Composers Datebook

Synopsis

Weather permitting, there’s a good chance you’ll be attending an outdoor symphonic concert tonight that will close with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, complete with a volley of booming cannon shots, church bells, and dazzling fireworks.

It’s become an American tradition to perform the 1812 Overture on July 4, even though it has nothing to do with the 1776 War of Independence — or America’s War of 1812, for that matter.

No, it’s all down to Arthur Fielder and the Boston Pops.

For years, a wealthy American businessman named David Mugar financed an outdoor Pops concert on Boston’s Esplanade on the Fourth of July. But by the mid-1970s, attendance started to decline, so Mugar suggested that if Fiedler would close the annual concert with the 1812 Overture, people might be lured back by the live cannon fire Tchaikovsky asks for in the piece.

Well, it worked. Outdoor concerts with the 1812 Overture plus cannons quickly became a tradition, and in 1976, 400,000 people attended the Boston Pops’ outdoor Bicentennial Fourth of July concert — setting a Guinness World Record for best-attended classical concert.

And, a year after his death in 2022, a bronze statue of Mugar was unveiled on the Boston Esplanade.

Music Played in Today's Program

Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): 1812 Overture; Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra; Antal Dorati, conductor; Mercury Living Presence 434360

Synopsis

Country Gardens is the best-known work of Australian-born American composer, arranger, and pianist Percy Grainger. Its score bears this note: “Birthday-gift, Mother, July 3, 1918.” His mother Rose was responsible for his excellent early musical training.

In 1918, he arranged a folk tune given to him in 1908 by Cecil Sharp, a major figure in the folklore revival in England. He titled this arrangement Country Gardens, and it went over so well at his recitals that he decided to have it published.

It was a big hit and broke sales records. In fact, until his death in 1961, its sales generated a significant portion of Grainger’s annual income. Like other composers with a mega-hit, Grainger came to resent being known for just one tune and would say to audiences: “The typical English country garden is not often used to grow flowers. It’s more likely to be a vegetable plot. So you can think of turnips as I play it”.

In 1931, Country Gardens was arranged for wind band by someone other than Grainger, but around 1950, at the special request of a Detroit band director, Grainger prepared his own wind band arrangement, which likewise became a hit.

Music Played in Today's Program

Percy Grainger (1882-1961): Country Gardens; Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra; Timothy Reynish Chandos 9549

Synopsis

In German, “Gluck” means “luck,” and today’s date marks the birthday of a German composer named Christoph Willibald Gluck, whose good fortune it was to be credited with reforming the vocally ornate but dramatically static form of Baroque opera.

In the 18th century, opera was the biggest and most high-profile of all musical forms, and Gluck wrote 49 of them during his 67 years of life. Like many 18th century opera composers, the stories Gluck chose were often based on ancient Greek myths such as “Orpheus and Eurydice.”

It wasn’t the matter of Gluck’s operas that was revolutionary, but the manner in which he set these stories to music. When the British music historian Charles Burney visited Gluck in 1771, he recorded the composer’s own words on the subject.

“It was my design to divest music of those abuses which the vanity of singers, or the complacency of composers, had so long disfigured Italian opera and made the most beautiful and magnificent of all public exhibitions into the most tiresome and ridiculous,” said Gluck.

To sum it all up, Gluck told Burney, “My first and chief care as a dramatic composer was to aim at a noble simplicity.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Christoph Willibald von Gluck (1714-1787): Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Orpheus; Academy of Ancient Music; Christopher Hogwood, conductor; L’Oiseau-Lyre 410553

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1937, a two-piano suite by French composer Darius Milhaud had its premiere. It was titled Scaramouche, after a stock character in the Italian commedia dell arte, and the music’s upbeat, carefree mood made it an instant hit. For his part, Milhaud was in an apprehensive mood. When he and his wife Madeleine had visited the 1937 Paris International Exposition, they saw premonitions of war reflected in many of its exhibits.

“Picasso’s Guernica adorned the walls of the Spanish pavilion, but the Spanish Republic had been murdered. Placed face to face, the German and the Soviet pavilions seemed to challenge each other to mortal combat. One evening, as we watched the sun set behind the flags of all nations, Madeleine clutched my arm in anguish and whispered, ‘This is the end of Europe!’” Milhaud recalled.

In 1940, Milhaud was forced to leave France when the Germans occupied Paris and his music was promptly banned due to his Jewish heritage. But in 1943, two French pianists performed Scaramouche in concert, tricking the German censors by listing its composer’s name as Hamid-al-Usurid — a fictitious Arabic composer whose name just happens to be an anagram of Darius Milhaud.

Music Played in Today's Program

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974): Scaramouche; Anthony and Joseph Paratore, pianos; Four Winds 3014

Synopsis

In 1971, American film composer Bernard Herrmann confessed, “the only thing I ever did that was foolhardy was to write an opera.” The opera was based on the 19th century novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Herrmann began work on it in April of 1943, and didn't finish until today's date in 1951 — at 3:45 p.m., as he noted in its score.

In those years, Herrmann was juggling three careers. He was conducting the CBS Orchestra, producing music for New York radio plays and occasional Hollywood films, and trying to write serious concert hall works. It's no wonder it took him eight years to finish a big opera score that clocked in at over three hours in length.

Now, writing an opera is hard enough, but getting it staged is even harder. Herrmann liked to quote Franz Liszt, that “to write an opera you have to have the soul of a hero — and the mentality of a lackey — to have it produced.” Even if an opera company expressed interest, Herrmann refused to cut or alter his score. He felt Wuthering Heights was his masterpiece, and refused to compromise.

The opera was never staged during his lifetime, so Herrmann had to content himself with making his own studio recording of Wuthering Heights at his own expense. After Herrmann’s death in 1975, the Portland Opera staged an edited-down version, and more recently, in 2011, the Minnesota Opera staged and filmed a critically acclaimed revival.

Music Played in Today's Program

Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975): Wuthering Heights; soloists; Pro Arte Orch; Bernard Herrmann, conductor; Unicorn UKCD -2050/52