Composers Datebook

Synopsis

The life story of George Gershwin usually runs something like this: an incredible string of successes cut short by Gershwin’s tragically early death. But on today’s date in 1922, Gershwin suffered one of his rare flops when his one-act opera Blue Monday opened and closed on the same day.

For five years, beginning in 1920, Gershwin had provided the music for an annual Broadway revue, The George White Scandals. The impresario Mr. White provided the money and the leggy showgirls; Gershwin provided the catchy tunes and light-hearted dances.

But in 1922, Gershwin was eager to try something different: a modern, jazz-age version of an Italian verismo opera. The plot was simple: he does her wrong, and then she shoots him. The reviews were devastatingly bad — one critic suggesting the soprano with the pistol should have shot the rest of the cast before anyone had a chance to sing.

And so White pulled Blue Monday from his revue before it could have a second performance. A concert revival by the Paul Whiteman band at Carnegie Hall in 1925, and a 1953 CBS-TV production didn’t fare all that much better.

Even today Blue Monday is rarely staged.

Music Played in Today's Program

George Gershwin (1898-1937): Blue Monday; Cincinnati Pops; Erich Kunzel, conductor; Telarc 80434

Synopsis

Around this time in 1956, the hot ticket on Broadway was for a musical based on the old Greek legend of Pygmalion, a sculptor so good that he fell in love with one of his beautiful female statues. The playwright, George Bernard Shaw, had updated the legend to modern-day London, and in 1956, the Broadway team of Lerner and Loewe had in turn transformed Shaw’s stage play into the smash Broadway musical, My Fair Lady.

But 208 years before all that, on today’s date in the year 1748, another very successful musical adaptation of the Pygmalion legend opened in Paris. This Pygmalion was an opera-ballet by great French Baroque composer, Jean-Philippe Rameau.

He was born in 1683, two years earlier than Bach and Handel, but unlike them, was something of a late bloomer. He was 50 before he became famous, and his opera-ballet Pygmalion opened shortly before his 65th birthday.

Rameau was famous for imitating natural sounds and noises in his music. One of his contemporaries, in praising the overture to Pygmalion, even suggested the repeated notes of his theme represented the chipping of Pygmalion’s chisel as he worked on his lovely creation.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764): Pygmalion; La Petite Bande; Gustav Leonhardt, conductor; BMG/Deutsche; Harmonia Mundi 77143

Synopsis

Piero della Francesca was a 15th century Renaissance painter, whose series of frescoes, Legend of the True Cross, inspired one of the best orchestral works of 20th-century Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu.

In 1952, he made a trip to the Tuscan hill town of Arezzo, where he saw the frescoes and got the idea for a new symphonic work that would attempt to capture in music what Piero had captured in painting.

What he sought to replicate was, as he put it, “a kind of solemn, frozen silence and opaque, colored atmosphere … a strange, peaceful and moving poetry.”

He linked the first movement of his score to one Tuscan fresco showing the Queen of Sheba and some women kneeling by a river; and the second to another depicting the dream of the Emperor Constantine. The third movement was intended, in his words, as “a kind of general view of the frescoes.”

Martinu’s orchestral triptych, The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca, received its premiere performance on today’s date at the 1956 Salzburg Festival in Austria, with the Vienna Philharmonic led by the eminent Czech conductor, Rafael Kubelik.

Music Played in Today's Program

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1950): Les Fresques de Piero della Francesca; Vienna Philharmonic; Rafael Kubelik, conductor; Orfeo C521-991 (recorded August 26, 1956)

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1959, Leonard Bernstein celebrated his 41st birthday in Moscow. The New York Philharmonic was embarked on an extensive world tour, which included three weeks in the Soviet Union.

Their August 25th concert proved controversial, offering two works of Igor Stravinsky, a composer still condemned in the Soviet Union as “bourgeois” and “decadent.” Even more daring, Bernstein opened his concert with The Unanswered Question, a short piece by American composer, Charles Ives.

Even worse, Bernstein broke traditional Soviet protocol by talking directly to the audience through an interpreter, explaining Ives’ unusual philosophy of music. The enthusiastic audience response after the Ives led to it being encored.

This really upset the Soviet authorities, and the music critic of the Ministry of Culture wrote, “Before this four-minute piece Bernstein spoke for six minutes. Only the good manners of the hospitable public resulted in a ripple of cool applause. Nevertheless, the conductor, setting modesty aside, himself suggested that the piece be repeated.”

Bernstein, although furious at what he called “an unforgivable lie,” was persuaded to forgo any further controversial lectures from the podium for the remainder of the Soviet tour.

Music Played in Today's Program

Charles Ives (1874-1954): The Unanswered Question; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony Classical 46701

Synopsis

We tend to think our time has had a monopoly on bitter religious conflicts, but on today’s date in 1572, which happened to be St. Bartholomew’s Day, the Catholic queen dowager of France, Catherine de Medici, and her son, King Charles IX, decided that the best way to rid their kingdom of troublesome Protestants would be simply to kill them off.

A few days earlier, Catholic and Protestant nobles from across France had come to Paris to attend a noble wedding which, ironically, was intended to bring the rival religious factions closer together.

Things quickly turned ugly, and on the 24th of August the infamous “Massacre of St. Bartholomew” began and quickly spread across the entire country. Among those who perished was a French Protestant composer named Claude Goudimel, who was killed when the massacre reached Lyons.

Fortunately for posterity, not all Reformation era rulers were so bloodthirsty. English Catholic composer Thomas Tallis managed to keep his head through the reigns of alternating Catholic and Protestant monarchs, and the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I admired and supported the music of William Byrd, despite his openly Catholic sympathies.

Music Played in Today's Program

Claude Goudimel (1510-1572): Comfort, Comfort Ye my People; Cathedral Singers; Richard Proulx, conductor; GIA 290