Composers Datebook

By the 1960s, the prevailing trends dictated that modern music should be austere, brainy, complex, and preferably written in the 12-tone “serial” technique developed by Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils. Igor Stravinsky had started writing serial pieces in the 1950s, and even Aaron Copland had a go at writing a 12-tone piece in his “Connotations” for Orchestra, composed for the opening of the New York Philharmonic’s new hall at Lincoln Center in 1962. Well, the American composer Henry Cowell was not one to be so easily pigeon-holed. In 1962 he composed an airy little quartet for flute, oboe, cello and harpsichord—a piece very much in the neo-classical style. Cowell then re-scored the harpsichord part for harp at the request of Mary Spalding Sevitzky, the harp-playing wife of the Russian émigré conductor Fabien Sevitzky, to whom the quartet was dedicated. Sevitzky’s real last name was Koussevitzky, and, yes, he was the nephew of the famous Russian conductor and music patron Serge Kousseviztky. At his uncle’s request, to avoid confusion, Fabien shorted his last name to Sevitzky when he became a conductor in his own right. He led the People’s Symphony of Boston in the 1930s before becoming the director of the Indianapolis Symphony from 1937 to 1955. Like his more famous uncle, Fabien Sevitzky was a great champion of American composers. In his later years, he moved to Florida, where he taught and led the University of Miami Symphony. It was in Miami that a distinguished quartet—including Mrs. Sevitzky—premiered Henry Cowell’s quartet on today’s date in 1963.