Today we have a letter to read, written by Mozart in the middle of May in the year 1778. Mozart was in Paris, 22 years old, and had this to say to his father back in Salzburg:

“I think I told you in my last letter, that the Duc de Guines plays the flute extremely well, and that his daughter is my pupil in composition. She also plays the harp magnifique. She has a great deal of talent, even genius, and in particular a marvelous memory so that she can play all her pieces, actually about 200, by heart. It is, however, extremely doubtful as to whether she has any talent for composition, especially as regards invention or ideas.”

The Duc de Guines was the former French ambassador to London and believed by Mozart’s father to be in the inner circle of the French Queen Marie Antoinette, and hence a contact well worth cultivating. De Guines commissioned Mozart to write a double concerto for himself on flute and daughter on harp. Mozart complied with a courtly Concerto in C Major. Four months after delivering the music, Mozart had to report to his father that he still hadn't seen any payment for his efforts!

Music Played in Today's Program

W.A. Mozart (1756-1791): Concerto for Flute and Harp; Emmanuel Pahud, flute; Marie-Pierre Langlamet, harp; Berlin Philharmonic; Claudio Abbado, conductor; EMI 57128

If you Google “Verdi” and “Royal Albert Hall,” you’ll probably be directed to a fine Italian restaurant named after the famous Italian opera composer that is located in that famous British concert venue, but back in 1875 the combination of Verdi and the Royal Albert Hall meant not a hot meal — but a hot ticket — for Londoners.

On today’s date that year a chorus of over 1000 and an orchestra of 150 assembled at Royal Albert Hall to give the U.K. premiere of Verdi’s Requiem Mass, a brand-new sacred work to be conducted by the composer himself.

Verdi’s “Requiem” had received its world premiere performance almost exactly one year earlier — on May 22, 1874 to be exact — at the Church of San Marco in Milan, a performance also conducted by the composer. Although it was premiered in a church, just three days later Verdi brought his Requiem to Milan’s La Scala opera house and cast the lead singers from his latest opera Aida as its four vocal soloists.

Commentators ever since have noted shared musical similarities of mood, color, and drama in these two works, and quipped Verdi’s “Requiem” might just be his greatest opera.

Music Played in Today's Program

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901): “Sanctus” from Requiem; Monteverdi Choir; Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique; John Eliot Gardner, conductor; Decca 441142

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 town of Friedland, the third of five children and the eldest daughter of a well-to-do pharmacist. No one else in her family was musically inclined, but after the death of her father when she was 28, a comfortable inheritance enabled her to devote the rest of her life to music and composition.

Despite the barriers to women as composers in her time, Mayer wrote and published orchestral and chamber works — including eight symphonies over a dozen concert overtures — and starting in the 1840s through to the time of her death in 1883, got them performed in Berlin, Cologne, Munich, Lyon, Brussels and Vienna.

Her early works are very much in the classical Viennese tradition of Beethoven, but as the decades passed, her style became much more in the high Romantic style. For most of the 20th century her works remained largely forgotten, but a 21st century reappraisal has resulted in new interest, recordings and performances of the symphonies and overtures of Emilie Mayer.

Music Played in Today's Program

Emilie Mayer (1812-1883): Symphony No. 4; New Brandenburg Philharmonie; Stefan Malzew, conductor; Capriccio 5339

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 first American performance of J.S. Bach’s Magnificat.

Bach composed this work in 1723, originally for Christmas use in Leipzig, then revised the score in 1733. The American premiere, 142 years after that, was also revised, since the original instrumentation was expanded for large 19th century orchestra and Bach probably would have been astonished at the size of the Cincinnati chorus.

Bach’s Magnificat served as the opener for a Festival performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. The Beethoven was a huge success, and Cincinnati newspapers reported that “Ninth Symphomania” was breaking out in their city.

The newspapers were less impressed with Bach’s Magnificat. The Cincinnati Commercial Review opined: “The work is difficult in the extreme … most of the chorus abounds with rambling sub-divisions. We considering the Magnificat the weakest thing the chorus has undertaken … possessing no dramatic character and incapable of conveying the magnitude of the labor that has been expended upon its inconsequential intricacies.”

Well, whatever they thought in 1875, we suspect American audiences and performers have a gotten a little more used to Bach’s “inconsequential intricacies” since then.

Music Played in Today's Program

J.S. Bach (1685-1750): Magnificat

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 Leningrad Philharmonic.

It must have been a heady experience for the young composer, who for the past two years had earned a living of sorts accompanying silent films at various Leningrad cinemas.

