On today’s date in 1951, the classic sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still was playing in theaters across America. The film’s opening sequence depicted a UFO hovering over Washington, D.C. Back then, flying saucer sightings were increasingly common, perhaps a result of mass hysteria spawned by cold war tensions and the existential threat posed by the atomic bomb. Or maybe we were being visited by other planets?

In any case, the movie made a big impression at the time, and countless kids — and probably a few adults as well — memorized the magic words “Gort: Klaatu barada nikto” which, in the film, prevented Washington DC’s destruction by a death-ray robot.

Fast forward nearly 50 years to 1999, when Washington, D.C.’s National Symphony premiered a new concerto for percussion and orchestra, specially composed for virtuoso percussionist Evelyn Glennie by American composer Michael Daugherty.

Inspired by the outer-space look of her percussion gear, Daugherty titled his piece UFO and asked that the soloist arrive unexpectedly and dressed as a space alien! In performance, she moved through the audience and around the stage while performing sleight-of-hand improvisations on a variety of flying saucer-like percussive instruments.

Music Played in Today's Program

Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975): The Day the Earth Stood Still film score; National Philharmonic; Bernard Herrmann, conductor; London 443 899

Michael Daugherty (b. 1954): UFO; Evelyn Glennie, percussion; North Texas Wind Symphony; Eugene Migliaro Corporon, conductor; Klavier 11121

In September 2001, American composer Elliott Carter was just a few months shy of his 93rd birthday, but still busy composing new works both large and small.

On today’s date that year, his Cello Concerto received its premiere in Chicago with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Daniel Barenboim conducting the Chicago Symphony.

Carter’s music is technically challenging for performers, and its complexity can make it equally challenging for audiences, especially at first hearing. Despite all that, his comments on his music were usually quite straightforward:

“In this score I have tried to find meaningful, personal ways of revealing the cello’s vast array of wonderful possibilities,” he wrote. “My Concerto is introduced by the soloist alone, playing a frequently interrupted cantilena that presents ideas later to be expanded into movements.”

A month after its premiere, Ma, Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony brought the new work to Carnegie Hall, and the New York Times reviewer Anthony Tommasini wrote:

“For all its complexities … the cello part has a rhapsodic, improvisatory quality … At its conclusion, when Mr. Carter, who is 92, climbed the steps to the stage with a cane to steady him, he received a prolonged standing ovation.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Elliott Carter (1908-2012): Cello Concerto; Alisa Weilerstein; Staatskapelle Berlin; Daniel Barenboim conductor; Decca 478 2735

Today’s date in 1899 marks the birthday of famous African-American composer, choir director and teacher, William L. Dawson, in Anniston, Alabama. After musical studies in Kansas City and Chicago, from 1931 to 1956 Dawson taught at the Tuskegee Institute, where he developed the Institute’s Choir into an internationally-renowned ensemble.

His arrangements of African-American spirituals, which he preferred to call folksongs, are justly famous, but in 1934 he produced his masterwork, a Negro Folk Symphony, modeled on Dvorak’s New World Symphony, but exhibiting his own distinctive mastery and development of his themes. His goal, he said, was for audiences to know that it was “unmistakably not the work of a white man.”

“The themes are taken from what are popularly known as Negro Spirituals. In this composition, the composer has employed themes … over which he has brooded since childhood, having learned them at his mother’s knee,” he wrote.

Dawson’s symphony was successfully premiered by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, who took the new work to Carnegie Hall, where its 35-year-old composer was repeatedly called to the stage. The symphony was revised in 1952 with added African rhythms inspired by the composer’s trip to West Africa.

Music Played in Today's Program

William L. Dawson (1899-1990): Negro Folk Symphony; Symphony of the Air; Leopold Stokowski, conductor; DG 477 6502

“Spaghetti western” is a nickname given to a genre of Italian films from the 1960s, most famously directed by Sergio Leone, and often starring Clint Eastwood as the taciturn, gun-toting anti-hero.

Spaghetti Western also is the title of a concerto for English horn written by American composer Michael Daugherty that received its premiere performance on today’s date in 1998 at a Pittsburgh Symphony concert conducted by Mariss Jansons.

“Just as Leone’s films redefined the Western genre from an Italian perspective, I redefine the European concerto … within an American context. In my Spaghetti Western, the English horn soloist is the ‘Man with no Name,’ moving through a series of sun-drenched panoramas, barren deserts, and desolate towns of the Wild West, … [one of ] the gun-slinging characters who haunt the landscape,” he wrote.

Daugherty gave Italian titles to his three-movement concerto: “Strade Vuote” (“Empty Streets”), “Assalto all’Oro” (“Gold Rush”) and “Mezzogiorno di Fuoco” (“Noon of Fire”). And since Eastwood was unable to play the English horn for the Pittsburgh Symphony premiere, Harold Smoliar removed the cigar from his parched, suntanned lips, adjusted his poncho and took up his English horn for the performance.

Music Played in Today's Program

Michael Daugherty (b. 1954): Spaghetti Western; Harold Smoliar; University of Michigan Symphony; Kenneth Kiesler, conductor; Equilibrium 63

On today’s date in 1875, one of the greatest musical match-makers of all time died in Spartanburg, South Carolina. His name was William Walker, an American Baptist shape-note-singing master who published several collections of traditional shape note tunes.

“Shape note” refers to a simple musical notation designed for communal singing. In his 1835 collection, Southern Harmony, Walker married a shape-note tune known as “New Britain” to the text of “Amazing Grace,” a hymn written by Anglican clergyman and abolitionist, John Newton.

Walker’s collection was a bestseller in the 19th century, and two centuries later, “Amazing Grace” has become one of the best-known and best-loved hymns of our time.

In 2011, a new orchestral fanfare based on “Amazing Grace,” by African-American composer Adolphus Hailstork, was published and subsequently recorded by the Virginia Symphony — appropriately enough, since Hailstork has served as professor of music and composer-in-residence at Virginia’s Norfolk State and Old Dominion universities, and in 1992 was named a cultural laureate of Virginia. In addition to this fanfare, Hailstork’s works range from choral and chamber pieces to symphonies and operas.

Music Played in Today's Program

Adolphus Hailstork (b. 1941): Fanfare on “Amazing Grace”; Virginia Symphony; JoAnne Faletta, conductor; Naxos 8559722

On today’s date in 2011, the Saint Louis Symphony under David Robertson premiered a new piano concerto by American composer Steven Mackey. The soloist was Orli Shaham, Robertson’s wife, to whom the new work was dedicated.

The new concerto had an odd title: Stumble to Grace, which Mackey explained:

“There is a narrative running through the piece … the piano is all thumbs … as it stumbles in its first entrance, playing naïve and awkward plinks and plunks. By [the end], the piano plays sophisticated, virtuosic and, at times, graceful contrapuntal music — a fugue, in fact … the inspiration … came from observing my now two-and-a-half year old toddler learning to become human … I wanted to open my compositional process to incorporate some of the whimsy and exuberance that he brings to his exploration of the world. A preoccupation with one’s children is common among most new parents but this seemed particularly appropriate … for a piece written for Orli Shaham. She and her conductor husband, David Robertson, have twins less than a year older than my son and we’ve had play dates and shared narrations about new parenthood.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Stephen Mackey (b. 1956): Stumble to Grace; Orli Shaham, piano; Los Angeles Philharmonic; David Robertson, conductor; Canary Classics CC-11

In the 1970s, the Afro-American Music Opportunities Association collaborated with Columbia Records to create an audio anthology of works by underrepresented Afro-American composers. Dubbed The Black Composer Series, this became a famous series of LPs devoted to recent works by then-contemporary composers as well as notable works from the 18th and 19th centuries.

One of the earliest composers represented in Columbia’s Black Composer Series was José Maurício Nunes Garcia, who was born in Brazil on today’s date in 1767. His grandparents had been African slaves, but his parents were Brazilians of mixed race. Since their young son showed great musical abilities, he was encouraged to pursue musical studies, and eventually secured a prestigious position as master of music at the Royal Chapel in Rio. By that time, he also had become a Roman Catholic priest.

Sacred music in 18th-century Brazil was heavily influenced by the symphonic mass settings of Haydn and Mozart. Garcia, in fact, had conducted the first performance of Mozart’s Requiem Mass in Rio de Janeiro. Garcia’s own Requiem Mass proved to be one of his most famous and often-performed works, and the one selected for inclusion in Columbia’s Black Composer Series.

Music Played in Today's Program

José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767-1830): Sanctus from Requiem Mass; Morgan State College Choir; Helsinki Philharmonic; Paul Freeman, conductor; Columbia Masterworks LP S33431/Sony CD G010003978687N

On today’s date in 1962, Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky returned to his homeland for the first time in nearly half a century. When he left in 1914, Czar Nicholas was still on the throne. By 1962, a lot had changed. For starters, his music had been severely criticized in the Soviet Union. Tikhon Khrennikov, first secretary of the Soviet Composers’ Union, branded Stravinsky “the apostle of reactionary forces in bourgeois music.” Dimtri Shostakovich had condemned “the unwholesome influence of Stravinsky” and his “complete divorce from the true demands of our time.”

Whether Khrennikov or Shostakovich really believed this, or merely parroted the official party line, is debatable. But his return to Russia proved a profoundly emotional experience for all concerned. The 80-year-old composer reconnected with old friends he had not seen in 50 years and relatives he had never met. And, yes, he even met with Khrennikov and Shostakovich.

Stravinsky led the Moscow Symphony in his Symphonic Ode and Orpheus Ballet. Robert Craft, his American assistant, then led the orchestra in his revolutionary Rite of Spring — all to thunderous applause. For an encore, he returned to conduct a quintessentially Russian score: his own 1917 arrangement of the Volga Boatmen’s Song.

Music Played in Today's Program

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): Ode; Cleveland Orchestra; Oliver Knussen, conductor; DG 4843064

On today’s date in 1975, the Kansas City Lyric Theater opened its 18th season with the world premiere of a new opera by Jack Beeson, Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines. As if to prove that everything is “up-to-date” in Kansas City, even before this world premiere, this Missouri company could boast a long tradition of staging contemporary operas by American composers.

Captain Jinks was the sixth of some 10 operas composed by Jack Beeson, who was born in Muncie, Indiana, in 1921. He blames the radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera for his catching the opera bug.

“When I was about 12, the Met started regularly broadcasting on Saturday afternoons, and I was seduced. With what spending money I had, I bought scores, and I would place the score up on the piano, and with a little radio on the piano and a big radio across the room, I would accompany the Met,” he said.

Some of Beeson’s other operas include The Sweet Bye and Bye from 1957, Lizzie Borden from 1965 and Sorry, Wrong Number from 1999. He also taught for many years at Columbia University in New York City, mentoring hundreds of his composition students.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jack Beeson (1921-2010): Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines; Kansas City Lyric Theatre; Russell Patterson, conductor; TROY 1149/50

On today’s date in 1958, just nine days after his death, a funeral service was held for British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams at Westminster Abbey, where his ashes were laid to rest. Now, many famous people are buried at Westminster Abbey, but an actual funeral service there, especially for someone not of the royal family, is pretty rare. In fact, Vaughan Williams was the first commoner to be buried there for almost 300 years.

The previous such event had been for the 17th English composer and sometime organist of the Abbey, Henry Purcell — whose grave, like Vaughan Williams, is in the Abbey’s north choir aisle, should you wish to pay your respects.

He had left instructions for which music was to be played: his anthem “O Taste and See” and also his setting of the hymn, “All People that on Earth do Dwell,” written for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, which had taken place at Westminster Abbey just five years earlier, in 1953.

The service was broadcast live by the BBC, and the announcer noted that if all the submitted requests to attend had have been honored, the Abbey would have been filled twice over.

Music Played in Today's Program

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): “O Taste and See” and “All People that on Earth do Dwell” (arr. of “Old 100th”); The Cambridge Singers; John Rutter, conductor; Collegium 107

Ralph Vaughan Williams (arr.): “All People That on Earth Do Dwell” (Old 100th) Christ Church Cathedral Choir; English Orchestra; Stephen Darlington, conductor; Nimbus 5166

On today’s date in 1930, in Kingsway Hall in London, British composer Edward Elgar conducted the first performance of his Pomp and Circumstance March No. 5, the last in this popular series.

Two of the previous marches had been dedicated to organist friends of the composer, and so when organist Percy Hull asked Elgar for a new work for the 1930 Hereford Festival, the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 5 is dedicated to him.

In 1930, Elgar was 73 and liked to go for automobile rides in the country. Hull had given him some driving lessons, and, appropriately enough, he got the idea for the musical themes of his new march on a drive through the countryside with a friend. He suddenly asked for something on which he could jot down his ideas. All the driver could produce was a road map of Worcestershire — so on its margins the first notes of his new score were scribbled.

