Composers Datebook

To say that the American composer and jazz pianist Vijay Iyer is a multi-faceted artist would be quite the understatement. The son of Tamil immigrants, Iyer was born and raised in New York and began classical music training at age 3. His undergraduate degree at Yale was in mathematics and physics, but music retained its strong pull, and at UC Berkeley his 1998 Ph.D...

On today’s date in 1966, a symphonic work by the American composer Dominick Argento received its premiere performance by the Minneapolis Civic Orchestra at the St. Paul Campus Student Center of the University of Minnesota. The work was entitled “Variations for Orchestra (The Mask of Night)” for orchestra and soprano soloist. For the premiere performances, the vocal soloist was Argento’s wife, the soprano Carolyn Bailey. The music was composed in Florence, Italy...

On today’s date in 1946, the octogenarian German composer Richard Strauss conducted the final rehearsal of his latest work, a study for 23 strings entitled “Metamorphosen.” Paul Sacher, the Swiss conductor and music patron, had commissioned “Metamorphosen,” and conducted the public premiere later that day in Zurich. Strauss had begun work on this piece on March 13, 1945, one day after the Vienna State Opera house had been bombed by the Allies...

On today’s date in 1968, London witnessed a double debut: the first concert of the London Sinfonietta, a chamber group which would go on to become one of the Britain’s most famous new music ensembles and, on their debut program, the premiere performance of a dramatic cantata by John Tavener, who would go on to become one of Britain’s most famous contemporary composers. Tavener’s cantata was titled, “The Whale...

On today’s date in 1935, at the Church of Saint François-Xavier in Paris, organist Geneviève de la Salle gave the first complete performance of the three-movement Suite, Op. 5, by the French composer and virtuoso organist Maurice Duruflé. If you sing in a choir or are a fan of choral classics, you probably know Duruflé’s serene and tranquil “Requiem,” Op. 9, which premiered some 12 years later. Now, if Duruflé’s Op. 5 premiered in 1935, and his Op...

In January of 1980, the famous American film music composer John Williams was named conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, and on today’s date that year led the Pops in the premiere performance of a concert overture based on his score for a John Wayne film entitled “The Cowboys.” Now, by 1980 John Williams has scored dozens of classic American films, but not all that many westerns...

In 1968, Senator Eugene McCarthy was running for President on an anti-war platform. The war in question was in Southeast Asia, and many American artists were, like Senator McCarthy, openly calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. On today’s date at a New York fundraising event for the anti-war movement entitled “Broadway for Peace,” a song by Leonard Bernstein received its premiere performance, with the composer at the piano accompanying Barbra Streisand...

On today’s date in 1939, pianist John Kirkpatrick gave a recital at Town Hall in New York City which included the New York premiere of the “Concord” Sonata by the American composer Charles Ives. Ives had self-published his “Concord” Sonata some 20 years earlier, and sent copies of it free to anyone he thought might be interested, including the then-prominent composer and teacher Rubin Goldmark, who, in 1921, was giving composition lessons to the young Aaron Copland...

On today’s date in 1853, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Il Trovatore” (or “The Troubador”) had its premiere performance at the Teatro Apollo in Rome. It proved an immediate hit. True, some did complain at the time about its gloomy, complicated and downright confusing plot. But Verdi’s music setting had such great tunes and such energetic verve that “Il Trovatore” quickly became the most popular of all his operas in the 19th century...

On today’s date in 1962, President John F. Kennedy received two memos regarding a dinner party at the White House scheduled the following evening honoring composer Igor Stravinsky and his wife Vera. The Kennedys were famous for inviting the finest artists and performers to the White House for special presentations. Mrs. Kennedy was a true arts maven, but JFK was not, and needed background information on figures like Stravinsky, which the first memo provided...