Music by and about telephones

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1947, Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera, The Telephone premiered at the Heckscher Theater in New York. The story involves a young man who keeps trying to propose to his girlfriend, but, well, she’s always on the phone. So the young man, deciding “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” goes to the corner and from a pay phone calls in his marriage proposal!

Now, these days, he would probably have just used his cell phone. A welcome convenience in most circumstances, cell-phones have become the bane of concert halls, interrupting musical performances with unwelcome beeps and those annoying little melodies.

One young American composer, Golan Levin, has even composed a 30-minute work titled Dialtones: A Telesymphony, scored for 200 cell-phones. Levin spend nearly a year working out the technology that would download customized sounds to cell-phones placed in the audience and allow them be played on cue. 200 members of the audience for the premiere were asked to bring their phones and register their numbers before the performance of the three-movement work.

Some audience members reportedly felt guilty when their phones rang, even though they were supposed to, and one of the performers confessed that he was jealous that the woman seated next to him was called more frequently than he was!

That might make a good storyline for a sequel to Menotti’s opera!

Music Played in Today's Program

Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007): Excerpt from The Telephone; New York Chamber Ensemble; Stephen Rogers Radcliffe, conductor; Albany 173

On This Day

Births

• 1632 - Italian composer Giovanni Battista Vitali, in Bologna

• 1864 - American music publisher Gustave Schirmer, Jr., in New York City, son of the German-born music publisher Gustave Schirmer, Sr.

• 1915 - French composer Marcel Landowski in Prêt L'Abbé (Finistère)

• 1939 - Brazilian composer, conductor and pianist Marlos Nobre, in Recife

Deaths

• 1956 - French composer French composer Gustave Charpentier, 95, in Paris

Premieres

• 1743 - Handel: oratorio Samson, at Covent Garden Theatre in London, and possibly the premiere of Handel’s recently-completed Organ Concerto No. 2 at the same concert (Gregorian date: Mar. 1)

• 1874 - Rimsky-Korsakov: Symphony No. 3, in St. Petersburg (Gregorian date: Mar. 2)

• 1893 - Berlioz: La Damnation de Faust (as a staged opera), in Monte Carlo with a cast headed by tenor Jean de Reske. Berlioz conducted the first concert performance of this work (as an oratorio) at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on Dec. 6, 1946.

• 1893 - Brahms: Intermezzo No. 1, for piano, in Vienna

• 1895 - Loeffler: Quintet for three violins, viola and cello, at Boston’s Union Hall by the Kneisel Quartet joined by violinist William Kraft

• 1916 - Daniel Mason: Symphony No. 1 (first version), by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting

• 1919 - Deems Taylor: chamber suite Through the Looking Glass, by the New York Chamber Music Society

• 1947 - Menotti: one-act opera The Telephone, in New York City at the Heckscher Theater

• 1952 - Prokofiev: Sinfonia Concertante (as Cello Concerto No. 2), in Moscow, with Sviatoslav Richter conducting and Mstislav Rostropovich the soloist

• 1955 - Hanson: Symphony No. 5 (Sinfonia Sacra), the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting

• 1965 - Ginastera: Harp Concerto, by harpist Nicanor Zabaleta, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting

• 1998 - Thea Musgrave: Phoenix Rising, at the Royal Festival Hall in London, by the BBC Symphony, Andrew Davis conducting