Music – Cosmic Reflections

A Tucson Symphony Suggestion

If the Tucson Symphony published a list of every piece they have ever played, I can guarantee you that I could provide them with a list of dozens of great orchestral works from past and present times that they have never played that I am certain would be well received by the listening public. And I am sure there are other TSO season subscribers who could also make such a list of never-before-programmed yet accessible works. My point is—and this would apply to any symphony orchestra—that some of us classical music lovers have devoted a lot of time and energy uncovering great music that is not part of the standard repertoire. Yes, we do love the standard repertoire as much as anyone, but wouldn’t it be exciting to regularly hear great orchestral works that our beloved orchestra has never played before?

Composer and musicologist Robert Greenberg speaks frankly and convincingly about this and related subjects at the end of the last episode of his 2011 DVD lecture series The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works¹:

What Will Happen to the Orchestra?

Any institution that relies strictly on the past to preserve its future is dead meat. America’s orchestras do not perform nearly enough contemporary music and are therefore failing to create that very repertoire that will guarantee their relevance into the future. Assuming that I am right about this, and I most certainly am, we must then ask whose fault is this? The answer, sadly, is the obvious one. It’s our fault. It’s the audience’s fault.

Orchestras are market-driven institutions that are struggling to stay alive. The margin between breaking even and bankruptcy-inducing debt can be the ticket sales for just a few concerts. For the most part, modern audiences go to concerts to be entertained by music that is familiar, a fact that militates entirely against the creation of new repertoire. I, for example, would love to compose for orchestra, but I will not waste my precious time writing music that will never be played or that will only be performed once. This is a sentiment shared by virtually every one of my colleagues whose creative energies are being lavished instead on chamber music and vocal music.

By my unofficial count, there are 223 professional orchestras in the United States and Puerto Rico, most of them regional orchestras. In a world in which the basic repertoire has been recorded a thousand times over at a time when more and more people are forgoing the comradery of the concert hall in favor of consuming their music in their cars and in front of their computer screens, the great bulk of those 223 orchestras will simply become irrelevant in a generation unless they do something to make themselves relevant. Taking music to the schools certainly helps as does giving performances in unusual venues. But, really, it is music that feeds the orchestral beast, and without the roughage provided by fresh music, the beast will die of unrelieved constipation.

Cultivating and performing new orchestral music is not an aspect of an orchestra’s mission or even a duty. No. Along with playing the pre-existing repertoire, cultivating and performing new music is the orchestra’s very reason to be. Just as living things mate and reproduce in order to guarantee the survival of their genetic lines, so the orchestra as an institution must create viable repertoire in order to stay relevant and therefore to survive. In this, orchestras must lead and not be led by polls that ask their audiences what music they should perform. There should be a piece of new music five to eight minutes long on every concert program, with a longer featured new work appearing, say, two or three times a season.

When it comes to new music, charity starts at home. Local composers should be cultivated, commissioned, and then paraded on stage before the performance so that (1) the audience can see that they are indeed alive, and (2) so that the the composers might briefly describe what their pieces are about. Conductors must become, as they once were, advocates for fresh repertoire. The orchestral players, realizing that their careers are at stake, must forgo their usual cynicism and lassitude over having to learn a new piece and actually practice their parts at home so that the brief amount of rehearsal time allotted to the new work can be used effectively. The performances of these new works should be posted on an orchestra’s website so that anyone, anywhere can hear what is fresh and new and exciting, in Texarkana, or Sarasota, or Hartford, or Oakland.

Regional orchestras should band together to create consortia that would commission emerging and mid-career composers of promise to compose works, particularly concertos that would feature the section leaders of the orchestras themselves. Yes, charity starts at home. Why bring in an overpriced outsider when your own principal flutist, for example, would be thrilled to be a featured soloist.

The composers themselves also have a huge responsibility as well. I would suggest that they take a page from Aaron Copland’s compositional career. Copland’s chamber music tends to be quite virtuosic and uncompromising in its modernity, while his orchestral music, which he knew he was writing for a wider public, tends to be relatively less virtuosic and more accessible. Now, Copland wasn’t writing down to his orchestral audiences. No. He was writing smart on exactly these lines and in direct opposition to the modernist screed, “Who cares if you listen?” Contemporary composers must care who listens. And if we want the traditional orchestral audience to re-embrace what is new, we as composers have to be willing to meet the audience halfway by composing music that gives something back immediately in terms of rhythm, melody, harmony, and expressive content. In all fairness to most living composers, I would point out that the daunting and ferociously modernistic music of the post-World War II era, music that gave the phrase “modern music” a bad name, has been pretty much a thing of the past since the 1980s. Generally, but accurately speaking, most contemporary composers would no more write such ear-scalding music than drink battery acid.

The local media, radio, and press must commit themselves to new programming as well, with the knowledge that by doing so they, too, will be making themselves culturally relevant. A sense of importance and occasion could be built around the performances of even short pieces of new music that could begin to transform an orchestra’s self and public image.

