Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1994, at 4:30 a.m. Pacific Coast time, an earthquake struck Southern California. It was located some 20 miles west-northwest of Los Angeles and centered 1 mile south-southwest of Northridge. It registered 6.7 on the Richter scale and caused 44 billion dollars in damage. The event also generated a rock musical entitled “I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky,” which premiered in Berkeley, California, the following year...

Coming of age in the first half of the 20th century were two exceptionally talented children of the wealthy Austrian steel magnate Karl Wittgenstein: Ludwig Wittgenstein became a famous philosopher and Paul Wittgenstein a concert pianist. Paul served in the Austrian army in World War I, and, for a concert pianist, suffered a horrific injury: the loss of his right arm. Undaunted, he rebuilt his career by commissioning and performing works for piano left-hand...

“Das Rheingold” is the opening work in a 4-opera cycle, Wagner titled “The Ring of the Nibelungen.” No pun intended, but one of the most striking moments in that opera occurs when the Norse gods Wotan and Loge descend to Nibelheim, where the poor race of Nibelung dwarfs are toiling away under the spell of Alberich, a fellow dwarf possessing a magic gold ring of incredible power – but bearing a terrible curse...

On today’s date in 1932, an all-Ravel concert was given in Paris by the Lamoureux Orchestra at the Salle Erard. Ravel himself was on hand, conducting some of his own works, including the premiere of his new Piano Concerto in G Major with pianist Marguerite Long the soloist. The critics were enthusiastic about the music, but less so about Ravel’s conducting skills...

Late in 1941, the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky was living in Hollywood – at 1260 North Wetherly Drive, to be precise. Notoriously unflappable, and eminently practical when it came to commissions, Stravinsky apparently did not even bat an eye when he received a phone call from the choreographer Georges Balanchine with an offer from Barnum’s Circus to write a short musical work for a ballet involving elephants...

Like everyone else, young composers indulge in daydreams from time to time. One can easily imagine a 15-year-old composer wanna-be staring out the window and fantasizing that one day her music will be performed by big-name virtuosos and heard coast-to-coast on a national broadcast...

In 1953, the Louisville Orchestra was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation grant of $500,000 to commission, premiere, and record 20th-century music to be issued on their own label, Louisville First Edition Records. By 1997 they had released nearly 150 discs, containing more than 450 compositions by living composers. On today’s date in 1980, one of the Louisville commissions premiered and recorded by the Orchestra was “Tournaments ” by the then 41-year old American composer John Corigliano...

Today, we note two anniversaries concerning Handel and his music in London. On today’s date in 1710, the German-born composer’s music was performed in London for the very first time when excerpts from his opera “Rodrigo” were used as incidental music during a revival of Ben Jonson’s comic play “The Alchemist,” written 100 years earlier...

In the musical world, there are many creative people with innovative ideas, but far fewer with the ability and persistence to raise the funds necessary to realize their visions. Today, a tip of the hat to the late American composer John Duffy, who, in 1982, was President of Meet the Composer, an organization which secured funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and other foundations for a large-scale residency program that paired rising American composers with major American orchestras...

Today’s date marks the birthday in 1937 of the American composer Robert Moran. A native of Denver, Moran studied in Berkley with Darius Milhaud and Luciano Berio and in Vienna with Hans Apostel, a pupil of Schoenberg and Berg. It was in Vienna that Moran overheard an unfamiliar waltz and was surprised to learn that Austrian composers were still writing them...