The march proved to be one of his last new orchestral works. He had planned to write a sixth Pomp and Circumstance March, a kind of soldier’s funeral march, he said, but he died in 1934.

Music Played in Today's Program

Edward Elgar (1857-1934): Pomp and Circumstance March No. 5; Royal Philharmonic; André Previn, conductor; Philips 454 250

The Milwaukee Symphony was one of the first American orchestras to offer recordings of their live performances as digital downloads — and along with Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner, occasionally offered more contemporary fare, as well.

For example, on today’s date in 2005, Andreas Delfs led the Milwaukee Symphony in the world premiere performance of an orchestral work they had commissioned from Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra, and they offered it as a download.

Sierra’s Sinfonia No. 3, La Salsa, turned to the dance music of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and his native Puerto Rico for its basic materials, referencing riffs and rhythmic patterns familiar to salsa dancers for the work’s outer movements, with a slow second movement in habañera form.

“Puerto Rican music, especially salsa and folkloric music, has been in my compositional DNA. The vitality of the rhythms and the unique way in which melodic structure merge with the rhythms has inspired me to the present day. I always remember with nostalgia my childhood experiences in the Puerto Rican countryside, and these feelings of longing are also present in my work,” he said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Roberto Sierra (b. 1953): Sinfonia No. 3 (La Salsa); Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra; Andreas Delfs, conductor; MSO Classics MSO11 (digital download)

On today’s date in 1925, Vincent Youman’s musical No, No Nanette opened on Broadway after a trial run in Detroit and additional preview stagings in Chicago and London.

Tunes from No, No Nanette even reached the Soviet Union, although occasionally something was lost in the translation. For example, in Russia, the musical’s popular foxtrot, Tea for Two, was called the Tahiti Trot.

Late in 1927, on a dare from conductor Nikolai Malko, 21-year old Soviet composer Dimtri Shostakovich orchestrated this tune in just one hour. Malko was so pleased that he performed the orchestration the following year, and Shostakovich, who had a soft spot for musicals and operettas, incorporated his Tahiti Trot into his new ballet, The Age of Gold.

Just three years later, however, Soviet authorities decided that the foxtrot was just one more vestige of Western decadence, and Shostakovich quickly moved to disassociate himself from anything remotely connected to Broadway. His name even appeared on an open letter suggesting, “Only after thorough and widespread educational work on the class essence of light music will we succeed in liquidating it from Soviet society.”

In other words, “Nyet, Nyet!” to “Nanette!”

Music Played in Today's Program

Vincent Youmans (1898-1946): No, No Nanette Overture; Broadway cast album; Columbia 30563

Today’s date in 1912 marked the birthday of Cuban composer, choral director, and educator Gisela Hernández.

She began her musical studies at the Santa Cecilia School in her hometown of Cárdenas, and in 1924 moved to Havana, where she finished her studies four years later at the National Conservatory. She won Cuba’s National Composition Award in 1940, and in 1944 continued her studies in the United States at the Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore. Returning to Cuba, she began to compose her own works, pursued a career at various educational institutions, and organized and promoted concerts of Cuban music. In 1949, she formed and directed a Women’s Choir and was named professor of harmony, music history, pedagogy and composition at the National Music Conservatory in Havana. She was also a member of the nationalistic Grupo Minorista of composers who incorporated Afro-Cuban traditions into their music.

Hernández wrote pieces for solo piano and chamber music, as well as choral and orchestral works. She is also credited with being one of the first, and most important composers of Cuban art songs. She died in 1971 at 59, and her music is only recently becoming better known outside of Cuba.

Music Played in Today's Program

Gisela Hernández (1912-1971): Cubanas for Piano: No. 3, Guajira; Juana Zayas, piano; Music & Arts MACD-1069

On this date in 1973, Eugene Ormandy conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in music by Mozart, Brahms and American composer, Roy Harris. The program was nothing out of the ordinary, but the concert took place in Beijing and marked the first time an American orchestra had performed in Communist China. The orchestra was invited to China following the famous visit of President and Mrs. Nixon and secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

In the audience for one of these historic concerts was a young student of traditional Chinese music, Tan Dun. When he heard the Philadelphians perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, a work he had never heard before, he decided then and there to become a composer. In 1986, he came to New York City, and since then has managed to combine elements of East and West into his own musical works.