Speaking of the public, it is all too easy to be cynical about public taste. From David Hannum’s famous line, misattributed to P.T. Barnum, that there’s a sucker born every minute, to H.L. Mencken’s admonition to never overestimate the intelligence of the American people, we are faced daily with the evidence of our cultural cretinism, from network television to Chia Pets, but I would point out that a concert hall is not a baseball stadium and that filling the seats of a concert hall is not a matter of drawing 45,000 people but rather of attracting those people who are predisposed, or who could be made to be predisposed, towards concert music in the first place. I am just foolish enough to believe that if you give the music-liking public a reason to believe there’s something new and exciting happening at the concert hall that they can’t get and won’t find anywhere else, they might very well show up!

We can only hope that at least some of this comes to pass because I fear that the epitaph, particularly for regional orchestras, is already being written. “Here lies an organizational dinosaur that never figured out how to maintain its duty to the past while staying relevant to the present.” Let us hope that such reports of the orchestra’s possible demise are entirely premature.

I would like to offer a few comments on Greenberg’s enlightening essay.

The Tucson Symphony, like many orchestras I’m sure, frequently presents new and often commissioned works, though they are always short, no more than 10 or 15 minutes in length. Many of these works are pleasant enough to listen to, but where are the more substantial works? The new symphonies and the new concertos? Also, there is an overemphasis on works from the Americas. In my opinion, most of these works are heavy on percussion and light on melody, harmony, and thematic development. I find what is going on in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, to be much more interesting and substantial. I would like to see some of these contemporary European works played. And there are many, many works from the past from all over the world that are not in the standard repertoire that also deserve to be regularly heard.

Greenberg brings up a disquieting thought: that composers won’t write what won’t get played. In other words, it may be that the reason we don’t have more symphonies, tone poems, suites, and concertos being written today is that the public isn’t demanding and, yes, paying for them. We could all be doing more to encourage composers to write longer and more substantial orchestral works and to see that they get performed by many orchestras and, yes, commercially recorded and released on CD. I do think this is more of a problem in the United States than it is in Europe, however.

In conclusion—and to expand on my original suggestion for the TSO—are there any orchestras that provide a complete list of all the works they have ever played on their website, and that invite suggestions for works not on this list from their concertgoers, and that program some of them? How exciting that would be!

Greenberg, Robert. 2011. The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works. The Great Courses. ↩︎

Cecilia Payne and Gustav Holst

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979), as a woman, had to endure an enormous number of challenges and setbacks but her perseverance, professional dedication, and brilliance led her to become one of the important astrophysicists in the 20th century. In her 1925 Ph.D. thesis, Cecilia Payne demonstrated that stars are primarily composed of hydrogen and helium. This was highly controversial at the time, but she was eventually proved correct. In 1960, the noted astronomer Otto Struve called her 1925 thesis, Stellar Atmospheres; A Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.” Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin would make an excellent subject for a full-length documentary as well as a biographical movie, and it is disgraceful that neither has been done yet.

I recently completed teaching a new five-week course on the English composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934). The research I did for that course plus my lifelong interest in astrophysics naturally led me to take an interest in the relationship between Cecilia Payne and Gustav Holst. Clearly from what you will see below, they had profound respect and admiration for each other.

Cecilia Payne attended St. Paul’ Girls’ School, where Gustav Holst taught, during the 1918-1919 school year. However, Holst left for war service in Salonika, Greece on October 29, 1918 and didn’t return to St. Paul’s until the 1919-1920 school year, after Payne had graduated and gone on to the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England.

Frances Ralph Gray was the founding “high mistress” of St. Paul’s School for Girls in the Brook Green neighborhood of London…Like Cecilia, she adored music; unlike Cecilia, she had had great difficulty learning mathematics. Also unlike Cecilia, she was small in stature. She was, however, commanding in presence. Students reported that being sent to see Miss Gray “was their greatest fear.”

Frances perceived that there was something different about the seventeen-year-old girl in her office who so wanted to be admitted. Yes, Cecilia had been told to leave her current school, but not because she was disruptive or a problem learner—quite the opposite. She was a serious student who loved music and science, whose goal was to go to Cambridge. She had responded to Elizabeth Edwards and to Dorothy Daglish. If St. Paul’s had similar teachers who could recognize Cecilia’s love of learning and would take time to nurture her, surely she would be a good fit.

Years later, in a touching letter recommending Cecilia for a fellowship at Harvard, Frances wrote: “It is not my practice to admit girls who have reached the age at which Cecilia Payne was admitted [age seventeen], but I was requested to make an exception in her case by the headmistress of the School she had previously attended, who assured me that she was a girl of very unusual promise.”

