Composers Datebook

Synopsis

Today’s date marks the birthday in 1885 of María Joaquina de la Portilla Torres, in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. Under her married name of Maria Grever, she became the first female Mexican composer to achieve international fame. She composed her first song at age four, studied in France with Claude Debussy among others, and at 18, one of her songs sold 3 million copies.

At age 22, she married Leo A...

Synopsis

The Grove Dictionary of Music defines the word “aleatory” as follows: “music whose composition and/or performance is, to a greater or lesser extent, undetermined by the composer.”

But isn’t music supposed to be organized, planned, determined sound? Isn’t “aleatoric music” a contradiction in terms? Well, not necessarily...

Synopsis

In the year 1840, the immensely talented German pianist Clara Wieck was eagerly awaiting the eve of her 21st birthday, when she would be free to legally marry the 30-year-old composer and music critic Robert Schumann. The couple had hoped to wed years earlier, but the match was bitterly opposed by Clara’s father.

Clara and Robert kept in touch by letters, which were sometimes intercepted by Papa Wieck...

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1733, the French composer François Couperin, known as “François Couperin the Great,” died in Paris. The building where Couperin lived for the last decade of his life still stands in Paris, and like the building, the high esteem afforded this Baroque composer has stood the test of time...

Synopsis

The average music lover, if asked to name some notable Baroque composers, will probably answer Bach, Handel, Telemann, or Vivaldi. But decades before most of those composers flourished, a number of bold pioneers of the early Baroque period were busily developing new musical forms and techniques.

Like most composers born before 1700, details about their lives and careers tend to be skimpy at best...

Synopsis

In September of 1825, an Englishman by the name of Sir George Smart came to Vienna, hoping to meet Beethoven. Smart had conducted the British premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth, and wanted, as he put it in his journal, “to ascertain from Beethoven himself the exact tempos of the movements of his sinfonia.”

By luck, Smart arrived in time to attend the first reading of Beethoven’s String Quartet in A minor, Op...

Synopsis

The year 2000 marked both the arrival of a new millennium and the 250th anniversary of the death of the great German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

The International Bach Academy in Stuttgart decided to mark the occasion by commissioning four very different composers to write four new passion settings, one each after the Gospel accounts of the evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. A German composer, Wolfgang Rihm, was chosen for the St...

Synopsis

In Pittsburgh on today’s date in 1996, the Latin-American Quartet of Mexico gave the premiere of the Third String Quartet of American composer David Stock. Stock was probably best known for his orchestral music served as composer-in-residence with both the Pittsburgh and Seattle Symphonies, writing large-scale works for those ensembles, but he wrote 13 string quartets as well.

The first was a student work that premiered in Paris...

Synopsis

Today we note the birthday anniversary of the American composer and teacher Wayne Barlow, who was born in Elyria, Ohio, on today’s date in 1912, and died in Rochester, New York, in 1996...

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1980, “Satyagraha,” an opera by the American composer Philip Glass had its premiere in Rotterdam by the Netherlands Opera.

Four years earlier, Glass’s first opera, “Einstein on the Beach,” had scored a big hit not only in Avignon, France, where it had premiered, but also at a special, non-subscription performance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera...