Four Centuries of Great Music January 11, 2026 Birthdays of Some American Composers Born in January

FCGM-01-11-26 

Aaron Jay KERNIS                01/15/1960
John Knowles PAINE            01/09/1839-04/25/1906    
Charles Martin LOEFFLER        01/30/1861-05/19/1935 

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music are three more celebrations of January composer birthdays and birthday anniversaries with in this case American composers including a contemporary composer, the founder of the American New England school of composers from the 19th century and an often forgotten but excellent composer from in-between those two others.

Lets start with the contemporary composer Aaron Jay Kernis.  Aaron Jay Kernis was born on January 15, 1960 in Philadelphia.  He began his musical career by playing the violin and piano. His composition career began at age 13, and he was awarded three BMI Foundation Student Composers Awards throughout his time as a student. He studied composition with John Adams at the San Francisco Conservatory; Charles Wuorinen at the Manhattan School of Music; and Morton Subotnick, Bernard Rands, and Jacob Druckman at Yale University. His wide range of teachers and time spent on both the east and west coasts helps to define his eclectic musical style that blends minimalism with post-Romanticism.

Aaron Kernis found immediate success as a composer when his work Dream of the Morning Sky was premiered in 1983 by the New York Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta conducting. He was only 23 years old at the time, but won unanimous praise for an incident that took place. In an open rehearsal, in front of an audience, Zubin Mehta stopped the orchestra to complain loudly about the vagueness of the score. Rather than being cowed by the strong-willed conductor, Aaron Jay Kernis simply replied, "Just read what's there." The audience applauded young Kernis for sticking up for his work, and within weeks the story received national attention.

In 1998, he won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Music, which recognized his String Quartet No. 2. Then, in 2002, he won the prestigious University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his work Colored Field.  And in 2019 his Violin Concerto won two Grammy Awards for best contemporary classical composition and best classical instrumental solo.  And it is that Violin Concerto that we are opening today’s program with.


Aaron Jay Kernis: Concerto for Violin -  I. Chaconne
Aaron Jay Kernis: Concerto for Violin -  II. Ballad
Concerto for Violin -  III. Toccatini
James Ehnes, Ludovic Morlot & Seattle Symphony
James Newton Howard, Aaron Jay Kernis: Violin Concertos – Bramwell Tovey: 'Stream of Limelight’
Onyx Records 


We close this first hour of todays Four Centuries of Great Music featuring the music of three American composers who have birthdays and birthday anniversaries in January with Charles Martin Loeffler.

Charles Martin Loeffler was born on January 30, 1861 in in Schöneberg near Berlin.  His family moved a lot while he was a young child.  

Loeffler decided to become a violinist and studied in Berlin and later composition with Ernest Guiraud) in Paris. In 1881, he emigrated to the United States becoming a citizen in 1887.  He joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra and served as the assistant concertmaster from 1882 to 1903.

He first appeared as a violinist-composer with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1891 with the performance of his suite Les Vieilles d'Ukraine, and his works were performed regularly by the Boston Symphony (and by other American orchestras) for the rest of his life. He eventually resigned from the Boston Symphony Orchestra to devote his time to composition.  His friends included Eugène Ysaÿe, Gabriel Fauré and Ferruccio Busoni and later George Gershwin.  In his later years he also, unexpectedly, became deeply interested in jazz, and wrote some works for jazz band.

His compositions range from orchestral works to art songs to chamber music.  Today I will be playing his two rhapsodies for trio of oboe, viola and piano

Charles Martin Loeffler:  Two Rhapsodies: I. L'Étang
Charles Martin Loeffler:  Two Rhapsodies: II. La Cornemuse
Han De Vries, Henk Guittart & Ivo Janssen
Trios For Oboe, Viola & Piano
Chandos Records

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music are three more celebrations of January composer birthdays and birthday anniversaries with in this case American composers.  This second hour of we are focusing on the music of John Knowles Paine.  Paine was the first American-born composer to achieve fame for large-scale orchestral music. The senior member of a group of composers collectively known as the Boston Six which established what many call the New England school of music.  The Boston Six's other five members were Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, Edward MacDowell, George Chadwick, and Horatio Parker.  Paine was one of those responsible for the first significant body of concert music by composers from the United States.  Paine was born on January 9, 1839 in Portland, Maine and grew up in a musical family including organ builders, organists and composers.  He studied organ performance and composition in both the United States and Europe.  In 1861, he was appointed Harvard's first University organist and choirmaster. While acting in this role, Paine offered free courses in music appreciation and music theory that became the core curriculum for Harvard's newly-formed academic music department (the first such department in the United States), and he was appointed as America's first music professor. He remained a member of the faculty of Harvard until 1905, just a year before his death.  He was an early director of the New England Conservatory of Music.  His work at Harvard and the New England Conservatory of Music established the foundations of what is university music education today.

He  is ostensibly known for his orchestral, choral and organ music.

At the end of the episode "A Long Ladder" in the first season of the HBO television series The Gilded Age, in a scene set in New York in 1882, the Boston Symphony Orchestra is shown under the composer's direction performing Paine's Symphony No. 2. The middle two movements are seen and heard in the episode: the Scherzo and the Adagio.  And it is Paine's Symphony No. 2 that I will be playing for you today.

John Knowles Paine: Symphony No. 2 in A Major, Op. 34 (In the Spring): I. Adagio sostenuto (Departure of Winter) - Allegro ma non troppo (Awakening of Nature)
John Knowles Paine: Symphony No. 2 in A Major, Op. 34 (In the Spring): II. Scherzo. Allegro  (May-Night Fantasy)
John Knowles Paine: Symphony No. 2 in A Major, Op. 34 (In the Spring): III. Adagio (A Romance of Springtime)
John Knowles Paine: Symphony No. 2 in A Major, Op. 34 (In the Spring): IV. Allegro giojoso (The Glory of Nature)

Ulster Orchestra & JoAnn Falletta
Paine: Orchestral Works, Vol. 2
Naxos


And here is a taste of that episode with Edward MacDowell Suite for Large Orchestra the second movement Summer Idyll
Eastman-Rochester Orchestra conducted by Howard Hanson
Chadwick: Symphonic Sketches - MacDowell: Suite for Large Orchestra; Sinfonia in G
Mercury Records