Wuorinen's "Genesis"

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1991, Herbert Blomstedt led the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus in the premiere of a cantata entitled “Genesis,” by the American composer Charles Wuorinen. This cantata was the culminating work of Wuorinen’s four-year association with the San Francisco Symphony as its composer-in-residence.

The most famous setting of the Biblical Genesis story is Haydn’s oratorio “The Creation” from 1798. But early on, Wuorinen decided his cantata would be a non-narrative, non-programmatic treatment of the subject, incorporating both a Latin version of the Genesis text and musical themes from Gregorian chant masses on the subject of the creation.

As the critic Michael Steinberg has noted, Wuorinen’s music fuses the physicality and punch of Stravinsky with Schoenberg’s struc¬tural principles. The resulting style, which some have dubbed “maximalist” is complex and demanding—just as its composer intended.

Wuorinen writes, “In any medium, entertainment is that which we can receive and enjoy passively, without effort, without our putting anything into the experience. Art is that which requires some initial effort from the receiver, after which the experience received may indeed be entertaining, but also transcending as well. Art is like nuclear fusion: you have to put something into it to get it started, but you get more out of it in the end than what you put in. Entertainment is its own reward, and generally doesn’t last.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Charles Wuorinen (b. 1938) Genesis Minnesota Chorale and Minnesota Orchestra; Edo de Waart, cond. Koch 7336

On This Day

Births

• 1898 - American pianist and composer George Gershwin in Brooklyn;

Deaths

• 1800 - Early American composer William Billings, age 53, in Boston; He died in poverty and was buried in an unmarked grave in Boston Common;

• 1945 - Hungarian pianist and composer Béla Bartók, age 64, in New York City;

Premieres

• 1835 - Donizetti: opera "Lucia di Lammermoor," at the Teatro San Carlos in Naples;

• 1898 - Victor Herbert: operetta, "The Fortune Teller," in Toronto;

• 1907 - Sibelius: Symphony No. 3, by the Helsinki Philharmonic, with the composer conducting;

• 1915 - Schillings: opera "Mona Lisa," in Stuttgart at the Hoftheater;

• 1938 - Kurt Weill: musical, "Knickerbocker Holiday," during trial run in Hartford, Conn.; The musical opened in New York on October 19, 1938;

• 1957 - Bernstein: musical "West Side Story," at the Winter Garden in New York City; A trial run of the musical had premiered during a trial run in Washington, D.C. at the National Theater on August 19, 1957;

• 1967 - Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 2 by the Moscow Philharmonic, Kirill Kondrashin conducting, with soloist David Oistrakh;

• 1991 - Wuorinen: cantata "Genesis," in San Francisco, Herbert Blomstedt conducting;

• 1997 - Kirchner: "Of Things Exactly As They Are," with vocalists Roberta Alexander and William Stone, with the Boston Symphony and Tanglewood Chorus conducted by Seiji Ozawa;

• 1998 - Philip Glass: opera "The White Raven," by the San Carlos National Theater at the World Expo in Lisbon, Portugal, with Dennis Russell Davies conducting;

Others

• 1962 - Igor Stravinsky concert by the Moscow State Symphony during the composer's first visit to Russia in 48 years; Stravinsky conducts his "Ode" and "Orpheus" Ballet, Stravinsky's assistant Robert Craft conducts "The Rite of Spring," with the composer returning to conduct his 1917 arrangement of the "Volga Boatmen's Song" as an encore.