Converse, Frederick

Frederick Shepherd Converse

(b. Newton, MA, January 5, 1871 – d. Westwood, MA, June 8, 1940),

Night and Day

Two Poems for Pianoforte and Orchestra

Op. 11

For information on the piece

Frederick Shepherd Converse, the youngest of seven children, began studying piano at the age of 10. In 1889 he enrolled at Harvard University, where he studied composition with John Knowles Paine. He received his B.A. with highest honors in music in 1893. At his father’s request, he began a career in business, but quickly realized that life with an office job did not suit him. At this point, he began studying piano with Carl Baermann and composition with George Chadwick. In 1896 he traveled to Munich to study counterpoint, composition, and organ with Joseph Rheinberger at the Akademie der Tonkunst.

Upon his return to the States, he moved to a large country estate in Westwood, MA and launched a full-fledged career in music. He taught harmony at the New England Conservatory between 1900 and 1902, and then at Harvard from 1903-1907, during which he produced some of his first significant compositions. Between 1907 and 1914, he left academia and composed on a more freelance basis. During this time, he served as vice president of the Boston Opera Company, where several of his operas were performed. During World War I, he joined the Massachusetts State Guard and was on the National Committee on Army and Navy Camp Music. After the war, he headed the theory department at NEC and in 1931 became the dean of faculty. He retired in 1938 due to illness and died in 1940. Although he made a few forays into Impressionism, jazz, and other contemporary styles, the majority of his music was deeply rooted in the heavily chromatic late nineteenth century Romantic tradition. Night and Day, one of his early works, quintessentially reflects this style.

He began writing his first major piano concerto, Night and Day, Op. 11, in 1901, not long after his move to his Westwood estate, and completed it in 1904. He initially began writing it for a small string chamber ensemble with piano but then decided only a full orchestral accompaniment could express what he had in mind. Pianist Heinrich Gebhard premiered the work with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Wilhelm Gericke on January 20, 1905. This was followed by performances in New York, Philadelphia, Providence, and elsewhere. The Boston Music Company was the first to publish the work in 1906, including a dedication to Gebhard.

The piece is subtitled “Two Poems for Pianoforte and Orchestra,” the two poems being “Night” and “Day.” These can be heard as two tone poems, or as a sort of Prelude and Allegro form. Each movement has a “motto” from a Walt Whitman poem, the motto for “Night” being “This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,” from A Clear Midnight:

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