One evening, while accompanying the film Swamp and Water Birds of Sweden, he was so carried away by his own improvisations of bird song that he assumed the catcalls and noisy expressions of disapproval from the audience were directed at the film, not at him. Only afterwards was he told the audience had assumed he must have been drunk. In later years, Shostakovich would tell this story with some pride — at least they had noticed his music!

The Leningrad Philharmonic’s performance of his symphony, the first of his orchestral works to be performed in public, was a triumph and established Shostakovich as a major new talent.

May 12 was a date Shostakovich would commemorate till the end of his life — if for no other reason than he would never again have to improvise piano accompaniment to cinematic masterworks like Swamp and Water Birds of Sweden.

Music Played in Today's Program

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Symphony No. 1; Cracow Philharmonic; Gilbert Levine, conductor; Arabesque 6610

Although contemporaries, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss were two very different human beings. Mahler was tormented by self-doubt and existential angst; Strauss was a placid soul, self-confident to the point of complacency. Still, Mahler and Strauss admired and conducted each other’s music, and their odd friendship is reflected in their published correspondence.

On today’s date in 1911, for example, on learning Mahler had been ill, but was recovering, Strauss wrote a gracious letter to his fellow composer-conductor:

“I learn with great pleasure that you are recovering from your long illness. Perhaps it might be a happy diversion for you during the melancholy hours of convalescence to know I plan to perform your Symphony No. 3 with the Royal Orchestra in Berlin next winter. It is an excellent orchestra. If you would like to conduct yourself, it would be my pleasure to hear your lovely work again under your own direction — much as I would like to conduct it myself. I would be glad to rehearse the orchestra for you, so you would have no trouble and only the pleasure of conducting.”

Sadly, Strauss was poorly-informed about Mahler’s recovery and the gravity of his illness. Mahler died seven days after Strauss penned the letter.

Music Played in Today’s Program

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Symphony No. 3; London Symphony Orchestra; Jascha Horenstein, conductor; Unicorn 2006-7

Australian composer Barrington Pheloung’s music might not be familiar to concertgoers, but if you watch public television’s Mystery series, you’ve probably heard a lot of his work.

He composed music for the British Inspector Morse TV series, chronicling the cases of a Thames Valley police inspector and his loyal assistant, Robbie Lewis, and once explained how he came up with the haunting Inspector Morse theme:

“Morse is a very melancholic character ... and he was a lover of classical music ... He has a very cryptic mind and loves doing crosswords; we came up with the obvious idea — his name is Morse and so we used Morse code in the [theme] music.” He said the tapped code for M-O-R-S-E created a rhythm and even suggested a harmonic structure: “I picked up my guitar and there was the tune.”

Pheloung was born on today’s date in 1954 in Sydney, Australia, played drums and guitar as a kid, discovered Bach as a teen, and ended up earning a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London. He composed music for dance, films and TV, including Lewis, the sequel to the successful Inspector Morse series.

Music Played in Today's Program

Barrington Pheloung (1954-2019): Theme from Inspector Morse; The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra; James Fitzpatrick, conductor; Silva Screen Records 4729

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 composers of a number of pieces presented without attribution.

Professional music critics were also in attendance, although they prudently refused to reveal their guesses, fearing their professional reputations might suffer as a result. In the audience was the French composer Maurice Ravel, who had agreed to let some of his new piano pieces be performed as part of the experiment.

“The title Valses nobles et Sentimentales is a sufficient indication that my intention was to compose a chain of waltzes following the example of Schubert,” Ravel wrote. “They were performed for the first time, amidst protests and booing, at this concert.”

Even more droll, he recalled, were the reactions of some his most ardent admirers, who didn't know any of his own music would be played. They jeered at his waltzes, calling them “ridiculous” and ventured the guess the composer must be either Satie or Kodaly. Ravel accepted their comments in stoic silence.

The audience proved more astute than Ravel’s friends, however. “The paternity of the waltzes was correctly attributed to me, but by a weak majority,” he recalled.

Music Played in Today's Program

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Valses Nobles et Sentimentales; Minnesota Orchestra; Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, conductor; Analogue 007

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 was the home of Robert and Mildred Bliss.

Robert had retired from a distinguished career in the U.S. Foreign Service, which included a posting in St. Petersburg in 1907, around the same time a young Russian composer name Igor Stravinsky was getting some of his first public performances there.

The Blisses commissioned Stravinsky to write a chamber work to be premiered at their 30th wedding anniversary, a work now known as the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto.