Unbeknownst to Cecilia, St. Paul’s needed her as much as she needed the school. Founded just over a decade earlier by the Worshipful Company of Mercers, it prided itself on consistently outperforming other schools. The “Paulinas” were not viewed as, or trained to be, socialites; this was a serious school. The social snobbery of other private schools had no place here.

Cecilia described her move to St. Paul’s as stepping from medieval times into the modern day. Instead of chapels there were laboratories—in biology, chemistry, physics—and teachers who were specialists. Here she was not just “allowed” to study science; she was encouraged. She only attended the school for one year. But from the moment she approached the Queen Anne-style pink brick building and walked up the stone steps and through the marble and oak arched front door, she was home.¹

Donovan Moore goes on now to write about Holst.

Frances Gray…made good on her professed love of music when she hired Gustav Holst. Holst was a relatively unknown trombone player when he accepted the job of director of music at St. Paul’s. Like Cecilia, he was shy and reserved, and he disdained fame. And like Cecilia, he was practiced in overcoming obstacles: neuritis in his right arm had forced him to stop playing the trombone and the piano, so he had to turn to composing.

Frances encouraged him; in fact, she worked with him, supplying the text for both a light-hearted masked dance in 1909 and a more ambitious orchestra work three years later. She had an entire music wing built in 1913, including a large soundproof room where Gustav composed on Sundays, when the school was locked up, in silence and solitude. It was in this room that he wrote his most famous work, the orchestra suite The Planets. Cecilia was among a group of students who heard it performed shortly after it was composed.²

As we shall see later through Cecilia’s own words, she must have heard some sort of run-through of The Planets at St. Paul’s. I wonder whether she was among the invited audience of about 250 people who attended the first performance of The Planets at Queen’s Hall, London, on Sunday, September 29, 1918, with Adrian Boult conducting the New Queen’s Hall Orchestra? Given that the choir for “Neptune: The Mystic” in that performance was comprised, in whole or in part, of students from St. Paul’s, it is possible she was present for the Queen’s Hall performance though perhaps unlikely given that the audience consisted of close friends and associates of Holst and many professional musicians in London.

Holst was also a great teacher. For three decades—from 1905 until his death in 1934—”Gussie”, as he was known, would cast his musical spell over his students. The contemporary composer Ralph Vaughan Williams described Holst’s long tenure at St. Paul’s: “He did away with the childish sentimentality that schoolgirls were supposed to appreciate and substituted Bach and Vittoria; a splendid background for immature minds.”

Holst discerned Cecilia’s love of music. He asked her to play her violin for him, made her a member of the school’s orchestra, and taught her how to conduct. He encouraged her to become a musician but did not prevail. Cecilia instinctively felt that a career in music would control her; as a scientist, she would be in control.³

In her autobiography, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin writes of St. Paul’s, Holst, and music:

The school ministered to my twin loves, science and music. Here I came under the spell of Gustav Holst, or “Gussie” as we affectionately called him. Aside from my shadowy Father, and my schoolboy brother, he was the first man I ever knew. He radiated music; the organ in the great hall reverberated to the great Toccata and fugue of Bach. Here for the first time I heard The Planets (then newly composed) and took part in a performance of the Hymn of Jesus. He was like a father to us, shy, abrupt and charming. He was quick to learn of my love of music, asked me to play the violin to him, and urged me to become a musician. I played in the orchestra, and learned conducting from him, but my love of science triumphed. It seems odd to think that the only career I was ever encouraged to follow was that of a musician. As a student at Cambridge I trained and conducted a choir that won an award. One of the judges told me that my conducting had been the decisive factor, and that my future lay there. Indeed, the feelings evoked by conducting a choir or orchestra are so powerful as to be overwhelming, but I recoiled instinctively from something I felt would control me; as a scientist I should be in control of my material. Who knows whether I was right?⁴

St. Paul’s Girls’ School did indeed have a great hall with an organ, so one wonders how Cecilia Payne heard The Planets there. It is also interesting that she first heard The Hymn of Jesus at St. Paul’s during her 1918-1919 school year, as the first known performance was on March 10, 1920 at the Royal College of Music with Holst conducting. Though Holst began composing the work during the summer of 1917, it was apparently not completed until after he returned from war service in Salonika, Greece on June 29, 1919. Cecilia Payne must have heard an early version of the work, or a part of it that had been completed.

Following four years at the University of Cambridge, Cecilia Payne arrived in New York aboard the RMS Laconia on Thursday, September 20, 1923, and from there proceeded to Cambridge, Massachusetts to begin her work in astronomy at Harvard University. Just a few months earlier, Gustav & Isobel Holst had visited the United States from April 27 through June 12, 1923. This was Isobel Holst’s only visit to the U.S., but Gustav would make two more visits, in 1929 and again in 1932.

