For American conductor and composer Bernard Herrmann, 1940 was a busy year. On the East Coast, he had been appointed chief conductor of the CBS Radio Symphony; on the West Coast, he was busy in Hollywood, scoring Citizen Kane for director Orson Welles.

Herrmann was 30 at the time and recalled: “I was given twelve weeks to do my job. I worked on the film reel by reel, as it was being shot and cut. This way I had a sense of the picture being built and of my own music being a part of that building. Many sequences were actually tailored to match the music.”

The finished product was released to the public on today’s date in 1941, and was an instant success, with The New York Times review noting “the stunning manner in which the music of Bernard Herrmann has been used.”

Although nominated for Best Picture and Best Musical Score, the film didn’t win either Oscar in 1941. No matter — for many film makers, film critics, and film fans, Citizen Kane rates No. 1 among the greatest films ever made.

Music Played in Today's Program

Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975): Citizen Kane film score (opening); National Philharmonic; Charles Gerhardt, conductor; RCA CD 707

At New York’s Alice Tully Hall on today’s date in 2003, the Avalon Quartet gave the first complete performance of a new four-movement string quartet, Sun Threads, by American composer Augusta Read Thomas.

Each movement of the new work has its own evocative title and had been premiered previously as stand-alone pieces by a consortium of ensembles: the first movement, Eagle at Sunrise, by the Ying Quartet; the second, Invocations, by the Miami Quartet; the third, Fugitive Star, by the Avalon Quartet; and the fourth, Rise Chanting, by the Alexander Quartet.

As the poetic titles indicate, Thomas is not afraid of emotion in music, but insists on internal logic as well, and said:

“I believe my music must be passionate, involving risk and adventure, such that a given musical moment might seem like a surprise right when you hear it but, only a millisecond later, seems inevitable … One of my main artistic credos has been to examine small musical objects — a chord, a motive, a rhythm, a color — and explore them from every possible perspective. The different perspectives reveal new musical elements, which I then transform and which in turn become the musical development.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964): Eagle at Sunrise from Sun Threads; Walden Chamber Players; ART CD 1992007

On today’s date in 1784, Italian violinist Regina Strinasacchi gave a concert in Vienna and had the good sense to commission a new work for the occasion from an up-and-coming young Austrian composer named Wolfgang Mozart.

“We have the famous Strinasacchi from Mantua here right now. She is a very good violinist, has excellent taste, and a lot of feeling in her playing — I’m composing a sonata for her at this moment that we’ll be performing together on Thursday,” he wrote to his father.

Wolfgang’s papa must have been pleased about the cash commission, but might have frowned to learn that Strinasacchi received her part barely in time for the performance, and that his son hadn’t even bothered to write out his own part in full. Also, Regina and Wolfgang never got together to rehearse prior to the concert, which meant that she was probably sight-reading her part, and he improvising his.

No matter — the new sonata was received warmly and afterward Wolfgang had a whole month to dot all the musical i’s and cross all the musicals t’s in his score before it was printed. And, for the record, this Violin Sonata No. 32 is arguably one of Mozart’s finest.

Music Played in Today's Program

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791): Violin Sonata No. 32

On today’s date in 1865, the hottest ticket in Paris was for the premiere of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s long-awaited grand opera L’Africaine, or The African Maid, at the Paris Opera. And when I say “long-awaited,” I mean long-awaited! Meyerbeer had begun work on L’Africaine some 25 years earlier. It had become a standing joke in the French press to rib Meyerbeer about the “imminent” completion of his opera.

There were many reasons for the delay: Meyerbeer was a slow worker and a perfectionist; he was sidelined by ill health; he was waiting for better singers, more sympathetic management at the Opera, etc. etc.

Opera fans back then must have given up hope he would ever finish L’Africaine, but — surprise! — he did and the work was slotted for production at the Paris Opera. At that point, ironically, he died, and his widow entrusted another composer to supervise the rehearsals for its 1865 premiere.

Meyerbeer’s operas were the 19th century equivalent of the sweeping costume epic movies of Cecil B. DeMille. In L’Africaine, the hero is the explorer Vasco da Gama, and one of the opera’s more spectacular stage effects involved a Portuguese ship running aground on an exotic reef and being taken over by a swarm of natives.

