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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303 episodi
Emilie Mayer
Today marks the birthday of one of the most prolific 19th century women composers. Emilie Luise Friderica Mayer was born May 14, 1812 in the German to...
A less-than-magnificent reception for Bach's 'Magnificat'
On today’s date in 1875, American conductor Theodore Thomas, a passionate advocate for both old and new music, led the Cincinnati May Festival in the...
Shostakovich gets on first
On this date in 1926, 19-year old composer and sometime silent film piano accompanist Dimitri Shostakovich saw his Symphony No. 1 performed by the Len...
Richard Writes to Gustav
Although contemporaries, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss were two very different human beings. Mahler was tormented by self-doubt and existential an...
Barrington Pheloung and Inspector Morse
Australian composer Barrington Pheloung’s music might not be familiar to concertgoers, but if you watch public television’s Mystery series, you’ve pro...
Ravel plays 'guess who' in Paris
On today’s date in 1911, the Independent Music Society of Paris sponsored an anonymous concert at which the audience was invited to guess the composer...
Stravinsky's 'Dumbarton Oaks Concerto'
On today’s date in 1938, a musical soirée was held at Dumbarton Oaks, a magnificent house on the crest of a wooded valley in Washington, D.C. This wa...
Dett's 'The Ordering of Moses'
On today’s date in 1937, the NBC radio network was carrying a live broadcast from the Cincinnati May Festival of a new oratorio The Ordering of Moses,...
A Mahler festival
As far as anniversary gifts go, the one Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg received in 1920 was pretty spectacular. To celebrate his 25th year as Music...
Rautavaara's 'Angels'
Do you believe in angels? It seems Finnish composer Einojuhanni Rautavaara did — and produced a number of orchestral pieces with evocative titles like...
Britten in America
Benjamin Britten was the most famous English opera composer of the 20th century, but ironically his first opera, Paul Bunyan, had an American theme an...
Virgil Thomson reviews Elliott Carter
On today's date in 1953, at New York’s 92nd Street YMCA, the Walden String Quartet tackled the difficult String Quartet No. 1 by American composer Ell...
Virgil Thomson reviews Elliott Carter
On today's date in 1953, at New York’s 92nd Street YMCA, the Walden String Quartet tackled the difficult String Quartet No. 1 by American composer Ell...
Bloch's greatest hit
Today marks the anniversary of the first performance of the best-known work of Swiss-born American composer, Ernest Bloch, whose Hebrew Rhapsody: Sche...
Higdon's 'Splendid Wood'
The marimba is a percussion instrument of tuned bars, usually made of wood, arranged like the keys of a piano. These bars are struck with mallets to p...
"Citizen Kane" scores big
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...
Thomas' 'Sun Threads'
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,...
Mozart and Strinasacchi in Vienna
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 occasi...
Meyerbeer's 'African Maid'
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...
Bostic's 'State of Grace'
Today’s date in 1945 marks the birthday in Pittsburgh of great American playwright August Wilson. He chronicled the experiences of the Great Northward...
Michael Hersch's Symphony No. 2
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 c...
Beethoven waits for Liszt
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 com...
Stockhausen's 'Sunday' from 'Light'
During the last 20 years of his life, avant-garde German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen concentrated on completing an ambitious cycle of seven operas,...
Arthur Farwell
During his stay in America, Czech composer Antonín Dvořák became convinced that distinctive American music could be based on two sources: the work son...
Dvorak's Seventh
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 premi...
Bach in the USA
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...
The Ondes Martenot
On today’s date in 1928, French musician and inventor Maurice Martenot gave the first public demonstration of a new electronic instrument he had creat...
Webern conducts Berg
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...
Beethover (sic) and Punto
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...
Gottschalk in Paris
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 Chopi...
Rorem's Third
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 n...
Vivian Fine's 'Missa Brevis'
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 re...
Mozart's 'Coronation Concerto'
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...
Jeremy Walker and Seven Psalms
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.
...
Loeffler's Quartet
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 Char...
Stokie and the Rite
On today’s date in 1930, Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the first staged presentation in America of Igor Stravinsky’s revolutio...
Giannini's Symphony No. 3
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....
Shostakovich on NBC
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...
Bach and Mozart in New York
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.<...
A Corigliano father and son act?
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...