Eugene Ormandy, Leopold Stokowski, Fritz Reiner, Arthur Fiedler - The Music of Lucien Cailliet (1936-46) [2015]

Ormandy, Stokowski, Reiner & Fiedler conduct Cailliet

Arrangements and original music by Lucien Cailliet, French-American composer, conductor, arranger and clarinetist


Transcriber, arranger and composer Lucien Cailliet was born in Dijon in 1891. He studied composition and orchestration in Dijon and Paris. During World War I, he was a bandmaster in the French Army Band, with which he toured the United States in 1915. Four years later, Leopold Stokowski hired him as a clarinetist for the Philadelphia Orchestra. Not long after his arrival, an orchestration of the Marseillaise was needed for a guest singer, and Cailliet volunteered to provide one. Pleased with the results, Stokowski continued to work with him over the next several years in his transcriptions of the works of Bach and others.

Cailliet’s exact role in the orchestrations credited to Stokowski has long been a matter of controversy. Writing to Stokowski biographer Oliver Daniel in 1978, Cailliet said that the Marseillaise project “started me in doing all his orchestrations.”



In fact, the next one he asked me [to do] was the [Bach] C Minor Passacaglia. Of course, we had some discussions before as, after all, he was an organist and a famous musician. [. . .] I must confide in you that as the situation developed, Stokowski asked me from the beginning not to mention or speak about it and keep the situation “entre nous” and adding: “The people would not understand.” That is how the name of Stokowski appeared on the programs as orchestrator.


Earlier, however, in an interview with broadcaster Steve Cohen, Cailliet credited Stokowski with a greater role in the Passacaglia transcription: “It was his idea completely, and of course he was himself a very good orchestrator. He made a very good choice of instruments.”

Based on the experiences of others who worked with Stokowski in producing transcriptions, it is believed that the conductor indicated his choices for instrumentation on the score for the transcriber to carry out. Stokowski would then edit and make further alterations to the score. Still, the collaborations with Stokowski provided Cailliet with valuable training.

Cailliet was not credited for his transcriptions, at least on record, until Eugene Ormandy’s arrival in Philadelphia as co-conductor in 1936. (Indeed, the Bach Prelude and Fugue in F minor which opens our program was Ormandy’s very first recording with the Philadelphians.) Stokowski did record one transcription specifically credited to Cailliet (Turina’s Sacro-Monte), but it was never issued on 78s.

In 1937, Cailliet left the orchestra to teach at the University of Southern California. Before his departure, Ormandy commissioned him to make his most significant transcription yet, that of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Working in the shadow of Ravel’s already famous version must have been daunting, but Cailliet, writing for the ensemble he knew so intimately, acquitted himself well with his imaginative instrumentation. He also reinstated the Promenade before “Limoges”, cut by Ravel. This remains the only recording of Cailliet’s version, except for the “Ballet of the Chicks” movement, which Leonard Slatkin included in his composite edition using different orchestrations of the work.

In the mid-1940s, Cailliet left teaching to work as an (often uncredited) orchestrator for Hollywood films, including such classics as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Red River and The Ten Commandments. He died in Los Angeles in 1985.

Mark Obert-Thorn



Tracks:

MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition
PURCELL Suite from Dido and Aeneas
CAILLIET Variations on “Pop! Goes the Weasel”
Works by J. S. Bach and Turina

Personnel:

Eugene Ormandy ∙ Leopold Stokowski
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Fritz Reiner ∙ Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Arthur Fiedler ∙ Boston “Pops” Orchestra