The Gunther Schuller Society
Selected Historical & Rare Recordings
As Composer and Performer
Nocturne (1942)
Nocturne was one of Gunther’s earliest compositions written in 1942 (at the age of 17) for horn and piano. By 1945, it eventually “found its way into” the 2nd movement of his first major orchestral work Concerto for Horn and Orchestra which was premiered that spring by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra with the composer as its featured soloist under the direction of conductor Eugene Goosens. However, the 2nd movement (the Nocturne movement) was left off the bill due to an already previously scheduled lengthy program. Only the first and third movements were performed.
Gunther did have a chance to perform the 2nd movement ten days later (April 17, 1945) when the College of Music Symphony Orchestra (Cincinnati) under the direction of conductor Walter Heermann presented a tribute concert to the recently deceased President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Nocturne was included in the All-American program along with works by Chadwick, Griffes, Gould and Gershwin, among others.
Here we have the composer performing his own composition from a surviving 78 acetate disc complete with clicks and scratches. This may be the earliest recorded example of the dual talents of Gunther as player as well as composer.
Twelve by Eleven (1955)
Twelve by Eleven — one of Gunther’s earliest compositions to employ a healthy dose of jazz elements — was composed somewhere around the summer or early fall of 1955 probably due to Gunther’s participation on a studio recording earlier that year (March 1955) that was eventually released on Norgan Records as The Modern Jazz Society Presents A Concert of Contemporary Music. Gunther played horn and also contributed a couple of arrangements to two John Lewis compositions for a medium-sized ensemble with an odd assortment of wind instruments, perhaps not too common in jazz during those days. Some of the other members of the group included Stan Getz, Lucky Thompson, Tony Scott, JJ Johnson, Percy Heath, and Connie Kay (2/4’s of the Modern Jazz Quartet sans John Lewis & Milt Jackson). The Modern Jazz Society was formed to function as a meeting place for two musical and somewhat opposing sides, jazz & classical. Ideas and concepts from both worlds were already slowly merging during the late 40s and early 50s amongst a small, yet committed group of like-minded composers and arrangers. Gunther was one of the leading progenitors of that emerging movement a few years before it was even coined “third stream.”
To promote the Norgan LP release, a concert was scheduled at Town Hall on Nov 19, 1955 to showcase this unusual mix of ensembles and to show off a diverse program…everything from jazz standards and ballads to a through-composed contemporary classical piece (the American premiere of Luigi Nono’s Polifonica-Monodia-Ritmica). Gunther set out to write a new composition by straddling the fences of tonality, atonality and improvisation while utilizing a wide-ranging instrumentation to mainly feature the Modern Jazz Quartet, especially Milt Jackson and John Lewis.
This rare and unissued live recording of Twelve by Eleven is probably the premiere performance from Town Hall (further research is needed). The title is a slight word-play referencing the serial side of Gunther’s compositional approach ‘times’ the number of players in the ensemble (i.e., shorthand for the alternative title: 12x11).
Personnel for the Town Hall concert on Twelve by Eleven included James Politis, flute; Tony Scott, clarinet; Lucky Thompson, tenor sax; Loren Glickman, bassoon; JJ Johnson, trombone; Gunther Schuller, French horn; Janet Putman, harp; Milt Jackson, vibes; John Lewis, piano; Percy Heath, bass; and Connie Kay, drums.
As Composer
String Quartet No. 1 (1957)
Schuller’s String Quartet No. 1 was commissioned by the University of Illinois School of Music and The Fromm Music Foundation for the 1957 Festival of Contemporary Music, held on the campus of University of Illinois during March of that year.
The Walden Quartet (Homer Schmitt, Bernard Goodman, violins; John Garvey, viola and cellist Robert Swenson) premiered the work during the festival on March 29, 1957 and subsequently released a live version of that performance on a rare 3-LP set (consisting of various selected commissioned works from the festival). Schuller’s string quartet received its European premiere later that year by the Ortleb Quartet (members of the Berlin Philharmonic) at the famous (or possibly infamous) Darmstadt Festival.
