Composers Datebook
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Composers Datebook
Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessi...
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Piazzolla passes
On today’s date in 1992, lovers of the tango had good reason to be sad. Argentinean composer and bandoneón virtuoso Astor Piazzolla had died in Buenos...
The 1812 Overture
Weather permitting, there’s a good chance you’ll be attending an outdoor symphonic concert tonight that will close with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, c...
Grainger and 'Country Gardens'
Country Gardens is the best-known work of Australian-born American composer, arranger, and pianist Percy Grainger. Its score bears this note: “Birthda...
Lucky Gluck?
In German, “Gluck” means “luck,” and today’s date marks the birthday of a German composer named Christoph Willibald Gluck, whose good fortune it was t...
Milhaud's 'Scaramouche' Suite
On today’s date in 1937, a two-piano suite by French composer Darius Milhaud had its premiere. It was titled Scaramouche, after a stock character in t...
Herrmann's 'Wuthering Heights'
In 1971, American film composer Bernard Herrmann confessed, “the only thing I ever did that was foolhardy was to write an opera.” The opera was based...
Rafael Kubelik
Today’s date in 1914 marks the birthday of famous Czech conductor Rafael Kubelík. He was the son of a very musical father, namely the violin virtuoso...
Antoine Forqueray
On today’s date in 1745, 73-year-old French composer Antoine Forqueray died in Mantes-la-Jolie outside Paris, where he had lived after his retirement...
George Templeton Strong, Jr.
The name George Templeton Strong crops up frequently in both the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War and Ric Burns’ history of New York City. That...
Zwilich's Piano Concerto
It was Mozart who wrote the first great piano concertos, with Beethoven, Brahms and others following suit in the 19th century. Closer to our own time,...
Telemann makes the record
In the Guiness Book of Music Facts and Feats, the record for Most Prolific Composer goes to Georg Philip Telemann, who died on today’s date in 1767 at...
Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 5
In wartime London, on today’s date in 1943, a Promenade Concert featured the first performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 5. The composer...
Carol Barnett's "Praise"
In 2008, the National Convention of the American Guild of Organists was held in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and for the occasion a Minnesota Organ Book...
Mehul's interesting times and tunes
There is an ancient curse, popularly attributed to the Chinese, “May you live in interesting times!” French composer Étienne-Nicolas Mehul, who was bo...
Lalo Schifrin
Today is the birthday of versatile Argentinean-born American composer, arranger and jazz pianist, Boris Claudio “Lalo” Schifrin, who was born in Bueno...
Mendelssohn and Richard Rodgers the record
On today’s date in 1948 at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel there was a press demonstration of a new kind of phonograph record. Edward Wallerstein of...
Freddy Hollaender and 'The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T'
Today’s date marks the 1953 New York premiere of a musical movie that flopped when it debuted but has since become a cult classic — and for two good r...
Shchedrin's Oboe Concerto
Violin soloists have it easy: there are thousands of violin concertos they can choose from, starting in the Baroque era of Bach and Vivaldi, and conti...
Berio, Brahms and Boccherini
The “Three B’s” are traditionally Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, of course — but today we’re offering Boccherini, Brahms and Berio.
20th-century I...
The diverting Mr. Persichetti
If you’re a baby boomer who played in a high school or college band, you’ll probably remember the Divertimento for Band by American composer Vincent P...
Grieg's 'Lyric Pieces'
Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg was born in Bergen on today’s date in 1843. He is credited with putting Norway on the map, musically speaking, drawing...
Harbison goes Baroque
A now-obscure Englishman named Charles Caleb Colton is credited with the famous adage that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
On to...
Ran's Violin Concerto
It was on today’s date in 2003 that a new violin concerto by composer Shulamit Ran premiered at Carnegie Hall — but it would be just as appropriate fo...
Brahms and Liszt
In Cockney rhyming slang, being “Brahms and Liszt” means being tipsy. But in the latter 19th century, “Brahms and Liszt” signified opposite schools of...
Carlisle Floyd
On today’s date in 1926, American opera composer Carlisle Floyd was born in Latta, South Carolina. Floyd’s ancestors were among the first to settle in...
Britten's 'Prodigal Son'
Back in Bach’s day, there were churchmen aghast at the thought that composers were trying to sneak flashy opera music into Sunday services. Church mus...
The London Symphony on stage (and screen)
On today’s date in 1904, the London Symphony gave its first concert at the old Queen’s Hall in London. Founded as a musician-run ensemble, along coope...
Ravel's 'Daphnis and Chloe'
On today’s date in 1912, Maurice Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé received its first performance at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, staged by Serge D...
Britten's 'Peter Grimes'
On today’s date in 1945 Peter Grimes, a new opera by English composer Benjamin Britten, debuted at Sadler’s Wells Theater in London. The libretto was...
Handel's dueling divas
On today’s date in 1727, the opera season in London ended early when rival Italian prima donnas, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni, came to blows...
A birthday surprise for Pinkham
On today’s date in 1998 at King’s Chapel in Boston, a new work by American composer Daniel Pinkham received its first performance. Scored for baritone...
Chadwick and Salonen go Greek
In the early years of the 20th century, a hauntingly beautiful piece of Grecian sculpture — a bust of the head of the goddess Aphrodite — was donated...
Finger finishes fourth
LAUGH-IN was a popular TV comedy sketch program in the late 1960s and one of their recurring alliterative gag lines referred to “the fickle finger of...
Currier's 'Time Machines'
When you listen to classical music like Bach or Mozart, you are taking a trip in a time machine. Or, as Shirley MacLaine might put it, “Classical musi...
Well-travelled Zwilich
On today’s date in 1988, the New York Philharmonic gave a concert in a city then called Leningrad and in a country then called the Soviet Union.
...
Melinda Wagner's Pulitzer premiere
On today’s date in 1998, in Purchase, New York, the Westchester Philharmonic gave the premiere performance of a new flute concerto by 41-year old comp...
Bach arrives (literally)
On today’s date in 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach began his formal duties as the new Cantor of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, a city that would remain...
Stravinsky's 'Riot' of Spring?
Today’s date marks the anniversary of one of the most famous — and notorious — premieres in the history of classical music, that of Stravinsky’s Le Sa...
The Hindemith case
On today's date in 1938, Matthias the Painter, an opera by the German composer Paul Hindemith, had its premiere performance in Zurich, Switzerland.
David Wilde's 'The Cellist of Sarajevo'
On today’s date in 1992, during the bloody civil wars that shattered the former Yugoslavia, a hand grenade was thrown into the midst of a bread line i...