Hanson and Thomas at summer camp

Synopsis

Summer music camps offer young talent a chance to rub shoulders with seasoned professional musicians and to perform both old and new musical works. On today’s date in 1977, American composer, conductor and educator Howard Hanson led the premiere of his Symphony No. 7 at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. Hanson subtitled his Seventh A Sea Symphony, and it includes a choral setting of passages from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

For 40 years, Hanson headed the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. And years later, Eastman professor Augusta Read Thomas follows in Hanson’s footsteps as composer-in-residence at various summer music camps. On today’s date in 2001, at the annual Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, her piece Murmurs in the Mist of Memory received its world premiere.

Speaking of music in general, Thomas says, “Music of all kinds constantly amazes, surprises, propels and seduces me into a wonderful and powerful journey. I am happiest when listening to music and in the process of composing music. I care deeply that music is not anonymous and generic or easily assimilated and just as easily dismissed.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Howard Hanson (1896-1981): Symphony No. 7 (A Sea Symphony); Seattle Symphony and Chorale; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Delos 3130

Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964): Wind Dances; Louisville Orchestra; Lawrence Leighton Smith, conductor; Albany/Louisville First Edition 010

On This Day

Births

• 1818 - English-born French composer, pianist and music publisher Charles Henry Litolff, in London

• 1868 - British composer Granville Bantock, in London

• 1896 - Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, in Havana. He composed a number of popular Latin pop melodies, including his famous Malagueña.

• 1921 - Czech-born, American composer and conductor Karel Husa, in Prague. He became an American citizen in 1959. In 1969 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his String Quartet No. 3.

• 1925 - Spanish-born American composer Julián Orbón, in Aviles

Deaths

• 1893 - Italian opera composer Alfred Caatalani, 39, in Milan

• 1913 - Czech composer and cellist David Popper, 69, in Baden (near Vienna)

• 1970 - German-born American composer Ingolf Dahl, 58, in Bernem Switzerland

Premieres

• 1912 - Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 1, in Moscow, with the composer as soloist (Julian date: July 26)

• 1977 - Hanson: Symphony No. 7 (A Sea Symphony) at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan

• 1981 - Cerha: opera Baal, at the Salzburg Festival in Austria

• 1981 - John Harbison: Piano Quintet, at the Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival in New Mexico, with Edward Auer (piano), Ani Kavafian (violin), Walter Trampler (viola), Timothy Eddy (cello)

• 1991 - David Del Tredici: An Alice Symphony (first complete performance), during the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Massachusetts

• 2001 - Augusta Read Thomas: Murmurs in the Mist of Memory, at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, by the International Sejong Soloists

Others

• 1829 - Mendelssohn visits Fingal’s Cave in the Hebrides Islands west of Scotland coast and starts composing the Hebrides Overture