Rorem's "After Reading Shakespeare"

Synopsis

For their February 2013 cover story, the editors of BBC Music magazine came up with a list of the 50 most influential people in the history of music. Bach was on it, as you might expect, but so was Shakespeare.

Any music lover can see the logic in that, and reel off pieces like Mendelssohn’s music for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” or Tchaikovsky’s Overture-Fantasy entitled “Romeo and Juliet,” or all the great operas based on Shakespeare’s plays, ranging from Verdi’s “Falstaff” to a recent setting of “The Tempest” by Thomas Adès.

And speaking of “The Tempest,” in New York on today’s date in 1981, Sharon Robinson premiered a new solo cello suite she commissioned from the American composer Ned Rorem, a work entitled “After Reading Shakespeare.” One section of the new suite was titled “Caliban,” after a memorable figure in “The Tempest”—others after Shakespearean characters like Lear, Portia, or Titania and Oberon.

“Yes,” says Rorem, “I was re-reading Shakespeare the month the piece was accomplished… Yet the experience did not so much inspire the music itself as provide a cohesive program upon which the music be might formalized, and thus intellectually grasped by the listener. Indeed, some of the titles were added AFTER the fact, as when parents christen their children.”

After all, as Shakespeare’s Juliet might put it, “What’s in a name?”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ned Rorem (b. 1923) After Reading Shakespeare Sharon Robinson, cello Naxos 8.559316

On This Day

Births

• 1835 - Austrian composer and conductor Eduard Strauss, in Vienna; He was the youngest son of Johann Strauss, Sr.;

• 1864 - Norwegian composer, conductor and violinist Johan Halvorsen, in Drammen;

• 1901 - American composer Colin McPhee, in Montréal, Canada;

• 1926 - American composer Ben Johnston, in Macon, Ga.;

• 1928 - American composer Nicolas Flagello, in New York City;

Deaths

• 1842 - Italian composer Luigi Cherubini, age 81, in Paris;

• 1918 - French composer Lili Boulanger, age 24, in Mezy;

• 1942 - Austrian composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, age 70, in Larchmont, N.Y.;

Premieres

• 1807 - Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 (first public performance), in Vienna, at a benefit concert conducted by the composer;

• 1885 - Franck: symphonic poem "Les Dijinns" (The Genies), in Paris;

• 1897 - Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 1 (Gregorian date: Mar. 27);

• 1908 - Ravel: "Rapsodie espagnole" (Spanish Rhapsody), in Paris;

• 1911 - Scriabin: Symphony No. 5 ("Prometheus: Poem of Fire"), in Moscow, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky and with the composer performing the solo piano part (Julian date: Mar. 2);

• 1981 - Stockhausen: opera "Donnerstag, aus Licht" (Thursday, from Light), in Milan at the Teatro alla Scala; This is one of a projected cycle of seven operas, each named after a day of the week;

• 1994 - Peter Maxwell Davies: "Chat Moss" (the name of a quagmire in Lancashire) for orchestra, in Liverpool by the orchestra of St. Edward's College, John Moseley conducting;

• 2000 - Corigliano: "Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan," at Carnegie Hall, by soprano Sylvia McNair and pianist Martin Katz; An orchestrated version of this song-cycle premiered in Minneapolis on October 23, 2003, with soprano Hila Plitmann and the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Robert Spano;

Others

• 1895 - Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, age 22, makes his operatic debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples, singing the lead tenor role in Domenico Morelli's comic opera "L'Amico Francesco."