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Composers Datebook®

with host John Birge

Florence Price

The American composer Florence Price wrote three symphonies in all. Her Symphony No. 1 was premiered by the Chicago Symphony in 1933 and marked the first time a composition by an African-American woman was played by a major American orchestra. The score for her second symphony is lost. Her third...Episode details...

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Sondheim in the Woods

“Into the Woods,” a new musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, opened on Broadway on today’s date in 1987, and brought to the stage characters from the world of fairy-tales: Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and not one, but TWO Prince Charmings. But in Lapine...Episode details...

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Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge

Today we honor one of America’s greatest patrons of chamber music, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who died on this date in 1953. Born in 1864, Elizabeth was the daughter of a very wealthy wholesale grocer. She put her inheritance to good use. In 1924, she proposed to the Library of Congress that an...Episode details...

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How to Pray

At Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 2002, the American Composers Orchestra presented new works inspired by the Hebrew Psalms. The program included the premiere of a new work by the American composer David Lang entitled “How to Pray.” In his program note, Lang wrote: “[The] Psalms are so central...Episode details...

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Mozart and "Amadeus"

On today’s date in 1979 a new play by Peter Schaffer titled “Amadeus” opened at the National Theatre in London. Schaffer’s play tells the story of Mozart’s final years in Vienna, including some posthumous gossip that it was the petty jealousy and back-stabbing intrigue of Mozart’s Italian...Episode details...

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Chopin gets out of town

On today’s date in 1830, the Polish composer Frederic Chopin said farewell to his native land at a bon voyage dinner thrown by his friends in Warsaw. It was all quite jolly, with singing, dancing, and drinking lasting well into the night. On a more melancholy note, Romantic legend has it that...Episode details...

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Hovhaness in "HOOS-ton"

On today’s date in 1955, Leopold Stokowski gave his first concert as the new music director of the Houston Symphony—or, as Stoki pronounced it, the “HOOSTON Symphony.” It was a major cultural event in those days. NBC even televised a bit of the famously white-maned conductor rehearsing the Texans...Episode details...

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Heggie's "Great Scott"

The American opera composer Jake Heggie and his librettist Terrence McNally decided to follow their “Dead Man Walking”–a successful but harrowing opera about capital punishment–with a lighter, more comic work, entitled “Great Scott.” Now, librettist McNally winced when people called “Great...Episode details...

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Before you go...

Who’s who and what’s what is our specialty at Composers Datebook. Take 2 minutes to make a gift today, to help us continue to share this musical education experience.

Handel advertises his wares

On today’s date in 1739, Mr. George Frideric Handel took out an advertisement, announcing that he was now accepting subscriptions for his new set of 12 Grand Concertos for strings. He had, in fact, finished the first concerto one month before, on September 29th, and spent the next five weeks...Episode details...

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A "pathetic" symphony by Tchaikovsky

In St. Petersburg on today’s date in 1893, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducted the first performance of his latest Symphony, his Sixth. From the beginning, this symphony has been commonly known by its French subtitle, the “Pathétique,” a designation suggested by the composer’s brother, Modest....Episode details...

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