Synopsis
It’s a book – it’s a YouTube video – it’s a concert hall work! It’s by Stookey and Snicket!
Now, “Stookey and Snicket” is not the name of a law firm in some obscure novel by Charles Dickens, but is in fact the collaborative team of American composer Nathaniel Stookey and American novelist Daniel Handler, who writes popular children’s books under the pen name of Lemony Snicket.
Stookey was the youngest composer ever commissioned for the San Francisco Symphony's New and Unusual Music Series when he collaborated with Handler on a piece for narrator and orchestra. Their collaboration, entitled “The Composer Is Dead,” premiered on this date in 2006.
This “new and usual” work with a macabre title is similar to Prokofiev's “Peter and the Wolf” and Britten's “The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra” in that it intends to introduce young audiences to the instruments of the orchestra. But anyone familiar with Lemony Snicket books can expect something a little quirky, and, in fact, “The Composer Is Dead” is a murder mystery, complete with a police inspector rounding up the usual suspects, and eventually pointing the finger…
And if you want to find out “whodunit” – well, you’ll have to buy the book!
Music Played in Today's Program
Lemony Snicket and Nathaniel Stookey – The Composer is Dead (Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler), narrator; San Francisco Symphony; Edwin Outwater, cond.) Book Audio CD
On This Day
Births
1882 - Australian-born American composer and pianist Percy Aldrich Grainger, in Melbourne; He became a USA citizen in 1919
1900 - American composer George Antheil, in Trenton, N.J.
Deaths
1839 - Spanish composer Fernando Sor, age 61, in Paris
Premieres
1940 - Randall Thompson: "Allelujah" at the opening of the Berkshire Music Center in Lenox, Mass.
1942 - Sir Lenox Berkeley: Symphony No. 1 in London, conducted by the composer
1987 - Judith Weir: opera "A Night at the Chinese Opera" in Cheltenham, England
1988 - Philip Glass: opera "The Making of the Representative for Planet 8" (after a sci-fi novel by Doris Lessing), by Houston Grand Opera
2000 - John Williams: "TreeSong" for Violin and Orchestra, at Tanglewood with Gil Shaham and the Boston Symphony, composer conducting
Others
1588 - English composer and lutenist John Dowland receives B. Mus. Degree from Christ Church, Oxford
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About Composers Datebook®
Host John Birge presents a daily snapshot of composers past and present, with timely information, intriguing musical events and appropriate, accessible music related to each.
He has been hosting, producing and performing classical music for more than 25 years. Since 1997, he has been hosting on Minnesota Public Radio's Classical Music Service. He played French horn for the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestra and performed with them on their centennial tour of Europe in 1995. He was trained at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Eastman School of Music and Interlochen Arts Academy.
