Composers Datebook
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Top 10 Composers Datebook Episodes
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Tchaikovsky and Glass at the movies
Composers Datebook
09/04/23 • 1 min
Synopsis
For ballet lovers, the opening of Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake conjures up tutus, but for old-time movie buffs, this same music triggers memories of many black-and-white films of the 1930s. Back then, the eerie opening measures of Swan Lake served as the “main title” music for dozens of old Universal Studios thrillers, including the famous 1931 film of Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi.
“Ah, the children of the night—what music THEY make...”
But on today’s date in 1999 at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, Tchaikovsky got some competition from Philip Glass. For a special showing of the Bela Lugosi Dracula, Glass wrote a brand-new score. Now, beyond the opening Tchaikovsky, the original 1931 soundtrack had included very little music, and, despite the creepy charisma of Bela Lugosi, the film moved at a ponderous pace. The new Philip Glass score, performed live by the Kronos Quartet, added fresh atmosphere to the familiar old film. In fact, it proved so effective that Glass and the Kronos Quartet took it on a tour, accompanying live showings of the old film in Europe and the U.S.
Music Played in Today's Program
Peter Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893) Swan Lake Ballet Montréal Symphony; Charles Dutoit, cond. London 436 212
Philip Glass (b. 1937) Dracula filmscore excerpt Kronos Quartet Nonesuch 79542
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Prokofiev's String Quartet No. 2
Composers Datebook
09/05/23 • 2 min
Synopsis
In 1941, as the German Army was overrunning Russia, the Soviet government evacuated important artists to remote places of safety. Composer Sergei Prokofiev, for example, found himself in the little town of Nalchik, nestled in the foothills of the northern Caucasus Mountains about 1000 miles away from the front.
Prokofiev was intrigued by the region’s folk music, and, taking a break from a big project to turn Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace into an opera, composed his String Quartet No. 2, based on local tunes. The new work was, as he put it, "a combination of virtually untouched folk material and the most classical of classical forms, the string quartet."
Its three movements are all based on local songs and dances, and Prokofiev took care not to smooth out any roughness in the original material.
Prokofiev’s new string quartet received its premiere performance back in Moscow in April of 1942, at a concert given by The Beethoven Quartet. A later performance on today’s date that same year was delayed due to a German air raid. The new music was well-received, and Prokofiev, perhaps with the air raid in mind, supposedly called the premiere "an extremely turbulent success."
Music Played in Today's Program
Sergei Prokofiev (1891 - 1953) String Quartet No. 2 in F, Op. 92
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Beethoven's "Razumovsky" Quartets
Composers Datebook
09/03/23 • 2 min
Synopsis
On today’s date in 1806, Ludwig van Beethoven offered his publisher Breitkopf and Härtel three new string quartets—works we know today as the three Razumovsky Quartets, that were eventually issued as Beethoven’s Opus 59.
In Beethoven’s day, Vienna was swarming with Russian, Polish, and Hungarian aristocrats with a taste for music. Among them was Count Andreas Kyrilovich Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to Vienna. The count was an amateur violinist who occasionally played in a string quartet he maintained at his own expense.
The count commissioned Beethoven to write three string quartets, stipulating that they should incorporate Russian melodies, real or imitated. The most recognizable of the Russian tunes, Beethoven employed occurs in the scherzo of the second quartet: It’s the same theme that was later quoted by Mussorgsky in the coronation scene of his opera “Boris Godunov.”
When these Razumovsky Quartets were premiered in Vienna in 1807, one contemporary review noted, “These very long and difficult quartets... are profoundly thought-through and composed with enormous skill, but will not be intelligible to everyone.”
When one Italian violinist confessed to Beethoven that he found them incomprehensible, Beethoven retorted: ‘Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age.’
Music Played in Today's Program
Ludwiv van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) Razumovsky Quartet, Op. 59, no. 2 Emerson String Quartet DG 479 1432
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Monteverdi gets mugged (and a new job)
Composers Datebook
08/18/23 • 2 min
Synopsis
August 1613 proved to be an especially eventful month in the life and career of Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi. The previous summer his old employer, Duke Vincenzo of Mantua, had died, and Monteverdi was looking for a job. Fortunately, the position of Master of Music for the Republic of Venice opened up, and, on today’s date Monteverdi was probably rehearsing musicians for a trial concert of his music at St. Mark’s Cathedral. The concert was a success. Monteverdi got the job, a generous salary, and even a cash advance to cover the move from his home.
So much for the good news—on his trip back home, Monteverdi was robbed by highwaymen armed with muskets. In a surviving letter, Monteverdi described the incident in some detail, noting that the muskets were very long and of the flint-wheel variety, and that he lost more than a hundred Venetian ducats.