Twenty years later, The Composers String Quartet (Matthew Raimondi, Anahid Ajemian, violins; Jean Dane, viola and cellist Michael Rudiakov), while in residence at the New England Conservatory of Music, recorded the same piece for the Golden Crest label (NEC series) along with works by Cowell, Stravinsky, Swift and Carter. It is presented here in three movements without interruption.
Woodwind Quintet (1958)
1. Lento
2. Moderato
3. Agitato
Schuller’s Woodwind Quintet (composed in 1958) was premiered by the New York Woodwind Quintet in Cologne, Germany for the Westdeutsch Rundfunk. It got its first NYC performance in March 1959 (see program below) and was probably recorded for the Concert-Disc label around 1961 or 62. Members of the New York Woodwind Quintet at that time included Samuel Baron, flute; Ronald Roseman, oboe; David Glazer, clarinet; John Barrows, horn; and Arthur Weisberg, bassoon.
Lines and Contrasts (1960)
Schuller’s Lines and Contrasts for 16 Horns (completed in 1960) was premiered by the Horn Club of Los Angeles on Oct 23, 1960. However, only the first movement was performed due to the late arrival of the second movement parts and lack of adequate rehearsal time. The complete work was recorded a decade later for Angel Records. Schuller conducted his own piece as well as Alec Wilder’s Nonet for Brass (which was included on the Angel LP release). The Horn Club is made up of members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and other professional orchestras and studio musicians based in Southern California.
Note that the piece is divided into two parts: 1) Lines 2) Contrasts.
Night Music (1961)
Densities 1 (1962)
Eric Dolphy was an important contributor to several of Schuller’s Third Stream concerts during the early 60s. His versatility alone as a multi-instrumentalist coupled with a sizable palette of improvisational and reading skills was truly unmatched even amongst some of the major jazz practitioners of his day. He was indeed a triple threat and a restless investigator of both jazz and classical concepts and beyond. Tragically cut short due to an undiagnosed illness by the early summer of 1964, his legend was immediate and forever lasting.
Schuller wrote Night Music and Densities I in 1962...the former written specifically for Dolphy to showcase his prowess on the bass clarinet. It was premiered on March 10, 1962 by a hybrid ensemble of jazz and classical musicians sponsored by The Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music under the direction of legendary violinist Louis Krasner. The program included works of Mozart, Ives, Gabrieli, and Stravinsky followed by several of Schuller’s Third Stream compositions (see program below). The concert was recorded and Night Music was later released on GM Recordings under the title Vintage Dolphy. Schuller also arranged Night Music for big band to be performed by none other than The Benny Goodman Orchestra for their six-week state department tour of the Soviet Union later that spring of 1962. It’s unknown if the work was ever performed or even attempted in rehearsal. It took another 26 years for the big band version to be dusted off, formally recorded by an augmented Orange Then Blue (normally a 12-piece ensemble) and subsequently released on GM Recordings under the title Jumpin’ in the Future.
Densities I was to be the first of a series of proposed small ensemble examinations dealing with certain types of musical densities and textures, but Schuller perhaps got caught up with other commitments before he could return to his original intended proposal. Written in 1962 for a quartet of clarinet, vibraphone, harp and bass, it was premiered with Dolphy on March 14, 1963 during one of Schuller’s Twentieth Century Innovations concerts held at Carnegie Hall (also released on Vintage Dolphy).
Recorded in the first half of 1965, Dedicated to Dolphy was one of the first album tributes to Eric released the following year for the Cambridge Record label (based in Framingham, MA). However due to its low visibility on a label known more for its classical and baroque leanings, it hardly got noticed. It was conductor and percussionist Harold Farberman’s idea to bring together many of NYC’s finest studio and working musicians (including those that performed in John Lewis’ Orchestra USA) to record original works to reflect Dolphy’s recent impact on the contemporary jazz and classical scene. With contributions by Lewis, Farberman and William O. Smith (aka Bill Smith who also had the inevitable task of channeling Dolphy as the lone clarinetist and bass clarinetist on three of the tracks), only Schuller’s works were previously composed with Dolphy in mind while he was still alive.