In 1987, for example, he composed a violin concerto Out of Peking Opera, which draws on both Chinese and European traditions. In addition to prestigious awards and commissions from major foundations and orchestras, in March of 2001, Dun won an Oscar for his film score to the Ang Lee film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Music Played in Today's Program

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Symphony No. 5; Royal Philharmonic; René Leibowitz, conductor; Chesky 17

Tan Dun (b. 1957): Out of Peking Opera; Cho-Liang Lin, violin; Helsinki Philharmonic; Muhai Tang, conductor; Ondine 864

On today’s date in 1967, Aaron Copland’s final orchestra work, Inscape, was premiered by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Copland said the work’s title, Inscape, was borrowed from 19th-century English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Its compositional technique was borrowed from the serial or 12-tone models of Arnold Schoenberg and the some of the late works of one of his favorite composers, Igor Stravinsky. Bernstein was no great fan of 12-tone music, but he exclaimed following the premiere, “Aaron, it’s amazing how, even when you compose in a completely foreign idiom, the music still comes out sounding like you!”

Beyond the technical challenge involved, Inscapes, said Copland, reflected what he called “the tenseness of the times in which we live.”

His experiments with 12-tone pieces like Inscape didn’t impress the avant-garde composers of the day, and only baffled audiences who expected him to produce more works in the style of his popular ballet scores of the 1930s and 40s.

By 1970, he stopped composing altogether, and claimed not to miss it very much. “I must have expressed myself sufficiently,” he said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Inscape; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 47236

For decades many of the 20th century’s greatest composers routinely visited Venice’s famous canals and churches during a biennial music festival that showcased brand-new works by the likes of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Britten and others.

French composer Darius Milhaud describes sharing space with several of his composer-colleagues in a cramped Festival “green room.” “It was a normal sight to see Stravinsky’s rain-coat and Constant Lambert’s tweed overcoat hanging near my two walking sticks,” he wrote. “Meanwhile, Italian composer Hildebrando Pizetti would be putting up a mirror, opening a silver toilet-case, and arranging flowers, his wife’s photograph and a sheaf of telegrams.”

On today’s date in 1937, he conducted the first performance of his Suite Provencale at the Venice Festival. This jaunty score proved to be one of his most popular orchestral works. In 1954, it was Leonard Bernstein’s turn. In Venice on today’s date that year, he conducted the premiere performance of his Serenade for violin and orchestra, with Isaac Stern the featured soloist.

Despite its admirable track record for picking winners, the Venice Festival shut down operations in 1973, although its impact lives on in the number of modern masterworks it helped launch in its day.

Music Played in Today's Program

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974): Suite Provençale; Detroit Symphony; Neeme Järvi, conductor; Chandos 7031

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium); Zino Francescatti, violin; NY Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 60559

In 1886, a Czech patron of the arts, Josef Hlavka, had a chapel built at his summer residence at Lužany in Bohemia and asked his composer friend Antonín Dvořák to write a mass to dedicate it.

As a devout Catholic, Dvořák was happy to oblige. Since the chapel was quite small, he wrote his Mass in D Major for just a quartet of soloists, a small choir, and organ, and led the premiere performance there on today’s date in 1887, with his wife Anna singing one of the solo roles.

He told Hlavka he was grateful for the chance to write so intimate a piece. “Until now, I had only written sacred works of larger proportions with considerable vocal and instrumental means at my disposal,” he wrote.

Ironically, Dvořák’s intimate Lužany Mass became popular as just such a large-scale work. At the request of his publisher, he orchestrated his Mass, and in that form it received its international premiere in 1893 at the immense Crystal Palace in London, performed by a huge chorus and a large symphony orchestra.

The published orchestrated version became extremely popular during his lifetime, but his small-scale original version was not even published until 1963.

Music Played in Today's Program

Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904): Mass in D; Christ Church Cathedral Choir; Nicholas Cleobury; Simon Preston, conductor; London/Decca 448 089-2

American composer Henry Cowell lived from 1897 to 1965 and wrote thousands of musical works in a wide variety of styles. As a young boy, he lived near San Francisco’s Chinatown, so Asian influences are as likely to crop up in his music as European models. And among his aggressively experimental works are piano pieces that employ what he called “tone clusters” — chords played with a fist or forearm. Those pieces piqued the interest of European composers like Béla Bartók and Leoš Janáček, but in addition to avant-garde scores, he wrote dozens of conventionally tonal works, often hauntingly beautiful.