Music Played in Today's Program

Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864): “O Paradis” from L’Africaine; Ben Heppner, tenor; London Symphony; Myung-Whun Chung, conductor; DG 471 372

Today’s date in 1945 marks the birthday in Pittsburgh of great American playwright August Wilson. He chronicled the experiences of the Great Northward Migration of African-Americans decade by decade across the 20th century in a series of ten powerful and poetic plays collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle. Plays in the series include Fences and The Piano Lesson, both of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame and a Broadway theater is named after him.

American composer Kathryn Bostic provided theatrical scores for several of his plays, working closely with him. Because of her collaboration, she also scored the PBS American Masters documentary August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand, which ultimately led her to create The August Wilson Symphony, which was premiered by the Pittsburgh Symphony in 2018.

One of the major quests in Wilson’s plays is what he called “finding one’s song,” and music — especially the blues — figures large in his work. Perhaps with that in mind, Bostic composed a song, “State of Grace” as her personal memorial to Wilson, a song she has recorded, accompanying herself at the piano.

Music Played in Today's Program

Kathryn Bostic (b. 1970): “State of Grace”; Kathryn Bostic, vocal and piano; Pittsburgh Symphony strings; KBMusic digital download

On today’s date in 2002, Mariss Jansons led the Pittsburg Symphony in the premiere performance of the Symphony No. 2 written by 32-year-old American composer Michael Hersch.

Hardly a child prodigy, he was introduced to classical music at 18 by his brother Jamie, who showed him a videotape of Georg Solti conducting Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. That experience shook him. “It scrambled everything. That’s when I knew that I was to be a composer... My whole life started over at that moment,” Hersch recalled.

He certainly made up for lost time, exhibiting an uncanny ability to master both the piano and the intricacies of contemporary compositional techniques in less than a decade.

His first success as a composer came when his Elegy for Strings won a major prize and was conducted by Marin Alsop at Lincoln Center in New York in 1997. Since then, his works have been commissioned and performed by many other leading orchestras and performers.

Hersch’s Symphony No. 2 has no stated program, but it was composed shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, and knowing that, it’s hard to disassociate the score’s violent opening and subsequent elegiac mood from that tragic moment in American history.

Music Played in Today's Program

Michael Hersch (b. 1971): Symphony No. 2; Bournemouth Symphony; Marin Alsop, conductor; Naxos 8.559281

On today’s date in 1841 an all-Beethoven concert was given at the Salle Erard to raise funds for the proposed Beethoven monument in Bonn, the late composer’s birthplace. Franz Liszt was the piano soloist in Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, conducted by Hector Berlioz.

About a month earlier, Liszt had dazzled Paris with the premiere of his new piano fantasia on themes from the popular opera Robert the Devil, by Giacomo Meyerbeer. So, as Liszt walked on stage — with the entire orchestra in place, all ready for Beethoven’s concerto — the audience clamored loudly for a repeat performance. They made such a racket that Berlioz and the orchestra had no choice but to sit idly by until Liszt first encored his Fantasia.

In the audience was 27-year old Richard Wagner, reviewing the concert for a Dresden newspaper. Wagner was outraged that the Beethoven was put on hold for Liszt’s flashy solo.

We’re not sure if Wagner attended a concert the following day at the Salle Pleyel, but any modern-day time traveler would probably want to stick around to hear Frederic Chopin give one of his rare Parisian recitals, performing, among other works, his own F-Major Ballade.

Music Played in Today's Program

Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Reminiscences de Robert le Diable; Leslie Howard, piano; Hyperion 66861

During the last 20 years of his life, avant-garde German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen concentrated on completing an ambitious cycle of seven operas, collectively titled Licht or, in English Light. Each opera was named for a day of the week and inspired by familiar and obscure world mythologies associated with each day.

The opera Montag (or Monday), for example, is devoted to the Moon and the feminine architype of Eve as the mother of all creation.

Each opera begins with a Greeting, or overture, often an electronic piece heard in the theater lobby while the audience gathers, and ends with a Farewell, sometimes intended for performance outside the theater, to be heard as the audience disperses.

Story lines in Stockhausen’s operas have more in common with symbolic Renaissance courtly masques and pageants than works by Verdi or Puccini, but might be considered a 21th century response to Wagner’s 19th-century cycle of four mythological Ring operas.

