Composers Datebook

• Mackey's 'Lost and Found'

  SynopsisOn today’s date in 1996, Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the San Francisco Symphony in the first performance of Lost and Found, a five-minute toccata for orchestra. Its composer was Steve Mackey, an American whose music Tilson Thomas championed and recorded.Mackey wrote: “On more than one occasion Michael has used the word ‘wacky’ to describe my music. Composers usually blanch at such attributions — nobody wants to be captured in a single word — but I can live with ‘wacky’. It is not a common adjective, does not end with ‘ism,’ and clearly the rhyme with my last name personalizes it. My music tends to explore fringe modes of consciousness rather than brand name emotion or logical thought.”He also avoids conventional titles. His Concerto for Electric Guitar is titled Tuck and Roll, and among his other works can be found Banana/Dump Truck and Eating Greens.Mackey said, “I think a lot about momentum, inertia, and even gravity, allowing the music to get stuck and tip over, lurch headlong, tumble with limbs akimbo as well as to move fluidly gives it a ‘road runner’ cartoon kind of physicality, a fantasy, but not completely unhinged from the physical world.”Music Played in Today's ProgramSteven Mackey (b. 1956): Lost and Found; New World Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; BMG 63826

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• Ives in San Francisco

  SynopsisOn today’s date in 1931, a short notice appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, which began: “Music never before heard in San Francisco will make up the program of the New Music Society to be conducted by Nicolas Slonimsky of Boston tonight in the Community Playhouse.” In addition to new works by Stravinsky and Prokofiev, Slonimsky conducted pieces by three American composers, including the world premiere of Washington’s Birthday, by Charles Ives.Ives had written Washington’s Birthday in 1909, and the following year had talked some theater musicians into giving the work a run-through. “They made an awful fuss about playing it, and only after some of the parts that seemed to me to be the best and strongest were cut,” he recalled. About 10 years later, he asked some players of the New York Symphony to give the score a private reading at his home. Again, the musicians complained it was just too difficult.Slonimsky’s 1931 performance in San Francisco presented the score complete and as originally written. Ives, who lived on the East Coast, was not present for the San Francisco premiere, but was delighted to learn — as he put it: “Neither the audience nor the critics were disturbed to the point of cussing.Music Played in Today's ProgramCharles Ives (1874-1954): Washington’s Birthday; Chicago Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; CBS/Sony 42381

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• Haydn at Esterhazy

  SynopsisOn today’s date in 1773, Austrian Empress Maria Theresa was visiting the country estate of Prince Nikolaus of Esterhazy. Among the attractions there were an opera house, a marionette theater, and the prince’s impressive chamber orchestra led by Franz Joseph Haydn.It’s possible that Haydn’s Symphony No. 48 was performed for the Empress — in any case, this symphony came to be nicknamed the Maria Theresa. We do know that Haydn and his orchestra did perform for the empress — and that they were all dressed up in Chinese costumes for one performance during her visit! Among other “duties as assigned,” Haydn shot three wild game hens that were cooked up for the Empress’s dinner. Ah, the life of a court musician in the 18th century!It’s also reported that Haydn told the empress an amusing story from his childhood in Vienna. Apparently repair work was being done on St. Stephens Cathedral when Haydn was a boy soprano in the Cathedral Choir. The empress was annoyed at the racket made by choirboys playing on the scaffolding and ordered that the next one caught playing up there would get a spanking. The following day Haydn climbed the scaffold, was caught, and received the promised punishment.Apparently they both got a good laugh out of recalling the story.Music Played in Today's ProgramFranz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): Symphony No. 48 (Maria Theresa); Polish Chamber Orchestra; Jerzy Maksymiuk, conductor; EMI Classics 69767

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• Pachelbel and his 'Canon'

  SynopsisOn today’s date in 17th century Germany, a baby boy was christened who would grow up to be one of the leading composers and organists of his time. No, it wasn’t Johann Sebastian Bach — although the child we’re discussing here would become the teacher of the teacher of J.S. Bach and did serve as godfather to one J.S. Bach’s older relations.It was Johann Pachelbel who was baptized on today’s date in Nuremberg in 1653. He was a famous musician in his day, but after his death in 1706, Pachelbel would be pretty much forgotten until late in the 20th century, when an orchestral arrangement of a little chamber piece that he’d written — Pachelbel’s Canon would suddenly become an unexpected hit. In 1979, the American composer George Rochberg even included a set of variations on Pachelbel’s Canon as the third movement of his own String Quartet No. 6.Like Bach, some of Pachelbel’s children also became composers, and one of them, Karl Teodorus Pachelbel, emigrated from Germany to the British colonies of North America. As “Charles Theodore Pachelbel,” he became an important figure in the musical life of early 18th century Boston and Charleston, where he died in 1750, the same year as J.S. Bach. Music Played in Today's ProgramGeorge Rochberg (1918-2005): Variations on Pachelbel’s Canon, from String Quartet No. 6; Concord Quartet; New World 80551

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• Weill's 'Three-Penny Opera' in Berlin

  SynopsisOn today’s date in 1928, Kurt Weill’s Three Penny Opera, whose cast members portrayed thieves, murderers,and sex workers, debuted at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin.The Three-Penny Opera was a 20th century updating of The Beggar’s Opera, a satirical 18th century British ballad-opera by John Gay. A new German text was provided by playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill provided a jazzy score.The opera was a smash success in Berlin, and within a year was taken up by theaters all over Europe. But in 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, all performances of The Three Penny Opera were banned, since Weill was Jewish and Brecht was a communist sympathizer.Just as it was being banned in Germany, its 1933 American premiere in New York was a flop, and the show closed after only a dozen performances. It wasn’t until 1952 that it was successfully revived in America. With a new English translation by the American composer Marc Bliztstein, The Three Penny Opera was reintroduced by Leonard Bernstein at a Music Festival at Brandeis University, and in 1954 reopened off-broadway in Greenwich Village to sold-out houses and rave reviews.Music Played in Today's ProgramKurt Weill (1900-1950): Three Penny Opera; Suite Canadian Chamber Ensemble; Raffi Armenian, conductor; CBC 5010

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