Composers Datebook

Synopsis In 1974, St. Petersburg was still called Leningrad and still part of what we now call the former Soviet Union. Back then, the most famous living Soviet composer was Dmitri Shostakovich, whose health was rapidly failing from the cancer that would claim his life the following year. On today’s date in 1974, Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 15, his final, was given its premiere performance b...

Synopsis On today’s date in 1922, the British Broadcasting Corporation began daily radio transmissions from London, at first offering just news and weather — the latter read twice, in case anyone wanted to take notes. The following month, on Dec. 23, 1922, the BBC broadcast its first orchestral concert. Over time, the BBC became affectionately nicknamed “the Beeb,” or, less affectionately “Auntie,...

Synopsis While for Puerto Ricans, the bomba and the plena are more familiar representatives of their proud dance tradition, the musical form known as danza holds a special place in their hearts. Danza originated in southern Puerto Rico in the early 19th century, originally similar to the waltz, but over time it absorbed Afro-Cuban influences. Manuel Gregorio Tavárez, a 19th-century Puerto Rican c...

Synopsis These days at symphony concerts, when a new piece of music is about to be played, it’s not uncommon to overhear someone mutter, “Why do they have to program this new stuff, when there’s so much Brahms and Tchaikovsky we’d rather hear?” Well, on today’s date in 1881, the 40th season of the New York Philharmonic Society’s concerts opened with a pair of new works: first the New York premiere...

Synopsis In his autobiographical sketch, A Mingled Chime , British conductor Thomas Beecham offered this assessment of British composer Ethel Smyth: “Ethel Smyth is without question the most remarkable of her sex that I have been privileged to know,” and added that he admired her “fiery energy and unrelenting fixity of purpose.” Born in 1858, she became a composer against her family’s wishes, and...

Synopsis Today’s date in 1928 marks the birthdate in 1928 of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, famous for more than 400 scores he wrote for films and TV. If you’re a fan, you already know that he wrote the music for a series of spaghetti western movies like the 1964 classic A Fistful of Dollars , starring Clint Eastwood as a taciturn, sun-burnt, cigar-chomping gunman. If you’re an oboist, you’ve p...

Synopsis On today’s date in 1967, the New York Philharmonic gave the premiere performance of a new piece, November Step s , by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, a work commissioned by the orchestra as part of its 125th-anniversary celebrations. In addition to the usual instruments of the Western symphony orchestra, he included in his score two traditional Japanese instruments: the shakuhachi flute...

Synopsis On today’s date in 1830, 11-year-old piano virtuoso Clara Wieck took the stage of the Leipzig Gewandhaus for her first solo recital. Her father was a piano teacher, who had prepared Clara for a solo career since infancy. This was the age of the great composer-pianists Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin, and little Clara also wrote original works for her performances. Her Four Polonaises was...

Synopsis The Nov. 7, 1950, issue of Look magazine included a record review of a new LP of music by avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse. “Varèse is unlike anything else in music, and well worth knowing,” the review suggested. Frank Zappa, a young Californian just short of his 10th birthday, was fascinated by the Look magazine photo of Varèse accompanying the review, which made the composer look a...

Synopsis American composer Florence Price wrote three symphonies in all. Her Symphony No. 1 was premiered by the Chicago Symphony in 1933 and marked the first time a composition by an African-American woman was played by a major American orchestra. The score for her second symphony is lost. Her Symphony No. 3, commissioned by the WPA Federal Music Project, was premiered on today’s date in 1940 by...

Synopsis Into the Woods , a musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, opened on Broadway on today’s date in 1987, and brought to the stage characters from the world of fairy tales: Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and not one, but two Prince Charmings. But in Lapine and Sondheim’s fairy tale, bad things happen to good people who make morally questionable decisions in...

Synopsis Today we honor one of America’s greatest patrons of chamber music, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who died on this date in 1953. Born in 1864, Coolidge was the daughter of a wealthy wholesale grocer. She put her inheritance to good use. In 1924, she proposed to the Library of Congress that an auditorium be constructed in Washington, D.C., that would be dedicated to the performance of chamber...