Gustav Holst was in the United States from April 16-27, 1929, and on the evening of Friday, April 26, 1929, Holst gave a well-received lecture at Harvard University. It seems likely that Cecilia Payne would have attended that lecture and visited with Holst, but he was only in Cambridge for a day and had to take an early morning train to New York to board the RMS Samaria for the trip back to England. I have not been able to find any evidence that indicates they saw each other during Holst’s 1929 American visit.

Nor have I found any evidence that Cecilia Payne visited Holst in England after she moved to the United States in 1923, though New York ship passenger records show she arrived in New York from Southampton, England aboard the SS Leviathan on September 21, 1925, aboard the SS Berengaria on January 3, 1929, and aboard the SS Bremen on October 7, 1931 and August 30, 1933.

Gustav Holst and Cecilia Payne did meet again in 1932, when Holst conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the first of two concerts in Symphony Hall in Boston.

After the concert Holst met Mrs. Arthur Foote and Cecilia Payne, a St. Paul’s Girls’ School alumna, who was studying astronomy.⁵

This would have been Friday, January 22, 1932, during Holst’s final visit to America. The all-Holst concert was at 2:30 p.m. and featured St. Paul’s Suite; Prelude and Scherzo, “Hammersmith” (Boston premiere); and the Ballet from the Opera, The Perfect Fool (Boston premiere); followed by an intermission and then The Planets. Here is the concert program courtesy of the Internet Archive which includes pages from the previous program suggesting that a last-minute program change occurred substituting St. Paul’s Suite for Somerset Rhapsody (an excellent early work by Holst, by the way) and switching the order of Hammersmith and The Perfect Fool:

Incidentally, you might notice from the program that Arthur Fiedler was a violist in the orchestra and prepared the women’s chorus for the final movement of The Planets.

I met one ex Paulina at Harvard—Cecilia Payne who is doing research in astronomy.⁶

This is from a letter that Holst began on Tuesday, January 26, 1932 to his daughter Imogen.

He also spent some time with ex-Paulina Cecilia Payne, meeting her for lunch one day and for dinner at her place on another. This was followed by her lecture on a subject of great interest to him, the Zodiac.⁷

This was after Holst returned to Harvard from his four-day trip to Montreal and New York, and before his lecture at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., thus sometime between Tuesday, March 15 and Saturday, March 26, 1932.

Holst’s train from Ann Arbor arrived at Boston’s South Station at 11:15 a.m. on Saturday, May 21st. The next two days were spent packing and writing letters. He met with the Davisons the following morning and had dinner with Cecilia Payne at the Faculty Club that same evening.⁸

This dinner with Cecilia Payne would have been the evening of Sunday, May 22, 1932.

Later that same evening, Cecilia Payne drove Holst over to the observatory to view Jupiter and a star cluster. Holst enjoyed her company and visited with her again the day of his Boston departure.⁹

The observatory visit would have been on Tuesday, May 24. I’m guessing that the star cluster they observed after Jupiter would have been M13 in Hercules, which that evening was high in the eastern sky. Holst’s last visit with Cecilia Payne was on Thursday, May 26, 1932. Later that day, he left Boston by boat for New York where he boarded the SS Europa the following day to return to England. This was the last time Holst and Payne saw each other.

Cecilia Payne first met Russian-born astrophysicist Sergei Gaposchkin at the Astronomische Gesellschaft (Astronomical Society) meeting in Göttingen, Germany, on August 4, 1933. She helped him emigrate to the United States, and they were married on March 5, 1934. Less than three months later, Gustav Holst would be dead.

Moore, Donovan. 2020. What Stars Are Made of: The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. London, England: Harvard University Press, pp. 34-35. ↩︎
Moore, pp. 37-38. ↩︎
Moore, p. 38. ↩︎
Haramundanis, Katherine. 1984. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, p. 108. ↩︎
Mitchell, Jon C. 2001. A Comprehensive Biography of Composer Gustav Holst, with Correspondence and Diary Excerpts: Including His American Years. New York, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, p. 442. ↩︎
Mitchell, p. 447. ↩︎
Mitchell, p. 485. ↩︎
Mitchell, p. 543. ↩︎
Mitchell, p. 547. ↩︎

Tucson Needs Evening and Weekend Classes

Since 2023, I’ve been teaching in-person classical composer music courses in Tucson. I’ve had to do all the work myself (preparation, venue, recruitment, publicity, etc.) because none of the existing continuing education organizations in the Tucson metro area offer evening and weekend classes. Moreover, the primary organization providing continuing education courses in Greater Tucson, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute—University of Arizona (OLLI-UA) adds the additional restriction that their advertised target audience includes no one under the age of 50. Since my music courses are expressly intended for anyone interested in learning more about classical music, high-school age and older, I have had to set about on my own with no organizational support whatsoever. It has not been easy.

