It is a piece of music by one of the greatest American composers, Charles Martin Loeffler, that has been lost to history. But one musician has spent the last 4 years bringing her back to life in the same position where she was once hidden in Washington.
Clarinetist Graeme Steele Johnson was able to revive the score with the help of documents from the Library of Congress; on Wednesday night he plays the music at the Washington institution.
“I call it new early music. It’s a piece written by Charles Martin Loeffler in 1897, who at that time was the most performed American composer in this country and in Europe,” Johnson told WTOP.
Johnson had to stop performing during the 2020 pandemic and instead wrote program notes for other performances and conducted research.
He came across the mention of an octet that interested him because it contained two clarinetists and because the instrumentation was almost the same as a Claude Debussy piece, “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune”, which he had had in the past . organized.
“I started looking for a recording, I couldn’t locate anything, I looked for sheet music, I couldn’t locate anything. And that’s when I started thinking maybe I’d found something,” Johnson said of the 30-minute song. .
Johnson said this was not an unusual phenomenon for the German-American composer, who describes himself as French, because “he was incredibly susceptible to critical reception. “
“He really ended up refusing to release most of his music, despite his great notoriety during his lifetime,” Johnson continued.
It’s the only manuscript of this specific octet at the Library of Congress, but it had to wait for copies until the facility reopened in 2021.
“It turned out to be a 75-page tome,” Johnson said of the manuscript. He spent the next year fixing it.
“The score is a patchwork with scratches, deletions and all sorts of Loeffler revisions that confuse the recovery process,” Johnson said.
Eventually, he and seven others did so privately for the first time since 1897.
“It was an absolutely bizarre experience to come into this practice session and have no idea how the play would play out,” Johnson recalls.
He is expected to perform the song Wednesday night at the Library of Congress, returning the music to the same place where it has been secretly hidden for more than a century.
“It’s exciting to hear how other people react to this music,” Johnson said. “It was something outside of the history of music and our sense of the musical canon. “
Johnson believes this may be just the first step toward the resurgence of long-forgotten music.
“There’s a misconception that we wholeheartedly adhere to in the classical music world: that time is a filter of quality,” he said.
The octet’s first recording will be released via Johnson on June 7, on the album “Forgotten Sounds. “
Since joining WTOP, Luke Lukert has held virtually every editorial position, from manufacturer to internet editor, and now works as a full-time reporter. He is an avid UGA football fan. Come on folks!