Portions of these operas were premiered piecemeal starting in 1977, and only on rare occasions staged in their entirety. The last to be completed, Sontag (or Sunday) was performed complete for the first time in Cologne, Germany, on today’s date in 2011, more than three years after Stockhausen’s death.

Music Played in Today's Program

Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007): “Lichter-Wasser (Sonntags-Gruss)” from Sonntag aus Licht; Barbara van den Boom, soprano; Hubert Mayer, tenor; Antonio Pérez Abellán, synthesizer; SW Radio Symphony Baden-Baden/Freiburg; Karlheinz Stockhausen, conductor; Stockhausen Verlag CD 58

During his stay in America, Czech composer Antonín Dvořák became convinced that distinctive American music could be based on two sources: the work songs and spirituals of African-Americans and the chants and dances of indigenous Native American tribes. By the early 20th century, a number of American composers had taken his suggestions to heart.

One of them, Arthur Farwell, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on today’s date in 1872. He went to MIT intending to become an electrical engineer, and did, in fact, get his engineering degree in 1893, the same year Dvořák’s views began appearing in the press. Farwell decided that a musical career might be more interesting than engineering. Frustrated at his inability to find a publisher for his set of solo piano transcriptions, American Indian Melodies, he formed his own publishing house.

He also set Emily Dickinson poems to music, experimented with polytonality, and, in 1916, arranged for the first light show in New York’s Central Park, decades before the psychedelic 1960s. Farwell taught at Cornell, UC Berkley and Michigan State, but never felt at home in academia, preferring to organize community-based musical pageants with audience participation. He died at 79 in New York in 1953.

Music Played in Today's Program

Arthur Farwell (1872-1952): Navajo War Dance and Song of Peace; Dario Muller, piano; Marco Polo 223715

At London’s St. James’s Hall on today’s date in 1885, Czech composer Antonín Dvořák conducted the London Philharmonic Society’s orchestra in the premiere of his Symphony No. 7, a work they had commissioned.

The Society had also commissioned Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 decades earlier, a fact of which Dvořák was quite aware, and just before starting work he heard and was bowled over by the brand-new Symphony No. 3 by his friend and mentor Johannes Brahms. In other words, “No pressure!”

Dvořák felt he must do his very best, and, judging by the warm reception at its London premiere, the new work was a success, with one reviewer calling it “one of the greatest works of its class produced in the present generation.”

But not all reviews were glowing. Another wrote, “the entire work is painted grey on grey: it lacks sweetness of melody and lightness of style.” And his German publisher complained big symphonies were not profitable and advised he write only shorter piano pieces that had a ready market.

But subsequent performances helped establish the new symphony as the masterwork it is, and although not as often-played as his New World Symphony, today Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 ranks among his finest creations.

Music Played in Today's Program

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904): Scherzo (Movement No. 3); from Symphony No. 7; Berlin Philharmonic; Rafael Kubelik, conductor; DG 463158-2

In 1863, the price of The New York Times was three cents, and many plunked down their pennies to read front-page news about “the rebellion” — what we now call the Civil War.

But if you were a music aficionado back in 1863, the Times “Amusements” page noted that one of Verdi’s newest operas, Un Ballo in Maschera, had just closed at the Academy of Music, and the contemporary composer-pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk had given a concert of his latest works the day before.

After all that “modern” music, maybe you were in the mood for some really old music. The enterprising duo of William Mason and Theodore Thomas was offering a Soiree of Chamber Music at Dodworth’s Hall on April 21, 1863, and their program included the first public performance in America of the Concerto for Two Keyboards and Strings by J.S. Bach. Now this was really old stuff — predating the birth of America in 1776 by a good 50 years!

The Times did not review this Bach premiere, but the next documented American performance in Boston in 1877 was described in Dwight’s Journal as a “cheerful, lightsome, everyday sort of composition … full of vigor and life, the best of tonics.”

Music Played in Today's Program

J.S. Bach (1650-1721): Concerto for Two Keyboards

On today’s date in 1928, French musician and inventor Maurice Martenot gave the first public demonstration of a new electronic instrument he had created which produced eerie-sounding tones reminiscent of the human voice, but without the human limitations of voice range or lung power.