“A little concerto in the style of the Brandenburg Concertos,” was how Stravinsky put it, adding, “I played Bach very regularly during the composition of the concerto, and I was greatly attracted to the Brandenburg Concertos. Whether or not the first theme of my first movement is a conscious borrowing from the third of the Brandenburg set, however, I do not know. What I can say is that Bach would most certainly have been delighted to loan it to me; to borrow in this way was exactly the sort of thing he liked to do.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): Dumbarton Oaks Concerto

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, inspired by the Biblical book of Exodus. The music was by 54-year old Canadian-born American composer, organist, pianist and music professor named Robert Nathaniel Dett.

Curiously, about 40 minutes into the live broadcast, which should have lasted a full hour, the NBC announcer broke in, stating, “We are sorry indeed, ladies and gentlemen, but due to previous commitments, we are unable to remain for the closing moments of this excellent performance.”

A live recording of the broadcast, preserved on scratchy acetate discs, documents that moment for posterity. No one knows for certain why the broadcast was cut short, but some have speculated that angry calls to NBC’s Southern affiliate stations might have been the reason, because Dett was African-American.

77 years later, in 2014, American conductor James Conlon led the Cincinnati May Festival Chorus in another live, broadcast performance of Dett’s oratorio, this time complete and uninterrupted from the stage of Carnegie Hall in New York City. That live performance was also recorded, this time digitally, and made available for posterity on a commercial release.

Music Played in Today's Program

R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943): The Ordering of Moses; Soloists; Cincinnati May Festival Chorus; Cincinnati Symphony; James Conlon, conductor; Bridge CD 9462

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 Director of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, they staged a special month-long festival in honor of one of Mengelberg’s favorite composers — Gustav Mahler, the Austrian composer of monumental symphonies, who had, in fact, conducted the Concertgebouw several times before his untimely death at 50 in 1911.

Mahler was the conductor Mengelberg admired most, and Mengelberg and his orchestra were ardent champions of Mahler’s symphonies, too: their 1920 festival performed all nine of them over the course of two weeks that May.

Mahler’s widow Alma was in attendance, as were his younger Austrian contemporaries Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, Danish composer Carl Nielsen and a young British conductor and Mahler fan named Adrian Boult, who reported on the festival for a British newspaper back home.

In 1995, the Concertgebouw staged another Mahler Festival on the 75th anniversary of the 1920 one, this time inviting the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic to participate. A hundredth-anniversary festival was planned for May 2020, but the COVID pandemic forced that Mahler cycle to be postponed until May 2025. Good things come to all who wait.

Music Played in Today's Program

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Symphony No. 1 (Titan); Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Riccardo Chailly, conductor; London/Decca 448813

Do you believe in angels? It seems Finnish composer Einojuhanni Rautavaara did — and produced a number of orchestral pieces with evocative titles like Angels and Visitations or Angel of Light. One of these, a concerto for double-bass and orchestra titled, Angel of Dusk, had its premiere performance on today's date in 1981, in Helsinki.

“Looking out the window of a plane, I saw a strikingly shaped cloud, gray but pierced with color, rising above the Atlantic horizon. Suddenly, the words Angel of Dusk came to mind,” he wrote. When asked to write a double-bass concerto, he recalled the vision of the cloud and had his title.

In an interview, Rautavaara spoke of a scientist who wrote that “the existence of music is an intellectual scandal. With that he meant that there is a message in music, and yet there are no words for that message. It’s from another world. For a scientist that is a scandal. For me, it’s a wonderful thing. In the end, I agree with Carl Jung. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him,” he explained.

Music Played in Today's Program

Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016): Angel of Dusk; Olli Kosonen, double bass; Finnish Radio Symphony; Leif Segerstam, conductor; Finlandia 009

Benjamin Britten was the most famous English opera composer of the 20th century, but ironically his first opera, Paul Bunyan, had an American theme and premiered at Columbia University in New York City on today's date in 1941.

Britten lived in America from 1939 to 1942. When his American publisher suggested he write something that could be performed by any high school, his good friend, British poet W.H. Auden fashioned a libretto around the tall tales of the mythical American folk hero, the giant logger Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe.

The New York Times review of the premiere of Paul Bunyan was a mixture of praise and pans. “Mr. Britten is a very clever young man,” wrote Olin Downes, but firmly suggested the young composer was capable of much better things.

His next opera, Peter Grimes, would receive its world premiere in London, in 1945, by which time Britten was back in England for good, but like Paul Bunyan had an American connection: it was originally commissioned for $1000 by the Koussevitsky Foundation of Boston, and so received its American premiere at the Berkshire Music Festival in 1946 under the baton of Leonard Bernstein.

Music Played in Today's Program

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): Paul Bunyan Overture; English Chamber Orchestra; Philip Brunelle, conductor; Virgin 45093

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): “Sea Interludes” from Peter Grimes; BBC Symphony; Andrew Davis, conductor; Teldec 73126

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 Elliott Carter.

