Liszt and Milhaud celebrate Goethe

Synopsis

Franz Liszt, the inventor of the “symphonic poem,” wrote 13 of them. The second, Tasso, had its first performance on today's date in 1849. The occasion was a festival celebrating the 100th birthday of great German national poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the author of Faust. The festival was in Weimar, Germany, the city where Goethe died and was buried in 1832.

Liszt’s Tasso was written to serve as the overture to Goethe’s drama about Italian poet Torquato Tasso, and its premiere performance was conducted by its composer. The main theme of the work is said to be a tune Liszt claimed he heard sung by an Italian gondolier in Venice.

One of the more surprising tributes to Goethe occurred not in Germany, but in scenic Aspen, Colorado, when the Aspen Music Festival was founded in Goethe's honor in 1949 — on the 200th anniversary of his birth. The Aspen Music Festival has grown over the years and today draws some 30,000 visitors annually. One of the original founders of the Festival was French composer Darius Milhaud, who taught at the Aspen Music School for many years. This music is from Milhaud’s Aspen Serenade, written in 1957.

More recently, during conductor David Zinman years as the Festival’s Music Director, many contemporary American composers, including John Corigliano, Richard Danielpour, Christopher Rouse and Augusta Read Thomas, have had their works performed — and occasionally premiered — in Aspen.

Music Played in Today's Program

Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Tasso; Orchestre de Paris; Georg Solti, conductor; London 417 513

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974): Aspen Serenade, Stuttgart Radio Symphony; Gilbert Varga, conductor; CPO 999114

On This Day

Births

• 1867 - Italian opera composer Umberto Giordano, in Foggia

Deaths

• 1572 - Huguenot composer Claude Goudimel, age c. 52-58, in Lyons, sometime between August 28-31, during the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of Protestants by Catholic partisans

• 1914 - Russian composer Anatol Liadov, 59, at his estate near Novgorod (Julian date: Aug 16)

• 1959 - Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu, 68, in Liestal, Switzerland

Premieres

• 1733 - Pergolesi: one-act opera La Serva Padrona, in Naples, as a comic interlude during the presentation of his serious opera, Il Prigionier Superbo. The comic interlude became his most famous work, while the serious opera has been long forgotten.

• 1849 - Liszt: tone-poem Tasso, in Weimarduring Goethe Centennery Festival

• 1850 - Wagner: Lohengrin, in Weimar at the Hoftheater, with Liszt conducting

• 1922 - Gershwin: one-act opera Blue Monday, as a part of George White’s Scandals of 1922 at the Globe Theater in New York City. The opera was cut from the Scandals after its one opening night performance; Reorchestrated by Ferde Grofe, it was given again as a concert performance by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Dec. 29, 1925.

• 1954 - Persichetti: Symphony No. 5 for strings, by the Louisville Orchestra

• 1956 - Martinu: Frescoes of Piero della Francesca, for orchestra, at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, by the Vienna Philharmonic, Rafael Kubelik conducting

• 1963 - Tippett: Concerto for Orchestra, at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland

• 1999 - Philip Glass: Symphony No. 5 (Requiem, Bardo and Nirmanakaya), at the Salzburg Festival in Austra, with Dennis Russell Davies conducting soloists, choruses and the Vienna Radio Symphony

Others

• 1949 - Founding of the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado as part of a celebration of the 200th anniversary of Goethe’s birth.