Today we note the American premiere of just one of dozens of symphonic masterworks introduced to these shores by German-born conductor Theodore Thomas, arguably the most important figure in the development of American symphony orchestras in the 19th century.

In 1864, Thomas began a series of summer concerts, first in New York City, and later in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Chicago. It was in New York City, on today’s date in 1867, that Thomas gave a concert at Terrace Gardens, a brand-new entertainment complex that included a five-story hotel, a concert hall, ballroom, banquet rooms, and big, beautifully-planted outdoor gardens, all located on East 58th Street, between Lexington and Third Avenue. In 1867, this address was still relatively green and quiet, perfect for an open-air garden concert, so under a blue July 4 sky the Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss, Jr., was performed for the first time in America — and less than five months after its world premiere performance in Vienna!

The price for a ticket to the Terrace Garden concert was 25 cents — and alongside the new music by Johann Strauss Jr., audiences would have heard pieces by Weber, Gounod, Suppe, Offenbach and Verdi among others.

Music Played in Today's Program

Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899): By the Beautiful Blue Danube; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 46710

The piano became the dominant keyboard instrument in Mozart’s lifetime in the late 18th century. Before that, the harpsichord had ruled. But for more than a hundred years after Mozart’s day, the harpsichord seemed as dead as the dodo, and even the great harpsichord works of Bach and other early 18th century masters were always played on the piano — that is, until Wanda Landowska came on the scene.

This indomitable woman was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1879, and single-handedly brought the harpsichord back to life. It was on today’s date in 1927 that she inaugurated a historic series of harpsichord concerts at her summer home near Paris — and, two years later, in 1929, Landowska premiered the Concert Champêtre, by Francis Poulenc, a brand new harpsichord concerto written specially for her.

Very much in the spirit of Landowska, the contemporary composer and performer Barbara Harbach is in the vanguard of today’s advocates for the harpsichord.

A passionate advocate for new music, she has recorded several compact discs of 20th Century Harpsichord Music for the Gasparo label, featuring works by American composers from Samuel Adler to Ellen Taafe Zwillich.

Music Played in Today's Program

J. S. Bach (1685-1750): Little Prelude; Wanda Landowska, harpsichord; Pearl 9489

Barbara Harbach (b. 1946): Cante Flamenco, from Tres Danzas para Clavecin; Barbara Harbach, harpsichord; Gasparo 290

On this date in 1723, churchgoers in Leipzig were offered some festive music along with the gospel readings and sermon. The vocal and instrumental music was pulled together from various sources, some old, some newly-composed, and crafted into a fresh, unified work, the church cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben — which in English would be “heart and voice and thought and action.” The idea was that text and music would complement and comment on that day’s scripture readings and sermon.

Now this sort of thing was not all that uncommon back then for the hard-working composer Johann Sebastian Bach. On average Bach would prepare and present around 50 church cantatas a year, and his cantata No. 147, presented on July 2, 1723, concluded with a catchy melody that would be revived to great effect 200 years later.

In 1926, the concluding choral section of Bach’s cantata, Jesus Bleibet Meine Freude in the original German, was arranged by the British pianist Dame Myra Hess and given an English title, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. It became a popular piano recital selection, and, over time, a very popular piece to play at weddings — even though Bach’s original cantata text had nothing at all to do with tying the knot.

Music Played in Today's Program

J.S. Bach (1627-1750): Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring; Celia Nicklin, oboe; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; Neville Marriner, conductor; Warner 975562

One way composers help make ends meet is to accept commissions for occasional pieces — works written for some special occasion, a private or public celebration or anniversary of some event, large or small. Sometimes these works go on to have a life of their own apart from the special occasion that prompted their creation, so that subsequent audiences might not even be aware of the original event at all.

In 1959, English composer Benjamin Britten accepted a commission from Swiss conductor Paul Sacher for a cantata to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the University of Basel in Switzerland. The texts selected for the cantata were all in Latin, the old academic language of universities 500 years ago, and included excerpts from the founding charter of the institution as well as medieval odes in praise of the university written by its students and faculty.

Britten’s score, which premiered at the University of Basel on today’s date in 1960, was quite literally, an academic exercise — and it’s amusing to note that apparently he wrote out the text for the work in the pages of one of his old school exercise books.

Music Played in Today's Program

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): Cantata Academica (Carmen Basiliense); Jennifere Vyvyan, soprano; Helen Watts, mezzo-soprano; Peter Pears, tenor; Owen Brannigan, bass; London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra; George Malcolm, conductor; Decca 4251532

Under the old Julian calendar in use in Czarist Russia, on today’s date in 1861, Romantic composer Anton Arensky was born in Novgorod. If you prefer, you can also celebrate Arensky’s birthday on July 12 — the same date under the modern Gregorian calendar, but Arensky was such a Romantic that the Old Style date seems, well, more appropriate somehow.

Arensky studied with Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov, and admired the music of Tchaikovsky. Arensky taught at the Moscow Conservatory and published two books: Manual of Harmony and A Handbook of Musical Forms. His own students included a number of famous Russian composers, including Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Glière.

Arensky wrote three operas, two symphonies, concertos, chamber works and suites for two pianos — but it’s his Piano Trio in D minor that gets performed and recorded more often than any of his other works.

A victim of tuberculosis, Arensky spent the last years of his life in a Finnish sanatorium. He died young — at just 44 — in 1906.

Music Played in Today's Program

Anton Arensky (1861-1906): Piano Trio No. 1; Rembrandt Trio; Dorian 90146

The reign of the Roman emperor Nero, notorious for his horrific deeds, was chronicled by the historian Tacitus. His account of the rise of the courtesan Poppea from Nero’s mistress to his empress, provides the plot of one of the operas written by the 17th century Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi.

Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea was first performed in Venice at the Teatro Sanctae Giovanni e Paolo in the autumn of 1643.

The first performance of Monteverdi’s Poppea in modern times had to wait until 1913, when the French composer Vincent d’Indy presented his arrangement of Poppea in Paris. In America and Britain, Poppea was first staged in 1927, at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and at Oxford University in England. It wasn’t until today’s date in 1962 that a full professional staging of Poppea occurred at the Glyndebourne Festival in England, in a version prepared and conducted by Raymond Leppard.

Monteverdi did not prescribe specific vocal ranges for the characters, and since there was no standardized orchestra in the 17th century, it was customary back then to simply give a list of some suggested instruments and leave it to the performers to decide who played what and when. Therefore, any modern performance of a Monteverdi opera is always somebody’s “version” of the surviving notes, based on educated guesswork and the available performers.

Music Played in Today's Program

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643): L’Incoronazione di Poppea; soloists; Vienna Concentus Music Vienna; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor; Teldec 42547

A decidedly un-politically correct opera had its premiere at London’s Covent Garden on today’s date in 1905: L’Oracolo or The Oracle by the Italian composer Franco Leoni. Here’s a witty one-sentence précis of the opera prepared by Nicolas Slonimsky for his chronology Music Since 1900:

“L’Oracolo, an opera in one long act, dealing with multiplex villainy in San Francisco’s Chinatown, wherein a wily opium-den keeper kidnaps the child of the uncle of a girl he covets, kills her young lover, and is in the end strangled by the latter’s father, with a local astrologer delivering remarkably accurate oracles; an Italianate score tinkling with tiny bells, booming with deep gongs, and bubbling with orientalistic pentatonicisms.”

Another wag described L’Oracolo as “Puccini-and-water,” suggesting that if Puccini were whisky, Leoni music was definitely a less potent brew.

But when a touring Italian opera company announced a performance of L’Oracolo in San Francisco in 1937, the city’s Asian residents protested, demanding they cut the most racially offensive scenes or, better yet, stage a different opera altogether. A compromise was reached, whereby the House manager preceded the performance with a speech assuring the capacity audience that the opera’s locale and action were pure fiction, and bore no resemblance to San Francisco’s Chinatown past or present.

Music Played in Today's Program

Franco Leoni (1864-1937): L’Oracolo; Tito Gobbi, baritone; National Philharmonic; Richard Bonynge, conductor; London OSA-12107; LP

According to Emerson, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Well, we’re not sure if composer Arnold Schoenberg ever read Emerson, but we think the 20th-century Austrian composer must have shared this principle with the 19th-century American essayist. Just when many people had Schoenberg comfortably pigeon-holed as an atonal composer, he went and wrote a big tonal piece, resolutely set in the key of G minor.

In the 1940’s, Schoenberg’s publisher asked him to write a piece for high school or amateur wind band. The work Schoenberg finished during the summer of 1943 was entitled “Theme and Variations,” and was described by its composer — with his customary modesty — as “one of those compositions which one writes in order to enjoy one’s own virtuosity and… to give a certain group of music lovers something better to play.”

Schoenberg’s music proved a little too difficult for high school bands, however, so its first performance was given on today’s date in 1946 by the Goldman Band, America’s top wind ensemble of that day, at a Central Park concert in New York City conducted by Richard Franko Goldman, an enthusiastic supporter of new works for band.

