Del Tredici through the looking glass

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1976, the American composer David Del Tredici conducted the San Francisco Symphony in the first performance of a work he called “Illustrated Alice.”

The music was subtitled “Two Scenes from Wonderland.” These two scenes would eventually form bookend movements of a much longer “Alice Symphony,” a work which received its first complete performance 15 years later in August of 1991 at the Tangle wood Festival in Massachusetts.

Back in 1968, Del Tredici had become fascinated with the works of Lewis Carroll, whose “Alice in Wonderland” books have captivated both children and adults for generations. To say that Del Tredici was captivated would be something of an understatement: he devoted 30 years of his career to setting Carroll’s creation to music in a series of increasingly tonal works—something that must have come as a surprise to those familiar with his earlier atonal music.

“I couldn’t imagine setting a Carroll text to dissonant music,” explained Del Tredici. “Dissonant music can’t possibly project the mood that surrounds Carroll’s writings. In order to create that mood I had to rethink everything I had done up to that time. I had to think about tonality again, not because I was trying to bring back the music of an older period, but because my musical imagination had seized upon that language.”

Music Played in Today's Program

David Del Tredici (b. 1937) Acrostic Song Carol Wincenc, flute; David Del Tredici, piano Nonesuch 79114

On This Day

Births

• 1857 - French composer Cécile Chaminade, in Paris;

• 1905 - French composer André Jolivet, in Paris;

• 1938 - Canadian composer Jacques Hétu, in Trois Rivières, Quebec;

Deaths

• 1950 - Russian composer Nikolai Miaskovsky, age 69, in Moscow;

• 1967 - Czech-born composer Jaromir Weinberger, age 71, commits suicide at his home in St. Peterburg, Florida (where he settled in 1939); Weinberger had composed one very popular work, his 1927 opera "Schwanda, the Bagpiper," but was reportedly despondent that he was unable to produce any other equally successful works;

Premieres

• 1882 - Tchaikovsky: "1812 Overture," in Moscow (Gregorian date: Aug. 20);

• 1942 - Poulenc: ballet "Les Animaux modèles" (The Model Animals), at the Paris Opéra;

• 1943 - Piston: “Prelude and Allegro” for organ and strings, on a CBS radio broadcast by organist E. Power Biggs with Arthur Fiedler conducting;

• 1976 - David Del Tredici: first version of “An Alice Symphony” (after Lewis Carroll) in San Francisco; See also Aug. 7, 1991;

• 1984 - Berio: opera "Un re in ascolto" (A King Listens), at the Salzburg Festival in Austria;