by Stephanie Manning
HAPPENING TODAY:
Welcome back from the long weekend. Tonight at 7:30 pm, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society presents flutist Emmanuel Pahud (pictured) and pianist Alessio Bax, who will play music by César Franck, Clara Schumann, J.S. Bach, and more.
That takes place at The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Church in Cleveland Heights — tickets available online. Stay warm out there!
For more details and to check out what else is coming up this week, visit our Concert Listings.
MLK CONCERT REPLAY:
If you missed The Cleveland Orchestra’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Concert on Sunday, you can stream it for the next nine days on Youtube (here) or on the Adella platform.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Mike Telin
Today we celebrate the births of a quartet of American composers. While they may not be household names, they have all had fruitful careers.
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1891, Timothy Mather Spelman studied with Harry Rowe Shelley and later with Albert Spalding and Edward Burlingame Hill at Harvard University. From 1913 to 1915 his studies took him to the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich where he was a student of Walter Courvoisier.
After returning to the United States, the composer accepted a post as assistant director of training for band musicians under the United States Department of War. Spelman and his wife, poet Leolyn Louise Everett, returned to Europe and eventually settled in Florence, Italy.
His music, a mixture of Impressionism and European Romanticism, was performed far more in Europe than in the United States. Spellman’s catalogue includes three operas and many songs set to texts by his wife. Click here to listen to pianist Phillip Sear play “Timgad” from Barbaresques, a suite for piano (1922).
Born in Keene, New Hampshire in 1898, Avery Claflin was trained in law and business and served as the president for the French American Banking Corp. He also studied music at Harvard University and was a business associate of Charles Ives. Most of his musical output came after his retirement in 1954, including his most famous work, Lament for April 15, which uses instructions for an Internal Revenue Service tax form as it’s text. The work was premiered in 1955 at Tanglewood, and on April 15, Karl Haas, played a recording of the piece during his Public Radio show, Adventures in Good Music. Click here to read a New York Times obituary and here to listen to pianist Gísli Magnússon perform Claflin’s Piano Concerto with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra under the direction of William Strickland.
Born in Montana in 1937, George Flynn studied and taught at Columbia University. From 1977 to 2001 he headed the Department of Composition at DePaul University. Flynn’s music includes everything from symphonies to electronic compositions — the music journal Tempo called his 114-minute piano cycle Trinity a “masterpiece.” As the title implies, the work is in three parts: “Kanal,” “Wound,” and “Salvage,” each of which can be performed as a single piece.
The fourth member of the American composer quartet is (Frank) Neely Bruce, born on this date in 1944. Bruce currently holds the John Spencer Camp Professorship in Music and American Studies at Wesleyan University. His 800-plus works catalogue includes three full-length operas. He also holds the distinction of being one of the seven keyboard players to perform the premiere of John Cage’s HPSCHD in 1969. Bruce was also the first pianist to perform the complete song catalogue of Charles Ives. Click here to read more about the project and here to listen to pianist Paul Orgel perform Bruce’s Geographical Preludes.
