'Morning Revisited' by Raksin

Synopsis

If your dad wrote music for silent movies and you also want to write music, does that increase the odds you’ll end up a film composer, too? That was the case with David Raksin, who was born in Philadelphia in 1912, and who died in Los Angeles on today’s date in 2004.

When he was 23, he moved to Hollywood to help Charlie Chaplin arrange Chaplin’s music for the film, Modern Times, and stayed on in Hollywood, working without credit on dozens of B-rated films.

A big break came in 1944 with the tremendous success of Raksin’s haunting score for the 1944 film noir classic, Laura. By the time of his death, he had written scores for hundreds of films and TV shows.

In 1960, for the Horn Club of Los Angeles, he wrote Morning Revisited. He explained the odd title as follows: “They needed a piece [for] their entire ensemble … two antiphonal groups of six French horns, four Wagner tubas, a baritone horn, two contrabass tubas, and seven timpani. I was busy working on a picture, so I’d start work at four or five a.m., and that’s how I wrote Morning Revisited.”

Music Played in Today's Program

David Raksin (1912-2004): Morning Revisited; The Horn Club of Los Angeles; David Raksin, conductor; EMI 63764

On This Day

Births

• 1781 - Austrian composer, violinist, and conductor Michael Umlauff, in Vienna. He conducted the orchestra, chorus, and soloists assembled for the premiere performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Vienna's Kärtnertor Theater on May 7, 1824. After the totally deaf Beethoven set the initial tempos for each movement, the performers were instructed to ignore Beethoven if he continued to beat time, and to follow Umlauf.

• 1874 - Venezuelan-born French composer, conductor and music critic Reynaldo Hahn, in Caracas

• 1875 - English light music composer Albert William Ketèlbey, in Aston

Deaths

• 1919 - Italian composer Ruggero Leoncavallo, 62, in Montecatini

• 1975 - Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, 68, in Moscow

• 1988 - Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi, 83, in Rome

Premieres

• 1862 - Berlioz: opera Beatrice and Benedick, in Baden-Baden at the Neues Theater, with the composer conducting. The libretto (also by Berlioz) is based on Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing.

• 1949 - Orff: opera Antigone, in Salzburg at the Felsenreitschile

• 1972 - London premiere of Andrew Lloyd-Webber: musical Jesus Christ Superstar

• 1978 - Dave Brubeck: oratorio Beloved Son, at the American Lutheran Women’s Convention in Minneapolis, with Richard Sieber conducting

• 1979 - Hanson: ballet Nymph and Satyr in Chautauqua, Tennessee

• 1988 - Peter Maxwell Davies: Symphony No. 5, during a BBC Proms Concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall, by the Philharmonia Orchestra, with the composer conducting

Others

• 1703 - J.S. Bach appointed organist at Neuekirche, Arnstadt (see also: August 4 and 14)

• 1928 - Australian-born American composer Percy Grainger marries Swedish poet and painter Ella Viola Strom at the Hollywood Bowl in front of an audience of 22,000 concert-goers. Grainger conducted the LA Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of his To a Nordic Princess, dedicated to his bride.