Synopsis At Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 2002, the American Composers Orchestra presented new works inspired by the Hebrew Psalms. The program included the premiere of a new work by American composer David Lang, How to Pray . In his program note, Lang wrote: “[The] Psalms are so central to religious experience [because] they are a comprehensive catalogue of how to talk to the Almighty. ... Of...

Synopsis On today’s date in 1979, a new play by Peter Schaffer, Amadeus , opened at the National Theatre in London. Schaffer’s play tells the story of Mozart’s final years in Vienna, including some posthumous gossip that it was the petty jealousy and back-stabbing intrigue of Mozart’s Italian contemporary Antonio Salieri that hastened his untimely demise. There was even a Romantic legend that Sali...

Synopsis In France, today is “la Fete de la Toussaint” — All Saints’ Day — observed as both a sacred and secular national holiday, a time to visit cemeteries and put flowers on the graves of relatives. In 1947, when memories of the dead of World War II were still fresh, French Radio broadcast three premieres at a special concert from the Salle Gaveau in Paris. First on the program was the French p...

Synopsis Since today is Halloween, how about a tale from the crypt — with a composer’s skull or two tossed in for good measure! Music lovers have always had a “thing” about composers’ skulls. In 1820, for example, Prince Esterhazy ordered that Haydn’s remains be transferred from Vienna to Eisenstadt, only to discover that Haydn’s skull was missing. It had been stolen by two of Haydn’s closest frie...

Synopsis American opera composer Jake Heggie and his librettist Terrence McNally decided to follow their Dead Man Walking — a successful but harrowing opera about capital punishment — with a lighter, more comic work, Great Scott . Now, McNally winced when people called Great Scott a “comic” opera, since it deals with a serious topic — for opera lovers, at least, namely, “Does opera still matter?”...

Synopsis On today’s date in 1739, George Frideric Handel took out an advertisement, announcing that he was now accepting subscriptions for his new set of 12 Grand Concertos for strings. He had, in fact, finished the first concerto one month before, on Sept. 29, and spent the next five weeks polishing off the other 11 at the rate of one every two or three days. Handel’s publisher was John Walsh Jr....

Synopsis In St. Petersburg on today’s date in 1893, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducted the first performance of his latest symphony, his sixth. From the beginning, this symphony has been commonly known by its French subtitle, the Pathétique , a designation suggested by the composer’s brother, Modest. Now, by Pathetique , Modest meant something like “passionate” or “emotional,” with overtones of “p...

Synopsis On today’s date in 1994, Dennis Russell Davies conducted the Chicago Symphony in the premiere performance of a 23-minute orchestral work by American composer Steven Mackey. The new piece was titled Eating Greens , after a painting of the same name that the composer purchased at an African art store in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Eating Greens is a colorful orchestral suite of seven...

Synopsis For composers of new operas, all too often, after the heady champagne of opening night comes the strong black coffee of “the morning after” — sipped anxiously while reading the first reviews. Imagine yourself as American composer Robert Ward, whose opera The Crucible was premiered by the New York City Opera on today’s date in 1961. Here’s what he would have read in the New York Times the...

Synopsis On today’s date in 1970, a new chamber work by American composer John Corigliano received its premiere performance at a concert given by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the group that had commissioned it. The new piece, Poem in October , was scored for tenor voice and eight instruments and was a setting of poetry by Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh poet who died in 1953. “The th...

Synopsis On today’s date in 2002, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Leonard Slatkin conducted the National Symphony in the premiere of a new symphony by American composer Cindy McTee. She subtitled her Symphony No. 1, Ballet for Orchestra , saying: “Music is said to have come from dance — [and] the impulse to compose often begins as a rhythmical stirring and leads to a physical response —...

Synopsis On today’s date in 2008, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, soprano Dawn Upshaw and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra gave the first performance of a new song cycle, Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories . Its composer, Maria Schneider, conducted the premiere. Drummond was one of Brazil’s greatest poets, and Schneider came to know his work through English translations by Mark Strand...

Synopsis Royalty was often flattered by the composers of the Baroque age. Handel wrote glorious ceremonial music for British monarchs, and Bach was not above working up an obsequiously complimentary cantata or two for some German prince. At the French Court of Versailles, King Louis XIV appeared on stage for cameo appearances during operas and ballets whose stories complemented his wisdom, talent...