Composers Datebook

Synopsis

The stage directions read: “The garden of the Grimaldi Palace outside Genoa. On the left side, the palace, directly in front, the sea. Dawn is breaking.”

The evocative music is by Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi, the prelude to his opera Simon Boccanegra, which premiered on today’s date in 1857 in Venice.

Despite its shimmering prelude, his new opera was not well received. The critics felt it was one of those works which “does not make its effect immediately … It is written with the utmost exquisite craftsmanship but needs to be studied in all its details.”

Verdi, a practical man of the theater, knew what that sort of review really meant. He wrote: “I thought I’d done something passable, but it seems I was mistaken. The score is not possible as it stands. It is too sad, too depressing. I shall need to redo it to give it more contrast and variety, more life.”

The revised version of Simon Boccanegra premiered 24 years later, in 1881, with additions and alterations to the story by Arrigo Boito, the brilliant librettist for Verdi’s final operas, Otello and Falstaff.

Despite the revisions, Boccanegra remained one of the least popular of Verdi’s works for many decades. In the 1930s, it was revised successfully at the Metropolitan Opera in New York with an all-star cast, and since then, audiences have had more opportunities to study Verdi’s score sufficiently to appreciate its “exquisite craftsmanship, contrast, variety and life.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901): Simon Boccanegra; La Scala Chorus and Orchestra; Claudio Abbado, conductor; DG 449 752

Synopsis

Today’s date marks the birth anniversaries of two major 20th century American composers: Carl Ruggles was born in East Marion, Massachusetts on today’s date in 1876, and Henry Cowell, in Menlo Park, California in 1897.

Ruggles was a tough old bird, who wrote a small handful of tough, uncompromising musical works. He was the conductor of a symphony orchestra in Winona, Minnesota from 1908-1912, a teacher at the University of Miami from 1937-1943, and a talented painter to boot. His first music to be performed in public was A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, an apt description of Ruggles himself, a crusty loner who once claimed the only man he ever met who could out-swear him was his friend and colleague Charles Ives. He eventually retired to an old schoolhouse in Arlington, Vermont.

Ruggles’ striking orchestral works, with titles like Sun-Treader and Men and Mountains, are occasionally revived, but he remains just a name for most 21st-century concert-goers.

Henry Cowell was a much more genial, out-going sort: a composer, performer and teacher who wrote a great deal of music, ranging from the dissonant and experimental to the beguilingly lyrical. He was an early apostle of what we now call world music, and in 1956 undertook a world tour, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and the US State Department, which included lengthy stays in Iran, India and Japan, and resulted in him writing a number of musical works incorporating ideas and musical instruments from those countries.

Music Played in Today's Program

Carl Ruggles (1897-1971): Sun-Treader; Cleveland Orchestra; Christoph von Dohnanyi, conductor; Cleveland Orchestra 75th Anniversary CD Edition 093-75

Henry Cowell (1897-1965): Homage to Iran; Leopold Avakian, violin; Mitchell Andrews, piano; Basil Bahar, Persian drum CRI 836

Synopsis

On today's date in 1915, the Moscow Synodal Choir gave the premiere performance of a new choral work by Sergei Rachmaninoff. In Russian, the work was titled Vsenoshchnoe Bdeniye, which translates as All-Night Vigil Service or more commonly as Vespers.

This was Rachmaninoff’s take on traditional liturgical melodies of the Easter Orthodox church. Rachmaninoff himself was not particularly religious, but by 1915, all Russians, religious or not, perhaps found solace in such music as the staggering casualties of the Russian Imperial troops during World War I became apparent.

Vespers was warmly received in Moscow and repeated five times within a month of its premiere. But in 1917, the Bolshevik revolution transformed Imperial Russia into a non-religious Soviet state. It remained pretty much forgotten until 1965, when Alexander Sveshnikov made the first recording of the work with the USSR State Academic Russian Choir for the Soviet record label Melodiya.

Ironically, that Melodiya LP was never available for sale within the USSR, and was only issued as an export item to the West. It quickly became a best-seller, and Western audiences were astonished by both the emotional power of the work and the low bass voices required to perform it.

Even by Russian standards, the bass parts are low. When shown the manuscript score back in 1915, the work’s original conductor shook his head, and said, “Now where on earth are we to find such basses? They are as rare as asparagus at Christmas!”

Music Played in Today's Program

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): Vespers (All-Nght Vigil); USSR State Academic Russian Choir; Alexander Sveshnikov, conductor; Pipeline Music custom CD (from Amazon.com)

Synopsis

If TikTok influencers were around in Paris in 1831, they would probably have offered a breathless special edition report on a concert that occurred on today’s date that year.

Everybody who was anybody was there: from the literary world, French novelist Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables, don’t you know, and writer Alfred de Mussett, who they say was living in sin with that scandalous baroness, who went by the name of George Sand. Oh, and German poet Heinrich Heine was there, and from the music world, three of the leading opera composers of the day: foreign-born Giacomo Meyerbeer and Luigi Cherubini, and popular native son, Jacques Halevy. And who could miss the dashing, lion-maned Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt also seated in the theater?

They were all there to witness the Parisian debut of the most charismatic performer of his time, Italian violinist Nicolo Paganini. It was whispered that the fourth string on his violin was made from the intestine of his mistress, murdered at his own hand, and that he had spent 20 years in prison for the crime, with his violin his sole companion. Others hinted he had actually made a pact with Satan, trading his immortal soul for superhuman virtuosity! He looked like death warmed over, thin and gaunt, but played like a man possessed.

Music Played in Today's Program

Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840): Caprice No. 10; James Ehnes, violin; Telarc 80398

Synopsis

Today is International Women’s Day, a global celebration of the social, economic, political, and cultural achievements of women, so here’s a French composer whose name you may not have heard before, but you should!

After all, her music was good enough that Gabriel Fauré, Paul Dukas, and Maurice Ravel performed it at musical salons in Paris. She was a close friend of the famous composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger, studied organ with Louis Vierne, and composition with Vincent d’Indy.

But enough name-dropping. Her name was Charlotte Sohy. Born in Paris in 1887, and in the early decades of the 20th century, achieved both professional status and public success as a composer, writing masses, art songs, piano pieces, chamber music, and this symphony, which dates from 1917.

Unlike many women composers of the past, Sohy’s husband fully supported her career. After all, he was also a composer, and she even collaborated with him on a few of his pieces. Still, even in cosmopolitan Paris, she chose to publish her music under the pseudonym Charles Sohy, and while her chamber works received performances, her symphony remained unperformed during her lifetime.

Music Played in Today's Program

Charlotte Sohy (1887-1955): Symphony in C-sharp minor; Orchestre National de France; Débora Waldman, conductor; Palazzetto Bru Zane Label BZ-2006