Besides Smith on bass clarinet, Night Music features guitarist Jim Hall, both bassists Richard Davis and George Duvivier along with drummer Mel Lewis. For Densities I, vibist Harold Farberman joins harpist Gloria Agostini and Davis with Smith on clarinet.
The Black Warrior (1998)
Schuller's oratorio The Black Warrior is a tribute to civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The piece features text from Dr. King's Letter From Birmingham City Jail (1963). This is a live unissued recording of the premiere on January 17, 1999 at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, conducted by Schuller with narrator, soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Read Gunther's program notes here.
Gunther was President of the New England Conservatory of Music when Dr. King was tragically murdered on April 4, 1968. The following day, the Conservatory held a memorial concert in Jordan Hall during which the community gathered, speeches were made, prayers were offered, and students and faculty performed. Gunther conducted the funeral march from his opera The Visitation as seen from the image below.
Where the Word Ends (2007)
This was a note that was in the insert of a CD-R that Gunther sent to his colleagues around the end of 2009.
As promised, I am herewith sending you Where the Word Ends, a Boston Symphony Orchestra commission given in 2005 for my eightieth birthday. The work was composed in record time between mid-November 2006 and end of January 2007. The scheduled performance in April 2007 was postponed simultaneously by the conductor and the composer in March, both feeling that the length of the work, its very large orchestration, and its multi-layered polyphonic complexity needed more rehearsal time than would be available during the four rehearsals for the already scheduled program of that week.
The postponed premiere took place on February 5, 2009, followed by two more performances in Boston and one in New York. The large orchestra consists of quadruple woodwinds and brass (plus four Wagner tuben), two harps, celeste/piano, and uncommonly multiple string divisis. It is essentially a gigantic ensemble work to be thought of in chamber music terms.
From merely listening to a recording of Where the Word Ends, even in a superior performance such as this is, it is hard to realize how polyphonically complex so much of this work actually is. I am using the term “polyphonically” in a larger than usual sense to point out two particular aspects of this work: its many-stranded multilayering (linearly/horizontally) and its frequent use of several independent musical ideas or events occurring simultaneously, vertically or in very close juxtapositions. Obviously a very attentive and aurally perceptive listener can get a sense of this even on a single hearing, and more so in an actual live performance where, compared to a stereo recording like this, the complex interplay can be seen occurring on the stage.
For an orchestra to learn, absorb/digest, and begin to hear their way fluently through such a relentlessly challenging piece in only parts of four rehearsals, and arrive at such a near-perfect performance verges on the miraculous. In that short period of time, condensed into three days, the orchestra achieved 85-90% of what I actually wrote and notated.
I have been privileged over the years to receive many excellent world premiere performances, by major orchestras and conductors. But I have to say that this particular performance tops all of them.
Gunther Schuller (Dec 2009)
Back in early 2009, Fred Harris (director of MIT wind and jazz ensembles) was asked by Ran Blake (think Film Noir) “to create a kind of ‘graphic form’ or ‘storyboard’” of the BSO performance of Gunther’s Where the Word Ends.
As Fred states, “I brought copies of it to Symphony Hall for one of the performances. I recall one of the people sitting with Ran saying, ‘I want one of these for every piece!’, which made me smile. But I also thought that maybe having some kind of basic, non-technical guide on what is going on in a given composition might not be a bad idea for some listeners. I don’t remember showing it to Gunther or not. Of course, it's just one idea about the form, and not definitive in anyway. It’s a simple example of what my imagination told me.”
Some references on the document that might be helpful to define:
1) “The Row” refers to Gunther’s “Magic Row” of 12 ordered pitches that he used in most (all?) compositions in one way or another from 1976 until 2015.
2) ”Herb-esk Horn solo” refers to the kind of soulful and melancholy manner that trumpeter Herb Pomeroy played, particularly in the late years of his career.