Music Played in Today's Program

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951): Theme and Variations; Peabody Conservatory Wind Ensemble; Harlan D. Parker, conductor; Naxos 8.570403

In the summer of 1912, the Vienna Philharmonic presented a week-long Music Festival that offered three “Ninths” — Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 conducted by Felix Weingartner, Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 conducted by Artur Nikisch, and, on today’s date, the world premiere of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 9, conducted by Bruno Walter.

Mahler had died the previous year, and the Viennese public greeted the posthumous premiere of his last complete work with a roar of applause — and decidedly mixed reviews. The work’s elegiac opening won over most of the professional critics, but many were frankly puzzled by some of the symphony’s raucous middle movements.

Bruno Walter, the Mahler protégé who conducted the premiere, was singled out for praise, however. Walter made two famous recordings of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9: The first made live during a January 16, 1938, concert of the Vienna Philharmonic. On January 16, 1961 — exactly 23 years to the day after that 1938 recording — Walter began making a stereo recording of Mahler’s Ninth at the American Legion Hall in Hollywood, with the Columbia Symphony.

Walter was 84 in 1961, and despite repeated pleas from the control room, couldn’t stop himself from vigorously stamping his foot 17 seconds into the second movement, Laendler — a thump not written in Mahler’s score, but now part of Walter’s classic second recording.

Music Played in Today's Program

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Symphony No. 9; Columbia Symphony; Bruno Walter, conductor; Sony 64452

In the middle of the 15th century, a German printer by the name of Johann Gutenberg invented a method of printing from moveable type cast in metal. His invention revolutionized the way books were printed, and the widespread dissemination of Gutenberg Bibles made him famous in Europe.

In the summer of 1840, the city of Leipzig planned to unveil a new statue of Gutenberg, and commissioned composer Felix Mendelssohn for two new works. The first, for two choirs, would accompany the unveiling of the statue of Gutenberg, and would take place in the city’s open marketplace after the morning church service on June 24. The following day, June 25th, there would be a gala concert in Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church featuring the church choir and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra performing a new symphony by Mendelssohn.

Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 2, Lobgesang, or Hymn of Praise, is modeled on Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, opening with purely instrumental movements, and concluding with a finale for vocal soloists and chorus. Mendelssohn’s text was taken from Martin Luther’s German-language translation of the Bible. Since the premiere was intended for St. Thomas Church, where the master of counterpoint Johann Sebastian Bach had once been Kantor, Mendelssohn chose to end his symphony with a big fugue.

Music Played in Today's Program

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Symphony No. 2 (Hymn of Praise); Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Chorus; Edo de Waart, conductor; Fidelio 9202

Today’s date marks the shared birthday of two of America’s most famous “maverick” composers, both hailing from California.

June 24, 1901, is the birth date of Harry Partch, an Oakland native. Partch devoted his life to developing an alternate system of tuning. Instead of the conventional Western system of equal temperament, in his harmonic world, microtones were welcomed.

To play his expanded scales, he designed and built new instruments with colorful names like “marimba eroica” and “cloud chamber bowls.” For Partch, music was a synthesis of theory and theater, ritual and dance — intensely physical in nature and best experienced live. Harry Partch died in San Diego in 1974.

Another Californian, born on this date in 1935, is Colfax native Terry Riley.

It was in San Francisco in 1964 that Riley’s most famous piece, In C, received its premiere. The score consists of 53 phrases, or modules, with each player freely repeating each phrase as many times as desired before proceeding to the next. The result is an unpredictable, unique music work of canonic textures and polyrhythms, capable of being performed by any group of instruments ranging from a marimba ensemble to a full symphony orchestra, and now regarded as one of the seminal works of the minimalist movement in music.

Music Played in Today's Program

Harry Partch (1901-1974): Delusion of the Fury; Ensemble of Unique Instruments; Danlee Mitchell, conductor; innova 406

Terry Riley (b. 1935): In C; SUNY at Buffalo Ensemble; Terry Riley, conductor; CBS 7178

Today we remember Russian composer Reinhold Glière, who died in Moscow on today’s date in 1956. These days Glière is probably best known for the popular Russian Sailor’s Dance from his ballet The Red Poppy.

Glière was born in Kiev in 1875, and studied at the Moscow Conservatory, where he later became professor of composition. That was after the Russian Revolution, and Glière could count among his students Sergei Prokofiev and Nikolai Miaskovsky. With the success of works like The Red Poppy, Glière is often cited as the founder of Soviet ballet.

