Composers Datebook

Synopsis

These days composer John J. Becker is almost totally forgotten, but back in the 1930s his name was linked with Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Henry Cowell and Wallingford Riegger as one of the American Five composers of what was dubbed “ultra-modern” music.

From 1928 to 1935, Becker taught at the College of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and briefly assembled a Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra to give Midwest premieres of works by Ives and other ultra-modernists. From 1935 to 1941, Becker was the Minnesota State director of the Federal Music Project, one of President Roosevelt’s initiatives to provide work for American musicians during the Depression years.

On today's date in 1937, at the old St. Paul Auditorium, Becker conducted the Federal Music Project's Twin Cities Orchestra in a program that included the premiere performance of his own Symphony No. 3, subtitled Symphonia Brevis.

This ultra-modern symphony was met with an ultra-conservative review in The Saint Paul Pioneer Press, whose critic wrote: “It consists of spasmodic little excursions … percussive barrages… ideas that seem to run out before the score comes to a close, with the consequent suggestion of that spurious vitality exhibited by decapitated fowls.”

Decades later, three years before his death in 1961, Becker, along with a few other surviving members of the American Five, was invited to take a bow from the stage of Carnegie Hall at one of Leonard Bernstein's New York Philharmonic concerts which featured his Sinfonia Brevis.

Music Played in Today's Program

John J. Becker (1886-1961): Sinfonia Brevis; Symphony No. 3; Louisville Orchestra; Jorge Mester, conductor; Albany TROY-027

Synopsis

On today’s date in 2013, a new work by 90-year old German-born American composer and teacher named Ursula Mamlok received its premiere performance in Switzerland. Five Fantasy Pieces for oboe and strings was given its premiere by great Swiss oboist Heinz Holliger and colleagues.

Mamlok was born in Berlin in 1923 and began composing as a child. Her family was Jewish, and once the Nazis placed school music programs off limits to Jews, her family began holding musicales in their home, with Ursula writing the music.

After the Crystal Night pogrom in 1938, her family left Germany, and, via Ecuador, young Ursula came to America after being offered a full scholarship to study at the Mannes School of Music in New York. She became an American citizen and began teaching most notably the Manhattan School of Music.

The bulk of Mamlok’s music is for small chamber ensembles, and only once she tried to create a purely electronic piece. In a 1996 interview, she confessed, “Unfortunately I have no connection to it … I put it together in the studio at Columbia in New York, but it took too long. I said, ‘I can’t do this.’ I’d rather use the pencil.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ursula Mamlok (1923-2016): Five Fantasy Pieces (2012/13); Heinz Holliger, oboe; Hanna Weinmeister, violin; Jurg Dahler, viola; Daniel Heaflinger, cello; Bridge 9457

Synopsis

In Costa Mesa, California, on today’s date in 2014, the Pacific Chorale premiered a new choral opera. And what exactly is a choral opera you ask? Good question — and one that puzzled Jake Heggie as well, since he was the composer commissioned for that occasion.

He and his librettist Gene Sheer at first scratched their heads. As Heggie put it, “Operas require action, characters, conflicts, journeys, transformation movement. Choirs stand still and make beautiful sound.”

They came up with a unique solution involving one character, Nora, a silent, on-stage actress, whose inner thoughts are sung by half of the choir. The other half expresses the sounds and surroundings of the outside world she chooses to hear on a day in her life on which everything seems to go wrong — starting with a returned, unopened, handwritten letter she had sent, pouring out her heart, to her jerk of a boyfriend. Even her apartment furniture gets in a word or two about her unhappy state. And where does she turn for comfort? Why, to the radio of course — hence the title of the new choral opera: The Radio Hour.

Spoiler alert: the opera ends on a hopeful note for poor Nora.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jake Heggie (b. 1961): The Radio Hour; John Alexander Singers; Pacific Symphony members; John Alexander, conductor; Delos 3484

Synopsis

Today, a tip of the hat to the persistence of Elisa Hall, who lived in Boston from 1853 to 1924.

Hall was a Francophile and championed the best and the latest in French music. Sadly, she suffered from a hearing ailment, which would eventually result in complete deafness. At the advice of her doctor, who thought it might stimulate her ears, she took up the saxophone — and with typical enthusiasm soon began commissioning the leading French composers of the day for new pieces for her instrument.

In all, she commissioned 22 works, the most famous being by Claude Debussy. He at first refused Hall’s persistent offers of a commission, pleading the saxophone was “a reed animal with whose habits he was poorly acquainted.”

Debussy was paid in advance, but it was years before delivered a short rhapsody in a vaguely Moorish style. In May of 1919, one year after his death, the orchestration of the piece was completed by his friend, Jean Roger-Ducasse, and premiered in Paris.

Hall apparently never performed it herself. Maybe she was exasperated by the long delay or perhaps, by 1919, her own hearing had deteriorated to the point where she no longer could.

Music Played in Today's Program

Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Rhapsody for Saxophone and Orchestra; Kenneth Radnofsky, alto saxophone; New York Philharmonic; Kurt Masur, conductor; Teldec 13133

Synopsis

Today we have a letter to read, written by Mozart in the middle of May in the year 1778. Mozart was in Paris, 22 years old, and had this to say to his father back in Salzburg:

“I think I told you in my last letter, that the Duc de Guines plays the flute extremely well, and that his daughter is my pupil in composition. She also plays the harp magnifique. She has a great deal of talent, even genius, and in particular a marvelous memory so that she can play all her pieces, actually about 200, by heart. It is, however, extremely doubtful as to whether she has any talent for composition, especially as regards invention or ideas.”

The Duc de Guines was the former French ambassador to London and believed by Mozart’s father to be in the inner circle of the French Queen Marie Antoinette, and hence a contact well worth cultivating. De Guines commissioned Mozart to write a double concerto for himself on flute and daughter on harp. Mozart complied with a courtly Concerto in C Major. Four months after delivering the music, Mozart had to report to his father that he still hadn't seen any payment for his efforts!

Music Played in Today's Program

W.A. Mozart (1756-1791): Concerto for Flute and Harp; Emmanuel Pahud, flute; Marie-Pierre Langlamet, harp; Berlin Philharmonic; Claudio Abbado, conductor; EMI 57128