Remembering Leo Smit (1921-1999)

Composer, Arranger, Editor

Leo Smit began studying composition in 1935 with Nicolas Nabokov in New York City. His first original composition, written in 1935, was a song entitled Zvay. Smit's compositional output eventually included three symphonies, an opera and a chamber opera, two ballets, a piano concerto, more than ninety songs, and numerous chamber, choral, and piano works.

Leo Smit's early experience as rehearsal pianist for George Balanchine provided him knowledge of ballet that he put to use in the composition of the music for two ballets: Yerma (1946) and Virginia Sampler (1947, revised in 1960). Both works were choreographed by Valerie Bettis (1919-1982), who had formed her own dance company in 1944. Yerma was choreographed for Bettis' dance company, while Virginia Sampler was choreographed for the Ballets Russe de Monte Carlo. Full image of the title page of Yerma Full image of p. 1 of Yerma

In 1988 Leo Smit purchased an edition of the complete poems of Emily Dickinson from a bookstore in Old Sturbridge, Massachusetts. He had been familiar with some of the poems before, having performed Aaron Copland's Twelve poems of Emily Dickinson , but had never truly studied them. In Dickinson's poems he felt he had discovered "a soulmate who answered my emotional needs and stimulated my musical desires." The poems stirred Smit's compositional creativity to the extent that he began setting her poems to music within a month after purchasing the collection. In the next three years he composed six song cycles to almost eighty of her texts: Childe Emilie, The Celestial Thrush, The Marigold Heart, Beyond Circumference, Tinted Mountains, and The White Diadem. He collectively titled the cycles The Ecstatic Pilgrimage.

Full image of the title page of The Celestial Thrush Full image of p. 1 of I Was a Phoebe, the first song of the song cycle, The Celestial Thrush

Smit said of his compositional involvement with Dickinson's texts:

I believe I was composing the music without first hearing the tones, led on by the rhythms and the stirring sounds and meaning of Dickinson's poems. Her words created my song cycles, which, in turn, helped me understand her poems, her premonitions of immortality.

A collection of thirty-three of these songs was recorded in June of 1997 by Smit and soprano, Rosalind Rees, for Bridge Records (Bridge 9080).

In 1996 Smit added to his collection of Emily Dickinson songs with Three Immortality Songs, for baritone and guitar. It was composed in memory of mezzo-soprano Jan De Gaetani, who was renowned for her performances of contemporary music, and with whom Smit had made a recording of Cole Porter songs in 1977. Full image of the title page of Three Songs of Immortality Full image of p. 1 of That Such Have Died, Enable Us, the first song in Three Songs of Immortality

In addition to composing, Leo Smit also arranged and edited several works. Among the works that Smit arranged: Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue No. 5 in F Minor, arranged for small ensemble (1974), Robert Schumann's Romances for oboe and orchestra, op. 94, arranged for two flutes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, and strings (1977), three piano works by Edward MacDowell arranged for oboe and piano, Mozart's Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452, arranged for piano and saxophone quartet, and four movements from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, arranged for solo piano (1968).

Smit also arranged several songs by Cole Porter for small chamber ensembles. In 1977 mezzo-soprano Jan De Gaetani and Leo Smit recorded a selection of Cole Porter songs for Columbia Records (M34533), Classic Cole. The program notes were written by Smit. In them he analyzed several of the songs, making connections between Porter's use of compositional devices and those used by such composers as Bach, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky. He also made the argument that Porter should be regarded more seriously as a composer with statements such as the following:

Porter looked for and found melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic details of common origin in the verses and refrains, thus creating songs that were highly unified in style and form. A study of these relationships reveals Porter as a composer who was consciousl y aware of the serious problems of musical craft and who, through an inspired gift, was able to conceal the many beautiful solutions from unsuspecting ears while easily charming them.

Full image of the title page of Leo Smit's arrangement of Cole Porter songs

As an editor of other composer's works, Smit was responsible for creating the two-piano reductions of Leonard Bernstein's Age of Anxiety (1950), Dmitri Kabalevsky's Piano Concerto no. 2 (1946), and Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto no. 2 (1948). He also edited publications of piano music by Aaron Copland (1981) and Dmitri Kabalevsky (1957 and 1958), as well as Irving Fine's Two Songs from Doña Rosita (1998).

April 2000 Music Library Staff musique@acsu.buffalo.edu http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/music/exhibits/smit/composer.html