Composers Datebook

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We tend to think of Paris as the most sophisticated and worldly of European capitals — a city whose residents are unlikely to be shocked by anything they see or hear.

Ah, but that’s not always the case, as poor Hector Berlioz discovered on today’s date in 1838, when his new opera Benvenuto Cellini premiered at the Paris Opéra. One line in the libretto about the cocks crowing at da...

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Today is the birthday of American composer and teacher Edward Burlingame Hill, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872.

Hill studied at Harvard, which was not surprising, since his grandfather had been President of the college, and his father taught chemistry there. “My father sang the songs of Schubert, and was a great admirer of Bach. Thus at an early age I was imbued with a d...

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On today’s date in 1971, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., was inaugurated with a gala performance of a new work by Leonard Bernstein. Mass was a musical and visual extravaganza which reinterpreted the text of the Latin liturgy and involved more than 200 singers, dancers, and instrumentalists.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had asked Bernstein to ...

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The Three Choirs Festival is one of England’s oldest musical traditions. Established around 1715, it showcases the cathedral choirs of Gloucester, Worcester and Herford, and presents both choral and orchestral works by British composers

Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis was premiered there in 1910, and in the audience was an 18-year-old aspiring composer named...

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Works by Henry Kimball Hadley rarely shows up on concert programs anymore, but in the early years of the 20th century, he ranked as a major and very popular American composer. In 1910, Gustav Mahler conducted Hadley’s tone poem The Culprit Fay during his tenure at the New York Philharmonic, and in 1920, Hadley’s opera Cleopatra’s Night was staged at the Metropolitan Opera.

But by ...

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Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was born in Henniker, New Hampshire, on today’s date in 1867. Amy Beach — or, Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, as she was also called — was one of America’s first major women composers and a gifted concert pianist to boot

We probably have Mr. Beach to thank for Amy’s decision to devote herself more to composition than performance. In the spring of 1885, at 18, she debute...

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On today’s date in 1996, Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the San Francisco Symphony in the first performance of Lost and Found, a five-minute toccata for orchestra. Its composer was Steve Mackey, an American whose music Tilson Thomas championed and recorded.

Mackey wrote: “On more than one occasion Michael has used the word ‘wacky’ to describe my music. Composers usually blanch at...

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On today’s date in 1931, a short notice appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, which began: “Music never before heard in San Francisco will make up the program of the New Music Society to be conducted by Nicolas Slonimsky of Boston tonight in the Community Playhouse.” In addition to new works by Stravinsky and Prokofiev, Slonimsky conducted pieces by three American composers, includ...

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On today’s date in 1773, Austrian Empress Maria Theresa was visiting the country estate of Prince Nikolaus of Esterhazy. Among the attractions there were an opera house, a marionette theater, and the prince’s impressive chamber orchestra led by Franz Joseph Haydn.

It’s possible that Haydn’s Symphony No. 48 was performed for the Empress — in any case, this symphony came to be nickn...

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On today’s date in 17th century Germany, a baby boy was christened who would grow up to be one of the leading composers and organists of his time. No, it wasn’t Johann Sebastian Bach — although the child we’re discussing here would become the teacher of the teacher of J.S. Bach and did serve as godfather to one J.S. Bach’s older relations.

It was Johann Pachelbel who was baptized ...

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On today’s date in 1928, Kurt Weill’s Three Penny Opera, whose cast members portrayed thieves, murderers,and sex workers, debuted at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin.

The Three-Penny Opera was a 20th century updating of The Beggar’s Opera, a satirical 18th century British ballad-opera by John Gay. A new German text was provided by playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill p...

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It was on this day in 1929 that a new march by John Philip Sousa was played for the first time — once — and then promptly forgotten until almost 60 years later. The Foshay Tower Washington Memorial March was commissioned by Wilbur Foshay, a high-flying Minneapolis businessman of the Roaring 20s who fell victim to the stock market crash and criminal charges of mail fraud.

One of hi...

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On today’s date in 1952, at the aptly named Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, New York, pianist David Tudor premiered two new works by the American composer John Cage.

The first, Water Music, was scored for a “prepared piano” — a piano into whose metal strings various items had been inserted to alter its sound — plus a duck call and transistor radio. For the second work, Tudor ...

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Franz Liszt, the inventor of the “symphonic poem,” wrote 13 of them. The second, Tasso, had its first performance on today's date in 1849. The occasion was a festival celebrating the 100th birthday of great German national poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the author of Faust. The festival was in Weimar, Germany, the city where Goethe died and was buried in 1832.

Lis...

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On today’s date in 1937, in Mexico City, Mexican composer and conductor Carlos Chavez conducted the first performance of this music by Aaron Copland.

The music owes its existence to Copland’s friendship with Chavez, which led to Copland visiting Mexico in 1932. Copland and Chavez paid a visit to a wild Mexico City Dance Hall called El Salón México. Quoting a guide-book descriptio...

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On today’s date in 2001, during the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, the German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter premiered Tango, Song and Dance, a new chamber work for violin and piano. She had commissioned the work from Andre Previn several years earlier, but its premiere was delayed as Mutter embarked on a project to perform and record all Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas.

“After doing a...

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You almost feel sorry for the guy — after all, how would you like to go down in history as the fellow who tried to stiff J.S. Bach? That’s what happened to Herr Johannes Friedrich Eitelwein, a rich merchant of Leipzig who thought he could avoid paying the customary wedding fee apportioned to that city’s church musicians by getting married outside city limits.

Back then such fees p...

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On today's date in 1907, the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 4 by Edward Elgar had its premiere performance in London. Say Pomp and Circumstance to most people and they will start humming the tune of No. 1, later set to words as Land of Hope and Glory. That march accompanied many of us down the aisle at our high school or college graduations.

In all, Elgar composed five Pomp and C...

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On today’s date in 1944, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky completed an orchestral score, Scenes de Ballet, or Ballet Scenes. Now, considering Stravinsky had achieved international fame for his earlier ballet scores for The Firebird, Petroushka and The Rite of Spring, perhaps the generic title Ballet Scenes was not all that surprising.

What was surprising was that the commission fo...