Glière also wrote several symphonies, all intensely Russian in color and character. The most famous of these is his Symphony No. 3, subtitled Ilya Murometz after a legendary Russian folk hero.

Glière was also intrigued by the folk music of the far eastern republics of the then USSR, incorporating folk themes from the Soviet Union’s Trans-Caucus and Central Asian peoples into some of his orchestral scores.

He was a prolific composer, but apart from a handful of popular works, most of Glière's operas, ballets and orchestral works remain largely unfamiliar to most music lovers in the West.

Music Played in Today's Program

Reinhold Glière (1875-1956): Russian Sailors’ Dance, from The Red Poppy; Philadelphia Orchestra; Eugene Ormandy, conductor; BMG 63313

Reinhold Glière (1875-1956): Symphony No. 3; Ilya Murometz; London Symphony; Leon Botstein, conductor; Telarc 80609

For eight summers starting in 1868, German-born American conductor Theodore Thomas led concerts at New York City’s Central Park. As usual with Thomas’ programs, there was a calculated mix of old and new music, and more than a few premieres.

On today’s date in 1871, for example, Thomas conducted the first American performance of Kaiser March, a brand-new work by German opera composer Richard Wagner completed earlier that year to honor Wilhelm of Prussia who had just become Emperor of a united German Reich. It went over very well back in Germany, and, considering that: a) everybody likes a good march, especially at summertime pops concerts and, b) a sizeable percentage of New York’s musicians in Thomas’ day were either German-born or German-trained, we can assume Wagner’s Kaiser March was well-received at its American debut.

Five years later, in 1876, Thomas would conduct the premiere of another celebratory march by Wagner, this one commissioned for the 100th anniversary of the American Revolution. Wagner was paid $5000, an enormous sum of money in those days, to compose an American Centennial March for national festivities in Philadelphia.

Both of these marches are seldom performed today, and are regarded as pretty thin stuff, musically speaking. Wagner quipped that the best thing about his American Centennial March was the fee he received for writing it.

Music Played in Today's Program

Richard Wagner (1813-1883): American Centennial and Imperial Marches; Hong Kong Philharmonic; Varujan Kojian, conductor; Naxos 8.555386

There are dozens of famous cello concertos that get performed in concert halls these days, ranging from 18th century works by Italian Baroque master Antonio Vivaldi to dramatic 20th century works of Russian modernist Dmitri Shostakovich.

In 2007, American composer Sean Hickey was commissioned by Russian cellist Dmitry Kouzov to write a new concerto, which received its premiere performance on today’s date two years later, in 2009.

“In this work, I wanted to fuse my interest in neo-classical clarity and design with the songful, heroic nature of the greatest cello concerto literature,” Hickey recalled. “My Cello Concerto had its Russian premiere at the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, a neo-Baroque edifice on the banks of the Fontanka River in Saint Petersburg … [It] was then recorded in the legendary Melodiya Studios on Vasilevsky Island in St. Petersburg, known from Soviet times as producing recordings from the likes of Shostakovich, Rostropovich, Mravinsky and many others.

“One moment of personal satisfaction came when the Russian orchestra, after rehearsing the piece for days, picked up on a buried quotation from Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, his Leningrad Symphony in the final pages of my piece. It’s easy to forget in the glittering and watery metropolis, which rivals any European city for beauty and culture, that St. Petersburg is a city full of ghosts.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Sean Hickey (b. 1970): Cello Concerto; Dmitry Kouzov, cello; St. Petersburg State Symphony; Vladimir Lande, conductor; Delos 3448

It’s a mark success when a new musical work is recorded shortly after its premiere, and even more when the recording session is the premiere. But that was the case with many works written by American composer Leroy Anderson, whose short and tuneful compositions from the 1940s, 50s and 60s proved enormously popular during his lifetime.

On June 20, 1962, Anderson was at New York’s Manhattan Center, conducting for Decca Records the premiere of his Clarinet Candy. By recording in the summer months, when many of New York’s best symphonic players were available for studio work, he was able to round up top-notch musicians for his recording sessions.

