Leonard Bernstein conducts, 24 Nov 1963 (Columbia Broadcasting System)

Leonard Bernstein was in a fix. The man he’d supported for the presidency of the United States was to be inagurated the next day, and he was to launch a gala celebration at the White House with his own newly composed fanfare. But Washington’s streets were nearly impassable, choked by a blizzard.

It took a police escort, but Bernstein made it to the White House. Under the circumstances, a side trip to his hotel for a change of clothes was out of the question, so on the evening of 19 January, 1961, Leonard Bernstein conducted without his tails. The best he could do was a borrowed, outsize dress shirt as he led an orchestra assembled from musicians who’d plowed their way through the daunting weather.

Not that a lack of formal wear was going to exclude Leonard Bernstein from the Kennedy White House. He and John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been friends for years. Both were Harvard graduates; they’d met while appearing in a mid-1950s television special about life at the school. Politically, Bernstein had deeply held progressive leanings, so backing Kennedy was natural for him. He was also close to first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

Two years and 10 months later, Leonard Bernstein – with all Americans – recoiled in shock and horror as the news reached him: an assassin’s bullet had ended the dynamic young president’s life.

Two days after those harrowing events of 22 November 1963, Bernstein took to television’s CBS network to deliver a musical memorial to his friend. He led the New York Philharmonic in a work he’d recorded just that year – Gustav Mahler’s transcendent, transformative "Resurrection" Symphony.

Though Bernstein’s was the first classical music broadcast to honor to the nation’s fallen president, his was not the first such classical performance. That honor may fall to Erich Leinsdorf’s impromptu reading of the second movement – the funeral march – from Beethoven’s "Eroica" Symphony. On the 22nd, Leinsdorf’s podium announcement of that day’s tragic events – an announcement captured on tape – came as a shock to most of the audience.

Herbert Howells

Shortly after the assassination, plans began to take shape for a concert that would bring Americans and Canadians together in tribute to the president’s memory. The English composer Herbert Howells (1892 – 1983) was asked to contribute a choral work to the observance.

Howells labored on the piece for months, but by the Spring of 1964 he still hadn’t settled on a text. Finally, he revisited words he’d set in Medieval Latin – but hadn’t published – in 1932. The words had given him comfort in the months and years after his son’s death from polio in 1935. This time he used Prudentius’s Hymnus circa Exsequias Defuncti in an English translation by Helen Waddell: Take him, earth, for cherishing. The poem speaks of the transition from Earth to Paradise; Howells’s music follows, evolving from a simple unison to reach its summit in rich, brilliant harmony.

It’s one of those odd accidents of the calendar that in 2012 the anniversary of this unthinkable American tragedy coincides with a day when we as Americans give thanks for the plenty that’s been granted to us. At such a time perhaps it’s worth remembering the part that music plays in helping us through our darkest moments.

After all, at its core, music is organized sound. If we’re to bring order and peace to this disordered, violent world, the place to start is inside our own hearts, where music’s quiet rigor raises a bulwark against chaos. As Bernstein said the day after his 1963 memorial concert, "This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."

Further Information:

Excerpt from Bernstein’s 1963 Mahler Concert (Youtube)

Leonard Bernstein’s speech at United Jewish Appeal benefit, 25 Nov 1963

Baritone Thomas Hampson on the origins of Mahler’s Urlicht (Hampsong Foundation)

Erich Leinsdorf conducts the funeral march from Beethoven’s "Eroica", 22 Nov 1963 (WQXR)

Notes and text for Howells’s Take him, earth, for cherishing (St Paul Sunday Morning)

Incipit (cantus part) from Canticum Trium Puerorum (Renato Calcaterra) Click to zoom

Now and again music history gives us personalities whose accomplishments range far and wide, well beyond composition. One such musician is Michael Praetorius. Not only did he leave us a good-sized body of music both sacred and secular, he created a reference volume that generations of early music researchers and performers have found invaluable: Syntagma Musicum, describing performing practice and musical instruments in the late Renaissance era.

Among Praetorius’s many publications of Lutheran church music is the collection Musarum Sioniarum: Motectae et Psalmi Latini. The 34th item in that volume is a setting of a text from the Latin Vulgate Bible.

In the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego – also called Ananias, Azarias and Misael – the three men refuse to worship Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image, so Nebuchadnezzar has them thrown into a furnace. There, the story goes, they’re protected by an angel. They walk about in the flames, unscathed, praying and singing.

