Composers Datebook

• HRH is amused

  Synopsis“We are not amused,” is the dour statement attributed to the matronly Queen Victoria in her later years, although some historians dispute she ever really said it.But as a young woman, in her diary Queen Victoria did write, “I was very much amused indeed!” after seeing Italian opera singer Giulia Grisi on stage. The young Queen was a fan, and made a drawing of the singer in a role she created: that of Elvira in Vincenzo Bellini’s opera I Puritani, or The Puritans, which debuted in Paris on today’s date in 1835.When Bellini’s opera came to London later that same year, with Grisi in the cast, the young Queen attended several performances, and the opera she called Dear Puritani became a life-long favorite, perhaps because it was the first she attended with her husband-to-be, the young Prince Albert.The opera is set in 17th century England during the Civil War between Royalist supporters of the deposed King Charles I and Puritan rebels led by Oliver Cromwell. Its plot involves a Romeo and Juliet-like love story between a delicate Puritan soprano and a dashing Royalist tenor. Unlike Shakespeare’s tragedy, however, Bellini’s opera provides a happy ending for its politics-crossed lovers.Music Played in Today's ProgramVincenzo Bellini (1801 – 1835) — "A te, o cara, amor talora," fr I Puritani (Alfredo Kraus; Philharmonia Orchestra; Riccardo Muti, cond.) EMI 09149

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• Durufle's Op. 5

  SynopsisOn today’s date in 1935, at the Church of Saint François-Xavier in Paris, organist Geneviève de la Salle gave the first complete performance of the three-movement Suite by French composer, teacher and virtuoso organist Maurice Duruflé.If you sing in a choir or are a fan of choral music, you’re probably familiar with Duruflé’s serene and tranquil Requiem, which premiered 12 years later.Duruflé’s Op. 5 premiered in 1935, his Op. 9 in 1947, so you might reasonably conclude the composer was a slow worker — which he was. He was also a very self-critical perfectionist whose catalog of works is rather small, but exquisitely crafted. In all, Duruflé’s output comprises less than 15 published works, of which seven are for organ.Duruflé’s music is firmly embedded in the French tradition of organ composers like César Franck and Louis Vierne, and orchestral composers like Debussy, Ravel and Duruflé’s own composition teacher, Paul Dukas. Great French organist Marie-Claire Alain, when asked to describe Duruflé’s music, replied “it is a perfectly honest art … he was not an innovator but a traditionalist … Duruflé evolved and amplified the old traditions, making them his own.”Music Played in Today's ProgramMaurice Durufle (1902-1986): Organ Suite; Todd Wilson, organ; Schudi organ at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Dallas, Texas; Delos 3047

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• Richard Strauss and Terry Riley put their spin on Salome's dance

  SynopsisOne of the 20th century’s most important — and most lurid — operas had its American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on today’s date in 1907.Richard Strauss’s Salome is a faithful setting of Oscar Wilde’s play about the decadent Biblical princess who, after her famous “dance of the seven veils,” demands the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter as a reward. She then confesses her love to the severed head and kisses it. This scene, accompanied by Strauss’s graphic music, proved too much for early audiences to take.“A reviewer should be an embodied conscience stung into righteous fury by the moral stench with which Salome fills the nostrils of humanity,” wrote The New York Tribune. The Met cancelled the rest of the scheduled performances, and Salome was not staged there again until 1934.Closer to our time, American composer Terry Riley put a more positive spin on the legend of Salome. In the 1980s, Riley wrote some string quartets collectively titled Salome Dances for Peace. “I conceived my quartets as a kind of ballet scenario, in which contemporary world leaders like Reagan and Gorbachev are seduced by a reincarnated Salome into realizing world peace,” said Riley. Music Played in Today's ProgramRichard Strauss (1864-1949): Dance of the Seven Veils, from Salome; New York Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, conductor; DG 7890Terry Riley (b. 1935): Good Medicine, from Salome Dances for Peace; Kronos Quartet; Nonesuch 79217

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• The final days of John Dowland

  SynopsisEnglish lutenist and songwriter John Dowland is one of the best-known composers from the age of Shakespeare, but there’s much about him that we don’t know. Dowland wrote that he was born in 1563 but didn’t say where. Early biographies said he died in London on today’s date in 1626, but a mid-February date seems more likely. Dowland was 63 when he died — a ripe old age in a time of Plague.One early biographer described Dowland as “a cheerful person, passing his days in lawful merriment,” but his most famous works are deeply introspective in tone, in keeping with the then-fashionable cult of melancholy and its preoccupation with tears, darkness, and death.Dowland lived in a dangerous period of bitter religious conflict. He once wrote a frantic letter from Germany warning of a Catholic plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. But in that same letter Dowland confessed his own Catholic sympathies, yet at home and abroad worked for eminent Protestant families and royalty. The last record we have of him as a performer dates from May of 1625 when he played at the funeral of King James I — a fitting finale to a remarkable composer of that remarkable age.Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Dowland (1563-1626): Melancholy Galliard/Allemande; Ronn McFarlane, lute; Dorian 90148

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• Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis

  SynopsisIn 1940, choreographer Léonide Massine, approached composer Paul Hindemith, with the idea of having him arrange pieces by 19th century Romantic composer Carl Maria von Weber into a ballet score. At first Hindemith was intrigued, but Massine wanted straight arrangements and Hindemith wanted to write something original in the spirit of Weber, so the ballet idea was scrapped. Oh well, what Hindemith finally did come up with turned out to be one of his most successful and popular orchestral works, Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, which received its premiere performance on today’s date in 1944 at a New York Philharmonic concert conducted by Artur Rodzinski.Now, Hindemith had a reputation for being serious and rather “Germanic,” so The New York Times critic had a little fun with that image of the composer, writing:“Sometimes [Hindemith’s] counterpoint has been as busy and energetic as the works of an automobile — and as meaningless. Sometimes it has been thick and overstuffed in its style. This metamorphosis employs counterpoint as a matter only incidental to the gay development of ideas, and there is sunshine in every nook and cranny of the transparent, debonair score.”Music Played in Today's ProgramPaul Hindemith (1895-1963): Symphonic Metamorphosis; San Francisco Symphony, Herbert Blomstedt, conductor; London/Decca 421523

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