Del Tredici in Wonderland

Synopsis

On today's date in 1964, a 27-year old Californian named David Del Tredici got a big break when his setting of " I Hear An Army," a poem by James Joyce, was performed by soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson at the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts. Del Tredici composed other works to poems by Joyce, which were equally well received. More commissions followed — as did a Guggenheim Fellowship, a summer at the Marlboro Festival as its resident composer, and a teaching job at Harvard University.

As successful as Del Tredici's Joyce settings were, he is best known for a remarkable series of works inspired by another writer, Lewis Carroll — the 19th century British creator of the "Alice in Wonderland" books. Beginning in 1968, with a choral work titled "Potpourri," Del Tredici created in short order "An Alice Symphony" and over a dozen other Lewis Carroll-inspired pieces. In 1980, one of these, "In Memory of a Summer Day," won the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

"Poetry turns me on," says Del Tredici, "and certain poets force me to write music for them… When I read a poem, I know before I'm through that I'll set it… It's the energy of the words, rather than the sense of the words. It's the mood that's important."

Music Played in Today's Program

David Del Tredici (b. 1937) Acrostic Song Carol Wincenc, flute; David Del Tredici, p. Nonesuch 79114

On This Day

Births

• 1644 - Bohemian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Von Biber, in Wartenburg (now Straz pod Ralskem) near Reichenberg (now Liberec);

Deaths

• 1612 - Italian composer Giovanni Gabrieli, age c. 55 (his exact birthdate is uncertain), in Venice;

• 1928 - Czech composer Leos Janácek, age 74, in Ostrava;

• 1992 - American composer John Cage, age 79, in New York;

Premieres

• 1845 - Verdi: opera "Alzira," in Naples at the Teatro San Carlo;

• 1964 - David Del Tredici: "I Hear an Army" for soprano and string quartet (based on a poem by James Joyce) at Tangelwood Festival in Massachusetts;

• 1964 - Panufnik: "Sinfonia Sacra," in Monaco, as the prize-winning work in an international competition sponsored by Prince Rainer III

• 1984 - Berio: opera "Un Re in ascolto" (A King Listening), at the Salzburg Festival, conducted by Lorin Maazel

• 2001 - Esa-Pekka Salonen: "Foreign Bodies," at the Schlewswig-Holstein Festival in Germany, with the Finnish Radio Symphony conducted by Esa-Pekka Saraste;

Others

• 1845 - A statute of Beethoven is unveiled in Bonn, Germany, the composer's birthplace; Ludwig Spohr conducts a performance of Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis" at the Bonn cathedral; Liszt had been instrumental in raising funds for the statue, and was present, as was Hector Berlioz, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Great Britain, and the King and Queen of Prussia;

• 1877 - Frequently listed (and almost certainly incorrect) date on which the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison recorded his own voice reciting, “Mary had a little lamb” on a tin-foil cylinder phonograph of his own design; Edison filed the patent for his new invention on December 24, and it was granted on February 19, 1878; In London in April of 1888, Edison’s phonograph would record excerpts from a live Crystal Palace performance of Handel’s oratorio, “Israel in Egypt”; On December 2, 1889, Theo Wangemann, a representative of Thomas Edison recorded Johannes Brahms playing the piano in Vienna. The latest research suggests the voice introducing this famous recording is probably that of Wangemann, not Brahms himself, as was earlier thought;

• 1922 - First live broadcast concert of the New York Philharmonic over New York radio station WJZ; The concert was broadcast from Lewisohn Stadium during the orchestra's summer series, and included music by Dvorák, Saint-Saens, Mendelssohn, Rimksy-Korsakov, Brahms, and Gluck. The conductor was Willem van Hoogstraten, the orchestra's regular summer-event director; On October 5, 1930, the New York Philharmonic began its regular weekly series of Sunday afternoon national broadcasts over the Columbia radio network