Anyone who has attended a symphony or chamber music concert over the last few years will notice that audiences are generally dwindling and the vast majority that do attend these concerts are folks in their 60s, 70s, or older. In my own small but determined way, I am attempting to help reverse these trends by helping folks—especially younger folks—to see that classical music can be as exciting, meaningful, and inspirational as the best of whatever other kinds of music they’ve been listening to—even more so. I am teaching the kind of music classes that I wish someone had taught me when I was a young adult. Since my interest and expertise is in building audiences for classical music, both live performances and recorded music (because, let’s face it, there is a lot of great music that most of us will never have the opportunity to hear in live performance, no matter where we live), I focus mostly on listening enjoyment and the “life and times” of each composer rather than on music theory. Even though my courses are entitled Music for Listeners, I have no doubt that professional and amateur musicians will also enjoy the meticulously-researched “deep dive” into the life and music of each composer while at the same time helping them expand their repertoire.

Attracting younger music listeners to the courses I teach requires choosing a class time that is least likely to conflict with a prospective participant’s work schedule or—in the case of students—class schedule. For the courses I teach, I have generally settled on Saturdays from 1:00 – 2:30 p.m.

Trying to reach the people in the Tucson metro area that would most benefit from my music courses has proved exceedingly difficult. So far, almost all of my students have comes from a Meetup group I started (also in 2023) and the Tucson Masterworks Chorale, where I am a member of the tenor section. Ideally, I would like to reach Classical 90.5 listeners (AZPM) and those that attend Tucson Symphony Orchestra concerts, but neither AZPM nor TSO offer public service announcements for non-profit community music events, and the cost of advertising with them is prohibitively expensive for an individual of modest means. I charge $20 per person for each music course I teach, and that covers my cost of renting the venue and little more. I want my courses to be affordable to all. Yes, it is a labor of love, but how to reach those that would most benefit from what I am doing?

I spend about half a year preparing each course that I teach, working on it each and every day (except when I am out of town which happens much less frequently than I would like). Given the enormous amount of time I invest in preparing each course, it would be a shame if I never had the opportunity to further refine and teach these courses again. At the time of this writing, I am currently teaching a course on Gustav Holst with twelve participants, and I have four other courses ready to be taught again at any time: Johannes Brahms, Sergei Prokofiev, Antonín Dvořák, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Here’s a link for an up-to-date list of past, present, and future courses that I will be teaching:

Music for Listeners – Tucson

I am sure there must be others in the Tucson metro area who would like to teach for an organization that offers evening and weekend classes and thus is inclusive of both non-retired as well as retired folks. Right now, this is one of many unmet needs we have here in Southern Arizona.

Classical Music Timeline: 2020s

This is one of a series of postings of important classical music dates, from the 17th century to the present. Included are the date and location of the birth and death of composers, and the premiere date and location of the first public performance of works. When the premiere date and location is unknown, the date or year of completion of the work is given. Though reasonably comprehensive, this is a subjective list, so the choice of composers and works is mine. If you find any errors, or if you can offer a premiere date and location for a work where only the completion date or year is listed, please post a comment here.

2023
January 18 – Clytus Gottwald (1925-2023) died in Ditzingen, Germany

August 3 – Carl Davis (1936-2023) died in Oxford, England

August 19 – Gloria Coates (1933-2023) died in Munich, Germany

2024
January 16 – Peter Schickele (1935-2024) died in Bearsville, New York

←2010s

2030s→

Classical Music Timeline: 2010s

2010
April 22 – Double Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra by Philip Glass (1937-) was first performed in The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands

November 2 – Rudolf Barshai (1924-2010) died in Basel, Switzerland

2011
Alma Deutscher (2005-) completed Piano Sonata in E-flat Major

Amanda Harberg (1973-) completed Concerto for Viola and Orchestra

December 15 – Krasimir Kyurkchiyski (1936-2011) died in Sofia, Bulgaria

2014
April 13 – The Drop That Contained the Sea by Christopher Tin (1976-) was first performed in New York, New York

2016
May 5 – Isao Tomita (1932-2016) died in Tokyo, Japan

July 27 – Einojuhani Rautavaara (1929-2016) died in Helsinki, Finland

2017
January 21 – Veljo Tormis (1930-2017) died in Tallinn, Estonia

2018
Alma Deutscher (2005-) completed I Think of You, for piano

Alma Deutscher (2005-) completed In Memoriam (from Piano Concerto, 2nd movement: Adagio), for piano

2019
Alma Deutscher (2005-) completed Impromptu in C minor, “The Chase”, for piano

Alma Deutscher (2005-) completed Siren Sounds Waltz, for piano

Alma Deutscher (2005-) completed Sixty Minutes Polka, for piano

Alma Deutscher (2005-) completed The Lonely Pine-Tree, for piano

Alma Deutscher (2005-) completed “The Star of Hope” (from the opera Cinderella), for piano

Alma Deutscher (2005-) completed “When the Day Falls Into Darkness” (from the opera Cinderella), for piano

February 17 – Deux Sérénades, for violin and orchestra, by Einojuhani Rautavaara (1929-2016) was first performed in Paris, France

