Composers Datebook

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1785, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dedicated six of his string quartets to his friend and older colleague, Joseph Haydn. Earlier that year, Haydn heard some of them performed in Vienna. Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang’s father, was also present, and must have been elated when Haydn said, “Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.”

Mozart’s quartets were published by Viennese firm Artaria and generated some much-needed income for Wolfgang. Whether they made money for their publisher as well is another matter. Three years later, one of Mozart’s lesser contemporaries, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, offered Artaria six of his string quartets at the same price they paid Mozart, with a note that read, “I am certain you will do better with my quartets than you did with Mozart’s, which deserve the highest praise, but which, because of their overwhelming and unrelenting artfulness, are not to everyone’s taste.”

Apparently Mozart’s quartets were deemed too “brainy” for public taste. Well, Dittersdorf may have sold better in the 1780’s, but these days performers and audiences find Mozart’s “unrelenting artfulness” more to their taste than Dittersdorf’s sugary confections.

Music Played in Today's Program

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): String Quartet; Emerson String Quartet; DG 439 861

Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-1799): String Quartet No. 4; Gewandhaus Quartet; Berlin Classics 9261

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1933, the Philadelphia Orchestra was performing at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell. Conductor Alexander Smallens led the world premiere performance of a new work by 23-year-old composer Samuel Barber. It was his first orchestral composition to have a major public hearing, but oddly enough, young Mr. Barber himself was not in attendance.

He was in Europe that summer, and so missed the premiere of his overture to The School for Scandal, a musical romp inspired by the 18th century English Restoration comedy of the same name by Richard Sheridan.

Even before he had left the Curtis Institute of Music, where he pursued a triple major in piano, composition, and voice, Barber had begun winning prizes that enabled him to study abroad. Until the outbreak of World War II, Barber’s musical career was quite Eurocentric.

His School for Scandal overture, in fact, was written in Italy in 1931. Barber’s Symphony No. 1 premiered in Rome in 1936, and the following year was played by the Vienna Philharmonic at the 1937 Salzburg Music Festival. That led to stateside performances and commissions from conductors like Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini.

Music Played in Today's Program

Samuel Barber (1910-1981): School for Scandal overture; Baltimore Symphony; David Zinman, conductor; Argo 436 288

Synopsis

Say the phrase “BBC Proms” to most music lovers, and they’ll conjure up a mental image of the rowdy “Last Night of the Proms” at which normally staid and reserved Britons don funny hats and make rude noises during Henry Wood’s arrangement of British sailor songs. But the raucous “Last Night of the Proms” is only the festive finale of several weeks of fairly serious music making: dozens of concerts covering a wide range of old and new music

From the very beginning of the Proms in 1895, Wood, who started the whole thing, had this specific agenda: “I am going to run nightly concerts to train the public in easy stages,” he explained. “Popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music.”

On today’s date in 1996, for example, violinist Gidon Kremer premiered a violin concerto by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho at a Proms concert. The work had an unusual title — Grail Theater. “I like the unusual combination of these two words because it represents two such different things. One is the search for the Grail, and the other the theatrical aspect,” she explained.

Music Played in Today's Program

J.S. Bach (1685-1750) arr. Henry Wood: Toccata and Fugue in D minor; BBC Symphony; Andrew Davis, conductor; Teldec 97868

Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023): Grail Theatre; Gidon Kremer, violin; BBC Symphony; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; Sony Classical 60817

Synopsis

The life story of George Gershwin usually runs something like this: an incredible string of successes cut short by Gershwin’s tragically early death. But on today’s date in 1922, Gershwin suffered one of his rare flops when his one-act opera Blue Monday opened and closed on the same day.

For five years, beginning in 1920, Gershwin had provided the music for an annual Broadway revue, The George White Scandals. The impresario Mr. White provided the money and the leggy showgirls; Gershwin provided the catchy tunes and light-hearted dances.

But in 1922, Gershwin was eager to try something different: a modern, jazz-age version of an Italian verismo opera. The plot was simple: he does her wrong, and then she shoots him. The reviews were devastatingly bad — one critic suggesting the soprano with the pistol should have shot the rest of the cast before anyone had a chance to sing.

And so White pulled Blue Monday from his revue before it could have a second performance. A concert revival by the Paul Whiteman band at Carnegie Hall in 1925, and a 1953 CBS-TV production didn’t fare all that much better.

Even today Blue Monday is rarely staged.

Music Played in Today's Program

George Gershwin (1898-1937): Blue Monday; Cincinnati Pops; Erich Kunzel, conductor; Telarc 80434

Synopsis

Around this time in 1956, the hot ticket on Broadway was for a musical based on the old Greek legend of Pygmalion, a sculptor so good that he fell in love with one of his beautiful female statues. The playwright, George Bernard Shaw, had updated the legend to modern-day London, and in 1956, the Broadway team of Lerner and Loewe had in turn transformed Shaw’s stage play into the smash Broadway musical, My Fair Lady.

But 208 years before all that, on today’s date in the year 1748, another very successful musical adaptation of the Pygmalion legend opened in Paris. This Pygmalion was an opera-ballet by great French Baroque composer, Jean-Philippe Rameau.

He was born in 1683, two years earlier than Bach and Handel, but unlike them, was something of a late bloomer. He was 50 before he became famous, and his opera-ballet Pygmalion opened shortly before his 65th birthday.

Rameau was famous for imitating natural sounds and noises in his music. One of his contemporaries, in praising the overture to Pygmalion, even suggested the repeated notes of his theme represented the chipping of Pygmalion’s chisel as he worked on his lovely creation.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764): Pygmalion; La Petite Bande; Gustav Leonhardt, conductor; BMG/Deutsche; Harmonia Mundi 77143