Contemporary Argentinean-born composer Osvaldo Golijov has also proved popular enough to have many of his new works recorded either at their premieres or shortly thereafter. This Klezmer-style clarinet piece, Rocketekya, was written for the 20th anniversary of New York’s Merkin Hall. Golijov explained, “I thought it would be interesting to write a different sort of celebratory piece, and I had an idea of a shofar blasting inside a rocket — an ancient sound propelled toward the future.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Leroy Anderson (1908-1975): Clarinet Candy; Decca Studio Orchestra; Leroy Anderson, conductorMCA 9815

Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960): Rocketekya; David Krakauer, clarinet; Alicia Svigals, violin; Martha Mooke, electric viola; Pablo Aslan, contrabass; Naxos 8.559403z

On today’s date in 1869, a visitor to Boston’s Back Bay could have marveled at a huge, specially-constructed wooden structure sporting American flags and surrounded by a mini-village of peanut vendors and lemonade stands.

Inside, an orchestra of 1000 sat surrounded by a chorus of 10,000. Over the stage hung giant portraits of Handel and Beethoven, and higher yet depictions of two angels gazing heavenwards by a banner reading “Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.”

This June 19 concert marked the end of a five-day Jubilee Festival of Music and Reconciliation, as America tried to mend the wounds caused by its recent Civil War. Former Union General and current President Ulysses S. Grant was on hand, and the New York Times opined that the Festival offered proof that, “our people can think of something beyond … the almighty dollar.”

During the Festival, the massive orchestra and chorus performed selections ranging from classical works by Bach and Mozart to more recent works by Meyerbeer and Verdi.

A review by John S. Dwight, Boston’s leading music critic of that day, found the immense chorus “glorious and inspiring” and the huge orchestra “splendid.” However, he dismissed a performance of Verdi’s Anvil Chorus, accompanied by 100 real anvils, as a “childish, trivial thing for such a grand occasion.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864): Coronation March, from Le Prophète; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 46709

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901): Anvil Chorus, from Il Trovatore; Chicago Symphony and Chorus; Georg Solti, conductor; London 466 075

Drop the name “Pleyel” among classical music aficionados and one might say, “Oh, yeah, Pleyel. He was a French piano maker. I think Chopin liked Pleyel pianos.” Another might add, “He was a composer, too, but … I don’t think he was really French…” Another might add, “Didn’t he have something to do with Haydn?”

Well, they’re all right. Ignace Joseph Pleyel was born near Vienna on today’s date in 1757. As a teenager, he became a pupil of Haydn, and in 1791, ended up in London, where, for a time, his orchestral concerts competed with Haydn’s. The two remained friends, however, dined together and attended each other’s concerts.

In 1795, Pleyel set up shop in Paris, where he founded a publishing house and piano factory. His own compositions remained enormously popular. In 1805, he travelled to Vienna, visited the aging Haydn and heard that young upstart Beethoven improvising at the piano.

In 1822, the whaling port of Nantucket, Massachusetts, formed a Pleyel Society ‘to chasten the taste of listeners,’ in the words of a local newspaper. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music, “The most telling evidence of the appeal of Pleyel’s music lies in the thousands of manuscript copies that filled the shelves of archives, libraries, … and private homes, and in the thousands of editions of his music produced in Europe and North America.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831): Symphony in G; London Mozart Players; Matthias Bamert, conductor; Chandos 9525

Back in 1714, today’s date fell on a Sunday, and, if you had happened to be attending a church service at the German Court of the Duke of Weimar, you might have heard some new music by the Duke’s court composer and organist, Johann Sebastian Bach.

It’s possible that Bach’s Cantata No. 21 received its first performance that day: its first part before the sermon, its second part right afterwards. The opening text, which Bach sets as a fugue, begins “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis” or, in English, “I had much affliction.”

Now even in Bach’s day, composers were afflicted with critics. In 1725, a famous composer — and critic — Johann Mattheson took Bach to task for the way in which he had set his text by quoting exactly what is being sung:

"I, I, I, I had much affliction, I had much affliction, in my heart, in my heart. I had much affliction, in my heart…” etc… Mattheson’s point, apparently, was that vocal music should not stutter, but flow gracefully in the “gallant” style that was becoming more fashionable and trendy back then.

Even so, Mattheson knew that Bach was the real deal, and earlier had praised Bach in print for church and keyboard music so well written that (quote), “we must certainly rate this man highly.”

Music Played in Today's Program

J.S. Bach (1685-1750): Cantata No. 21: Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis; The Monteverdi Choir; The English Baroque Soloists; Sir John Eliot Gardiner, conductor; Soli Deo Gloria 165

American composer Henry Brant is famous for his avant-garde “spatial” music — works that require groups of musicians stationed at various points around a performance space. But hard-core film music buffs might also know Brant as a master orchestrator of other composers’ scores for Hollywood productions in the 1960s.

