Glass' 'Akhnaten'

Synopsis

14th-century B.C.E. pharaoh Akhnaten is remembered for his radical abandonment of the multiple gods of Egypt in favor of just one: the sun god Aten. Akhnaten’s heresy ended with his death when traditional beliefs were quickly reestablished and Akhnaten’s name was literally chiseled out of Egyptian history.

Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism opined that Moses might have been an Egyptian priest of Akhnaten, and Immanuel Velikovsky, a once-popular but fanciful historian, suggested in his book Oedipus and Akhnaton that a garbled memory of Akhnaten’s reign was the source of the Greek tragedy Oedipus the King.

American composer Philip Glass credits both those authors among the inspirations for his opera Akhnaten, which premiered on today’s date in 1984 at the Staatstheaer in Stuttgart, Germany.

In 1984, the Stuttgart opera was undergoing renovations, so the premiere was moved to a much smaller hall, with a much smaller orchestra pit. Rather than scrimp on other instruments, Glass simply made a virtue of necessity and omitted the entire violin section from his score. The role of Akhnaten is sung by a counter-tenor, whose high voice provides a striking contrast to the a low, dark timbre of Glass’ violin-less orchestration.

Music Played in Today's Program

Philip Glass (b. 1937): ‘Hymn to the Sun,’ from ‘Akhnaten’; Paul Esswood, ct; Stuttgart Opera Orchestra; Dennis Russel Davies, cond. CBS Masterworks/Sony 42457

On This Day

Births

• 1740 - American-born Moravian composer John Antes, in Frederickstownship, PA

Deaths

• 1654 - German composer Samuel Scheidt, 66, in Halle

• 1916 - Spanish composer Enrique Granados, 48, dies at sea returning to Europe from New York City when the S.S. Sussex is torpedoed in the English Channel by a German submarine during WWI

• 1921 - French composer Deódat de Sévérac, 48, in Céret

Premieres

• 1784 - Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 15 in Bb, K. 450, at the Trattnerhof in Vienna, with composer as soloist

• 1860 - Joachim: Violin Concerto (Hungarian), in Hannover, Germany

• 1868 - Brahms: Piano Quintet, Op. 34, in Paris, with pianist Luise Langhans-Japha, with an unidentified string ensemble

• 1881 - Verdi: opera Simon Boccanegra (second version, with libretto revised by Boito), in Milan at the Teatro alla Scala

• 1924 - Sibelius: Symphony No. 7, in Stockholm, with the composer conducting

• 1932 - Randall Thompson: Symphony No. 2, in, Rochester, NY

• 1941 - Shostakovich: incidental music for Shakespeare's King Lear, in Leningrad, at the Gorky Bolshoy Dramatic Theater

• 1949 - Panufnik: Tragic Overture, in New York City

• 1984 - Philip Glass: opera Akhnaten, in Stuttgart, at the Wurttemberg State Theater, with Dennis Russell Davies, conducting

• 1996 - Thomas Oboe Lee: ART: arias and interludes for string quartet, in Gassoon Hall at Boston College by the Artaria Quartet

• 2001 - Chihara: Songs of Love and Loss, by violist Geraldine Waltherthe and the 20-voice San Francisco Chamber Singers, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, CA, directed by Robert Geary

Others

• 1721 - J.S. Bach dedicates his six Brandenburg Concertos to Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg, whose orchestra apparently never performed them