In 1941, he discovered Southern Harmony, a collection of evocative 19th century American hymns. These reminded him of even earlier works by 18th century American composer William Billings, who liked to write what he called “fuguing tunes.” Combining these two influences, he came up with his own series of “Hymns and Fuguing Tunes” for various combinations of instruments.

Cowell’s Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10 for oboe and strings, for example, was premiered on today’s date in 1955, in Santa Barbara, California, by oboist Bert Gassman and the Pacific Coast Music Festival orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

Music Played in Today's Program

Henry Cowell (1897-1965): Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10; Humbert Lucarelli, oboe; Manhattan Chamber Orchestra; Richard Auldon Clark, conductor; Koch 7282

On today’s date in 1949, British composer Gerald Finzi conducted the premiere performance of his Clarinet Concerto at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford.

During his lifetime, Finzi never achieved the fame of some other 20th-century British composers. British tenor Mark Padmore wrote an article, “The Quiet Man of British Music,” which included these lines:

“I want to make a case for taking the time to get to know a composer … whose plumage is discreet and whose song is quiet and subtle. Finzi might be termed one of classical music's wrens. Despite his exotic-sounding surname and mixed Italian, Sephardic and Ashkenazi heritage, Finzi was in many ways an archetypal English gentleman ... One of his passions was the saving of old English varieties of apples … [His] music was written slowly and often it would take many years for a piece to reach its final form.”

Finzi died in 1956, at 55, from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was concerned his music would be forgotten after his death and added this note to his catalogue of works: “The affection which an individual may retain after his departure is perhaps the only thing which guarantees an ultimate life to his work.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Gerald Finzi (1901-1956): Clarinet Concerto; Alan Hacker, clarinet; English String Orchestra; William Boughton, conductor; Nimbus 5665

Today's date in 1934 marked the birthday of British composer Peter Maxwell Davies. His name is spelled D-A-V-I-E-S, so most Americans tend to pronounce it “Day-VEES,” even though “Davis” is the common British pronunciation.

Once, when he was in the U.S., a British journalist called a Las Vegas hotel where the composer was staying and asked to speak to Peter Maxwell Davis. The receptionist said there was no one there by that name. Asked to spell the name, the British journalist did. “Oh, Day-vees!” said the receptionist. “Sorry, there is no one registered by that name either.” It turned out the hotel computer had compressed Maxwell Davis into “Mavis” and that was how he was registered. He found the whole incident so amusing that he wrote an orchestral tone-poem, Mavis in Las Vegas, fantasizing that somehow he had a female alter-ego in that city, perhaps earning her living as a high-kicking Vegas showgirl.

In addition to the whimsical Mavis in Las Vegas, Davies often composed music often inspired by the bleak Northern land — and seascape of the Orkney Islands — an atmosphere as far removed from the Vegas Strip as you can imagine.

Music Played in Today's Program

Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016): Mavis in Las Vegas; BBC Symphony; Peter Maxwell Davies, conductor; Collins 1524

On today’s date in 1573, Queen Elizabeth the First celebrated her 40th birthday.

According to some musicologists, the music-loving monarch received as a birthday gift a Latin motet for 40 voices by Thomas Tallis, Spem in Alium, which translates as Hope in All Things. Elisabeth was certainly fond of Tallis, awarding him special gifts and privileges —despite his remaining a steadfast Roman Catholic throughout her reign, when being a Catholic in Protestant England was very risky business, indeed!

In fact, other musicologists contend that this famous motet was actually written for the coronation of Elizabeth’s predecessor, Catholic queen Mary Tudor. Still others say: “No, no — the motet was commissioned by a patriotic British nobleman, who challenged Tallis to write a work as good as — or better — than a contemporary Italian composer’s 40-voice motet.”

The truth is we just don’t know for sure why Tallis composed this intricate and glorious music. We do know that in a dangerous time for anyone with strong religious convictions, Tallis lived to the ripe old age of 80. His epitaph reads: “As he did live, so he did die — in mild and quiet sort (O happy Man!)”

Music Played in Today's Program

Thomas Tallis (1505-1585): Spem in Alium; Huelgas Ensemble; Paul Van Nevel, conductor; Sony 60992

Consider, if you will, the poor timpanist. At most symphony concerts, they sit quietly — waiting for the moment when a dramatic exclamation point is required from the kettledrums. While the violinists rarely get a break, the timpanist must sit patiently for most of the evening, biding their time, waiting for the precise moments to strike.

