Variations on a tune by Handel

Synopsis

On this date in 1747, London concert-goers gathered in response to a newspaper announcement, which read, “At the Theatre-Royal in Covent-Garden will be perform’d a new oratorio, call’d Judas Maccabaeus … no person to be admitted without tickets … at half a guinea each.”

The composer of this piece was George Frideric Handel. Over time, one choral tune in Judas Maccabaeus, “See, the Conqu’ring Hero Comes,” became something generations of audience members would whistle or hum on their way home.

Oddly enough, audiences wouldn’t have heard that tune at the 1747 premiere, since Handel only added it to his score years later, after first using it in another oratorio altogether.

Fifty years after the oratorio’s premiere, Beethoven composed 12 variations on “See, the Conqu’ring Hero Comes” for piano and cello, and 90 years after Beethoven, the melody was used for an Easter hymn some of us know as Thine Be the Glory.

The tune also appears in a much rowdier context during the annual Last Night of the Proms concert in London, since it crops up in Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs, an almost obligatory party piece played on that occasion

Music Played in Today's Program

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Variations on Handel’s ‘See, the conquering hero comes’; Henry Wood, conductor; Fantasia on British Sea Songs

On This Day

Births

• 1866 - Italian composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni, in Empoli

• 1873 - Russian composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff, in Semyonovo, near Staraya Russa, Novgorod district (Julian date: Mar. 20). Rachmaninoff came to the U.S. in 1918, and became an American citizen shortly before his death in 1943.

• 1917 - Rumanian composer and pianist Dinu Lipatti, in Bucharest

• 1921 - American composer Williams Bergsma, in Oakland, California

Deaths

• 1917 - American ragtime composer Scott Joplin, 48, in a New York City hospital

Premieres

• 1735 - Handel: Organ Concerto No. 4. as an intermission feature during the London premiere of Handel’s oratorio Athalia at the Covent Garden Theater. Athalia had premiered at the Sheldonian Theater in Oxford on July 10, 1733 (Gregorian dates: April 12 and July 21, respectively).

• 1747 - Handel: oratorio Judas Maccabaeus, in London at the Covent Garden Theater. The event possibly included the premiere of Handel’s Concerto a due Cori No. 3 as well (Gregorian date: April 12).

• 1873 - Verdi: String Quartet, at an informal performance in Verdi's hotel in Naples, by performers identified only as “the Pinto brothers (violins), Salvadore (viola), and Giarritiello (cello)”

• 1894 - Rachmaninoff: symphonic fantasy The Rock, in Moscow, conducted by Vasily Safonov (Julian date: March 20)

• 1913 - de Falla: opera La Vida Breve (The Short Life), in Nice, at the Théatre du Casino Municipal

• 1937 - Menotti: opera Amelia Goes to the Ball, at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia; Menotti was a Curtis alumnus and wrote Amelia Goes to the Ball while still a student there. The work is dedicated to Curtis founder Mary Bok. A year later, the opera is presented by the Metropolitan Opera.

• 1954 - Copland: opera The Tender Land, by the New York City Opera

• 1976 - Diamond: Violin Concerto No. 3, in New York City

• 1995 - Michael Torke: December for string orchestra, by the Des Moines (Iowa) Symphony, Joseph Giunta conducting

• 1999 - Magnus Lindberg: Cantiags for orchestra, by the Cleveland Orchestra, Christoph von Dohnányi, conducting

Others

• 1888 - Eccentric Parisian composer and piano virtuoso Alkan is buried in the Montmatre Cemetary. Isidore Philipp, one of only four mourners who attend Alkan’s internment, claimed to have been present when the composer’s body was found in his apartment and said the elderly Alkan was pulled from under a heavy bookcase, which apparently fell on him while Alkan was trying to reach for a copy of the Talmud on its top shelf. This story has been discounted by some Alkan scholars.

• 1902 - American premiere of Debussy’s Prelude to ‘The Afternoon of a Faun’ by the Orchestral Club of Boston.