Composers Datebook

Synopsis

American composer Philip Glass was born in Baltimore on this date in 1937.

Glass says he discovered music via his father’s radio repair shop, where, in addition to servicing radios, Papa Glass sold records. When certain titles sold poorly, Papa would take them home and play them for his three children, trying to discover why they didn't appeal to customers. And so the future composer rapidly became familiar with commercially unsuccessful records of Beethoven string quartets, Schubert piano sonatas, and Shostakovich symphonies.

After some decades studying music, both commercially successful and not, Glass struck out on an original path. In the 1970s, he made a name for himself as both a composer and a performer of hypnotically and repetitiously patterned music for dance and theatrical events in association with Mabou Mines and avant-garde theatrical director Robert Wilson. In 1976 the Philip Glass-Robert Wilson opera Einstein on the Beach premiered in France and was subsequently staged at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

In the decades that followed, Glass has composed many more operas, symphonies, and film scores, and has the dubious distinction of generating of “Philip Glass jokes,” the most famous being:

Knock-knock.

Who’s there?

Philip Glass.

Knock-knock.

Who’s there?

Philip Glass

Knock-knock.

Who’s there?

Philip Glass

Music Played in Today's Program

Philip Glass (b. 1937): Symphony No. 3; Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra; Dennis Russell Davies, conductor; Nonesuch 79581

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1948, Leonard Bernstein, 29, conducted the Boston Symphony in the premiere of a new orchestral work by Harold Shapero, 27.

This was Shapero’s Symphony for Classical Orchestra, a work modeled on Beethoven but sounding very much like one of the Neo-Classical scores of Igor Stravinsky. This was exactly what Shapero intended, but some found the music perplexing.

Aaron Copland, for one, wrote, “Harold Shapero, it is safe to say, is at the same time the most gifted and baffling composer of his generation.” That comment by Copland, one should remember, came at a time when Shapero’s generation included the likes of Barber, Bernstein, Menotti and Rorem. But Copland continued, “Stylistically, Shapero seems to feel a compulsion to fashion his music after some great model. He seems to be suffering from a hero-worship complex — or perhaps it is a freakish attack of false modesty.”

“Copland was so original that he just couldn’t understand anyone who wasn’t,” Shapero responded.

Even so, Shapero’s superbly crafted orchestral imitations suffered many decades of neglect. In the 1980s, however, conductor and composer Andre Previn fell in love with Shapero’s Symphony, performing and recording it with the LA Philharmonic, and declared its Adagietto movement the most beautiful slow movement of any American symphony.

Music Played in Today's Program

Harold Shapero (1920-2013): Symphony for Classical Orchestra; Los Angeles Philharmonic; André Previn, conductor; New World 373

Synopsis

Today marks the birthday of American pianist and composer Donald Shirley, who was born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1927, to Jamaican immigrant parents: a mother who was a teacher and a father an Episcopalian priest. He was a musical prodigy who made his debut with the Boston Pops at 18, performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

If Shirley had been born 20 years later, he might have had the career enjoyed by Andre Watts, who born in 1946. But in the late 1940s, when he was in his 20s, impresario Sol Hurok advised him that America was not ready for a black classical pianist, so instead he toured performing his own arrangements of pop tunes accompanied by cello and double-bass.

His trio recorded successful albums marketed as jazz during the 1950s and 60s, but he also released a solo LP of his piano improvisations that sounds more like Debussy or Scriabin, and he composed organ symphonies, string quartets, concertos, chamber works, and a symphonic tone poem based on the novel Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

The 2018 Oscar-winning film Green Book sparked renewed interest in Shirley’s career as a performer, but those of us curious to hear his organ symphonies and concert works hope they get a second look as well.

Music Played in Today's Program

Donald Shirley (1927-2013): Orpheus in the Underworld; Donald Shirley, piano; Cadence CLP-1009

Synopsis

Late in 2013, the musical world was gearing up to celebrate the 70th birthday of British composer John Tavener, but sadly he died, so his 70th birthday, which fell on today’s date in 2014, became a memorial tribute instead.

Tavener had suffered from ill health throughout his life: a stroke in his thirties, heart surgery and the removal of a tumor in his forties, and two subsequent heart attacks.

In his early twenties, he became famous in 1968 with his avant-garde cantata, The Whale, based loosely on the Old Testament story of Jonah. That work caught the attention of one of The Beatles, and a recording of it was released on The Beatles’ own Apple label.

Tavener converted to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977, and his music became increasingly spiritual. Millions who watched TV coverage of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, were deeply moved by his “Song for Athene,” which was performed to telling effect as Diana’s casket left Westminster Abbey. He was knighted in 2000, becoming Sir John Tavener.

In 2003, his Ikon of Eros, commissioned for the Centennial of the Minnesota Orchestra, and premiered at St. Paul’s Cathedral — the one in St. Paul, Minnesota, that is, not the one in London — and Tavener came to Minnesota for the event.

Music Played in Today's Program

John Tavener (1944-2013): Ikon of Eros; Jorja Fleezanis, violin; Minnesota Chorale; Minnesota Orchestra; Paul Goodwin, conductor; Reference Recording 102

Synopsis

On today’s date in 2019 a new documentary film, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah examining her powerful works and her career as a Black American artist.

Appropriately enough, the musical score for that documentary was crafted by another talented Black American woman, namely Kathryn Bostic, an accomplished composer of film, TV, theatrical, and concert hall scores.

Bostic is a recipient of many fellowships and awards including several from the Sundance Festival. She served the Vice President of the Alliance for Women Film Composers, is a member of the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2016 she became the first female African American score composer in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

“My parents loved music and my mother was a classical pianist and teacher. Listening to the wide range of music while growing up brought me to a phenomenal treasure trove of black composers including William Grant Still, Ulysses Kay, George Walker, Margaret Bonds, Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones, Isaac Hayes … I mean I could go on and on. They are all such extraordinary innovators of rich textures and amazing emotional depth. Definitely big influences for me,” Bostic said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Kathryn Bostic: Main Title, from Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am; Lakeshore Records 35495 (original soundtrack album)