Despite the trauma—and the humiliation of being strip-searched for valuables by one of the robbers—Monteverdi recovered his fortunes in Venice. In addition to his church duties at St. Mark’s, he became famous writing a newfangled sort of commercial entertainment called opera, and lived to the ripe old age of 77.
Music Played in Today's Program
Claudio Monteverdi (1567 – 1643) Che dar piu vi poss'io, fr 5th Book of Madrigals Consort of Musicke; Anthony Rooley, conductor. L'oiseau Lyre 410 291
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An Italian western (for English horn)
Composers Datebook
09/25/23 • 2 min
Synopsis
“Spaghetti western” is a nickname given to a genre of Italian films from the 1960s, most famously directed by Sergio Leone, and often starring Clint Eastwood as the taciturn, gun-toting anti-hero.
Spaghetti Western also is the title of a Concerto for English horn written by American composer Michael Daugherty that received its premiere performance on today’s date in 1998 at a Pittsburgh Symphony concert conducted by Mariss Jansons.
“Just as Leone’s films redefined the Western genre from an Italian perspective,” writes Michael Daugherty, “I redefine the European concerto ... within an American context. In my ‘Spaghetti Western,’ the English horn soloist is the ‘Man with no Name,’ moving through a series of sun-drenched panoramas, barren deserts, and desolate towns of the Wild West, ... [one of ] the gun-slinging characters who haunt the landscape.”
Daugherty gave Italian titles to his three-movement concerto: “Strade Vuote” (“Empty Streets”), “Assalto all’Oro” (“Gold Rush”) and “Mezzogiorno di Fuoco” (“Noon of Fire”). And since Eastwood was unable to play the English horn for the Pittsburgh Symphony premiere, Harold Smoliar removed the cigar from his parched, suntanned lips, adjusted his poncho and took up his English horn for the performance.
Music Played in Today's Program
Michael Daugherty (b. 1954) Spaghetti Western Harold Smoliar; University of Michigan Symphony; Kenneth Kiesler, cond. Equilibrium 63
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Grove and Sullivan 'discover' Schubert
Composers Datebook
10/05/23 • 2 min
Synopsis
On today’s date in 1867, two eminent British Victorians arrived in Vienna in search of Franz Schubert. Now, Schubert had been dead for 39 years, as the two Brits were quite aware. George Grove, 47, was England’s finest musicologist, and Arthur Sullivan, 25, one of the country’s most promising young composers.
Grove believed there might be forgotten manuscripts in the possession of the late composer’s relatives, so the pair met with Schubert’s nephew, a certain Herr Doktor Schneider, who said, oh, yes, come to mention it, he did have some pieces by Uncle Franz that no one had played for more than 40 years. If the two gentlemen had no objection to getting dusty, they were welcome to rummage the family’s storage closets.
The two visitors braved the dust and found orchestral parts for Schubert’s Rosamunde incidental music, tied up in a big bundle after the work’s premiere back in 1823 and untouched since then.
Grove and Sullivan spent the rest of the day carefully making a copy of their discovery. At 2 a.m., after finishing the task, their spirits must have been pretty high, since to celebrate the proper Victorian gentlemen began an impromptu game of leap-frog.
Music Played in Today's Program
Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828) Rosamunde Incidental Music - Chamber Music Orchestra of Europe; Claudio Abbado, cond. DG 431 655
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Adolphus Hailstork's 'Amazing Grace'
Composers Datebook
09/24/23 • 2 min
Synopsis
On today’s date in 1875, one of the greatest musical match-makers of all time died in Spartanburg, South Carolina. His name was William Walker, an American Baptist shape-note-singing master who published several collections of traditional shape note tunes.
Now, “shape note” refers to a simple musical notation designed for communal singing. In his 1835 collection, Southern Harmony, Walker married a shape-note tune known as “New Britain” to a hymn text titled “Amazing Grace,” written by an Anglican clergyman and abolitionist named John Newton.
Walker’s collection was a bestseller in the 19th century, and two centuries later, “Amazing Grace” has become one of the best-known and best-loved hymns of our time.
In 2011, a new orchestral fanfare based on “Amazing Grace,” by African-American composer Adolphus Hailstork, was published and subsequently recorded by the Virginia Symphony — appropriately enough, since Hailstork has served as professor of music and composer-in-residence at Virginia's Norfolk State and Old Dominion universities, and in 1992 was named a cultural laureate of Virginia. In addition to this Fanfare, Hailstork’s works range from choral and chamber pieces to symphonies and operas.
