Panufnik's "Love Abide"

Synopsis

Dealing with the death of loved ones is never easy, but sometimes music can help – especially if music plays a role in the lives of both the departed and survivors. And some survivors find both meaning and consolation in commissioning a work of new music to honor the memory of those they have lost.

On today’s date in 2007, the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia gave the premiere of such a memorial work, entitled Love Abide. The work was commissioned by Paul Rowley, who for years had driven his wife Miriam to weekly Choral Society of Philadelphia rehearsals, where she sang alto, always, said her husband, “beaming with excitement.” 

After her sudden death in 2003, Rowley asked the society's artistic director to choose a composer to write a tribute to his wife. Rowley had a text in mind for the lyrics and wanted an alto solo and a female composer. The commission went to the British composer Roxanna Panufnik and the selected text was the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, which includes the lines: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all thinks, endures all things …  faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Roxanna Panufnik (b. 1968) – Love Abide (London Oratory School Choir; London Mozart Players; Lee Ward, cond.) Signum 564

On This Day

Births

• 1740 - American-born Moravian composer John Antes, in Frederickstownship, Pa.;

Deaths

• 1654 - German composer Samuel Scheidt, age 66, in Halle;

• 1916 - Spanish composer Enrique Granados, age 48, dies at sea returning to Europe from New York City when the S.S. Sussex is torpedoed in the English Channel by a German submarine during WWI;

• 1921 - French composer Deódat de Sévérac, age 48, in Céret;

Premieres

• 1784 - Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 15 in Bb, K. 450, at the Trattnerhof in Vienna, with composer as soloist;

• 1860 - Joachim: Violin Concerto ("Hungarian"), in Hannover, Germany;

• 1868 - Brahms: Piano Quintet in f, Op. 34, in Paris, with pianist Luise Langhans-Japha, with an unidentified string ensemble;

• 1881 - Verdi: opera "Simon Boccanegra" (2nd version, with libretto revised by Boito), in Milan at the Teatro alla Scala;

• 1924 - Sibelius: Symphony No. 7, in Stockholm, with the composer conducting;

• 1932 - Randall Thompson: Symphony No. 2, in, Rochester, N.Y.;

• 1941 - Shostakovich: incidental music for Shakespeare's "King Lear," in Leningrad, at the Gorky Bolshoy Dramatic Theater;

• 1949 - Panufnik: "Tragic Overture," in New York City;

• 1984 - Philip Glass: opera "Akhnaten," in Stuttgart, at the Wurttemberg State Theater, with Dennis Russell Davies, conducting;

• 1996 - Thomas Oboe Lee: "ART: arias and interludes" for string quartet, in Gassoon Hall at Boston College by the Artaria Quartet;

• 2001 - Chihara: "Songs of Love and Loss," by violist Geraldine Waltherthe and the 20-voice San Francisco Chamber Singers, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, Calif., directed by Robert Geary;

Others

• 1721 - J.S. Bach dedicates his six "Brandenburg" Concertos to Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg, whose orchestra apparently never performed them.