Composers Datebook

Synopsis

"Chamber music” is defined as “music written for and performed by a small ensemble, with one performer on a part.”  The website of a Portland, Oregon, organization called Chamber Music Northwest, once added this description: “Music that is inspiring, stimulating and intensely personal...

Synopsis

Once, when someone asked JFK what his favorite song might be, the waggish president responded: “Well, ‘Hail to the Chief’ has a nice ring to it.”

As most people know, “Hail to the Chief” is the tune traditionally played to announce presidential arrivals at public events. What most people don't know is that the composer of the tune was British: one James Sanderson, an early 19th century violinist and the conductor of the Surrey Theatre in London...

Synopsis

Remember “Y2K” — the Millennial Year 2000? It was a time of extravagant hopes and dire predictions, as pundits and prophets weighed in as the 20th century hastened to its end.

Composers weighed in, too. The American Composers Forum and the National Endowment for the Arts collaborated on a project entitled “Continental Harmony” which commissioned new musical works for public celebrations in communities large and small in all 50 states...

Synopsis

Nothing is better than being outdoors on a glorious summer’s day listening to live music – at least that’s what American composer Libby Larsen thinks. “I grew up on outdoor concerts,” she recalls. “There was a bandstand by my house in Minneapolis, and all summer long, orchestras and bands would play there. There's something special about being outside and hearing music fill the air with sound...

Synopsis

Browsing The New York Times for today’s date in 1867, under the banner “Amusements,” you would have seen this notice: “Mr. Theodore Thomas, returned home from his trip to Paris and Berlin, will resume personal control of the concerts given by his orchestra at Terrace Garden this evening.”

Born in Germany in 1835, Theodore Thomas came to America when he was ten...

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1826, Franz Schubert completed what would be his last String Quartet, in G Major, published posthumously as his Op. 161.

1826 was a rather frustrating year for Schubert...

Synopsis

The American composer Joan Tower says that explaining her own music is (quote) “sheer torture for me.” Understandably, she prefers to let her music speak for itself, and many of her works have simple generic titles like: “Piano Concerto” or “Concerto for Orchestra.”

But audiences generally prefer more evocative titles, and on more than one occasion Tower has provided them...

Synopsis

Interest in the life of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has been on the rise ever since her death in 1954, so it’s not surprising that in 1991 she became the subject of an opera, entitled “Frida,”  by the American composer Robert Xavier Rodriguez, who was born in San Antonio, Texas, on today’s date in 1946.

Like Frida’s paintings, Rodriguez’s opera evokes Mexican folk traditions...

Synopsis

No four notes in classical music are more familiar than those that open Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.  Their powerful psychological resonance has often extended beyond music into overtly political contexts.

For example, on today’s date in 1941, the British Broadcasting Company began using those notes as a theme for radio shows beamed across Europe to boost morale during the Second World War...

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1995, the four members of the Arditti String Quartet entered four helicopters warming up their engines at an airfield in Holland. Followed by video cameras, each player’s image and audio was relayed to huge video displays and loud-speakers on the ground for the mid-air  premiere of a work titled – what else – “Helicopter Quartet” by the avant-garde German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen...