Debussy in Boston

Synopsis

Claude Debussy probably never saw the reviews his symphonic suite La Mer (The Sea) received after its American premiere on today’s date in Boston in 1907 — and that was probably for the best.

Musicologist Nicholas Slonimsky, who collected notably bad reviews in his notably excellent Lexicon of Musical Invective, says the 1907 Boston audience was a tough crowd, composed of — as Slonimsky put it — “easily discomfited dowagers, quiet academically minded New England music lovers, and irascible music critics.”

The Boston newspaper reviews of the 1907 audience’s reaction to Debussy’s La Mer included some real zingers like: “Frenchmen are notoriously bad sailors, and we clung like a drowning man to a few fragments of the tonal wreck.”    

An even more graphic critic said: “It is possible that Debussy did not intend to call it La Mer, but Le Mal de Mer, which would at once make the tone-picture as clear as day. It is a series of symphonic pictures of seasickness. The first movement is Headache. The second is Doubt, picturing moments of dread suspense … The third movement, with its explosions and rumblings, has now a self-evident purpose: The hero is endeavoring to throw up his boot heels!”

Music Played in Today's Program

Claude Debussy (1862-1918): La Mer; Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal; Charles Dutoit, conductor; London/Decca 430240

On This Day

Births

• 1810 - Polish composer and pianist Frederic Chopin, in Zelazowa Wola (This is the date Chopin and his friends observed, although the composer’s baptismal certificate says he was born on February 22)

• 1896 - Greek conductor and composer Dimitri Mitropoulos, in Athens

Deaths

• 1643 - Italian composer Girolamo Frescobaldi, 59, in Rome

• 1777 - Austrian composer Georg Christoph Wagenseil, 62, in Vienna

• 1976 - French conductor and composer Jean Martinon, 66, in Paris

• 1980 - American folksinger and folksong collector John Jacob Niles, 88, near Lexington, Kentucky

Premieres

• 1736 - Handel: cantata Alexander’s Feast, Concerto Grosso, Harp Concerto, No. 6, and Organ Concerto No. 1, in London (Julian date: Feb. 19)

• 1743 - Handel: oratorio Samson and possibly the Organ Concerto No. 2, in London (Julian date: Feb. 18)

• 1950 - Menotti: opera The Consul, in Philadelphia at the Shubert Theatre; The opera opened in New York City on March 15, 1950, and won that year's Pulitzer Prize for Music

• 1950 - Prokofiev: Cello Sonata (first public performance), at the Moscow Conservatory, by cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and pianist Sviatoslav Richter; The same artists had given a private performance of the work in Moscow, at the House of the Union of Composers on December 6, 1949

• 1958 - Pizzetti: opera Assassinio della Cattedrale (based on T.S. Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral), at the Teatro della Scala in Milan

• 1968 - Andrew Lloyd-Webber: musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (first version) at Colet Court Prep School in London

• 1979 - Broadway premiere of Sondheim: musical Sweeny Todd

• 2003 - Beethoven: Largo movement from a lost Oboe Concerto written in 1792, reconstructed by Dutch musicologists Jos van der Zanden and Cees Nieuwenhuizen, by the Rotterdam Chamber Orchestra conducted by Conrad van Alphen, with Alexei Ogrintchouk the oboe soloist

Others

• 1907 - American premiere of Debussy: La Mer, by the Boston Symphony, Karl Muck conducting

• 1916 - U.S. premiere of Mahler's Symphony No. 8, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting.