Composers Datebook

• Berlioz and the Parisian prudes

  SynopsisWe tend to think of Paris as the most sophisticated and worldly of European capitals — a city whose residents are unlikely to be shocked by anything they see or hear.Ah, but that’s not always the case, as poor Hector Berlioz discovered on today’s date in 1838, when his new opera Benvenuto Cellini premiered at the Paris Opéra. One line in the libretto about the cocks crowing at dawn was considered, as Berlioz put it, “belonging to a vocabulary inconsistent with our present prudishness” and provoked shocked disapproval. And that was just the start of a controversy that raged over both the morality and the music of this new opera.Following the dismal opening night, Berlioz wrote to his father: “It’s impossible to describe all the underhanded maneuvers, intrigues, conspiracies, disputes, battles, and insults my work has given rise to … The French have a positive mania for arguing about music without having the first idea — or even any feeling — about it!”From the fiasco of the opera’s premiere, however, Berlioz did retrieve some measure of success. His famous contemporaries Paganini and Liszt both admired the work — and said so — and one flashy orchestral interlude from Benvenuto Cellini did prove a lasting success when Berlioz recast it as a concert work: his Roman Carnival Overture.Music Played in Today's ProgramHector Berlioz (1803-1869): Benvenuto Cellini and Roman Carnival Overtures; Staatskapelle Dresden; Sir Colin Davis, conductor; BMG/RCA 68790

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• Edward Burlingame Hill

  SynopsisToday is the birthday of American composer and teacher Edward Burlingame Hill, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872.Hill studied at Harvard, which was not surprising, since his grandfather had been President of the college, and his father taught chemistry there. “My father sang the songs of Schubert, and was a great admirer of Bach. Thus at an early age I was imbued with a deep love for serious music,” he recalled. Hill studied with 19th-century American composer John Knowles Paine, who had established at Harvard the first music department in any American university. After he took all of Paine’s courses, he went on to study in Paris with Charles Widor.Hill’s early works were in the French style, and you might say that he “wrote the book on the subject” — literally. In 1924, he published a study, French Music, and was awarded the French Legion of Honor for his efforts. During his lifetime, major American orchestras performed his music, but today, if he’s remembered at all, it’s as a teacher at Harvard. Toward the end of tenure, one his students was Leonard Bernstein, who, in 1953, made a recording of his teacher’s Prelude for Orchestra. Hill died at 88 in New Hampshire in 1960.Music Played in Today's ProgramEdward Burlingame Hill (1872-1960): Prelude for Orchestra; Columbia Symphony; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; CBS/Sony 61849

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• Bernstein's 'Mass'

  SynopsisOn today’s date in 1971, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., was inaugurated with a gala performance of a new work by Leonard Bernstein. Mass was a musical and visual extravaganza which reinterpreted the text of the Latin liturgy and involved more than 200 singers, dancers, and instrumentalists.Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had asked Bernstein to write a piece to open the new Center but was conspicuous by her absence. President Richard Nixon also chose to stay away, rightly fearing that Bernstein’s Mass would be interpreted as an embarrassing protest against the war in Vietnam.The Washington Post’s front-page review, “A Reaffirmation of Faith,” was glowing in its praise, but Time magazine’s assessment was condescending, quoting some New York wits who dubbed it the “Mitzvah Solemnis.” The New York Times review was brutal, calling Bernstein’s Mass “a combination of superficiality and pretentiousness…[and] the greatest mélange of styles since the ladies’ magazine recipe for steak fried in peanut butter and marshmallow sauce.”But Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, when she finally did hear Bernstein’s work, sent the composer an inscribed photograph which read: “Lenny — I loved it, yes, I did, and I love you, too. Thank you for making Mass so beautiful.”Music Played in Today's ProgramLeonard Bernstein (1918-1990): Sanctus, from Mass; Empire Brass; Telarc 80159 Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): Simple Song, from Mass; Boston Pops; John Williams, conductor; Philips 416 360

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• Hymnus Paradisi by Herbert Howells

  SynopsisThe Three Choirs Festival is one of England’s oldest musical traditions. Established around 1715, it showcases the cathedral choirs of Gloucester, Worcester and Herford, and presents both choral and orchestral works by British composersVaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis was premiered there in 1910, and in the audience was an 18-year-old aspiring composer named Herbert Howells, who later would relate how Vaughan Williams had sat next to him for the remainder of the concert and shared his score of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with him.Howells studied music at Gloucester Cathedral before heading off to London and the Royal College of Music. He also got married and had two children. In 1935, his 9-year-old son Michael contracted polio and died three days later. The grief-stricken Howells began composing a memorial work as private therapy, choral sketches he considered too painful to complete and too personal to have performed.But in 1950 Howells was asked for a new work to be premiered at Three Choirs Festival, and, at the urging of Vaughan Williams and others who had seen Howell’s private sketches, Howells completed his work Hymnus Paradisi, and led the premiere himself on September 7, 1950, one day after the 15th anniversary of his son’s death.Music Played in Today's ProgramHerbert Howells (1892-1983): Hymnus Paradisi; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra; Vernon Handley, conductor; Hyperion 66448

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• Henry Kimball Hadley

  SynopsisWorks by Henry Kimball Hadley rarely shows up on concert programs anymore, but in the early years of the 20th century, he ranked as a major and very popular American composer. In 1910, Gustav Mahler conducted Hadley’s tone poem The Culprit Fay during his tenure at the New York Philharmonic, and in 1920, Hadley’s opera Cleopatra’s Night was staged at the Metropolitan Opera.But by the time of his death on today’s date in 1937, Hadley’s full-blown, late-Romantic style was falling out of fashion in the modernist age of Stravinsky and Schoenberg.In other aspects of his musical career, however Hadley was quite avant-garde and forward-looking: In 1921 he became associate conductor of the New York Philharmonic — the first American-born conductor to hold a full-time post with any major American orchestra. In 1926, he was invited by Warner Brothers to conduct the Philharmonic at the New York premiere of their silent film Don Juan, starting legendary actor John Barrymore, and the following year wrote an original score for a second Barrymore silent feature, When A Man Loves.Hadley is also credited with making the first symphonic video, a 10-minute Vitaphone film of Hadley conducting Wagner’s Tannhauser Overture that was shown in movie theaters back then and you can still see today via YouTube!Music Played in Today's ProgramHenry Kimball Hadley (1871-1937): The Culprit Fay; Ukraine National Symphony; John McLaughlin Williams, conductor; Naxos 8.559064

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