Debussy in Boston

Synopsis

In Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s characters brags: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” None of those happened to Claude Debussy, however, when his symphonic suite “La Mer”–“The Sea”–had its American premiere on today’s date in Boston in 1907.

It was, as they say, a tough crowd… composed of “easily discomfited dowagers, quiet, academically-minded New England music lovers, and irascible music critics.”

That’s the description of musicologist Nicholas Slonimsky, who collected notably bad reviews in his notably excellent “Lexicon of Musical Invective.” Other reviews of “The Sea” included lines like: “Frenchmen are notoriously bad sailors, and we clung like a drowning man to a few fragments of the tonal wreck.”

Another said: “Debussy’s music is the dreariest kind of rubbish. Does anybody for a moment doubt that Debussy would not write such chaotic, meaningless, cacophonous, ungrammatical stuff if he could invent a melody?”

An even more graphic critic said: “It is possible that Debussy did not intend to call it 'La Mer,' but 'Le Mal de Mer,' which would at once make the tone-picture as clear as day. It is a series of symphonic pictures of seasickness. The first movement is Headache. The second is Doubt, picturing moments of dread suspense... The third movement, with its explosions and rumblings, has now a self-evident purpose: The hero is endeavoring to throw up his boot heels!”

Music Played in Today's Program

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) La Mer Chicago Symphony; Daniel Barenboim, cond. Teldec 81702

On This Day

Births

• 1810 - Polish composer and pianist Frederic Chopin, in Zelazowa Wola (This is the date Chopin and his friends observed, although the composer's baptismal certificate says he was born on February 22);

• 1896 - Greek conductor and composer Dimitri Mitropoulos, in Athens;

Deaths

• 1643 - Italian composer Girolamo Frescobaldi, age 59, in Rome;

• 1777 - Austrian composer Georg Christoph Wagenseil, age 62, in Vienna;

• 1976 - French conductor and composer Jean Martinon, age 66, in Paris;

• 1980 - American folksinger and folksong collector John Jacob Niles, age 88, near Lexington, Ky.;

Premieres

• 1736 - Handel: cantata "Alexander's Feast," Concerto grosso in C (HWV. 318), Harp Concerto, Op. 4, no. 6, and Organ Concerto, Op. 4, no. 1, in London (Julian date: Feb. 19);

• 1743 - Handel: oratorio "Samson" and possibly the Organ Concerto Op. 7, no. 2, in London (Julian date: Feb. 18);

• 1950 - Menotti: opera "The Consul," in Philadelphia at the Shubert Theatre; The opera opened in New York City on March 15, 1950, and won that year's Pulitzer Prize for Music;

• 1950 - Prokofiev: Cello Sonata, Op. 119 (first public performance), at the Moscow Conservatory, by cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and pianist Sviatoslav Richter; The same artists had given a private performance of the work in Moscow, at the House of the Union of Composers on December 6, 1949;

• 1958 - Pizzetti: opera "Assassinio della cattedrale" (based on T.S. Eliot's play "Murder in the Cathedral"), at the Teatro della Scala in Milan;

• 1968 - Andrew Lloyd-Webber: musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" (first version) at Colet Court Prep School in London;

• 1979 - Broadway premiere of Sondheim: musical "Sweeny Todd";

• 2003 - Beethoven: "Largo" movement from a lost Oboe Concerto written in 1792, reconstructed by Dutch musicologists Jos van der Zanden and Cees Nieuwenhuizen, by the Rotterdam Chamber Orchestra conducted by Conrad van Alphen, with Alexei Ogrintchouk the oboe soloist;

Others

• 1907 - American premiere of Debussy: "La Mer," by the Boston Symphony, Karl Muck conducting;

• 1916 - U.S. premiere of Mahler's Symphony No. 8, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting.