Larsen's "Calamity Jane" songs

Synopsis

Song settings form a significant part of the output of the American composer Libby Larsen. Like many other composers, she’s set poems of Emily Dickinson and Rainer Maria Rilke—but she has also penned a song-cycle entitled “Try Me, Good King: Last Words of the Wives of Henry VIII.” Another, for mezzo-soprano and handbell choir entitled “Hell’s Belles,” is set to words of formidable women such as Talulah Bankhead, Billy Jean King, and Gertrude Stein.

On today’s date in 1989, Larsen’s “Songs from Letters: Calamity Jane to her Daughter, Jenny” had its premiere performance in New York City. As the title indicates, the texts are drawn from the correspondence of Martha Jane Canary, popularly known as “Calamity Jane,” a hard-drinking, gun-toting woman of the Wild West, who lived from 1848 to 1903. Calamity Jane had a daughter, possibly by Wild Bill Hickok. Calamity Jane sent the child to live with a man she called a "normal daddy,” her friend Jim O'Neil, paying child support by both legal and not-so legal means. As Calamity Jane put it: “I ain’t no lady.”

Larsen says she was fascinated by “the struggle of an individual soul, a woman and pioneer on many frontiers.” As Larsen put it: “Calamity Jane was a working woman, good in her profession, doing what she loved and making choices because of her will to work. In her time she was odd and lonely. She chooses rough-tough words to describe her life to her daughter. I'm interested in that rough-toughness and in Calamity Jane's struggle to explain herself honestly.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Libby Larsen (b. 1950) Songs from Letters Benita Valente, soprano; Scottish Chamber Orchestra; Joel Revzen, cond. Koch 7481

On This Day

Births

• 1533 - Italian composer and publisher Claudio Merculo, in Correggio;

• 1692 - Italian composer and violin virtuoso Giuseppe Tartini, in Pirano;

• 1881 - Russian composer Nikolai Miaskovsky (Gregorian date: April 20);

Deaths

• 1848 - Italian opera composer Gaetano Donizetti, age 50, in Bergamo;

• 1858 - Austrian composer and publisher Anton Diabelli, age 76, in Vienna;

• 1920 - American composer Charles Tomlinson Griffes, age 35, in New York;

• 1937 - American composer Arthur Foote, age 84, in Boston;

Premieres

• 1708 - Handel: oratorio "La Resurrezione" (The Resurrection), at the Bonelli Palace in Rome, with Arcangelo Corelli leading the orchestra;

• 1876 - Ponchielli: opera "La Gioconda," in Milan at the Teatro alla Scala;

• 1894 - Bruckner: Symphony No. 5, in Graz, with Franz Schalk conducting his own much-edited and re-orchestrated version of Bruckner's score; The Schalk edition was subsequently published as the "official" version of the symphony; The composer's original version of this symphony was first performed in 1935 and published in 1936;

• 1927 - Varèse: "Arcana" for orchestra, by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting;

• 1931 - Shostakovich: ballet "The Bolt," in Leningrad, at the Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet;

• 1935 - Bartók: String Quartet No.5, at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, by the Kolisch Quartet;

• 1938 - Walter Piston: Symphony No. 1, by the Boston Symphony, with the composer conducting;

• 1949 - Bernstein: Symphony No. 2 ("The Age of Anxiety"), by the Boston Symphony conducted by Serge Koussevutzky, with composer as piano soloist;

• 1983 - Christopher Rouse: "Rotae Passionis" (Passion Wheels) for chamber ensemble, in Boston, by Boston Musica Viva, Richard Pittman conducting;

• 1985 - Michael Torke: "The Yellow Pages" for chamber quintet, at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., by the Yale Contemporary Players;

• 1989 - Libby Larsen: "Songs from Letters" (of Calamity Jane to her daughter), for soprano and orchestra, in New York, by soprano Mary Elizabeth Poorel

• 1999 - Bright Sheng: "Three Songs" for pipa and cello, at The White House in Washington, DC, by Wu Man (pipa) and Yo-Yo Ma (cello);

Others

• 1739 - London music publisher John Walsh the younger issues Handel's Trio Sonatas, Op. 5 (Julian date: Feb. 28);

• 1805 - Haydn, age 73, gives his blessing to the late Wolfgang Mozart's 14-year old son, Franz Xaver Mozart, at the teenager's first public concert;

• 1865 - American premiere of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertate in Eb, K. 364(320d) for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, in New York, with violinist Theodore Thomas and violist Georg Matzka (A review of this concert in the New York Times said: "On the whole we would prefer death to a repetition of this production. The wearisome scale passages on the little fiddle repeated ad nausea on the bigger one were simply maddening.”);

• 1886 - Franz Liszt plays for Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle;

• 1931 - Abram Chasins: "Flirtation in a Chinese Garden" and "Parade" (orchestral versions of two of his "Three Chinese Pieces" for piano) become the first pieces of American music conducted by Arturo Toscanini as music director of the New York Philharmonic.