Martenot was also a savvy promoter of his new instrument, which he took on a world tour, with his sister serving as its first virtuoso performer. The instrument came to be called the “Ondes Martenot”— which translates into English as “Martenot Waves.”

A number of 20th century composers were quite enthusiastic. Arthur Honegger suggested the instrument might replace the contra-bassoon in symphony orchestras, writing: “The Ondes Martenot has power and a speed of utterance which is not to be compared with those gloomy stove-pipes looming up in orchestras.”

Well, contra-bassoonists needn’t worry: their stove-pipes still provide the low blows in most modern orchestras, but the Ondes Martenot does figure prominently in several major 20th century scores, including the monumental Turangalila Symphony of French composer Oliver Messiaen.

And, following Martenot’s death in 1981, the French even formed an official society with the grand title of “L’Association pour la Diffusion et le Développement des Ondes Martenot.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992): Turangalila Symphony; Tristan Murail, Ondes Martenot; Philharmonia Orchestra; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; Sony 53473

Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto was first performed in Barcelona, Spain, on today’s date in 1936, at the opening concert of the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival. Berg had died the previous winter, and the premiere was supposed to be conducted by his close friend and fellow composer, Anton Webern, but he withdrew at the last minute, and so Hermann Scherchen conducted the first performance, with the violinist who had commissioned the work, Louis Krasner, as soloist.

Krasner was born in Ukraine but raised in America and served for a time as the concertmaster of the Minneapolis Symphony under Dimitri Mitropoulos. He later taught at Syracuse University and the New England Conservatory of Music.

In the spring of 1976, he was cleaning out his attic, and discovered he still had private acetate discs he had made of the second performance of the Berg Violin Concerto, a May 1, 1936 radio broadcast of the new work by the BBC Symphony, with Krasner again as the soloist. This time the conductor was Webern. The 40-year old discs were transcribed to tape, and eventually were released on CD, allowing posterity a chance to listen in as music history was being made.

Music Played in Today's Program

Alban Berg (1885-1935): Violin Concerto; Louis Krasner, violin; BBC Symphony; Anton Webern, conductor; Testament/Continuum 1004

The month of April in the year 1800 was an especially busy one for Ludwig van Beethoven. On the second of April at his first big orchestral concert in Vienna, Beethoven premiered his Symphony No. 1, a new piano concerto, and his chamber septet. Composing, writing out the parts, and rehearsing all that music was no small task.

On today’s date that same month, Beethoven appeared in Vienna once again, this time as piano accompanist for the popular Bohemian horn virtuoso, Johann Wenzel Stich, who went by the more marketable Italian “stage name” of Giovanni Punto.

The pre-concert announcements for the Punto recital promised that Beethoven would contribute a new work for the occasion — but, apparently still recovering from his own big concert, Beethoven didn’t get around to writing the promised Horn Sonata for Punto until the day before the recital.

Beethoven and Punto took the new Sonata with them for a concert in Budapest the following month. The press in Hungary had heard of Punto, but not Beethoven, whose name they didn’t even get right: “Who is this Beethover (sic)?” one press notice read, noting, “The history of German music is not acquainted with such a name. Punto, of course, is very well known…”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Horn Sonata; Hermann Baumann, horn; Leonard Hokanson, piano; Philips 416 816

Early in April in the year 1845, 15-year old American pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk performed at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. On the program was Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and Chopin happened to be in the audience and congratulated the young American on his performance.

What exactly Chopin said depends on whom you asked. Gottschalk’s first biographer claims it was, “Very good, my child, let me shake your hand,” while his sister insists it was, “I predict you will become the king of pianists!”

In 1845, Parisian society was curious about anything American after experiencing other exotic exports from the New World, including P.T. Barnum’s circus and George Catlin’s paintings of Native American life. Anything American was definitely “hip.”

Four years later, on today’s date in 1849, Gottschalk returned to the Salle Pleyel, this time performing some of his own compositions, including Bamboula, a work named after the a deep-voiced Afro-Caribbean drum. The Parisian audiences had never heard anything like it and gave him a standing ovation. He was born in New Orleans and was exposed from childhood to Cuban and Haitian music and went on to write original works which anticipate both the rhythms and colors of American jazz.

