On this day in 1711 William Boyce was baptized (his birthdate is unknown) in London.
In 1733 François Couperin (“le Grand”) died at age 64 in Paris.
In 1786 Friedrich Kuhlau was born in Ülzen (near Hanover), Germany.
In 1825 Eduard Hanslick was born in Prague.
In 1840 Robert Schumann gifted his fiancée, Clara Wieck, his new song-cycle “Liederkreis,” on the eve of their wedding.
In 1850 soprano Jenny Lind made her American debut at the Castle Garden Theatre in New York City, inaugurating a 93-stop American tour arranged by showman and entertainment entrepreneur Phineas “P.T.” Barnum.
In 1887 Antonin Dvorák’s Mass in D, Op. 86 was first performed at a private performance in Luzany, Czech Republic.
In 1924 George Gershwin’s musical “Primrose” opened at the Winter Garden Theater in London.
Happy 80th birthday Arvo Pärt! He was born on this day in Paide, Estonia.
In 1936 Zoltán Kodály’s “Te Deum” was premiered in Budapest.
In 1949 Henri Rabaud died at age 76 in Paris.
In 1950, at a Decca recording session in New York City, Leroy Anderson conducts the premiere performance of his piece entitled “The Waltzing Cat” and also commits to disc six more of his most popular compositions: “Jazz Pizzicato” and “Jazz Legato” (both composed in 1938), “A Trumpeter’s Lullaby” and “The Syncopated Clock” (both composed in 1945), and two of his pieces that had premiered at 1947 and 1948 Boston Pops concerts: “Serenata” (Arthur Fiedler’s favorite Leroy Anderson composition) and “Sleigh Ride” (which was actually composed in July!). Anderson had conducted the premiere of “Jazz Pizzicato” (his first composition) at a 1938 Boston Pops concert, and “Jazz Legato” was written at the request of Arthur Fiedler as a companion piece for the second side of a 78-rpm recording of “Jazz Pizzicato”. “A Trumpeter’s Lullaby” was written at the request of Roger Voison, principal trumpet of the Boston Pops, and “The Syncopated Clock” was popularized when it was used for 25 years as the theme music for “The Late Show” on WCBS-TV in New York City.
In 1951 Igor Stravinsky conducted the premiered of his opera “The Rake’s Progress” in Venice at the Teatro della Fenice. The libretto was by W. H. Auden, that was, in turn, based on the etchings of William Hogarth.
In 1971 Samuel Barber’s “Fadograph from a Yestern Scene” (the title is a line from James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake”) was premiered by the Pittsburgh Symphony at the opening concert in Heinz Hall.
In 1985 William Alwyn died age 79 in Southwold, England.
In 1986 William Harbison’s “Remembering Gatsby” for orchestra premiered in Atlanta, with the Atlanta Symphony, Robert Shaw conducting. This music became the prelude to Harbison’s 1999 opera, “The Great Gatsby”.
My thanks to John Zech and his Composer’s Datebook, from which this information comes.
Composers Datebook is produced by American Public Media in association with the American Composers Forum, with initial support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The creator of the series and its principal writer is John Michel of American Composers Forum. The Composers Datebook Web site is maintained by American Public Media with content provided by ACF.
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