On today’s date in 1995, Brant conducted the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa, Canada, in the premiere of one of his orchestrations — in this case, a symphonic version of the Concord Piano Sonata by Charles Ives, first published in 1920. In the long preface to his Sonata, Ives wrote:

“The [Sonata] is an attempt to present [an] impression of the spirit of transcendentalism … associated in the minds of many with Concord, Massachusetts … impressionistic pictures of Emerson and Thoreau, a sketch of the Alcotts, and a scherzo supposed to reflect a lighter quality … found in the fantastic side of Hawthorne.”

Henry Brant had been profoundly influenced by Ives’ music long before he got to know the Concord Sonata, but when he did, Brant set to work orchestrating it.

“I sensed that here was a tremendous orchestral piece,” Brant wrote. “It seemed to me that the complete Sonata, in a symphonic orchestration, might become the ‘Great American Symphony’ that we had been seeking for years … What better way to honor Ives.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Charles Ives (1874-1954) arr. Henry Brant (1913-2008): A Concord Symphony; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Dennis Russell Davies, conductor; innova 414

On today’s date in 1980, a week-long festival, New Music America, came to a close in Minneapolis with a concert at that city’s Guthrie Theater. The program included the premiere of High Life for Strings, composed by David Byrne, a musician best known for his work with a rock band called The Talking Heads.

Byrne later recalled, “When I participated in the New Music America festival in Minneapolis, minimalism and New-Age noodling were making big in-roads into a scene that had been more insular and academic. My piece, for a dozen strings was on a program with Philip Glass.” He said he was influenced by the intricate rhythms of West African pop music.

Brian Eno was another rock musician represented during the festival in Minneapolis. Some years earlier, Eno had been so irritated by the inane, chirpy muzak he heard while traveling that he composed a soothing ambient synthesizer score he called Music for Airports. Appropriately enough, during the 8 days of the Festival, his score was broadcast 24 hours a day throughout the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Decades after its composition, composer Michael Gordon arranged Eno’s synthesizer score for acoustic instruments, and recorded this arrangement of Music for Airports with the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Music Played in Today's Program

David Byrne (b. 1952): High Life; Balanescu Quartet; Argo 436 565

Brian Eno (b. 1948) arr. Gordon: Music for Airports; Bang on a Can All-Stars; Point Music 314 536 847

It’s summertime, the livin’ is easy, and all across the country music festivals large and small are getting underway. In addition to the big symphonic festivals at Ravinia and Tanglewood, there are smaller ones devoted exclusively to the intimate art of chamber music. These festival often offer young, emerging composers the chance have their brand-new scores heard in workshop settings. Sometimes composers themselves are in charge of these summer festivals, partnering with established or specially-organized performing ensembles.

In 1995, for example, two American composers, Daniel S. Godfrey and Andrew Waggoner, started the Seal Bay Festival, a two-week series of performances and workshops of recently composed chamber music in the Penobscot Bay area of Maine.

On June 14, 2001, this newly-revised string quartet by Daniel Godfrey received its premiere by the Cassatt Quartet at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport.

The quartet is inscribed to the memory of Godfrey’s mother, who died in 1997. “Her passing came to represent for me the losses, and the necessity of letting go, that have accompanied my arrival at late middle age,” he said. “To oversimplify, perhaps, the first movement grieves, the second looks back wistfully, and the third looks ahead with determination and, ultimately, with hope.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Daniel S. Godfrey (b. 1949): String Quartet No. 3; Cassatt String Quartet; Koch 7573

In 1944, French composer Darius Milhaud was in California, teaching at Mills College in California, and received a commission to write a piece suitable for school bands. With a world at war, the Jewish composer had found safe refuge in the U.S., and so eagerly accepted the commission for a number of reasons. Milhaud, confined to a wheelchair for most of his adult life, sent his wife Madaleine to the College library to obtain a collection of French folk tunes. His idea was arrange of some these into a suite.

As the composer himself explained after his Suite Française was finished:

“The five parts of [my] Suite are named after French Provinces, the very ones in which the American and Allied armies fought together with the French underground for the liberation of my country. I used some folk tunes of these Provinces, as I wanted the young American to hear the popular melodies of those parts of France where their fathers and brothers fought on behalf of the peaceful and democratic people of France."

Milhaud’s Suite Française was premiered by the Goldman Band in New York City on today’s date in 1945, and rapidly became one of the best-known and most often performed of Milhaud’s works, and one of the established classics of the wind band repertory.