Music Played in Today's Program

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849): Piano Concerto No. 1; Krystian Zimerman, piano; Polish Festival Orchestra; DG 459 684

Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869): Bamboula; Alan Feinberg, piano; Argo 444 457

For the 1958-59 season of the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, the orchestra’s newly-appointed music director, was eager to program as much new American music as he dared. As luck would have it, early in 1958, 35-year old American composer Ned Rorem had just returned from Europe with a new symphonic score.

“I wrote most of my Symphony No. 3 in France. It’s a big piece but not a commission — I was still writing for the love of it in those days… So I showed it to Lenny and he said ‘Okay, I’ll do it, but I wish you would re-orchestrate the slow movement entirely for strings.’ I replied ‘Sure,’ but didn’t, because Bernstein was always saying things like that and then would forget all about it,” he said.

The premiere of Rorem’s Symphony No. 3 — as written — occurred at Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 1959, but for its composer, the thrill was tempered by some harsher realities.

He recalled, “I came late to the first rehearsal because in those days I was living off unemployment insurance … and I had to go down and stand in line to pick up my check. I guess they managed without me because Lenny conducted four wonderful performances.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ned Rorem (1923-2022): Symphony No. 3; Utah Symphony; Maurice Abravanel, conductor; Vox Box 5092

Over the centuries, a wide range of composers have created musical settings of the Latin mass, but one of the more unusual and distinctive settings received its premiere performance on today’s date in 1973 at a concert at Finch College in New York City devoted entirely to the music of American composer Vivian Fine.

At that time, Fine was teaching at Bennington College in Vermont, and her Missa Brevis, or Short Mass, was inspired by some of her colleagues there. Cellist George Finckel had organized cello quartet at the college, and for one semester as a sabbatical replacement, mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani, a noted new music advocate, taught at Bennington. She crafted her Missa Brevis from the taped voice of DeGaetani, multi-tracked into four channels as a kind of one-woman chorus, accompanied by Finckel’s quartet of cellos, whose combined low registers sound rather organ-like.

The blend of taped and live musicians created an effect both ancient and modern. In addition to the familiar Kyrie and Sanctus movements of the traditional mass, Fine interpolated sacred texts of her own choosing, making this Missa Brevis her own, intensely personal private spiritual testament.

Music Played in Today's Program

Vivian Fine (1913-2000): Missa Brevis; JanDeGaetani, mezzo-soprano; Eric Barlett, David Finckel, Michael Finckel, Maurice Neuman, cello; CRI 692

On today’s date in 1789, Mozart was in Dresden, performing his new piano concerto at the Royal Saxon Court. Mozart was pretty good at documenting his own compositions, and we know from a catalog of his works that he finished this concerto in late February the previous year.

Unfortunately for posterity, he was less dutiful in copying out all of the solo piano part, which he no doubt just kept in his head. The surviving manuscript score contains just a shorthand version of the solo piano part, with the music for the left-hand hardly there at all.

Modern performers have to rely on their own wit and imagination to fill in the blanks, and, who knows: maybe he played it differently each time, improvising around his own sketchy outline as the mood took him?

In any case, Mozart must have been proud of this concerto. He played it again at the festivities surrounding the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in Frankfurt in October of 1790. Ever since, this concerto has been known as the Coronation Concerto.

Music Played in Today's Program

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791): Piano Concerto No. 26 (Coronation); Jenö Jandó, piano; Concentus Hungaricus; Mátyás Antál, conductor; Naxos 8.550209

Over the centuries, many composers have set verses from the Bible’s Book of Psalms to music, often in response to times of turmoil and trouble.

One unusual Psalm setting had its premiere performance on today’s date in 2013 at Bethel University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Seven Psalms was scored for a jazz quartet of bass, drums, saxophone and piano accompanying a solo vocalist and 15-member choir, and was created by Minneapolis composer Jeremy Walker, who confesses the music was motivated by his own personal struggle.

Walker’s burgeoning career as a jazz saxophonist was sidetracked by an illness which stymied doctors for 12 years until finally diagnosed as Lyme Disease. Unable to continue as a saxophonist, he turned to the piano and composition, and found himself drawn to the Book of Psalms, where he heard echoes of African-American spirituals and the blues.