On rare occasions, however, the timpanist is the center of attention as soloist in a timpani concerto. One such concerto was written by American composer and timpanist William Kraft, who was born on this day in 1923. He served as a percussionist and timpanist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 26 years, from 1955-1981. He was that orchestra’s first composer-in-residence, and founded the L.A. Philharmonic’s first New Music Group.

His timpani concerto was written in 1983 for timpanist Thomas Akins of the Indianapolis Symphony, who premiered the work with that orchestra in 1984.

Kraft’s description of his timpani concerto is as follows: “The first movement is very jazzy … the second movement is very beautiful, with two string orchestras and a lot of glissandi, and the third is hell-bent for leather.”

Music Played in Today's Program

William Kraft (1923-2022): Timpani Concerto; Thomas Akins, timpani; Alabama Symphony; Paul Polivnick, conductor; Albany 302

In 1941, as the German army was overrunning Russia, the Soviet government evacuated important artists to remote places of safety. Composer Sergei Prokofiev, for example, found himself in the little town of Nalchik, nestled in the foothills of the northern Caucasus Mountains about 1000 miles away from the front.

He was intrigued by the region’s folk music, and, taking a break from a big project to turn Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace into an opera, composed his String Quartet No. 2, based on local tunes. The new work was, as he put it, “a combination of virtually untouched folk material and the most classical of classical forms, the string quartet.”

Its three movements are all based on local songs and dances, and he took care not to smooth out any roughness in the original material.

His new string quartet received its premiere performance back in Moscow in April of 1942, at a concert given by The Beethoven Quartet. A later performance on today’s date that same year was delayed due to a German air raid. The new music was well received, and Prokofiev, perhaps with the air raid in mind, supposedly called the premiere “an extremely turbulent success.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953): String Quartet No. 2

For ballet lovers, the opening of Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake conjures up tutus, but for old-time movie buffs, this same music triggers memories of many black-and-white films of the 1930s. Back then, the eerie opening measures of Swan Lake served as the “main title” music for dozens of old Universal Studios thrillers, including the famous 1931 film of Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi.

“Ah, the children of the night—what music THEY make…”

But on today’s date in 1999 at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, Tchaikovsky got some competition from Philip Glass. For a special showing of the Bela Lugosi Dracula, Glass wrote a brand-new score. Now, beyond the opening Tchaikovsky, the original 1931 soundtrack had included very little music, and, despite the creepy charisma of Bela Lugosi, the film moved at a ponderous pace. The new Philip Glass score, performed live by the Kronos Quartet, added fresh atmosphere to the familiar old film. In fact, it proved so effective that Glass and the Kronos Quartet took it on a tour, accompanying live showings of the old film in Europe and the U.S.

Music Played in Today's Program

Peter Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893) Swan Lake Ballet Montréal Symphony; Charles Dutoit, cond. London 436 212

Philip Glass (b. 1937) Dracula filmscore excerpt Kronos Quartet Nonesuch 79542

On today’s date in 1806, Ludwig van Beethoven offered his publisher Breitkopf and Härtel three new string quartets — works we know today as the three Razumovsky Quartets, that were eventually issued as Beethoven’s Opus 59.

In Beethoven’s day, Vienna was swarming with Russian, Polish and Hungarian aristocrats with a taste for music. Among them was Count Andreas Kyrilovich Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to Vienna. The count was an amateur violinist who occasionally played in a string quartet he maintained at his own expense.

The count commissioned Beethoven to write three string quartets, stipulating that they should incorporate Russian melodies, real or imitated. The most recognizable of the Russian tunes, Beethoven employed occurs in the scherzo of the second quartet: It’s the same theme that was later quoted by Mussorgsky in the coronation scene of his opera, Boris Godunov.

When the Razumovsky Quartets were premiered in Vienna in 1807, one contemporary review noted, “These very long and difficult quartets … are profoundly thought-through and composed with enormous skill, but will not be intelligible to everyone.”

When one Italian violinist confessed to Beethoven that he found them incomprehensible, Beethoven retorted: “Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Razumovsky Quartet No. 2; Emerson String Quartet; DG 479 1432

On today’s date in 1948, at a Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall, the London Symphony gave the premiere performance of the Serenade in G Major by British composer Ernest John Moeran. He was born in 1894 in London, but Ireland became his adopted home and musical inspiration during the last decades of his life.

