Synopsis
During the summer of 1973, a chamber music festival was inaugurated in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The great Spanish cellist Pablo Casals was the festival’s honorary president. Fourteen artists performed six Sunday concerts in Santa Fe and toured to several area communities. The promotional poster for the first Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival sported a painting by Georgia O'Keeffe.
The summertime festival—and the Georgia O'Keeffe posters—became a recurring annual tradition. Today, the Festival presents over 80 events, including concerts, adult and youth education/outreach presentations, free open rehearsals, concert previews and roundtable discussions with composers and musicians.
In 1976, a “Composer-in-Residence” program was added to the Festival mix, and featured composers have included Aaron Copland, Ned Rorem, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Since 1980, the Festival has commissioned and premiered many new chamber works.
On today’s date in 1982, for example, this music by the American composer John Harbison debuted at Santa Fe. It’s entitled simply “Variations” for clarinet, violin, and piano. Harbison recalls the first inspiration for the piece was a statue of the Caananite fertility goddess dancing, and so the piece began as a dance set with the titles “Spirit Dance, Body Dance, Soul Dance and Dervish-Finale.” But as the composition process continued, the dance set turned into a set of variations with the same four basic sections.
Music Played in Today's Program
John Harbison (b. 1937) Variations David Satz, clarinet; Rose Mary Harbison, violin; Ursula Oppens, piano Northeastern 230
On This Day
Births
1796 - Swedish composer Franz Berwald, in Stockholm
1866 - Italian opera composer Francesco Cilea, in Palmi, Calabria
1916 - American composer Ben Weber, in St. Louis, Mo.
Deaths
1757 - Italian composer and harpsichordist Domenico Scarlatti, age 71, in Madrid
1983 - French composer Georges Auric, age 84, in Paris
Premieres
1982 - John Harbison: "Variation" for clarinet, violin and piano, at the Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival in New Mexico, by clarinetist David Satz, violinist Rose Mary Harbison, and pianist Ursula Oppens
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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.