Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.
A Birthday Surprise for Pinkham
On today's date in 1998 at King's Chapel in Boston, a new work by the American composer Daniel Pinkham received its premiere performance. The work was titled "Three Latin Motets" for baritone and organ, and Pinkham intended it as a birthday offering to his fellow composer and colleague Ned Rorem. And so the work's dedication read, "For Ned Rorem and a half century of friendship." But the premiere occurred on the 75th anniversary of Pinkham's birth, as a surprise for the composer at a concert in HIS honor. Organist James David Christie and baritone Sanford Sylvan had sneakily persuaded Pinkham to write the motets for Rorem, who was born in the same year as Pinkham, namely 1923, but intended all along to premiere the music as a surprise at a 75th birthday concert in Pinkham's honor. Pinkham was especially noted for this church music, and once quipped, "I just like to hear my pieces more than once, and when you write music for the church you have a better chance at that… I [tell people] am available for weddings, funerals, and bar mitzvahs." Pinkham died in 2006, and Christie and Sylvan performed his "Three Latin Motets" once again in January of 2007—this time at Pinkham's memorial service.