Composers Datebook

Synopsis

Australian composer Barrington Pheloung’s music might not be familiar to concertgoers, but if you watch public television’s Mystery series, you’ve probably heard a lot of his work.

He composed music for the British Inspector Morse TV series, chronicling the cases of a Thames Valley police inspector and his loyal assistant, Robbie Lewis, and once explained how he came up with the haunting Inspector Morse theme:

“Morse is a very melancholic character ... and he was a lover of classical music ... He has a very cryptic mind and loves doing crosswords; we came up with the obvious idea — his name is Morse and so we used Morse code in the [theme] music.” He said the tapped code for M-O-R-S-E created a rhythm and even suggested a harmonic structure: “I picked up my guitar and there was the tune.”

Pheloung was born on today’s date in 1954 in Sydney, Australia, played drums and guitar as a kid, discovered Bach as a teen, and ended up earning a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London. He composed music for dance, films and TV, including Lewis, the sequel to the successful Inspector Morse series.

Music Played in Today's Program

Barrington Pheloung (1954-2019): Theme from Inspector Morse; The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra; James Fitzpatrick, conductor; Silva Screen Records 4729

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1911, the Independent Music Society of Paris sponsored an anonymous concert at which the audience was invited to guess the composers of a number of pieces presented without attribution.

Professional music critics were also in attendance, although they prudently refused to reveal their guesses, fearing their professional reputations might suffer as a result. In the audience was the French composer Maurice Ravel, who had agreed to let some of his new piano pieces be performed as part of the experiment.

“The title Valses nobles et Sentimentales is a sufficient indication that my intention was to compose a chain of waltzes following the example of Schubert,” Ravel wrote. “They were performed for the first time, amidst protests and booing, at this concert.”

Even more droll, he recalled, were the reactions of some his most ardent admirers, who didn't know any of his own music would be played. They jeered at his waltzes, calling them “ridiculous” and ventured the guess the composer must be either Satie or Kodaly. Ravel accepted their comments in stoic silence.

The audience proved more astute than Ravel’s friends, however. “The paternity of the waltzes was correctly attributed to me, but by a weak majority,” he recalled.

Music Played in Today's Program

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Valses Nobles et Sentimentales; Minnesota Orchestra; Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, conductor; Analogue 007

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1938, a musical soirée was held at Dumbarton Oaks, a magnificent house on the crest of a wooded valley in Washington, D.C. This was the home of Robert and Mildred Bliss.

Robert had retired from a distinguished career in the U.S. Foreign Service, which included a posting in St. Petersburg in 1907, around the same time a young Russian composer name Igor Stravinsky was getting some of his first public performances there.

The Blisses commissioned Stravinsky to write a chamber work to be premiered at their 30th wedding anniversary, a work now known as the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto.

“A little concerto in the style of the Brandenburg Concertos,” was how Stravinsky put it, adding, “I played Bach very regularly during the composition of the concerto, and I was greatly attracted to the Brandenburg Concertos. Whether or not the first theme of my first movement is a conscious borrowing from the third of the Brandenburg set, however, I do not know. What I can say is that Bach would most certainly have been delighted to loan it to me; to borrow in this way was exactly the sort of thing he liked to do.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): Dumbarton Oaks Concerto

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1937, the NBC radio network was carrying a live broadcast from the Cincinnati May Festival of a new oratorio The Ordering of Moses, inspired by the Biblical book of Exodus. The music was by 54-year old Canadian-born American composer, organist, pianist and music professor named Robert Nathaniel Dett.

Curiously, about 40 minutes into the live broadcast, which should have lasted a full hour, the NBC announcer broke in, stating, “We are sorry indeed, ladies and gentlemen, but due to previous commitments, we are unable to remain for the closing moments of this excellent performance.”

A live recording of the broadcast, preserved on scratchy acetate discs, documents that moment for posterity. No one knows for certain why the broadcast was cut short, but some have speculated that angry calls to NBC’s Southern affiliate stations might have been the reason, because Dett was African-American.

77 years later, in 2014, American conductor James Conlon led the Cincinnati May Festival Chorus in another live, broadcast performance of Dett’s oratorio, this time complete and uninterrupted from the stage of Carnegie Hall in New York City. That live performance was also recorded, this time digitally, and made available for posterity on a commercial release.

Music Played in Today's Program

R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943): The Ordering of Moses; Soloists; Cincinnati May Festival Chorus; Cincinnati Symphony; James Conlon, conductor; Bridge CD 9462

Synopsis

As far as anniversary gifts go, the one Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg received in 1920 was pretty spectacular. To celebrate his 25th year as Music Director of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, they staged a special month-long festival in honor of one of Mengelberg’s favorite composers — Gustav Mahler, the Austrian composer of monumental symphonies, who had, in fact, conducted the Concertgebouw several times before his untimely death at 50 in 1911.

Mahler was the conductor Mengelberg admired most, and Mengelberg and his orchestra were ardent champions of Mahler’s symphonies, too: their 1920 festival performed all nine of them over the course of two weeks that May.

Mahler’s widow Alma was in attendance, as were his younger Austrian contemporaries Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, Danish composer Carl Nielsen and a young British conductor and Mahler fan named Adrian Boult, who reported on the festival for a British newspaper back home.

In 1995, the Concertgebouw staged another Mahler Festival on the 75th anniversary of the 1920 one, this time inviting the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic to participate. A hundredth-anniversary festival was planned for May 2020, but the COVID pandemic forced that Mahler cycle to be postponed until May 2025. Good things come to all who wait.

Music Played in Today's Program

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Symphony No. 1 (Titan); Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Riccardo Chailly, conductor; London/Decca 448813