Music Played in Today's Program

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974): Suite Francaise; Eastman Wind Ensemble; Frederick Fennell, conductor; Mercury 289 434 399-2

On today’s date in 2002, a high-profile musical event occurred at Philadelphia’s new Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. The city was hosting the 57th National Conference of the American Symphony Orchestra League, and the Philadelphia Orchestra was celebrating its 100th anniversary with eight new commissions, all to be premiered in the Orchestra’s new Verizon Hall.

On June 12th, the new piece was a Concerto for Orchestra by 39-year-old composer Jennifer Higdon. Her concerto opened the Philadelphia Orchestra’s program, followed by Richard Strauss’ tone-poem Ein Heldenleben. Both pieces were performed before an audience of orchestral professionals from around the country — not to mention Higdon’s proud mother.

Higdon, understandably a little nervous, quipped to a newspaper reporter, “You’ll know my mother because she’ll be the one crying before the piece starts.” She needn’t have worried. Her Concerto for Orchestra was greeted with cheers from both its audience and performers — the latter in typically irreverent fashion, dubbed the new piece Ein Higdonleben.

Higdon, the only woman among the eight composers commissioned for the orchestra’s centennial project, calls herself a “late bloomer” as a composer. She taught herself the flute at 15 and didn’t pursue formal music training until college. She was almost finished with her bachelor’s degree requirements at Bowling Green State University when she started composing her own music.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962): Concerto for Orchestra; Atlanta Symphony; Robert Spano, conductor; Telarc 80620

On today’s date in 1931, Russian-born American composer Nicolas Slonimsky was in Paris, conducting the second of two concerts of modern music from the Americas bankrolled by retired insurance executive and famous composer Charles Ives.

This second concert showcased Latin American composers like Pedro Sanjuan, Carlos Chavez and Alejandro Caturla, as well as works by the Franco-American composers Carlos Salzedo and Edgard Varese. North America was represented by Wallingford Riegger’s Three Canons for flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon.

Normally, chamber music for just four players doesn’t require the services of a conductor, but in this case Slonimsky did beat time for the Parisian wind players hired for the gig. As he put it, “Some instrumental parts were written in 5/8 and others in 2/8. I started beating time in 5/8, whereupon the binary musicians began to gesticulate at me to show their discomfort. What was I to do? OK, I said, I will conduct 5/8 with my right hand and 2/8 with my left. I was so delighted with my newly found ambidextrous technique that I applied it in other pieces as well, notably in the second movement of Ives’ Three Places in New England, played on the first of the two Parisian concerts. Someone quipped that my conducting was evangelical, for my right hand knew not what my left hand was doing.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961): Three Canons; Samuel Baron, flute; Ronald Roseman, oboe; Charles Neidich, clarinet; Donald MacCourt, bassoon; Bridge 9068

On today’s date in 1939, the King and Queen of England were in New York City. Despite the perilous situation back home in Europe, their royal majesties George and Elizabeth Windsor crossed the Atlantic to attend the 1939 World’s Fair, and sample exotic native delights such as a hot dog picnic with President Franklin Roosevelt.

That same evening at Carnegie Hall, another visiting Brit, conductor Adrian Boult, led the New York Philharmonic in premiere performances of three brand-new works by leading British composers of the day, including the world premiere of the Seventh Symphony of Arnold Bax, a work commissioned by the British Council and dedicated to the American people. Also premiered that night was a virtuoso Piano Concerto by Arthur Bliss and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ set of variations for strings and harp on the old English carol, “Dives and Lazarus.”

The music critic for The New Yorker, covering the premieres, wrote, “The symphony wandered, as Bax symphonies seem to do, yet wandered into many characteristic eloquences. The variations were soundly charming, and the piano concerto was a roaring triumph.”

There seems to be no documentation on the quality of the hot dogs served to their royal majesties, but we’re willing to bet they, too, were top-notch.

Music Played in Today's Program

Arthur Bliss (1891-1975): Piano Concerto; Philip Fowke, piano; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic; David Atherton, conductor; Unicorn 2029

Arnold Bax (1883-1953): Symphony No. 7; London Philharmonic; Raymond Leppard, conductor; Lyrita 232

Contemporary composers may bemoan that their newly-composed opera or concerto might languish unperformed for years. “Haydn was lucky,” they whine, “His stuff got played right away!”

Well, it’s true that Haydn did have his own orchestra at Prince Esterhazy’s estate and got his music played while the ink was still wet. But even Haydn had to wait for a premiere on occasion — in two instances, for a very, very long time.