Music Played in Today's Program
Adolphus Hailstork (b. 1941) Fanfare on “Amazing Grace” Virginia Symphony; JoAnne Faletta, cond. Naxos 8559722
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Mackey's “Stumble to Grace"
Composers Datebook
09/23/23 • 2 min
Synopsis
On today’s date in 2011, the Saint Louis Symphony under David Robertson premiered a new piano concerto by the American composer Steven Mackey. The soloist was Orli Shaham, Robertson’s wife, to whom the new work was dedicated.
The new concerto had an odd title, “Stumble to Grace,” which Mackey explained:
“There is a narrative running through the piece ... the piano is all thumbs ... as it stumbles in its first entrance, playing naïve and awkward plinks and plunks. By [the end], the piano plays sophisticated, virtuosic and, at times, graceful contrapuntal music—a fugue, in fact ...
“The inspiration ... came from observing my now two-and-a-half year old toddler learning to become human ... I wanted to open my compositional process to incorporate some of the whimsy and exuberance that he brings to his exploration of the world.”
Mackey concludes, “A preoccupation with one’s children is common among most new parents but this seemed particularly appropriate ... for a piece written for Orli Shaham. She and her conductor husband, David Robertson, have twins less than a year older than my son and we’ve had play dates and shared narrations about new parenthood.”
Music Played in Today's Program
Stephen Mackey (b. 1956) Stumble to Grace Orli Shaham, p; Los Angeles Philharmonic; David Robertson, cond. Canary Classics CC-11
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Gabriela Lena Frank's "Hilos"
Composers Datebook
10/01/23 • 2 min
Synopsis
On today’s date in 2010, at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music in Nashville, the ALIAS ensemble gave the premiere performance of a new chamber world by American composer Gabriela Lena Frank. It was titled Hilos — the Spanish word for “threads” — and scored for piano, violin, cello and clarinet.
Now, it’s not unusual for composers to tap their particular cultural background for inspiration, but Gabriela Lena Frank has a pretty wide variety of options in that regard: Her father is an American of Lithuanian Jewish heritage and her mother is Peruvian of Chinese descent. They met when her father was a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru in the 1960s, and Frank herself grew up in Berkeley, California.
"There's usually a story line behind my music," says Frank. Regarding Hilos, she noted, “There are similarities to [Mussorgsky’s] ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ in that each movement tells a different story ... Hilos refers to the ‘threads’ that make up Andean textiles and how these threads weave together.”
Each movement of Hilos has an evocative title, such “Canto del Altiplano” (Song of the Highlands), “Zumballyu” (Spinning Top), or “Juegos de los Niños” (Games of the Children).
Music Played in Today's Program
Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972) Hilos Lee Carroll Levine, cl; Zeneba Brown, vn; Matt Walker, vcl; Gabriela Lena Frank, p. Naxos 8.559645
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A "well-Krafted" concerto?
Composers Datebook
09/06/23 • 2 min
Synopsis
Consider, if you will, the poor timpanist. At most symphony concerts, they sit quietly—waiting for the moment when a dramatic exclamation point is required from the kettledrums. While the violinists rarely get a break, the timpanist must sit patiently for most of the evening, biding their time, waiting for the precise moments to strike.
On rare occasions, however, the timpanist is the CENTER of attention as soloist in a timpani concerto. One such concerto was written by an American composer, William Kraft, who was born on this day in 1923. Kraft was a timpanist himself. In fact, Kraft served as a percussionist and timpanist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 26 years, from 1955-1981. He was that orchestra’s first composer-in-residence, and founded the LA Philharmonic’s first New Music Group.
William Kraft’s Timpani Concerto was written in 1983 for timpanist Thomas Akins of the Indianapolis Symphony, who premiered the work with that orchestra in 1984.
Kraft’s own description of his Timpani Concerto is as follows, "The first movement is very jazzy ... the second movement is very beautiful, with two string orchestras and a lot of glissandi, and the third is hell-bent for leather."
Music Played in Today's Program
William Kraft (b. 1923) Timpani Concerto Thomas Akins, timpani; Alabama Symphony; Paul Polivnick, cond. Albany 302
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FAQ
How many episodes does Composers Datebook have?
Composers Datebook currently has 1351 episodes available.
What topics does Composers Datebook cover?
The podcast is about Music, Music History and Podcasts.
What is the most popular episode on Composers Datebook?
The episode title 'Tchaikovsky and Glass at the movies' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Composers Datebook?
The average episode length on Composers Datebook is 2 minutes.
How often are episodes of Composers Datebook released?
Episodes of Composers Datebook are typically released every day.
When was the first episode of Composers Datebook?
The first episode of Composers Datebook was released on Jun 6, 2020.
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