Composers Datebook

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1927, the landmark film The Jazz Singer received its premiere showing at the Warner Theater in New York. The Jazz Singer starred Al Jolson and is usually credited with being the first “talkie” — the first motion picture to successfully incorporate prerecorded music and spoken dialogue. Both the music and dialogue were recorded using the Vitaphone process, essentially a set of disc recordings synchronized for playback with the film’s projector.

The previous year, the New York Philharmonic had participated in the first Vitaphone projects, recording Wagner’s Tannhauser Overture as the first music video and performing the soundtrack for the otherwise silent drama Don Juan, starring John Barrymore.

Within a decade, Hollywood orchestras would be recording the classic film scores of European émigré composers like Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner, and within two decades American composers like Aaron Copland and Bernard Herrmann would be writing their memorable film scores, as well.

But back in 1927, all of that was well in the future, and, as one of Jolson’s lines in The Jazz Singer so prophetically put it, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Felix Arndt (1889-1918): An Operatic Nightmare (Desecration Rag No. 2); Paragon Ragtime Orchestra; Rick Benjamin, conductor; Newport Classics 60039

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957): The Prince and the Pauper film score; National Philharmonic; Charles Gerhardt, conductor; RCA/BMG 0185

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1867, two eminent British Victorians arrived in Vienna in search of Franz Schubert. Now, Schubert had been dead for 39 years, as the two Brits were quite aware. George Grove, 47, was England’s finest musicologist, and Arthur Sullivan, 25, one of the country’s most promising young composers.

Grove believed there might be forgotten manuscripts in the possession of the late composer’s relatives, so the pair met with Schubert’s nephew, Herr Doktor Schneider, who said he did have some pieces by Uncle Franz that no one had played for more than 40 years. If the two gentlemen had no objection to getting dusty, they were welcome to rummage the family’s storage closets.

The two visitors braved the dust and found orchestral parts for Schubert’s Rosamunde incidental music, tied up in a big bundle after the work’s premiere back in 1823 and untouched since then.

Grove and Sullivan spent the rest of the day carefully making a copy of their discovery. At 2 a.m., after finishing the task, their spirits must have been pretty high, since to celebrate the proper Victorian gentlemen began an impromptu game of leapfrog.

Music Played in Today's Program

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Rosamunde Incidental Music; Chamber Music Orchestra of Europe; Claudio Abbado, conductor; DG 431 655

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1945, Artur Rodzinski conducted the New York Philharmonic in the premiere performance of an orchestral suite arranged from Aaron Copland’s ballet score Appalachian Spring.

For the ballet’s 1944 premiere at the Library of Congress, Copland called for a chamber orchestra of 13 players, but for most music lovers, it’s as a work for a larger symphony orchestra that Appalachian Spring is most often remembered.

He said he had conducted all of his own works but knew his Appalachian Spring best of all. He also had some specific advice for other conductors of his score.

“I have often admonished orchestras, professional and otherwise, not to get too sweet or too sentimental with it, and I have reminded performers that Appalachian Spring should be played cooler than Tchaikovsky and lighter than Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. My own favorite place in the whole piece is toward the end where I have marked a misterioso. I would tell string players that we don't want to know where the up and down bows are. They must have a special sustained quality there, a kind of organ like sound, with each entry like an amen,” he said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Appalachian Spring Suite; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony Classical 63082

Synopsis

Despite a disastrous premiere in Birmingham on today’s date in 1900, Edward Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius has become one of his best-loved and most-frequently performed works in the U.K., where, in 2015, Classic FM offered a guide to what it called the work’s “most epic choral stupendousness.”

Here’s Classic FM’s summary of its story: “The piece follows an ‘everyman’ character (the word ‘Gerontius’ comes from the Greek for ‘old man’) as he faces death, meets his guardian angel and goes before his God before being taken to Purgatory with the promise of everlasting glory.”

Well, all that Roman Catholic talk of Purgatory in the poem by Cardinal John Henry Newman that Elgar set to music did not sit well with the Church of England in the early decades of the 20th century. Many Anglican clerics flatly refused to let it be performed in their cathedrals.

But that controversy is long a thing of the past, and nowadays Gerontius is performed at cathedrals such as St. Paul’s in London and in concert venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, where in 1991 it was performed at the BBC Proms in the presence of the Prince of Wales, now known as King Charles III.

Music Played in Today's Program

Edward Elgar (1857-1934): The Dream of Gerontius; John Shirley-Quirk, baritone; London Symphony Chorus; King’s College Choir, Cambridge; London Symphony Orchestra; Benjamin Britten, conductor; London/Decca 448170

Synopsis

In 2001, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize, Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, commissioned American composer Steve Heitzeg to write a Nobel Symphony.

In 1866, the Swedish engineer and scientist Alfred Nobel had invented dynamite. His patent helped him amass a great fortune, but, troubled by the destructive power and potential misuse of his invention, Nobel arranged that his estate would award annual prizes to those who made significant contributions to world peace.

For his Nobel Symphony, Heitzeg chose to set quotes from a variety of Nobel laureates, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Dalai Lama. Purely instrumental effects were also employed to convey something of their ideas and ideals. For example, in a section honoring a 1997 winner of the Nobel Prize, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, he scored an eerie march for a percussion ensemble consisting of hollow artificial limbs.

The October 2, 2001 premiere of the Nobel Symphony came shortly after the tragic events of September 11th. Understandably, its message had a special resonance for the performers and audiences present at its first performance.

Music Played in Today's Program

Steve Heitzeg (b. 1959): Nobel Symphony; Gustavus Orchestra; Warren Friesen, conductor; Gustavus Adolphus 60171-10022