This text has come to be called The Prayer of the Three Holy Children. In the Latin Praetorius used, it’s Canticum Trium Puerorum – the song of the three boys. It’s not clear to me why they’re called boys or children when all of the biblical text refers to them as men, but those seem to be the terms used.

If Bach was the master of number symbolism (more detail here and here), Praetorius excelled at word-painting, at least in this work. Where his text is "bless the lightning and clouds," at "fulgura" (lightning) he zig-zags the music across the voices. At "nubes" (clouds) the music gets softer and darker.

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But Praetorius’s best word-painting is the trick he plays on us throughout the entire work.

Praetorius structures Canticum Trium Puerorum as a series of verses and two alternating refrains, on a text which exhorts all of Creation to bless the Lord. In the first verse, two high voices (they would have been the boys of his choir) speak of the angels and heaven.

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With each verse, Praetorius adds more voices. By the time he reaches the last lines of the text almost 20 minutes later, all of Creation is indeed singing – or at least all 8 voices in his choir.

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Our recording is from 1980 (regrettably, out of print). It was produced by Erato Records of France, with the Audite Nova Chorale of Paris and director Jean Sourisse. The choir is doubled in the refrains by a small cornett and sackbut ensemble. In general, when it comes to Renaissance music, there’s ample evidence to support the use of such doubling. However, some purists might insist that since Praetorius didn’t specify an instrumental ensemble, a pure choral reading would be safer, if you’re going for authenticity.

A reviewer for Gramophone also sniffed that the 38-voice choir was too large for Praetorius. I’ll stay out of this one and let that reviewer work it out with Praetorius, should they ever meet. I will say, though, that I suspect that reviewer would wax apoplectic if he heard Erato’s earlier recording of this work.

That older performance was my own introduction to Canticum Trium Puerorum, back when I was little more than a pup, musically speaking. This was long before the historically informed performance movement had made any real inroads, and it made no claims whatsoever to authenticity. Praetorius’s modest notes were sung by a massive 500-voice choir, doubled in the refrains by a blaring modern brass band (the Paris Police Force brass ensemble, if you can imagine that). It produced the sort of effect that, as the recording’s annotator pointed out, Praetorius could only have dreamed of.

That recording was distributed in the US over a half-century ago under the Westminster label, and later by Musical Heritage Society. It’s many years out of print. We’ll just have to make do with 38 voices.

This is an updated version of an article previously published in WKSU Classical on 2 May 2010.

Pirates of Penzance Program (1881) (Wikimedia Commons)

NOTE: This In Performance broadcast (10 June 2012) will begin at 3pm, one half hour earlier than usual.

W S Gilbert began writing plays when he was still in school, but after he graduated, he set his sights on a military career. As it turned out, though, the military didn’t need him. So he tried civil service as an assistant clerk.

He despised the job. When a bit of an inheritance came his way in 1863, he decided to try his hand at legal work. His career as a barrister was more satisfying, but not very successful. Gilbert averaged five clients per year.

Gilbert soon realized that such niceties as food and shelter were going to require a bit more income than law was bringing him, so he turned back to writing. Initially he used it as a supplement to his legal income, penning (often scathing) theatre reviews, magazine stories, and poems.

Gilbert’s Bab Ballads were named for his childhood moniker. He illustrated them himself. It was here that Gilbert developed the topsy-turvy style that would serve him so well in the theatre – taking an utterly absurd premise and following it faithfully to its logical conclusion. These publications would later provide feedstock for Gilbert’s plays and operettas.

At a rehearsal for his 1869 play Ages Ago, Gilbert was introduced to a young composer.

There was never any doubt that Arthur Sullivan would become a musician – he was composing for band when he was eight years old! His father tried to divert the hurtling freight train, thinking that a music career wasn’t apt to produce a son who could support him in his old age. It was all to no avail. Sullivan became a choir boy and soon was composing anthems. A scholarship cleared his way to the Royal Academy of Music and eventually to the Leipzig Conservatory.

After his 1861 graduation and a return from Leipzig, Sullivan dug into composing in earnest. His father’s warning quickly returned to haunt him, though. He found that composing music – even when it was amply salted with briskly-selling parlor songs and hymns – wasn’t much of a living. Fortunately, steady work and a stable income came with a gig as a church organist. Over the next decade Sullivan composed a good-sized catalog of moderately successful works, including a cello concerto, a symphony, an oratorio, overtures, ballet, and opera.

In 1869, Sullivan’s fellow composer Frederic Clay was working with a poet and author on a musical, Ages Ago, and introduced Sullivan to the librettist.

