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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Music by and about telephones
On today’s date in 1947, Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera, The Telephone premiered at the Heckscher Theater in New York. The story involves a young man who...
The Night the Lights Went Out on Elliott Carter
On today’s date in 1994, at Orchestra Hall in Chicago, the Chicago Symphony and conductor Daniel Barenboim gave the world premiere performance of Part...
A Romance for Bassoon
Famous composers have been, on occasion, famous performers as well. Think of Bach on the organ, or Rachmaninoff on the piano. And if Mozart’s father i...
A belated Elgar premiere
We probably have the irrepressible playwright, music critic, and ardent socialist George Bernard Shaw to thank for this music — the Symphony No. 3 of...
Orff's 'Trionfo di Aphrodite'
Happy Saint Valentine’s Day!
On today's date in 1953, a new choral work by German composer Carl Orff received its premiere performance at the La...
Elsa Barraine
Today’s date in 1910 marks the birthday in Paris of a French composer you perhaps have never heard of, but Elsa Barraine is well-deserving of your att...
The Brothers Johnson write an anthem
On today’s date in the year 1900, the principal of Stanton Elementary in Jacksonville, Florida was asked to give a Lincoln’s Day speech to his student...
'Music for Two Big Instruments'
If the bassoon is rather unkindly known as the “clown” of the orchestra, what does that make the poor tuba?
Just say “tuba” to someone, and they...
Hanson's 'Merry Mount' at the Met
On today’s date in 1934, the audience at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City demanded — and got — 50 curtain calls for the cast and conductor of t...
Mozart starts keeping track
On today’s date in 1784, in the city of Vienna, Wolfgang Mozart finished one bit of work and started another — which he would continue until the end o...
Virgil Thomson and Wallace Stevens in Hartford
On this day in 1934, an excited crowd of locals and visitors had gathered in Hartford, Connecticut, for the premiere performance of a new opera, Four...
Borodin's String Quartet No. 2
One of the most popular Romantic string quartets had its premiere performance on today’s date in 1882 at a Russian Musical Society concert in Saint Pe...
Stephen Paulus and the Commissioning Club
For most of the 18th and 19th centuries, commissioning new musical works was the exclusive prerogative of the Church, royalty, and the wealthy nobilit...
Verdi's 'Otello' premieres
One of the greatest of all Italian operas had its first performance on this day in 1887. Otello, by Giuseppe Verdi, was a musical version of Shakespea...
The passing of Iannis Xenakis
Many 20th century composers were scarred by the violence and turmoil of their times — but none quite so literally as Greek composer, engineer, and arc...
Kurtag's Tribute
Contemporary Hungarian composer György Kurtág is famous for writing short, sparse and concentrated musical works. He has, however on occasional writte...
Haydn's 'real' Miracle Symphony
On today’s date in 1795, Haydn was in England and about to conduct one of his new symphonies at The King’s Theater in London. An early biographer reco...
Brahms in New York
On today's date in 1862, while President Lincoln was fretting over General McClellan’s unwillingness to confront Secessionist rebels, New York concert...
Glass Philip Glass Philip Glass
American composer Philip Glass was born in Baltimore on this date in 1937.
Glass says he discovered music via his father’s radio repair shop, wh...
Shapero goes classical
On today’s date in 1948, Leonard Bernstein, 29, conducted the Boston Symphony in the premiere of a new orchestral work by Harold Shapero, 27.
Th...
Donald Shirley
Today marks the birthday of American pianist and composer Donald Shirley, who was born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1927, to Jamaican immigrant parents:...
John Tavener
Late in 2013, the musical world was gearing up to celebrate the 70th birthday of British composer John Tavener, but sadly he died, so his 70th birthda...
Kathryn Bostic
On today’s date in 2019 a new documentary film, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah examining her powerful w...
Harris's '1933' in 1934
In 1933, Aaron Copland introduced Roy Harris to Serge Koussevitzky, the famous conductor of the Boston Symphony in those days. Now, Koussevitzky was o...
Strauss raw and cooked
On today’s date in 1909, Richard Strauss’s opera Elektra had its premiere in Dresden. The libretto, a free adaptation of the grim, ancient Greek trage...
Stravinsky (and Newman) at the movies
On this day in 1946, Igor Stravinsky conducted the New York Philharmonic in the first performance of his Symphony in Three Movements, a work inspired...
Field the Claveciniste
On today’s date in 1837, the Dublin-born pianist and composer John Field breathed his last in Moscow at 54.
Born in 1782 into musical family, Fi...
Bach's two- and three-part Inventions
As kids, many of us received home-made presents: a sweater or pair of socks, perhaps, or — if you were unlucky — a crocheted bow tie you were forced t...
Brahms breaks the rules
The Piano Concerto No. 1 by Brahms received its premiere public performance on today’s date in 1859 with the Hanover Court Orchestra under the directi...
Poulenc's 'Gloria'
On today’s date in 1961, French composer Francis Poulenc was in Boston for the premiere of his new choral work. It was a setting of a Latin text “Glor...
'Truth Tones' for MLK
Each January, Martin Luther King Day is observed on the third Monday of the month, and in 2009, MLK day fell on January 19.
To celebrate, the di...
Bernstein for young people
On today's date in 1958, Leonard Bernstein asked, “What does music mean?” He posed the question to an audience of kids assembled at Carnegie Hall for...
George Walker's Trombone Concerto
In Rochester, New York, on today’s date in 1957, there was a concert at the Eastman School of Music, conducted by the school’s famous director Howard...
Prokofiev's 'Scythian Suite'
In 1916, Imperial Russia was still using the old Julian calendar. In Russia, as Hamlet might have put it, “time was out of joint,” lagging 13 days beh...
The Mozarts in Vienna
In the fall of 1784, Mozart and his wife moved into an elegant apartment near St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. The house belonged to the Camesina br...
Puccini's shocker
On today’s date in 1900, Tosca, a new opera by Giacomo Puccini had its premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Rome was, in fact, the opera’s setting...
'Hello, Mr. Addinsell?'
Today’s date in 1904 marks the birthday of Richard Addinsell, a versatile British musician who became one of the most famous film score composers of h...
Dvořák's 'American Quintet'
Composers and publishers don’t always see eye to eye. Simrock, the German publisher of Dvořák’s music, irritated the patriotic Czech composer by issui...
A Kernis premiere wins the Pulitzer
On today’s date in 1998, the Lark Quartet gave the first performance of the String Quartet No. 2 by American composer Aaron Jay Kernis. Like much of h...
Bartok's 'Contrasts'
In January of 1939, famous jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman was playing each night at New York’s Paramount Theater. On today’s date that year, he also a...