Carter's Quartet was as densely-packed with ideas as a page from James Joyce — an author the composer cited as an influence. But, writing for the Herald Tribune, composer Virgil Thomson gave the work a glowing review: “The piece is complex of texture, delicious in sound, richly expressive and in every way grand — the audience loved it,” wrote Thomson.

That same year Carter’s quartet won First Prize in the International String Quartet competition in Belgium — a contest Carter entered almost as an afterthought. “My Quartet No. 1 was written largely for my own satisfaction and grew out of an effort to understand myself,” he said. To escape from the distractions of New York, Carter retreated to the desert near Tucson to write it. No one had commissioned the quartet, and Carter initially feared its complexity would baffle performers and audiences. His next quartet, equally challenging, won a Pulitzer Prize.

Complexity would characterize Carter's music for the next 50 years — although the composer himself insisted that fantasy and invention, rather than difficulty for its own sake, had always been his goal.

Music Played in Today's Program

Elliott Carter (1908-2012): String Quartet No. 1; The Composers Quartet; Nonesuch 71249

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 Elliott Carter.

Carter's Quartet was as densely-packed with ideas as a page from James Joyce — an author the composer cited as an influence. But, writing for the Herald Tribune, composer Virgil Thomson gave the work a glowing review: “The piece is complex of texture, delicious in sound, richly expressive and in every way grand — the audience loved it,” wrote Thomson.

That same year Carter’s quartet won first prize in the International String Quartet competition in Belgium — a contest Carter entered almost as an afterthought. “My Quartet No. 1 was written largely for my own satisfaction and grew out of an effort to understand myself,” he said. To escape from the distractions of New York, Carter retreated to the desert near Tucson to write it. No one had commissioned the quartet, and Carter initially feared its complexity would baffle performers and audiences. His next quartet, equally challenging, won a Pulitzer Prize.

Complexity would characterize Carter's music for the next 50 years — although the composer himself insisted that fantasy and invention, rather than difficulty for its own sake, had always been his goal.

Music Played in Today's Program

Elliott Carter (1908-2012): String Quartet No. 1; The Composers Quartet; Nonesuch 71249

Today marks the anniversary of the first performance of the best-known work of Swiss-born American composer, Ernest Bloch, whose Hebrew Rhapsody: Schelomo, for cello and orchestra, premiered at Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 1917. The piece is a meditation on the Book of Ecclesiastes, which describes King Solomon reflecting sadly on the vanity of human endeavor — Schelomo being the original Hebrew pronunciation of Solomon.

Schelomo premiered just a year after Bloch came to the United States. In America, Bloch had found encouragement and remarkable acceptance of his music. His Schelomo was premiered at an all-Bloch concert at Carnegie Hall arranged by The Society of the Friends of Music with the Philadelphia orchestra’s principal cellist Hans Kindler as soloist.

Schelomo was originally written with Russian cellist Serge Alexander Barjansky in mind, and was dedicated to him and his wife; but it was not until a concert in Rome in 1933, a fateful year for European Jewish communities, that Bloch got to conduct the work with Barjansky as soloist. Despite his success in America, he tried to resume his career in Europe in the 1930s, but, discouraged by the rise of anti-Semitism and threats of war, he returned to American for good in 1938.

Music Played in Today's Program

Ernest Bloch (1880-1959): Schelomo; Mischa Maisky, cello; Israel Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; DG 427 347

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 produce resonate, rounded — and, well, woody — musical tones.

The marimba was developed in Mexico and Guatemala, inspired by instruments native to Africa reconstructed in the New World by enslaved Africans in Central America. By the mid-20th century, the marimba was showing up in jazz ensembles, and classical composers would, on occasion, even write a marimba concerto or two. More recently, massed marimbas make up a sonorous, albeit stationary, component of hyper-kinetic drum and bugle corps spectaculars.

Contemporary American composer Jennifer Higdon loves the sound of the marimba, and so in 2006 wrote a piece for three marimbas, Splendid Wood.

‘Splendid Wood’ is a joyous celebration of the sound of wood, one of nature’s most basic materials. Wood is a part of all sorts of things in our world, but is used most thrillingly and gloriously in instruments. This work reflects the evolving patterns inside a piece of wood, always shifting, and yet every part is related and contributes to the magnificent of the whole,” she said.

Splendid Wood was commissioned by Bradford and Dorothea Endicott for the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble and had its New York premiere on today’s date in 2007, by the Mannes Percussion Ensemble under the direction of James Preiss.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962): Splendid Wood; New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble; Naxos 8.559683

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