“The book is just dripping with human hope and suffering all intertwined so it seemed like blues material to me,” he said. “It occurred to me to blend the jazz vernacular harmonic universe with the psalms. And right away the call and response between solo voice, or between the band and the choir, were sounds I could hear,” he said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jeremey Walker (b. 1972): “Psalm 130” from Seven Psalms; Jason Harms, vocalist; 7 Psalms Chamber Choir; Jeremy Walker Quartet; CD Baby/iTunes/Amazon release

On today’s date in 1892, the Adamowski Quartet gave a concert in Boston that included two movements from a string quartet by 32-year old composer Charles Martin Loeffler.

For the past 10 years, Loeffler had been the associate concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, and just the previous year they had premiered his first orchestral piece.

Loeffler told people he was born in the Alsace region of France in 1861, which would account for his French manners and the French titles he gave some of his pieces. In fact, he was born in Berlin, but he never forgave the Prussians for the political persecution and imprisonment of his father, and left Berlin for Paris as soon as he could.

In 1881, at 20, Loeffler came to the United States, where, as he put it, he found Americans “quick to reward genuine musical merit and to reward it far more generously than Europe.” In 1887, he became an American citizen, and in short order established himself as one of our leading composers.

After his death in 1935, Loeffler’s music fell into neglect for many decades, but his elegant and well-crafted music is attracting renewed interest — and recordings — today.

Music Played in Today's Program

Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935): String Quartet; DaVinci Quartet; Naxos 8.559077

On today’s date in 1930, Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the first staged presentation in America of Igor Stravinsky’s revolutionary ballet The Rite of Spring at Philadelphia’s 4000-seat Opera House — and it was a hot ticket.

The Philadelphia Inquirer noted “a milling mob fought and scrambled for entrance to the Opera House … there was a traffic tie-up of taxis and trolleys for blocks beyond, while dignified ladies were seen to pop out of automobiles like rabbits out of hutches, and scurry for blocks on foot, to avoid being late.” This was for what the newspaper described as, “the startling spectacle of bare-legged girls and men whirling madly and stamping upon the stage to an orgiastic fury of sound.”

For its American premiere, the original costuming from the work’s Paris premiere was retained, but the choreography was now by Léonide Massine, not Vaslav Nijinsky, and Martha Graham and her Corps de Ballet were the dancers, not Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe.

Stokowski, a passionate promoter of Stravinsky’s score, had given its American concert premiere with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1922 and, in 1940, it was Stokie and the Philadelphians who could accompany Walt Disney’s dinosaurs in his animated Fantasia version of the famous Stravinsky score.

Music Played in Today's Program

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): The Rite of Spring; Philadelphia Orchestra; Leopold Stokowski, conductor; Disneyland WDX101

On today’s date in 1959, the Duke University Band under Paul Bryan gave the premiere performance of a new work they had commissioned: the Symphony No. 3 for concert band by American composer Vittorio Giannini.

With the growth of concert bands in the 1950s, and success of high-profile performing ensembles like Frederick Fennell’s Eastman Wind Ensemble, composers like Giannini started getting commissions to write new works for these ensembles. In all, Giannini wrote five pieces for concert band, with his Symphony No. 3 the biggest and best known of the lot.

Paul Bryan and Duke University were certainly pleased with the new work. Its resounding success encouraged other band directors to commission new concert works for wind band — and, in one fell swoop, the Duke Band achieved national recognition for its initiative.

As for Giannini, in his later years he taught a younger generation of composers, first in New York City at Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music, then in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute, and finally at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he served as that institution’s first president. Giannini students included a number of successful composers, including David Amram, John Corigliano, Nicolas Flagello, Adolphus Hailstork and Alfred Reed.

Music Played in Today's Program

Vittorio Giannini (1903-1966): Symphony No. 3; University of Houston Wind Ensemble; Tom Bennett, conductor; Naxos 8.570130

On today’s date in 1938, radio listeners across North America tuned to the NBC network to hear the first American performance of the Symphony No. 5 by 32-year-old Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. The work premiered in Moscow the previous year to great acclaim, and many American conductors and orchestras were competing to give its first performance here, but it was Artur Rodzinski and the NBC Symphony who were chosen — for two very good reasons.

