Synopsis
It’s perhaps not surprising that a solitary, iconoclastic 20th century composer should identify with a solitary, iconoclastic 18th century poet. Ultra-modernist American composer Carl Ruggles took as the title for one of his most famous orchestral pieces, a phrase from a motto by early Romantic British poet William Blake which ran, “Great things are done when men and mountains meet.”
On today’s date in 1924, Ruggles’ Men and Mountains received its premiere performance at a New York concert of the International Composers’ Guild.
The music critic of the New York Times was in attendance and wrote: “Mr. Ruggles … leaps upon the listener with a yell. There is a wild shriek of the brass choir, and thereafter no rest for the wicked. It is as if the irate composer had seized a plump, disparaging critic by some soft and flabby part of his anatomy, and pinched him blue, crying the while, ‘You will hear me and you’ll not go to sleep, either!’”
By the time of his death in 1971, at 95, Ruggles was seldom performed, yet he was still revered as the craggy, last-standing survivor of the craggy ultra-modernist movement of the early 20th century.
Music Played in Today's Program
Carl Ruggles (1876-1971): Men and Mountains; Buffalo Philharmonic; Lukas Foss, conductor; Vox 8155
On This Day
Births
1637 - Italian composer Bernardo Pasquini, in Massa da Valdinievole, Lucca
1840 - German composer Hermann Goetz, in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad)
1863 - Italian composer Pietro Mascagni, in Livorno
1887 - Austrian-born American composer Ernst Toch, in Vienna
1910 - American composer and bandmaster Richard Franko Goldman, in New York City
1912 - Welsh composer Daniel Jones, in Pembroke
Premieres
1861 - Brahms: Handel Variations, in Hamburg, by pianist Clara Schumann
1873 - Tchaikovsky: symphonic fantasia The Tempest, in Moscow (Gregorian date: Dec. 19)
1879 - Berlioz: opera La Prise de Troie (The Capture of Troy), Acts 1 & 2 of Les Troyens (The Trojans), posthumously, in a concert performance in Paris at the Théatre du Châtelet
1889 - Gilbert & Sullivan: operetta, The Gondoliers at the Savoy Theatre in London
1890 - Tchaikovsky: opera, Pique Dame, in St. Petersburg (Gregorian date: Dec. 19)
1898 - Rimsky-Korsakov: opera Mozart and Salieri, in Moscow, Truffi conducting (Julian date: Nov. 25)
1924 - Carl Ruggles: Men and Mountains, in New York City
1939 - Walton: Violin Concerto, by the Cleveland Orchestra, Artur Rodzinski conducting, with Jascha Heifetz (who commissioned the work) as the soloist
1975 - Lou Harrison Symphony No. 2 (Elegiac), by the Oakland Youth Symphony, Denis de Coteau conducting
1999 - Gunther Schuller: Saxophone Sonata, in New York, by members of the Washington Square Contemporary Music Society
Others
1732 - John Rich opens his Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London (Gregorian date: Dec. 18). Five years earlier, in 1728, Rich had launched English-language “ballad opera” as a genre when he staged John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London (as contemporary wags put it, the wildly successful Beggar’s Opera ”made Gay Rich and Rich Gay”). Even though The Beggar’s Opera parodied the prentions of Italian opera seria, it was Rich who gave Handel’s beleaguered opera company a home at Covent Garden in 1734-1737. Handel’s Ariodante, Alcina, Atalanta, Arminio, Giustino and Berenice were first staged at Rich’s theater.
1842 - First concert by The Philharmonic Society of New York (now the New York Philharmonic Orchestra), in the Apollo Rooms at 410 Broadway, program including Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and Weber’s Oberon Overture.
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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.