Composers Datebook

Synopsis

Any composer who sets out to write a violin concerto knows their new work will be measured against the famous concertos of the past. But in the fall of 1936, when Hungarian composer Béla Bartók decided to write a violin concerto, he asked his publisher to send him some recent work of his contemporaries. After seeing what Karol Szymanowski, Kurt Weill and Alban Berg had accomplished in the form, Bartok set to work, with much input from his violinist friend, Zoltan Szekely, for whom the new concerto was being written.

Bartók was in America when Szekely premiered his Concerto with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Willem Mengelberg.

It was only in America in 1943, that Bartok first heard his Concerto at a New York Philharmonic concert. He wrote, “I was most happy that there is nothing wrong with the scoring. Nothing needs to be changed, even though orchestral accompaniment of the violin is a very delicate business.”

If Bartók was happy with the scoring, he wasn’t very pleased with one New York music critic, who wrote that he didn’t think the new work would ever displace the great violin concertos of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, or Brahms.

“How is it possible to write such an idiotic thing? What fool fit for a madhouse would want to displace these works with his own?” he commented.

Music Played in Today's Program

Béla Bartók (1881-1945): Violin Concerto No. 1; Kyung-Wha Chung, violin; Chicago Symphony; Sir Georg Solti, conductor; London 411 804

Synopsis

The Boston Symphony premiered a new symphony on today’s date in 1984 — a commission for its Centenary Celebrations. It was the Symphony No. 1 by American composer John Harbison.

Like many composers who teach, Harbison does most of his composing in the summer months, usually spent on a farm in Token Creek, Wisconsin. The academic year is usually spent in Boston, teaching at MIT. In the case of his first symphony, he worked on the piece both in Wisconsin (where he was also finishing up an Italian language song-cycle), and during a residency year at the American Academy in Rome.

“Just as it felt very right to be working on Italian songs in the Midwest, it was natural to work on this American-accented symphony in Italy. I have always found the view from the distance to be clearest,” he said.

Harbison’s father, a Princeton history professor and amateur composer, also was a big influence on him. The younger Harbison, like his father, has an abiding passion for and fluency in American jazz as well as the modern classical idiom. He dramatically fused both styles in one of his most ambitious ventures to date, the opera, The Great Gatsby, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1999.

Music Played in Today's Program

John Harbison (b. 1938): Symphony No. 1; Boston Symphony; Seiji Ozawa, conductor; New World 80331

Synopsis

In 1838, Robert Schumann visited the grave of Franz Schubert in Vienna and paid a courtesy call on Schubert's brother, Ferdinand, who was still alive. Schumann had heard about Ferdinand's closet full of his brother’s manuscripts, and among the dusty music scores that Schumann was shown was one for a big symphony in C Major, unperformed, he was told, because people thought it was too difficult, too bombastic, and far too long.

Looking at the music, Schumann was stunned, and asked if he could arrange to have the symphony played. “Sure,” said Ferdinand, and Schumann sent the score off to his friend and fellow composer, Felix Mendelssohn, who was the director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Mendelssohn liked what he saw, and gave the first public performance of Schubert’s big symphony on today’s date in 1839.

After attending the rehearsal, Schumann wrote to his girlfriend, Clara Wieck, “Today I have been in seventh heaven. If only you had been there! For I cannot describe it to you; all the instruments were like human voices, and immensely full of life and wit … and the length, the divine length, like a four-volume novel … I was utterly happy, with nothing left to wish for except that you were my wife and I could write such symphonies myself!”

Well, sometimes wishes do come true, and good deeds are rewarded. Schumann did marry Clara, did write symphonies of his own, and did help launch Schubert’s work on its path towards worldwide recognition as a great symphonic masterpiece.

Music Played in Today's Program

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Symphony No. 9; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; Kurt Masur, conductor; Philips 426 269

Synopsis

Not all composers were nice people, and even some of the more famous ones turn out to have been rather nasty, greedy, vindictive and altogether unpleasant specimens of humanity, despite the enduring beauty of their music.

But we like to showcase the better side of the species. On today’s date in 1739, for example, George Frederick Handel premiered this music, his Organ Concerto in A Major, as a special, added attraction at a benefit concert in London. It was organized “for the benefit and increase of a fund established for the support of decayed musicians and their families.”

The previous year Handel had been shocked to learn that the widow and children of one of his favorite performers, oboist John Christian Kitch, were found wandering impoverished on the streets of London. Handel called a meeting of some of his colleagues at the Crown and Anchor Tavern and started a charitable fund, even enlisting the support of rival composers and musicians who heretofore had not been on very good terms with Herr Handel.

Within a year, a series of benefit concerts were organized to raise money for a continuing fund to assist musicians fallen on hard times, and even Handel’s enemies had to admit the gruff and frequently abrasive German must have had a good heart after all.

Music Played in Today's Program

George Frederic Handel (1685-1757): Organ Concerto in A; Peter Hurford, organ; Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra; Joshua Rifkin, conductor; London 430 569

Synopsis

It’s time once again for our Composer Quiz: Name a famous American composer who was also a successful businessman. If you answered insurance executive Charles Ives, Jay will show you what's under the box. But if your answer was “John Alden Carpenter,” vice president of George B. Carpenter and Co., supplies and equipment dealer, we'll just pull back the curtain and show you all your prizes!

John Alden Carpenter was born in 1876 near Chicago, and, after studies out East, entered his father’s business back home, eventually becoming its vice president. Fortunately for the budding composer, the firm was largely run by his brothers, and he had enough free time to devote to his music. On today’s date in 1915, the Chicago Symphony premiered Carpenter’s first big orchestral work, the suite, Adventures in a Perambulator. (You get extra points if you knew a perambulator is a baby buggy.)

Anyway…

Carpenter's pram piece was a big success, and he wrote a string of other popular works, including a ballet based on the Krazy Kat comic strip of his day, and Skyscrapers, a jazzy and topical tribute to the transformation of urban America in the 1920s.

Unlike the unconventional Charles Ives, who toiled away in obscurity, the more conventional Carpenter was famous in his day. Ironically, while Ives’ fame only increased after his death in 1954, when Carpenter died in 1951, his music rapidly fell from fashion.

Music Played in Today's Program

John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951): Adventrues in a Perambulator; National Symphony of Ukraine; John McLaughlin Williams, conductor; Naxos 8.559065