First, he had traveled to Moscow in 1934 to meet Shostakovich and a kind of mutual admiration bond was formed. Second, NBC was willing to pay the outrageously high premium demanded by the Soviet government for the American premiere. Now, $5000 might not seem like a lot to us now, but in 1938 that was the equivalent of well over $100,000 in today’s money — and NBC was willing and able to pony up that much to promote their recently-formed NBC Symphony Orchestra and its coast-to-coast radio broadcasts.

Rodzinski’s wife Halina recalled that upon receiving the new score after all the fuss and expense, her husband was at first not impressed, but during rehearsals fell in love with what would become Shostakovich’s most-performed symphony.

Music Played in Today's Program

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Symphony No. 5; Cleveland Orchestra; Artur Rodzinski, conductor; Sony 19439928772

It’s usually new music that gets terrible reviews, but scanning old newspapers, you’ll find that occasionally old music gets panned with equal venom.

On today’s date in 1865, a concert by the Theodore Thomas Orchestra at Irving Hall opened with an orchestral arrangement of a Bach Passacaglia, followed by Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola.

The New York Times reviewer was not thrilled with either selection:

“The Bach is a fair representation of the treadmill. A culprit may travel on it for a day without advancing a step. It simply goes ‘round and ‘round in the most obvious style, and is generally dull — like a superannuated church warden… The symphony for violin and viola by Mozart is a work generally avoided in Europe. The wearisome scale passages on the little fiddle repeated ad nauseam on the bigger one are simply maddening. On the whole, one would prefer death to a repetition of this production,” he wrote.

Thus spake The Times in April of 1865. We should note in its defense that Americans had other matters on their minds that week. The day the review appeared the paper’s headline read: “Union Victory! Peace! Lee Surrenders His Whole Army!”

Music Played in Today's Program

J.S. Bach (1685-1750) (arr. Respighi): Passacaglia in c; BBC Philharmonic; Leonard Slatkin, conductor; Chandos 9835

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791): Sinfonia Concertante; Midori, violin; Nobuko Imai, viola; NDR Symphony; Christoph Eschenbach, conductor; Sony 89488

From 1951 to the time of his death in 1976, Texas-born conductor Victor Alesandro led the San Antonio Symphony.

Alessandro was a fine conductor and had a very clever system for attracting talented players to San Antonio. He kept his eyes open for key players about to retire from all the top American orchestras and sent them tempting brochures describing San Antonio’s palm trees, old Spanish houses, and mild winters. Many accepted his invitations, settled in San Antonio, and served as mentors for the Symphony’s younger players.

In 1966, for example, John Corigliano, Sr., facing mandatory retirement as the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, took up the same position with the San Antonio Symphony.

And so it came about that on today’s date in 1968, John Corigliano, Sr., then 67, served as the concertmaster for the world premiere performance of a new piano concerto written by his son, composer John Corigliano, Jr., then 30. The premiere performers, pianist Hilde Somer and the San Antonio Symphony under Alessandro, even recorded the new work for Mercury Records.

Although well received at the time, Corigliano’s concerto was rather neglected for many years thereafter, but more recently has been receiving new performances and recordings.

Music Played in Today's Program

John Corigliano (b. 1938): Piano Concerto; James Tocco, piano; Louisville Orchestra; Lawrence Leighton Smith, conductor; First Edition FECD-0002

Carlos Salzedo, the most influential harpist of the 20th century, was born in Arcachon, France, on today’s date in 1885. He transformed the harp into a virtuoso instrument, developing new techniques showcased in his own compositions and that others like Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Britten adopted in theirs.

In 1921, Salzedo and Edgard Varese co-founded the International Composers Guild, promoting works by progressive composers like Bartok and Honegger. Salzedo’s compositions for harp include both transcriptions as well as original works like Scintillation, probably his most famous piece, and Four Preludes to the Afternoon of a Telephone, based on the phone numbers of four of his students.

He taught at the Curtis Institute, the Juilliard School, and offered summer courses in Camden, Maine. Hundreds of Salzedo pupils filled harp positions with major orchestras around the world. Salzedo himself entered the Paris Conservatory at age nine and won the premiere prize in harp and piano when he was just 16. He came to America in 1909 at the invitation of Arturo Toscanini, who wanted him as harpist at the Metropolitan Opera, and — curious to note — Salzedo died in the summer of 1961, at 76, while adjudicating Metropolitan Opera regional auditions in Maine.