Two years later, Arthur Sullivan and W S Gilbert joined forces for the first time to create Thespis. It was a parody of grand opera in general, and of the then-popular Offenbach comic operas such as Orpheus in the Underworld in particular. I’d like to say that they immediately hit it off – but that didn’t happen. In fact, it was another 4 years before Gilbert and Sullivan teamed up again.

In 1875 producer Richard d’Oyly Carte was managing the Royalty Theater, and was about to produce Jacques Offenbach’s La Perichole. He needed a companion piece, and brought Gilbert and Sullivan together to create Trial By Jury.

The filler piece became the hit, far outdrawing – and outlasting – the Offenbach. The stage was set.

It took d’Oyly Carte another two years to raise the cash, but his next collaboration with Gilbert and Sullivan, The Sorcerer, did rather well, thank you very much. Encouraged by that modest success, the team launched the H M S Pinafore barely half a year later. Pinafore became a huge hit – and the trio were off and running.

When Gilbert had begun writing plays, English theatre’s reputation hadn’t been any too good. One of his objectives had been to improve its image, and to make theatre more "family-friendly."

d’Oyly Carte agreed – he wanted to produce comic opera for families. Not for him the risque reputation of Vaudeville. The plays he produced with Gilbert and Sullivan were thoroughly entertaining – and utterly innocent. With these three men at the helm, never would evil gain so much as an inch of dramatic traction.

Gilbert and d’Oyly Carte’s reputation management extended from the characters to the people playing them. They rigorously corraled the performers to forestall any hint of scandal. They forbade such temptations to perdition as cursing, loitering, flirting, and gossip. Men’s and women’s dressing rooms were on opposite sides of the theatre; as the players left the stage they were summarily shooed to their strictly segregated warrens.

With the Savoy Theatre, newly built for Gilbert and Sullivan in 1881, they and d’Oyly Carte gave us theatrical traditions that persist today, from free programs to numbered seating. The Savoy was also the first theatre to be lit entirely by electricity.

There was one thing that Gilbert, Sullivan, and d’Oyly Carte had trouble managing, though: performance rights. Not in England, mind you; between their trademark "natural" acting style and their youthful performers’ energy, they effectively owned the market. And when they didn’t, they successfully worked England’s legal system to their advantage.

But America had a more freewheeling attitude and far less aggressive copyright laws (things have changed appreciably since then). HMS Pinafore was a huge international hit, and G, S & C found it nearly impossible to rein in the hundreds of unauthorized American performances.

Thus Pirates of Penzance became the first – and only – G&S opera to have its official premiere in New York, opening on New Year’s Eve in 1879. They were hoping to establish theirs as the official production. They did succeed in making a tidy profit on it, but in the end, they still couldn’t prevent a plethora of pirates pirating Pirates. (Sorry.)

Act 1 finds us with a rollicking band of brigands on the rocky Cornish coast of Britain. They’re drinking to Frederic, who is celebrating the completion of his pirate apprenticeship. At noon, just half an hour away, he will turn 21.

But Frederic has a secret. As his nurse Ruth explains, his apprenticeship is all a careless mistake. When Frederic was just a boy, his father sent Ruth with him to apprentice him to a sea pilot. But she misunderstood the boy’s father, and here he is with a band of sea pirates. Afraid to face up to her error, Ruth too signed on with the lawbreakers.

Frederic, ever the dutiful one, has faithfully served out the terms of his agreement. In 30 minutes, he’ll be free – and then it’ll be his obligation as a British citizen to betray the pirate band!

For this, the Pirate King compliments Frederic. After all, he’s only acting on his convictions when he resolves to exterminate his colleagues. But, the Pirate King points out, for the moment Frederic is still a pirate – and come to that, why haven’t they been successful pirates, anyway?

Frederic points out the problem: they’re just too nice. As orphans themselves, they feel a duty to release all the orphans they capture. And, somehow, curiously, these days every ship they capture is full of orphans.

The time comes and Frederic takes leave of his pirate friends, but not before trying to leave the long-suffering Ruth behind ("… yours is the only woman’s face I have seen … What a terrible thing it would be if I were to marry this innocent person and then find out that she is, on the whole, plain!"). Frederic even goes so far as to ask Ruth if she considers herself fair. Then he points out her advanced age and thoughtlessly renounces his companion of many years. In despair, she leaves him.

Just then Frederic spots a bevy of comely maidens. Their response is about what you’d expect: "A pirate! Horror!" Only one of them, Mabel, seems willing to accept Frederic as he is: "It’s true that he’s gone astray, but … why should you all be deaf to pity’s name?"