As Conductor
Arnold Schoenberg – Suite, Op. 29 (1925)
Schoenberg Suite Op. 29 (composed in 1925) was written for a septet of clarinets, strings and piano recorded in 1954 for the Period Record label which produced mostly classical and operetta in its varied catalog, but also featured jazz and popular music during the 1950s. This version of the Suite may have been the first American recording issued even though a Los Angeles ensemble led by Robert Craft had apparently recorded their own a year before for Columbia, but not released until 1956.
Directed by Gunther Schuller, the personnel for the Period session included Jack Kreiselman, Eb clarinet; Irving Neidich, clarinet; Sidney Keil, bass clarinet; Victor Aitay, violin; Godfrey Layefsky, viola; Tony Sophos, cello; and Russell Sherman, piano. This might have been Schuller’s first commercial recording as conductor, and the first time Russell Sherman and Schuller recorded together.
Note: The origins of this recording and how it came about are sketchy at best, but indications point to a connection (according to Schuller) to Peter Bartok, Bela’s son, who ran a studio on 57th St (NYC) during those years and mastered recordings with the initials PB stamped in runouts (as is stamped on this particular Period LP).
As Performer
Early Recordings (1944)
The following three excerpts are believed to be the earliest recordings of Gunther's horn playing (at age 18) as a member of the Cincinnati Symphony (first horn). These chamber music arrangements are probably from a radio broadcast (May 23, 1944) during the annual May Festival in Cincinnati with members of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra including Walter Heermann (cello) and his brother, Emil Heermann (violin). The other members of the sextet might have included violinist Reuben Segal and pianist Laverne Gustafson. No guess as to the violist present on these recordings.
The excerpts were transferred from a fragile Presto glass base acetate with an unfortunate nagging crack for a minute and a half on each side (especially during the first portion of the Overture).
1) Excerpt of Felix Mendelssohn's Overture from A Midsummer Night's Dream.
2) Excerpt of Felix Mendelssohn's Nocturne from A Midsummer Night's Dream.
3) Excerpt of Percy Grainger's Handel on the Strand.
Young Gunther Warming Up (c. 1945)
On the B side of the 78 acetate disc that contains part 2 of the Nocturne for Horn and Orchestra are four rare examples of young Gunther warming up including an excerpt of the famous horn solo from Till Eulenspiegel.
Arnold Schoenberg – Quintet, Op. 26 (1924)
Recorded by The Metropolitan Wind Quintet (after many years and countless hours of rehearsing) on Feb 17 & April 6, 1951 at WOR Studios, this was the first recording of Schoenberg’s Quintet Op. 26 (composed in 1924) for Dial Records, an independent label owned by Ross Russell that primarily featured the current trends in jazz of the mid to late 40s (most of which were the first recordings of bebop legend Charlie Parker). Russell was also interested in what was largely, at the time, an undocumented void of contemporary classical repertoire. With Gunther’s advice and perhaps first-hand production assistance during some of those initial sessions, by 1950 Russell began to focus less on new jazz and more on the compositions of Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Cage, etc., while mainly working with leading practitioners of 12-tone music like Rudolph Kolisch and Eduard Steuermann, among others.
The members of the MWQ (sometimes referred to as the Manhattan Wind Quintet) included James Politis, flute; William Arrowsmith, oboe; Luigi Cancellieri, clarinet; Gunther Schuller, horn; and Stephen Maxym, bassoon. Live performance data is a bit sketchy, but Gunther wrote in his memoir that there were successful attempts to perform the Scherzo movement (only) in public as they worked out the other three movements in private. There’s some indication that home recordings might exist of rehearsals of the Schoenberg Quintet and other 19th and 20th century woodwind repertoire, yet the Dial session may have been the only studio recording of the MWQ’s entire existence.
Furthermore, a live complete performance of the Schoenberg Quintet was scheduled on June 5, 1951 with the MWQ for a concert sponsored by the ISCM (International Society of Contemporary Music, Columbia University, NYC). However, a note on the back of the program states that the performance was instead to be played by tape (from the Dial session yet to be released) due to the “indisposition” of one of the members of the quintet. (see program below)