Music Played in Today's Program

Carlos Salzedo (1885-1961): Scintillation; Carlos Sazledo, harp Mercury; LP MG-80003

The “waltz king” Johann Strauss Jr. was 45 before he tried his hand at writing an operetta, urged on by the management of Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, who wanted to replace the extremely popular French operettas of Jacques Offenbach with some by Vienna’s own famous purveyor of light music.

Even so, for the libretto of Strauss’ third operetta, the cagey theater managers hedged their bets by acquiring the rights to a spicy French farce which just happened to be written by the librettists of Offenbach’s biggest hits.

The original French farce was considered a little too racy as it stood, so some substantial changes were made before Strauss set to work. The end result, re-titled Die Fledermaus (or The Bat) opened in Vienna on today’s date in 1874.

Now, there is an oft-repeated myth that Fledermaus was initially a flop and that it closed after only sixteen performances. But blame that on famous American soprano, Adelina Patti, who had booked the Theater an der Wien for a run of Italian opera performances right after Die Fledermaus was opened.

When Patti left Vienna, Die Fledermaus returned for more performances, and has rarely been absent from Viennese stages from that day to this.

Music Played in Today's Program

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899): Die Fledermaus Overture; Vienna Symphony; Robert Stolz, conductor; BMG 72916

Today we offer a special “Gong Show” edition of the Composer’s Datebook.

On today’s date in 1791, at the height of the French Revolution, the Panthéon in Paris was converted into a mausoleum for national heroes, and the first to be interred there, with great pomp and ceremony, was Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, a tremendously popular personage of the day.

For dramatic effect during the Count’s funeral procession through the streets of Paris, French composer François Joseph Gossec added an unusual percussion instrument to his funereal wind band: an exotic instrument someone had brought to Paris from the Far East, and known as—you guessed it—the gong.

It was reported that whenever the gong was struck during Mirabeau’s funeral procession, cries of terror and fright were heard from the crowd that lined the Parisian streets as the cortège passed.

Now terror and fright are bread and butter in the world of grand opera, and so the gong soon was adopted by 19th century composers like Spontini, Meyerbeer, and Wagner, and, in the 20th century, composers like Puccini, Stravinsky, Stockhausen, and George Crumb have also used gongs to—pardon the pun—striking effect!

Music Played in Today's Program

François-Joseph Gossec (1734 – 1829) Marche lugubre The Wallace Collection; John Wallace, cond. Nimbus 5175

In the 19th century, much like today, New Yorkers looking for musical entertainment had a lot to choose from. For example, on today’s date in 1871, the options included these three offerings:

First: at Lina Edwin’s Theater, a musical burlesque, Pluto, which The New York Times billed as an “Anglicized and condensed” version of Jacques Offenbach’s racy operetta, Orpheus in the Underworld, with interpolated comic sketches and monologues by the show’s star, the Jerry Seinfeld of the day, the ever-popular comedian Mr. Lingard.

Second: for the more serious sort, the American staged premiere of Richard Wagner’s opera, Lohengrin, at the Stadt Theater. The Times noted that Wagner’s opera was “brought out in Germany some 20 years earlier but was unknown here in its entirety until now.” A large audience showed up for the “entirety” of “Lohengrin,” which lasted over four hours and ended around midnight.

Finally: at Broadway’s Minstrel Hall, directly from Japan, Satsuma’s Circus offered the amazing Mr. Yadunochi, who first smoked a pipe, then ate it, then while playing on a flute expelled the pipe’s smoke through his instrument; for his finale, Mr. Yadunochi reproduced, as the Times put it “the original pipe whole and unsullied.” Now, that’s entertainment!

Music Played in Today's Program

Jacques Offenbach (1819-1890) (arr. Rosenthal): Cancan from Gaite Parisienne; Montréal Symphony; Charles Dutoit, conductor; London 430 718

Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Act 3 Prelude from Lohengrin; Berlin Philharmonic; Daniel Barenboim, conductor; Teldec 81791

Kozaburo Hirai (1910-2002): Sonata; Kazue Frances Asawa, flute; Kazue Kudo, koto; Crystal 316