'Starry Night' variations by McLean and Dutilleux

Synopsis

In 1971, after reading a book about Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, American pop singer Don McLean wrote the song, “Vincent,” which became a big hit the following year. The song is better known by its opening line, “Starry, starry night,” a reference to one of Van Gogh’s best-known paintings, The Starry Night.

But McLean wasn’t the only composer inspired by that painting. On today’s date in 1978, the National Symphony Orchestra under Mstislav Rostropovich premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., a new orchestral work by French composer Henri Dutilleux.

Dutilleux titled his new work Timbres, Espace, Mouvement, but added a subtitle, The Starry Night, in acknowledgment of the painting’s influence, and said he wanted to translate into music the (quote) “almost cosmic whirling effect which [the painting] produces.”

Now, painting and music are very different art forms, but the energy, pulsation, and whirling qualities of Van Gogh’s masterpiece do find vivid expression, both visual and musical, in Dutilleux’s work.

As a kind of frame, Dutilleux placed the cellos in a half circle around the conductor, omitted violins and violas from his instrumentation, and alternated static episodes and whirling wind and percussion solos to evoke the illusion of motion in the Van Gogh painting.

Music Played in Today's Program

Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013): Timbres, Espace, Mouvement; BBC Philharmonic; Yan Pascal Tortelier, conductor; Chandos 9504

On This Day

Births

• 1810 - Hungarian composer Ferenc (Franz) Erkel, in Gyula

• 1859 - Russian composer Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, in Gatchina (Gregorian date: Nov. 19)

• 1905 - English composer William Alwyn, in Northampton

Deaths

• 1983 - French composer Germaine Tailleferre, 91, in Paris

Premieres

• 1723 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 60 (O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort I)performed on the 24th Sunday after Trinity as part of Bach’s first annual Sacred Cantata cycle in Leipzig (1723/24)

• 1867 - Liszt: Dante Symphony in Dresden

• 1875 - Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 3, in Moscow (Gregorian date: Nov. 19)

• 1924 - American premiere of Mussorgsky (arr. Ravel): Pictures at an Exhibition, by the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzky conducting

• 1934 - Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, in Baltimore, by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski, with the composer as soloist

• 1940 - Stravinsky: Symphony in C, by the Chicago Symphony, with the composer conducting. This work was commissioned by Mrs. R. Woods Bliss in honor of the Chicago Symphony’s 50th Anniversary.

• 1987 - Daniel Asia: Scherzo Sonata for piano, at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., by pianist Jonathan Shames (who commissioned the work)

• 1988 - Leo Ornstein: Piano Sonata No. 7, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, by pianist Marvin Tartak

• 1991 - Christopher Rouse: Karolju for chorus and orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony and Chorus, David Zinman conducting

• 1997 - Peter Maxwell Davies: Piano Concerto, in Nottingham, England, with soloist Kathryn Stott and the Royal Philharmonic, conducted by the composer

Others

• 1786 - The first American musical society was founded at Stoughton, Massachusetts

• 1950 - A Look magazine feature on composer Edgar Varèse attracts the attention of 9-year-old Frank Zappa and leads to a life-long fascination with the music of Varèse. Zappa would later found the unconventional rock band The Mothers of Invention.