February 20 – Dominick Argento (1927-2019) died in Minneapolis, Minnesota

May 10 – “Inferno” (Part 1 of Dante) by Thomas Adès (1971-) was first performed in Los Angeles, California

←2000s

2020s→

Classical Music Timeline: 2000s

2000
April 4 – Scenes from the Poet’s Dreams, for piano quintet, by Jennifer Higdon (1962-) was first performed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

April 27 – Symphony No. 8, “The Journey”, by Einojuhani Rautavaara (1929-2016) was first performed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

June 2 – Lepo Sumera (1950-2000) died in Tallinn, Estonia

June 21 – Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) died in Seattle, Washington

2001
April 19 – Orphée Suite [transcribed for piano by Paul Barnes (1961-)] by Philip Glass (1937-) was first performed in New York, New York

May 12 – Viola Sonata [Cello Sonata, op. 40, arranged for viola by Annette Bartholdy (1972-)] by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) received its world premiere recording

2002
July 2 – Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur (1908-2002) died in Paris, France

September – The full film score by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) for Scott of the Antarctic was released for the first time, on Chandos CD 10007. Musicologist Stephen Hogger (1962-) edited this film suite and it includes a significant amount of noteworthy music that was not used in the film nor in Sinfonia Antartica.

September 22 – Light Refracted by Jennifer Higdon (1962-) was first performed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

2003
April 29 – Wild Swans, ballet by Elena Kats-Chernin (1957-) was first performed in Sydney, Australia

May 9 – Dreams of the Child of Light by Michael Mauldin (1947-) was first performed in Albuquerque, New Mexico

2004
Clytus Gottwald (1925-2023) completed Im Treibhaus (after Wagner), for unaccompanied chorus

July 21 – Jerry Goldsmith (1929-2004) died in Beverly Hills, California

November 12 – The Spirit and the Maiden, for violin, cello, and piano, by Elena Kats-Chernin (1957-) was first performed in Brisbane, Australia

2005
Valentin Silvestrov (1937-) completed Liturgical Chants, for SATB choir a cappella

January 21 – Kaljo Raid (1921-2005) died in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada

February 19 – Alma Deutscher (2005-) was born in Basingstoke, England

April 23 – Robert Farnon (1917-2005) died in Guernsey, Channel Islands

October – Symphony No. 1 (3rd and final version) by Einojuhani Rautavaara (1929-2016) was premiered via recording in Brussels, Belgium

December 17 – Trevor Duncan (1924-2005) died in Taunton, England

2006
Valentin Silvestrov (1937-) completed Two Christmas Lullabies, for SATB choir a cappella

Valentin Silvestrov (1937-) completed Two Sacred Songs, for SATB choir a cappella

Alla Pavlova (1952-) completed Symphony No. 5

Elisabetta Brusa (1954-) completed Merlin, Symphonic Poem

June 12 – György Ligeti (1923-2006) died in Vienna, Austria

September 23 – Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006) died in Norwich, England

2007
February 1 – Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007) died in Monte Carlo, Monaco

2009
April 10 – Richard Arnell (1917-2009) died in London, England

←1990s

2010s→

4534 Rimskij-Korsakov

On Sunday afternoon, October 13, 2024, I attended a wonderful concert by the Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra (SASO) that included a rousing performance of Scheherazade by the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Early that evening, I was the first person in the world to observe the composer’s namesake asteroid 4534 Rimskij-Korsakov passing in front of a distant star and, briefly, blocking its light. As a classical music lover, that made me very happy.

The 0.5-second occultation of the 13.6-magnitude star UCAC4 558-003434 by the asteroid
4534 Rimskij-Korsakov on 14 Oct 2024 2:23:46 UT as seen from Tucson, Arizona
using an 8-inch telescope

4534 Rimskij-Korsakov was discovered on 6 Aug 1986 by the Russian astronomer Nikolai Chernykh (1931-2004) at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory near the small settlement of Nauchnyi on the Crimean peninsula, part of Ukraine but illegally occupied by Putin’s Russian forces since 2014.

At the time of its discovery, this asteroid received its preliminary designation 1986 PV₄. As is the custom, the discoverer gets to choose a name for the asteroid if they so desire, and Nikolai Chernykh decided to name his discovery after Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908). This name was approved by the IAU and published in Minor Planet Circular 23352 on 25 Apr 1994.

4534 Rimskij-Korsakov is not a large asteroid. Its average diameter is estimated to be just 9.9 miles. Had I been right on the centerline of the asteroid’s shadow, I should have seen the star disappear for about 1.2 seconds. Given that I had to use an integration time of 0.27^s due the faintness of the occulted star, the 0.5-second event I recorded had only two data points in the “dip” where the 13.6 magnitude star disappeared leaving only the sky background since the asteroid’s estimated magnitude was just 17.5^m. Normally, one likes to have at least three data points in the dip, but two is better than one and the event happened at exactly the predicted time.

