Synopsis
On today’s date in 1976, the American composer David Del Tredici conducted the San Francisco Symphony in the first performance of Illustrated Alice, Two Scenes from Wonderland. These two scenes would eventually form bookend movements of a much longer Alice Symphony, which premiered 15 years later in August of 1991 at the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts.
Back in the late 1960s, Del Tredici had become fascinated with the works of Lewis Carroll, whose Alice in Wonderland books have captivated both children and adults for generations. Del Tredici then devoted the rest of his career to setting Carroll’s creation to music in a series of increasingly tonal works — something that must have come as a surprise to those familiar with his earlier atonal music.
“I couldn’t imagine setting a Carroll text to dissonant music,” explained Del Tredici. “Dissonant music can’t possibly project the mood that surrounds Carroll’s writings. In order to create that mood I had to rethink everything I had done up to that time. I had to think about tonality again, not because I was trying to bring back the music of an older period, but because my musical imagination had seized upon that language.”
Music Played in Today's Program
David Del Tredici (b. 1937): Acrostic Song; Carol Wincenc, flute; David Del Tredici, piano; Nonesuch 79114
On This Day
Births
1857 - French composer Cécile Chaminade, in Paris
1905 - French composer André Jolivet, in Paris
1938 - Canadian composer Jacques Hétu, in Trois Rivières, Quebec
Deaths
1950 - Russian composer Nikolai Miaskovsky, 69, in Moscow;
1967 - Czech-born composer Jaromir Weinberger, 71, commits suicide at his home in St. Peterburg, Florida (where he settled in 1939). Weinberger had composed one very popular work, his 1927 opera Schwanda, the Bagpiper, but was reportedly despondent that he was unable to produce any other equally successful works.
Premieres
1882 - Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture, in Moscow (Gregorian date: Aug. 20)
1942 - Poulenc: ballet Les Animaux Modèles (The Model Animals), at the Paris Opéra
1943 - Piston: Prelude and Allegro for organ and strings, on a CBS radio broadcast by organist E. Power Biggs with Arthur Fiedler conducting
1976 - David Del Tredici: first version of An Alice Symphony (after Lewis Carroll) in San Francisco; See also Aug. 7, 1991
1984 - Berio: opera Un Re in Ascolto (A King Listens), at the Salzburg Festival in Austria
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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.
