Yale Faculty and Yale Symphony Orchestra
After a year at Yale’s graduate school, Mr. Mauceri was appointed music director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra. He remained on the faculty for fifteen years, building the orchestra to international recognition and achieving an unprecedented popularity for its symphony concerts. At Yale Mr. Mauceri taught orchestration, conducting, gave guest lectures in the German and Italian Departments and, with the Yale Symphony, developed the concept of thematic programming built on his studies of information theory, linguistics, and psychoacoustics. He conducted a number of significant premieres including the first American performances of Debussy’s Khamma and musiques pour le roi Lear, the world premiere of the original large orchestra version of Charles Ives’ Three Places in New England as well as the new critical edition of his Second Orchestral Set,the American premiere of Stockhausen’s Hymnen (which he also produced on Yale’sCross Campus), the American premiere of Paul Hindemith’s orchestrated Marienleben Song Cycle, as well as the American premiere of the score to the silent film of Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier (performed with the film and in the presence of legendary soprano, Maria Jeritza). He brought rare performances of Hindemith’s Sinfonia Serena and Symphony “die Harmonie der Welt” with the Yale Philharmonia to Carnegie Hall,and led performances of Stravinsky’s Agon, Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, John Cage’s Atlas Eclipticalis, Debussy’s Jeux, and Messaien’s Reveil des oiseux for the Yale community.
His restoration of Scriabin’s Prométhée, ou le poème du feu, observing the composer’s “keyboard of light,” by making use of the newly developed laser technology, was a sensation, and required the concert to be performed three times, to a total audience of 7,500 people. (The Yale community was estimated at 10,000 at that time.) In his seven years as Music Director of the Yale Symphony, Mr. Mauceri played to a consistently sold-out Woolsey Hall, which has 2,500 seats.
In 1971 the Yale Symphony toured France and brought with it Debussy’s Khamma (its French premiere), along with Ives’ Symphony No. 4. His piano soloist in the Ives was his good friend and colleague, John Kirkpatrick, the world expert on the music of Ives and curator of Yale’s Ives Collection. In 1973 Mr. Mauceri produced and conducted Leonard Bernstein’s Mass in New Haven with the composer in attendance and, as a result,subsequently in Vienna for its European premiere. Mauceri’s Vienna production was telecast throughout Europe and America by PBS, in conjunction with the BBC and the ORTF. In 1978 he developed a plan for the creation of a department of Music Theater at New York University’s School of the Arts (at the behest of Richard Rodgers) that has become one of the finest courses of study in America. Mr. Mauceri left the faculty of Yale in 1982 as Associate Professor, and in 1985 was awarded Yale’s first Arts Alumni Award for Outstanding Achievement. He returned for one semester in the spring of 2001 to teach a course on the effects of World War II on contemporary esthetics and conduct both Yale orchestras for the tercentennial of the university.
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