The young women soon find themselves surrounded by Frederic’s former pirate band. Just as the pirates are about to claim the maidens as their wives, the women reveal their identity. All are daughters of major-general Stanley – and here he is, "the very model of the modern major-general." Stanley knows the pirates’ secret, so he lies, claiming to be an orphan. Duty-bound, the pirates set the major-general and his daughters free.

Act 2 opens in a derelict chapel on major-general Stanley’s estate. Stanley, surrounded by his daughters, is racked with guilt for his falsehood. He has betrayed his ancestors’ honor – even if they aren’t really his ancestors. A crew of nervous policemen arrive. Frederic’s duty will be to lead them to the pirates’ lair.

Ruth and the Pirate King find Frederic alone in the chapel. They bring news – he’s still a pirate after all! It seems that his contract says he’ll be released on his 21st birthday. But Frederic was born on the 29th of February in leap year. So he’s celebrated only 5 birthdays, not 21. He still has another 16 "years" to serve in his pirate apprenticeship.

Duty calls yet again. Frederic will have to leave his beloved Mabel and return to the pirate life.

If there’s one thing Frederic knows, it’s duty. His duty now is to the Pirate King, so he reveals that major-general Stanley lied when he claimed to be an orphan. The Pirate King is livid. He vows "swift and terrible" revenge that very night.

Mabel, alone with Frederic, swears she will remain faithful to him until he has served out his full 21-leap-year term. The pirate band approaches and the fearful pirate-hunting policemen hide. Major-general Stanley appears with his daughters, and the pirates seize him. Despite all of Mabel’s entreaties, Frederic is powerless to help him – his duty is to the pirates, after all. The police try to save Stanley, but the pirates quickly repel the attack – "Don’t say you are orphans, for we know that game."

The police seargent, desperate, tries one last move: "We charge you yield, in Queen Victoria’s name!"

The words have a striking effect. Moments before, the pirates were standing over policemen with drawn swords. Now they are on their knees.

What is this? Ruth steps forward to explain. The pirates aren’t really orphans, she says. They’re "noblemen who have gone wrong."

Well then! "Peers will be peers," in major-general Stanley’s world. All is forgiven. Frederic and Mabel can wed. The pirates will return to their official duties in the House of Lords. And as a bonus, they’ll have the hands of Stanley’s daughters in marriage.

Poster for a 1905 performance (Wikimedia Commons; PD in USA)

NOTE: This In Performance broadcast (for 3 June 2012) will begin at 3pm, one half hour earlier than usual.

Victor Herbert was born in Dublin, but after his father died, he and his mother went to London to live with his grandfather. When he was 27, his mother married a German physician, and Herbert landed in Stuttgart.

There he expected to become a doctor like his stepfather, but that was not to be. His family fell on hard times. Then as now, the cost of a medical education was daunting. So music it was, and Victor entered the Stuttgart Conservatory, where he studied cello.

A gig as a cellist in Eduard Strauss’s orchestra took Herbert to Vienna, where he met soprano Therese Foerster. In 1886 they were married. Her career was on an upward trajectory that soon took her to New York and the Met. There she was offered the lead in Goldmark’s The Queen of Sheba for the 1886-87 season opener. She accepted, on the condition that her husband would be hired to play in the Met orchestra. He signed on as principal cellist.

Herbert threw himself into New York’s musical life, playing cello and composing, and eventually adopting America as his permanent home. For the first several years, he composed only instrumental music, but in 1894 he created his first operetta, Prince Ananias.

Except for a few years as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, the theatre would be Herbert’s principal musical home for the rest of his life, with such major operetta successes as 1903′s Babes in Toyland, 1905′s Mlle Modiste, 1906′s The Red Mill, 1910′s Naughty Marietta, and 1913′s Sweethearts. He also composed operas; in later years, ballet music for musical theatre; and the score for the 1916 film, The Fall of a Nation.

Herbert’s first real success in operetta came in 1897 with The Serenade. This was thanks partly to his music, and partly to the impressive star power of soprano Alice Nielsen. The following season, Herbert composed The Fortune Teller for Nielsen and her opera company, giving her no fewer than three roles. His librettist was Harry B. Smith.

After a brief engagement in Toronto, The Fortune Teller premiered on Broadway on 26 September 1898. It ran for 40 performances. That may not seem like a long run, but at the beginning of the 20th century a Broadway premiere was just the beginning of a show’s life on the road.

Act 1 opens at the Budapest Opera’s ballet school. Penurious Count Berezowski has learned that one of the ballet students is to inherit an imposing estate. The count has found the solution to his poverty: a wedding!