Moeran was fascinated by folksongs, and his method of collecting them was to sit in a country pub and wait until an old man started singing. He would note down the song and ask for more. In the 1920s, he became drinking companion of another British composer, music critic, and fellow folk song aficionado Peter Warlock, a talented but rather notorious character who was the model for the outrageously Bohemian composer depicted in Anthony Powell’s string of novels, A Dance to the Music of Time.

Warlock’s most famous work was his Capriol Suite, an affectionate reworking of Renaissance tunes, and Moeran’s serenade, similar in tone, was perhaps a tribute to his old boon companion. This proved to be his last major work, as he died suddenly two years later, at 55, in his beloved Ireland.

Music Played in Today's Program

E.J. Moeran (1894-1950): Serenade in G; Northern Sinfonietta of England; Richard Hickox, conductor; EMI 74991-2

On today’s date in 1785, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dedicated six of his string quartets to his friend and older colleague, Joseph Haydn. Earlier that year, Haydn heard some of them performed in Vienna. Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang’s father, was also present, and must have been elated when Haydn said, “Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.”

Mozart’s quartets were published by Viennese firm Artaria and generated some much-needed income for Wolfgang. Whether they made money for their publisher as well is another matter. Three years later, one of Mozart’s lesser contemporaries, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, offered Artaria six of his string quartets at the same price they paid Mozart, with a note that read, “I am certain you will do better with my quartets than you did with Mozart’s, which deserve the highest praise, but which, because of their overwhelming and unrelenting artfulness, are not to everyone’s taste.”

Apparently Mozart’s quartets were deemed too “brainy” for public taste. Well, Dittersdorf may have sold better in the 1780’s, but these days performers and audiences find Mozart’s “unrelenting artfulness” more to their taste than Dittersdorf’s sugary confections.

Music Played in Today's Program

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): String Quartet; Emerson String Quartet; DG 439 861

Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-1799): String Quartet No. 4; Gewandhaus Quartet; Berlin Classics 9261

On today’s date in 1933, the Philadelphia Orchestra was performing at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell. Conductor Alexander Smallens led the world premiere performance of a new work by 23-year-old composer Samuel Barber. It was his first orchestral composition to have a major public hearing, but oddly enough, young Mr. Barber himself was not in attendance.

He was in Europe that summer, and so missed the premiere of his overture to The School for Scandal, a musical romp inspired by the 18th century English Restoration comedy of the same name by Richard Sheridan.

Even before he had left the Curtis Institute of Music, where he pursued a triple major in piano, composition, and voice, Barber had begun winning prizes that enabled him to study abroad. Until the outbreak of World War II, Barber’s musical career was quite Eurocentric.

His School for Scandal overture, in fact, was written in Italy in 1931. Barber’s Symphony No. 1 premiered in Rome in 1936, and the following year was played by the Vienna Philharmonic at the 1937 Salzburg Music Festival. That led to stateside performances and commissions from conductors like Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini.

Music Played in Today's Program

Samuel Barber (1910-1981): School for Scandal overture; Baltimore Symphony; David Zinman, conductor; Argo 436 288

Say the phrase “BBC Proms” to most music lovers, and they’ll conjure up a mental image of the rowdy “Last Night of the Proms” at which normally staid and reserved Britons don funny hats and make rude noises during Henry Wood’s arrangement of British sailor songs. But the raucous “Last Night of the Proms” is only the festive finale of several weeks of fairly serious music making: dozens of concerts covering a wide range of old and new music

From the very beginning of the Proms in 1895, Wood, who started the whole thing, had this specific agenda: “I am going to run nightly concerts to train the public in easy stages,” he explained. “Popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music.”

On today’s date in 1996, for example, violinist Gidon Kremer premiered a violin concerto by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho at a Proms concert. The work had an unusual title — Grail Theater. “I like the unusual combination of these two words because it represents two such different things. One is the search for the Grail, and the other the theatrical aspect,” she explained.

Music Played in Today's Program

J.S. Bach (1685-1750) arr. Henry Wood: Toccata and Fugue in D minor; BBC Symphony; Andrew Davis, conductor; Teldec 97868

Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023): Grail Theatre; Gidon Kremer, violin; BBC Symphony; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; Sony Classical 60817