Grofe in Hollywood

Synopsis

In the 1930s, the American composer Ferde Grofe was on a roll. During the previous decade, as staff arranger for the Paul Whiteman orchestra, Grofe had orchestrated all the music that popular ensemble had premiered, including George Gershwin’s 1924 jazz classic “Rhapsody in Blue”. By the late 1920s, Grofe was composing his own original scores, and in 1931 finished his famous “Grand Canyon” Suite.

Around that time, Ferde Grofe left the Whiteman band, and signed on as staff conductor of the NBC Radio Network, and soon became a familiar figure on the American music scene from coast to coast.

On today’s date in 1935, for example, a new ballet score by Grofe premiered at the Hollywood Bowl. It took as its story line a familiar Hollywood theme: the exploited “double” who stands in for a starlet during the making of a film. The double is the anonymous actor who does all the hard work, but gets none of the recognition—or close-ups—when the film is released.

Grofe later arranged his ballet score into a “Hollywood Suite,” adding another musical picture postcard to works with titles like: “Kentucky Derby Suite” or “Niagara Falls Suite.” In the 1960s, looking back on his long career in music, Grofe said: "Many of my compositions, I believe, were born of sight, sound, and sensations common to all of us. I think I have spoken of America in this music simply because America spoke to me.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ferde Grofé (1892 - 1972) Hollywood Suite Bournemouth Symphony; William Stromberg, cond. Naxos 8.559017

On This Day

Births

• 1875 - English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, in London; His father was from Sierra Leone and his mother English; He composed a very successful trilogy of oratorios based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Hiawatha": "The Song of Hiawatha" (1898), "The Death of Minnehaha" (1899) and "Hiawatha's Departure" (1900);

• 1890 - French composer Jacques Ibert, in Paris;

• 1896 - Russian inventor Lev Sergeivitch Termen (anglicized to Leon Theremin) in St. Petersburg (Julian date: August 3); He invented the theremin, an electronic instrument whose sound was used or imitated in a number of film scores (“Spellbound,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, etc.) and in the Beach Boys’ song “Good Vibrations”

• 1922 - German-born American composer and conductor Lukas Foss, in Berlin (presumed date; Foss says his birth year is not authenticated and he has no birth certificate);

Deaths

• 1728 - French composer and gamba virtuoso Marain Marais, age 72, in Paris;

• 1985 - American composer Richard Yardumian, age 68, in Bryn Athyn, Pa.;

Premieres

• 1865 - Liszt: oratorio, "St. Elizabeth," in Pest, Hungary;

• 1935 - Grofé: "Hollywood" Suite, at the Hollywood Bowl;

• 1986 - Penderecki: opera "The Black Mask," at the Salzburg Festival in Austria;

• 2000 - Saariaho: opera "L'amour de loin," at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, with a cast including Dawn Upshaw, Dwayne Croft, and Dagmar Peckova; and Kent Nagano conducting the Southwest German Radio Orchestra of Baden-Baden;

Others

• 1772 - Johannes Nepomuk Maelzel, German inventor credited with the creation of the metronome, is born in Regensburg; For a time he was the friend of Beethoven and collaborated with him on various projects;

• 1969 - The three-day Woodstock Music and Arts Fair begins in Bethel, fifty miles south of Woodstock, N.Y., attended by nearly half a million rock 'n' roll enthusiasts.