There are, however, two small catches. One is ballet master Fresco, who wants his cut of the fortune – a "finder’s fee," if you will. The other is a bit more daunting: the would-be heiress, Irma, doesn’t much like the count. Besides, she already loves another, Captain Ladislas. Not for her this wedding: she must escape before it’s too late!

As luck (and reports from Ladislas) would have it, Irma’s twin brother Fedor has just deserted his military post to elope with a French singer. Desertion is a capital crime. So Irma has a chance not only to escape the count, but also to save her brother’s life. All she has to do is dress up in Fedor’s uniform and take his place. With that, she’s off, leaving behind a bogus suicide note for ballet master Fresco.

Fresco is beside himself – not at Irma’s alleged death, but at the loss of the cash it represents! Just then a solution presents itself in the form of Musette, a fortune teller with a band of Romanies who have just arrived. Musette bears an uncanny resemblance to Irma. (The two roles are always played by the same singer.) Aha! Fresco will simply marry Musette to the count.

Not surprisingly, this idea doesn’t sit well with Musette’s real lover from the Romany band, Sandor. But not to worry, he says – they’ll just run off after the wedding, leaving Count Berezowski in the lurch.

Act 2 takes place at Count Berezowski’s chateau. The wedding is imminent, but the bride, Musette, is nowhere to be found. However, Irma has returned, wearing her brother’s uniform. Fresco persuades her to trade her uniform for the wedding gown.

Following all this so far? Good. Now, take a deep breath: Sandor takes Irma for Musette, his sweetheart. Captain Ladislas takes her for his love, Irma. Count Berezowski takes her for his bride-to-be. And the count is determined to take her for his bride.

The three men are about to come to blows, so Irma reveals her "true identity." She is, she says, Fedor, her brother. This ruse is threatened when Fedor’s fiancee, the French singer Pompom, appears. But just then a messenger arrives with the news that war has broken out. All head for the front.

Act 3 finds us at the Hungarian forces’ camp. Fedor is still missing, and Irma is still taking his place. Pompom arrives, and accuses "Fedor" of deserting her.

Just as the situation seems hopeless, an officer arrives with the resolution. Fedor hasn’t deserted either Pompom or the army. He’s been sent on a top secret mission, and he’s about to return a hero!

The subterfuge is undone and all is forgiven. Now Irma can marry her true love Ladislas, Musette can marry Sandor, and Fedor can tie the knot with Pompom. Count Berezowski and Fresco? They’re left with their just reward for their conniving and duplicity – nothing.

Bach at the Keyboard

Bach was only 22 when he landed his third church job, as organist of St Blasius in the city of Muehlhausen. His audition was on Easter Sunday of 1707 – imagine the stress! – and there’s a good chance that his audition piece was this very cantata.

If so, it was a good choice. The Muehlhausen city council met a month later and no one even discussed any other musician. His second interview was on the 14th of June. The very next day, Bach signed his contract.

For this cantata, Bach used a text by Martin Luther. Unlike some of his later Easter Sunday works, it’s not a bright, joyous piece – but it’s not by any means dark. It’s celebratory, all right, but in a reserved, pensive way.

Bach opens with the chorus, the sopranos carrying the melody and the violins adding florid decorations. He keeps the mood relatively somber until the text says "des wir sollen fröhlich sein" ("thus we should be joyful"). Finally, then, he starts to open things up.

Bach was both a sensitive musician and a devout one: he wrote the letters SDG (Soli Deo Gloria, or glory only to God) at the end of every sacred manuscript. Thus he didn’t hesitate to use word-painting to illuminate the religious meaning of this cantata. He writes scales around "Menschenkinder" and "Tod," ("mankind" and "death") and assigns strong chords to the words "Recht" ("rule") and "Gewalt" ("power"). He paints the phrase "Tods Gestalt" ("death’s empty shell") in a dim, hazy light. His voices chase each other as "Tod und Leben ringen" ("death and life battled"), and "ein Tod den andern fraß" ("one death ate the other").

Then Bach drives home his point. A low part for the bass and a surprisingly dissonant orchestral part represent the Passion – and then rising scales in the violins symbolize the Resurrection. He ends with an elegantly direct setting of the gospel lesson for the day, "Christus will die Koste sein" ("Christ will be the sustenance").

Bach must have thought this cantata was effective, because he didn’t let it gather library dust forever. In his harried, overworked Leipzig days, he revived it not once, but twice – for Easter Sunday of 1724, and again on Easter of 1725.