Composers Datebook

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1813, William Henry Fry was born in Philadelphia. As a journalist, he was one of the most vociferous champions of American concert music, and put his money where his mouth was by becoming a composer, creating a number of programmatic works, including a Niagara symphony and another titled Santa Claus. Above all else, Fry was passionate about opera, and wrote several of his own.

Fry was a colorful — if understandably biased — music critic. Here’s an excerpt from his 1862 review of a New York performance of Verdi’s Il Trovatore — an opera only 9 years old at that time:

“Trovatore … has a wonderful plot, beyond human comprehension; though finally we learn in the last scene that [the tenor] is made into soup by the order of his brother [the baritone], who then expresses his emotion and surprise on learning of the transaction as the curtain falls. As to the music — there are some charming, popular, ingenious, artistic … points; [but] there are others egregiously vulgar and rowdy. The Anvil Chorus, for example, is about the equal to a scene of mending a sewer set to music; or repairing a pair of cast-off leather breeches.”

Music Played in Today's Program

William Henry Fry (1813-1864): Macbeth Overture; Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Tony Rowe, conductor; Naxos 8.559057

Synopsis

If your dad wrote music for silent movies and you also want to write music, does that increase the odds you’ll end up a film composer, too? That was the case with David Raksin, who was born in Philadelphia in 1912, and who died in Los Angeles on today’s date in 2004.

When he was 23, he moved to Hollywood to help Charlie Chaplin arrange Chaplin’s music for the film, Modern Times, and stayed on in Hollywood, working without credit on dozens of B-rated films.

A big break came in 1944 with the tremendous success of Raksin’s haunting score for the 1944 film noir classic, Laura. By the time of his death, he had written scores for hundreds of films and TV shows.

In 1960, for the Horn Club of Los Angeles, he wrote Morning Revisited. He explained the odd title as follows: “They needed a piece [for] their entire ensemble … two antiphonal groups of six French horns, four Wagner tubas, a baritone horn, two contrabass tubas, and seven timpani. I was busy working on a picture, so I’d start work at four or five a.m., and that’s how I wrote Morning Revisited.”

Music Played in Today's Program

David Raksin (1912-2004): Morning Revisited; The Horn Club of Los Angeles; David Raksin, conductor; EMI 63764

Synopsis

Just about any time is a good time to be in Paris, but chances are, given your druthers, you wouldn’t have chosen to be there in 1942. The city was occupied by German troops, and World War II had several more dismal years to grind on.

But if you were in Paris on today’s date in 1942, you could have visited the Paris Opera for the premiere of a new ballet by French composer Francis Poulenc: Les Animaux Modeles or The Model Animals, with a scenario based on animal fables by French writer La Fontaine.

In 1924, in happier times, Poulenc had made his name with another one-act ballet. Les Biches or The Does and was written for the Ballets Russes of Monte Carlo. That work’s scenario described the flirtations and seductions of some bright young things at a house party in the country. “Everything was simple and carefree, sunshine and good humor,” as Poulenc himself put it.

Not surprisingly, Poulenc’s 1942 ballet was a darker, often grimmer affair, expressing perhaps the quiet desperation of the German occupation, mingled with a fervent hope for better days to come.

Music Played in Today's Program

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963): Les Animaux Modeles; French National Orchestra; Charles Dutoit, conductor; London 452 937

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1893, a talented Italian composer died of tuberculosis at 39. His name was Alfredo Catalani, and, in his short lifetime, he completed six operas. The last of these, La Wally, premiered the year before his death and proved the most successful.

The opera had some passionate fans — including the famous Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, who even named one of his daughters Wally, after the title character.

These days Catalani’s operas are rarely staged, but one aria from La Wally has kept his name alive. In Act One, the mountain maid Wally sings “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” (“Well, then? I’ll go far away”) as she decides to leave her home forever.

This aria became very popular with sopranos and has been recorded by artists ranging from Maria Callas to Renée Fleming.

Oddly enough, the aria plays a major role in a movie — a 1981 French crime thriller, Diva, about an obsessed opera fan who has a secret recording made of his favorite soprano singing it — an artist who (in the movie) refuses to be recorded, so (of course) everyone wants to get their hands on his bootleg.

Music Played in Today's Program

Viardot-Garcia, Pauline (1821-1910): 12 Poems by Pushkin, Fet and Turgenev: No. 12. Les Étoiles; Laetitia Grimaldi, soprano; Ammiel Bushakevitz, piano; Bis 2546

Synopsis

In 1942, the 19th Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music was held in Berkeley, California. Over 30 composers from 13 nations were represented. All of them were male­ — with one exception. On today’s date, the Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale for clarinet and viola written by Rebecca Clarke was premiered at the Festival.

Clarke was born in England, in 1886, to an American father and a German mother. She grew up a British citizen, studied music in London, and became one of the U.K.’s first female professional orchestral violists. She was stranded in the United States at the outbreak of World War II and settled permanently in New York City.

In notes for the 1942 Festival, she modestly described her Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale as: “… very unpretentious: a short, unassuming little prelude … The second movement should sound very spirited … The third movement, Pastorale, is rather melancholy and nostalgic…”

This work, and much of her music, remained unpublished during her lifetime, but, over time, its quality and range increasingly came to light. When she turned 90 in 1976, she was interviewed by the BBC, and seemed both gratified and bemused by all the renewed attention.

Music Played in Today's Program

Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979): Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale; Robert Plane, clarinet; Philip Dukes, viola; Naxos 8.557934