Composers Datebook

Synopsis

Traditionally, the harmonica is the instrument of the loner: the cowboy by the campfire, the hobo riding the rails, the bluesman pouring out his soul at midnight.

The harmonica seems a little out of place in a concert hall — especially when played by someone wearing a tuxedo. But every so often a virtuoso player comes along who commissions a new concert work for the instrument. In...

Synopsis

On this day in 1919, Edward Elgar conducted the London Symphony in the premiere performance of his new Cello Concerto, with Felix Salmond as soloist.

What should have been a joyous occasion turned out to be a frustrating one — there simply wasn’t enough time to rehearse properly, and the premiere was a near-fiasco. Puzzled, the less-than-full house in Queen’s Hall gave Elgar a pol...

Synopsis

Imagine that you are playing for high stakes on a TV quiz show and here’s your question:

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 had its world premiere performance in what city?

a) Moscow

b) St. Petersburg

c) Budapest

d) Boston

Is that your final answer? If you chose d) Boston, you would have been a winner!

Tchaikovsky finished his Piano Concerto N...

Synopsis

In the year 1929, October 24 fell on a Thursday, and that particular day has the dubious honor of being dubbed “Black Thursday” — for it was on that fateful day that the New York Stock Exchange crashed. A full-blown financial panic ensued, leading to the Great Depression of the 1930s. For many who saw their fortunes wiped out overnight, it must have seemed like the end of the world.

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1913, composer Frederick Delius was in Leipzig for the first performances of two orchestral pieces destined to become among his most popular works. These were On hearing the first Cuckoo in Spring and Summer Night on the River, premiered by the world-famous Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, led by one of the most charismatic conductors of that time, the legendary Artur ...

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On today’s date in 1942, Bruno Walter conducted the New York Philharmonic in the premiere of the Symphony No. 2 of American composer John Alden Carpenter.

Like Charles Ives, Carpenter led a double life as a composer and successful businessman. He was born into a wealthy family, and from 1906 until his retirement in 1936, served as Vice President of George B. Carpenter & Co., h...

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In the year 1858, Parisian composer Jacques Offenbach was, as usual, busy writing his next operetta and avoiding his creditors. He found it expedient to work in hotel rooms rather than at home, where he ran the risk of being cornered by bill collectors. Offenbach hoped that maybe, just maybe, one big box office success might clear his debts — and enable him to reupholster the tattered...

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An unusual piano concerto by American composer Lou Harrison had its premiere performance in New York on this day in 1985. Famous jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, for whom it was written, was the soloist.

Now, Harrison’s music was often marked by its eclectic blending of East and West, and on occasion, Harrison employed non-Western or unusual instruments in his scores, including his own...

Synopsis

From the first millennium of the Common Era to the present day, the Mass have been chanted and sung to music both simple and complex. Most Mass settings are in the original Latin, since that liturgical language, after so many centuries, has the advantage of being very familiar and eminently suitable for singing.

On today’s date in 2010, the Kansas City Chorale gave the premiere of...

Synopsis

On this day in 1904, in Cologne, Germany, Gustav Mahler conducted the first performance of his Symphony No. 5. It was not a success. Applause was light, with loud hissing from some in the audience. Even Mahler’s wife, Alma, complained so much about the orchestration that Mahler kept tinkering with the score until the last year of his life.

Despite this inauspicious beginning, Mahl...

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On this date in 1831, the 21-year-old Felix Mendelssohn conducted a concert in Munich consisting entirely of his own works — a concert that included the premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 1, with its composer as the soloist.

Mendelssohn was in high spirits and wrote these lines to family:

“It is a glorious feeling to waken in the morning and to know that you are going to write...

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Today’s date in 1956 marks the birthday of Cuban composer Eduardo Martin, a name that might not be all that familiar to you — unless you play guitar, that is. Martin has written music for orchestra and films but is best known and admired for works he’s written for his own instrument, the guitar — music infused with the flair and dance rhythms of his native Havana.

One of his popul...

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On today’s date in 1905, Claude Debussy’s orchestral suite La Mer or The Sea was performed for the first time in Paris. Today this music is regarded as an impressionistic masterpiece, but early audiences — especially those in America — found it rough sailing.

“We clung like a drowning man to a few fragments of the tonal wreck,” wrote a 1907 Boston critic, and suggested that instea...

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To most music lovers, the name Jean-Baptise Lully calls to mind pompous and courtly music for Louis XIV, the French “Sun King” who was his great patron. The Italian-born Lully is credited with “creating” French opera in the 17th century — and some of these works, usually based on subjects from classical mythology and poetry, are occasionally revived and recorded today.

But that wa...

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Today’s date in 1979 marked the passing, at 93, of a remarkable composer and performer named Rebecca Clarke. Born in Harrow, England, in 1886, she became one of the first female professional orchestral viola players in the United Kingdom, and in 1916 moved to the United States.

At a New York recital in 1918, she premiered one of her own compositions under the male pseudonym of Ant...

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Today’s date marks the original Columbus Day, honoring the Italian explorer who for decades was described as the man who “discovered America.” In recent years Native American leaders have pointed out that indigenous peoples had been living on the continent for thousands of years, and Columbus didn’t “discover” anything — in fact, he didn’t even know where he was, which is why he calle...

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On today’s date in 1928, Danish composer Carl Nielsen conducted the first public performance of his new Clarinet Concerto in Copenhagen.

“The clarinet can, at one and the same time seem utterly hysterical, gentle as balsam, or as screechy as a streetcar on badly greased rails,” Nielsen said. He set himself the task of covering that whole range of the instrument’s conflicting emoti...

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In James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, the thoughts of its major characters keep shifting from the sights and sounds they encounter in and around Dublin to their private, non-stop interior monologues. This narrative technique came to be called “stream of consciousness” writing.

In music, something similar occurred on today’s date in 1968, when the Italian composer Luciano Berio conducted...

Synopsis

John Lennon was born on today’s date in the year 1940, in Liverpool, England — during a German air raid on that city, as it happened. With three other young lads from Liverpool, Lennon would eventually become world-famous, courtesy of the band he helped formed in 1959 called the Beatles.

The Beatles started out in a Liverpool nightclub called the Cavern, playing pop tunes of the d...