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20241014_4534_Rimskij-Korsakov_DAMIT.gif

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov wrote a lot of great music, and he was a master of orchestration and orchestral “colors”. Here are my favorite works. If you don’t already know them, give them a listen!

Capriccio espagnol
Le Coq d’Or, Suite [arranged by Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936) & Maximilian Steinberg (1883-1946)]
Russian Easter Festival Overture
Scheherazade
Suite from The Snow Maiden
Symphony No. 2, “Antar”
The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Suite

Classical Music Timeline: 1990s

1990
Gloria Coates (1933-2023) completed Symphony No. 7

March 15 – Symphony No. 1 by John Corigliano (1938-) was first performed in Chicago, Illinois

October 14 – Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) died in New York, New York

November 10 – Home Alone, with film score by John Williams (1932-), was released

December 2 – Aaron Copland (1900-1990) died in Sleepy Hollow, New York

1991
Ballade in G minor, op. 24 by Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) as orchestrated by Geirr Tveitt (1908-1981) was first performed in Norheimsund, Norway

John Adams (1947-) completed Berceuse élégiaque, an arrangement for small orchestra of the work by Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924)

June 29 – Liverpool Oratorio by Paul McCartney (1942-) and Carl Davis (1936-2023) was first performed in Liverpool, England

1992
April 27 – Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) died in Paris, France

1994
December 2 – Thurber’s Dogs by Peter Schickele (1935-2024) was first performed in Columbus, Ohio

1995
James Moody (1907-1995) died in London, England

Jack Stamp (1954-) completed Aubrey Fanfare

Timothy Brock (1963-) completed a film score for the 1926 silent movie Faust

May 31 – Lintukoto (Isle of Bliss) by Einojuhani Rautavaara (1929-2016) was first performed in Lohja, Finland

September 1 – Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra by Philip Glass (1937-) was first performed in Stockholm, Sweden

1996
Thomas Bloch [aka Johann Julius Sontag von Holt Sombach] (1962-) completed Adagio for Glass Harmonica & String Quartet (from Fantaisie Concertante) sometime after this year

1997
Dominick Argento (1927-2019) completed Reverie, Reflections on a Hymn Tune

February 21 – Rosewood, with film score by John Williams (1932-), was released

1998
November 11 – Clive Richardson (1909-1998) died in London, England

1999
Lera Auerbach (1973-) completed Postlude for Violin and Piano

Lera Auerbach (1973-) completed Twenty-Four Preludes for Violin and Piano, op. 46

February 23 – Ruth Gipps (1921-1999) died in Eastbourne, England

July 6 – Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) died in Madrid, Spain

←1980s

2000s→

Classical Music Timeline: 1980s

1980
January 17 – Epitaph for a Man Who Dreamed (In Memoriam: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) by Adolphus Hailstork (1941-) was first performed in Baltimore, Maryland

May 6 – The Empire Strikes Back, with film score by John Williams (1932-), was released

December 24 – Alec Wilder (1907-1980) died in Gainesville, Florida

1981
January 23 – Samuel Barber (1910-1981) died in New York, New York

February 1 – Geirr Tveitt (1908-1981) died in Oslo, Norway

February 26 – Howard Hanson (1896-1981) died in Rochester, New York

June 12 – Raiders of the Lost Ark, with film score by John Williams (1932-), was released

1982
Mikhail Goldstein (1917-1989) published a reconstruction of the Cello Sonata in B minor by Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)

May 26 – E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, with film score by John Williams (1932-), was released

1983
March 8 – William Walton (1902-1983) died in La Mortella, Italy

May 1 – Cypresses, for voice and piano, B11 by Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) was first performed in Prague, Czech Republic

May 25 – Return of the Jedi, with film score by John Williams (1932-), was released

June 25 – Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) died in Geneva, Switzerland

1984
June 8 – Gordon Jacob (1895-1984) died in Saffron Walden, Essex, England

July 18 – Olympic Fanfare and Theme by John Williams (1932-) was first performed in Los Angeles, California

1985
April 30 – “1712 Overture” by [P.D.Q. Bach] Peter Schickele (1935-2024) was first performed in Boston, Massachusetts

September 11 – William Alwyn (1905-1985) died in Southwold, England

October 13 – Requiem by John Rutter (1945-) was first performed in Dallas, Texas

1986
Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006) completed Four Irish Dances, op. 126

January 22 – Ilse Fromm-Michaels (1888-1986) died in Detmold, Germany

November 15 – Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) died in Paris, France

December 27 – Lars-Erik Larsson (1908-1986) died in Helsingborg, Sweden

1987
Krasimir Kyurkchiyski (1936-2011) completed Kalmankou Denkou (The Evening Gathering), for a cappella Bulgarian female choir, this year or before