Consider the last opera Haydn wrote, L’anima del Filosofo, ossia Orfeo ed Euridice — or, in English, The Soul of the Philosopher, or Orpheus and Euridice. This was supposed to premiere in 1791 in London. But a spat between the Prince of Wales and his pop, King George III, meant the performance was off. The opera was eventually premiered 160 years later — on today’s date in 1951, at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, with a cast including Maria Callas and Boris Christoff, led by the German conductor Erich Kleiber.

And the public premiere of a Cello Concerto, a work some think Haydn wrote at Esterhazy in the 1760s, took place in the 1960s. Haydn’s score was presumed lost until 1961, when it was discovered at the Prague National Museum and finally played by cellist Milos Sádlo and the Czech Radio Symphony, led by Sir Charles Mackerras, on May 19, 1962.

Music Played in Today's Program

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): L’Anima del Filosofo (Orfeo ed Euridice); Cecilia Bartoli, mezzo-soprano; Academy of Ancient Music; Christopher Hogwood, conductor; Decca 452668

Cello Concerto No. 1; Mstislav Rostropovich, cello; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; Iona Brown, conductor; EMI 65701

For some composers, what made them popular in their own day is not always what makes them popular today. Take, for example, Italian Baroque composer Tomaso Albinoni, who was born in Venice on today’s date in 1671.

Albinoni was the son of a wealthy paper merchant, so he was sufficiently well-off, not to have to land a job with the church or some noble patron. He was most famous as an opera composer and travelled outside Italy to lead productions. Unfortunately, his opera scores were never published and so were lost to posterity. He did, however, publish several collections of instrumental works, and it is on these that his fame rests today.

By a quirk of fate, nowadays Albinoni’s best known work, his famous Adagio in g minor, was not one those works published in the 18th century. Rather, it was a 20th century recreation by musicologist Remo Giazotto based on a rather skimpy surviving sketch. No matter that there are scads of other Albinoni Adagios equally ravishing and straight from his own quill pen. In 1996 the Erato label even issued an album consisting of nothing but 22 original and legitimate Albinoni Adagios and slow movements — plus the famous Adagio that was cooked up by Remo Giazotto tossed in for good measure!

Music Played in Today's Program

Tomaso Albinoni (1671-1751): Adagio, from Concerto No. 12; I Solisti Veneti; Claudio Scimone, conductor; Erato 0630-15681-2

Claudette Sorel was a pianist, educator and passionate advocate for equal rights for women in music, especially composers and performers. In 1996, she founded the Sorel Organization to expand opportunities and stretch the boundaries for promising emerging female musicians through a variety of collaborations and scholarships, and to acknowledge notable masters in the field.

On today’s date in 2022, for example, Cuban-born American composer Tania J. León was awarded the Organization’s Sorel Legacy Medallion for her life and work in music.

While still in her 20s, León became a founding member and the first musical director of the Dance Theater of Harlem, establishing its music department, school, and orchestra. She has composed a number of both large scale and chamber works that have been performed here and abroad. In February 2020, the New York Philharmonic premiered her orchestral piece Stride and in 2021 that work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

León said, “Stride was inspired by women’s rights pioneer Susan B. Anthony. She kept pushing and pushing and moving forward, walking with firm steps until she got [it] done. That is what Stride means. Something that is moving forward.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Tania León (b. 1943): Batá; Louisville Orchestra; Lawrence Leighton Smith, conductor; Soundmark CD 48027

On today’s date in 1931, Russian-born American conductor and composer Nicolas Slonimsky was in Paris conducting the first of two concerts of ultra-modern music from the New World. These were presented under the auspices of the Pan American Association of Composers, and funded by an anonymous philanthropist Slonimsky later identified as retired insurance executive and fellow composer Charles Ives.

Slonimsky had approached Ives early in 1931 with the idea of presenting a series of new music concerts in New York. When that proved too costly, they suggested mounting the same concerts in Paris.

“In 1931, the dollar was still almighty among world currencies,” Slonimsky recalled. “Ives gave me a letter of credit to the Paris branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank in the amount of $1500, an enormous sum of money in French francs at the time. The prestigious Orchestra Straram was engaged for my first Paris concert. I had a brilliant audience: composers, journalists, painters, Italian futurists. There was applause, but also puzzled responses.”

One French music critic even titled his review “The Discovery of America,” writing, “We have, (without joking), just discovered America, thanks to a Christopher Columbus called Slonimsky.” As for Ives, he was very pleased with the success of the concerts, and for a time jokingly addressed Slonimsky as either “Columbus et Vespuccius.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Henry Cowell (1897-1965): Synchrony; Polish National Radio Orchestra; William Strickland, cond.) Citadel 88122