The long and the short of it

Synopsis

“Time is a funny thing,” as one of the more philosophically-inclined Viennese characters in Richard Strauss’ opera “Der Rosenkavalier” so wisely observed.

Strauss’ opera had its premiere in 1911, and coincidentally, on today’s date in that year, Viennese composer Anton von Webern completed one of the SHORTEST orchestral works ever written—the fourth of his “Five Pieces for Orchestra,” scored for clarinet, trumpet, trombone, mandolin, celesta, harp, small drum, violin and viola—a work lasting about 20 seconds. It’s so short, it takes longer to describe the music than to actually hear it!

Webern was attempting to render down the extravagant orchestral writing of late-Romantic composers like Strauss or Mahler into its quintessence—a haiku-like concentration of orchestral gesture and color, the musical equivalent of a Japanese painting of just a few deft brush strokes across a blank canvas, in which much more is implied than is actually shown.

In the same spirit, but at the opposite end of the time spectrum, is the work of the late American composer Morton Feldman, who holds the record for composing some of the longest pieces of music ever written. Feldman was friends with and inspired by painters of the so-called “New York School,” including Mark Rothko and Philip Guston.

The work by Feldman we’re sampling now dates from 1984 and is titled “For Philip Guston.” In complete performance, this one piece runs about four hours.

Music Played in Today's Program

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) Der Rosenkavalier Suite Bavarian Radio Symphony; Lorin Maazel, cond. BMG/RCA 68225

Anton Webern (1883-1945) No. 4, from Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 10 Ensemble InterContemporain; Pierre Boulez, cond. Deutsche Grammophon 437 786

Morton Feldman (1926-1987) For Philip Guston S.E.M. Ensemble Dog w/a Bone 02

On This Day

Births

• 1906 - Norwegian composer Klaus Egge, in Gransherad, Telemark

• 1913 - American composer and pianist Peggy Stuart-Coolidge in Swampscott, Mass.;

• 1952 - English composer Dominic Muldowney, in Southhampton

• 1965 - Scottish composer and percussionist Evelyn Glennie, in Aberdeen

Deaths

• 1730 - French composer and flutist Jean-Baptiste Loeillet, age 49, in London

Premieres

• 1924 - Webern: Six Bagatelles, Op. 9, for string quartet , in Donauschingen (Germany), by the Amar Quartet

• 1973 - Penderecki: Symphony No. 1 in Peterborough Cathedral by the London Symphony, conducted by the composer

• 1976 - Richard Wernick: "Visions of Terror and Wonder" for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado; This work won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1977

• 1996 - John Williams "Summon the Heroes," a six-minute theme for the 1996 Summer Olympics, commissioned by the Atlanta Olympic Organizing Committee

Others

• 1942 - Arturo Toscanini conducts the American premiere of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 ("Leningrad") on a NBC Symphony broadcast; The world premiere performance by the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra had occurred on March 1, 1942, in Kuybishe, the wartime seat of the Soviet government