February 14 – Dmitry Kabalevsky (1904-1987) died in Moscow, Russia

December 11 – Empire of the Sun, with film score by John Williams (1932-), was released

1988
October 9 – Symphony No. 3 by Lepo Sumera (1950-2000) was first performed in Tallinn, Estonia

November 28 – Atardecer (Dusk), for piano four hands, by Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) was first performed in Madrid, Spain

1989
September 7 – Mikhail Goldstein (1917-1989) died in Hamburg, Germany

September 30 – Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) died in New York, New York

December 20 – Born on the Fourth of July, with film score by John Williams (1932-), was released

←1970s

1990s→

Classical Music Timeline: 1970s

1970
June 4 – Two Pieces for cello and piano by Anton Webern (1883-1945) was first performed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

June 16 – Heino Eller (1887-1970) died in Tallinn, Estonia

July 4 – Sinfonietta for String Orchestra by William Alwyn (1905-1985) was first performed in Cheltenham, England

1971
February 8 – King Lear, with film score (op. 137) by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), was released

March 1 – Thomas Adès (1971-) was born in London, England

April 6 – Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) died in New York, New York

1972
Robert Farnon (1917-2005) completed Colditz March

Einojuhani Rautavaara (1929-2016) completed Pelimannit (“The Fiddlers”), for string orchestra

Annette Bartholdy (1972-) was born in Bern, Switzerland

January 8 – Symphony No. 15 in A major, op. 141 by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) was first performed in Moscow, Russia

March 2 – Sonata for String Orchestra by William Walton (1902-1983) was first performed in Perth, Australia

April 3 – Ferde Grofé (1892-1972) died in Santa Monica, California

October 5 – A Ring of Time by Dominick Argento (1927-2019) was first performed in Minneapolis, Minnesota

October 15 – Symphony No. 10 in F♯ major (Cooke II) by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was first performed in London, England

October 18 – Cantus Arcticus, Concerto for Birds and Orchestra, by Einojuhani Rautavaara (1929-2016) was first performed in Oulu, Finland

1973
Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) completed Concerto for Harp and String Orchestra, op. 267

February 25 – Amanda Harberg (1973-) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

October 21 – Lera Auerbach (1973-) was born in Chelyabinsk, Russia

1974
February 15 – Kurt Atterberg (1887-1974) died in Stockholm, Sweden

April 12 – Snowflakes Are Dancing, with music by Claude Debussy as electronically realized by Isao Tomita (1932-2016), was released

November 15 – String Quartet No. 15 in E♭ minor, op. 144 by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) was first performed in Saint Petersburg, Russia

1975
April – Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky as electronically realized by Isao Tomita (1932-2016) was released

May 18 – Leroy Anderson (1908-1975) died in Woodbury, Connecticut

August 9 – Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) died in Moscow, Russia

September 5 – Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun by Claude Debussy and Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky as electronically realized by Isao Tomita (1932-2016) was released

1976
May 21 – Christopher Tin (1976-) was born in Palo Alto, California

December 4 – Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) died in Aldeburgh, England

1977
Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) completed Sonatina para dos Muñecas (Sonatina for two Puppets), for piano four hands

March 14 – Gyula Dávid (1913-1977) died in Budapest, Hungary

May 25 – Star Wars, with film score by John Williams (1932-), was released

June – The Beatles Concerto, for two pianos and orchestra, by John Rutter (1945-) was first performed in London, England

September 3 – Marjatta, Lowly Maiden, a Finnish Mystery Play, by Einojuhani Rautavaara (1929-2016) was first performed in Espoo, Finland

September 13 – Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) died in Nether Wallop, Hampshire, England

October 23 – Piano Quartet by William Bolcom (1938-) was first performed in New York, New York

November 14 – Richard Addinsell (1904-1977) died in London, England

November 16 – Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with film score by John Williams (1932-), was released

1978
Hanget soi (“Singing Snow”), for children’s chorus, by Heikki Sarmanto (1939-) [Arranged by Auvo Sarmanto (1935-)] was published

January 29 – Peter Schickele (1935-2024) [P.D.Q. Bach] completed “Twelve Quite Heavenly Songs”

March 27 – A la busca del más allá “In search of the beyond” by Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) was first performed in Houston, Texas

May 1 – Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978) died in Moscow, Russia

October 17 – Concierto pastoral, for flute and orchestra, by Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999) was first performed in London, England

December 3 – William Grant Still (1895-1978) died in Los Angeles, California

December 10 – Superman, with film score by John Williams (1932-), was released

1979
April 10 – Nino Rota (1911-1979) died in Rome, Italy

September 7 – Peter Schickele (1935-2024) [P.D.Q. Bach] completed “Liebeslieder Polkas”

October 1 – Roy Harris (1898-1979) died in Santa Monica, California

December 7 – Star Trek: The Motion Picture, with film score by Jerry Goldsmith (1929-2004), was released

December 30 – Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) died in New York, New York

←1960s

1980s→