When a flying saucer circled over Washington, D.C. in the classic 1951 sci-fi film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, it did so to music played on an electronic instrument known as the Theremin.

Its Russian inventor, Leon Theremin, was born in St. Petersburg on today’s date in 1896. In 1927 he traveled to America, where he obtained a patent for an electronic instrument he called the Thereminovox. In the 1930s, he arranged concerts for his creation at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Then, in 1938, without explanation, he disappeared. Some said it was because he was in debt, others because he was married to two women at the same time. The truth was even stranger: Theremin was a spy.

He had been passing on American technical information to the Soviets. Ironically, when he returned home, he was immediately thrown into a Soviet prison for seven years. While incarcerated, he developed miniature electronic eavesdropping devices for the Soviet government.

Decades later, in 1989, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, 92-year old Theremin again showed up in New York to be honored at a festival of electronic music, amazed his name and instrument were even remembered.

Music Played in Today's Program

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

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): Berceuse from The Firebird; Clara Rockmore, theremin; Nadia Reisenberg, piano; Delos 1014

There was a time when German opera houses would have fought over the chance to premiere an opera by Richard Strauss. But by 1940, when he finished the mythological opera, The Love of Danae, there was a war on and Strauss had fallen out of favor with Germany’s Nazi rulers.

A scheduled premiere in Dresden had to be cancelled. In Leipzig, the orchestral parts for the new opera were lost in a fire, and in Munich an Allied air raid damaged the opera’s sets and scenery. By the summer of 1944, when conductor Clemens Krauss was rehearsing handpicked vocal soloists and the Vienna Philharmonic for the opera’s belated premiere at the Salzburg Festival, the collapse of the Third Reich was imminent.

On August 1, an order was issued from Berlin canceling all music festivals and closing all theaters. Somehow Salzburg managed to get a dispensation, and rehearsals for Strauss’ opera were allowed to continue. A private dress rehearsal of The Love of Danae took place in Salzburg on August 16, 1944. The 80-year old composer attended, and, with tears in his eyes, thanked the performers with these words: “Perhaps we shall meet again in a better world.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Die Liebe der Danae (Symphonic Fragment); Toronto Symphony; Andrew Davis, conductor; CBS 45804

It’s said that nature abhors a vacuum — and so, apparently, did Richard Wagner, who devised a brass instrument to bridge a gap he perceived between the horns and the trombones in the orchestra of his day. And so the Wagner tuba was born, a brass instrument Wagner designed for the 1876 premiere of his cycle of four Ring operas in Bayreuth, Germany, which began on today’s date that year with Das Rheingold — the first opera in the Ring cycle.

Other composers have also scored for Wagner tubas, including Anton Bruckner and Richard Strauss, both ardent Wagner fans, and also Igor Stravinsky, who, though certainly not a Wagnerite, did include Wagner tubas in the early versions of some of his famous ballet scores.

Some contemporary composers include parts for the Wagner tuba in their works as well, and a quartet of these instruments appears in a 1994 score Hungarian composer György Kurtág wrote for the Berlin Philharmonic and its then music director, Claudio Abbado. Kurtág is noted for his short, epigrammatic and introspective chamber works, and Stele is his first major work for a large, conventional, arranged symphony orchestra.

Music Played in Today's Program

György Kurtág (1926-2019): Stele; SWR Symphony; Michael Gielen, conductor; Hänssler 93001

Some have claimed that it was on today’s date in 1877 that the American inventor Thomas Edison recorded his own voice reciting, “Mary had a little lamb” on a tinfoil cylinder of his own design. Other historians date the precise birth of the phonograph earlier, others later. In any case, the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company wasn’t established until January of 1878.

Initially, music wasn’t Edison’s top priority: He thought his phonograph might be profitable as an aid to stenographers, or for families who wanted to record the last words of beloved relatives.

Eventually, however, classical music and the phonograph began to interact.

In London in 1888, a bit of a Crystal Palace performance of Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt was captured on an Edison cylinder. In Vienna, Johannes Brahms, seated at the piano, recorded a snippet of his famous Hungarian Dance No. 3, with a spoken intro many wrongly assumed was by the composer.

The voice of British composer Arthur Sullivan was captured, however, commenting, “I am astonished — and terrified — at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever!”

Well, Arthur, I’m afraid there’s no going back now…

Music Played in Today's Program

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) arr. Kreisler: Songs My Mother Taught Me; Fritz Kreisler, violin Pearl 9324

George Frederic Handel (1685-1757): excerpt from Judas Maccabeus; Edward Lloyd, tenor; Koch Historic 7703

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): plays on an Edison cylinder (recorded 1889); Johannes Brahms, piano; Pearl 99049

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Hungarian Dance No. 1; Idil Biret, piano; Naxos 8.550355

As the proverbial saying goes: “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

It was, frankly, a matter of economic necessity that led 36-year-old Austrian conductor Clemens Krauss to program an all-Johann Strauss concert by the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Music Festival on today’s date in 1929.

The Festival was established in 1920 with high ideals but insecure funding. To succeed, the Festival needed both strong local support and wealthy visitors from abroad. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but in 1929, as the festival approached its 10th anniversary, its finances and future seemed uncertain.

Now, Krauss knew that Strauss waltzes were popular with both the natives and the festival’s international visitors, so why not offer a whole concert program consisting of nothing but the dance music of Johann Strauss? The August 11, 1929, concert proved to be a resounding success, and the idea was repeated at the Festival several times over the next decade.

Back home in Vienna, Krauss revived the idea of an all-Strauss concert on December 31, 1939. That year-end tradition continues to this day, as the Philharmonic presents its annual New Year’s Concert, broadcast worldwide from Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna.

Music Played in Today's Program

Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825-1899): Annen Polka and Perpetuum Mobile; Vienna Philharmonic; Clemens Krauss, conductor; Preiser 90139 (recorded 1929)

On today’s date in 1813, William Henry Fry was born in Philadelphia. As a journalist, he was one of the most vociferous champions of American concert music, and put his money where his mouth was by becoming a composer, creating a number of programmatic works, including a Niagara symphony and another titled Santa Claus. Above all else, Fry was passionate about opera, and wrote several of his own.

Fry was a colorful — if understandably biased — music critic. Here’s an excerpt from his 1862 review of a New York performance of Verdi’s Il Trovatore — an opera only 9 years old at that time:

“Trovatore … has a wonderful plot, beyond human comprehension; though finally we learn in the last scene that [the tenor] is made into soup by the order of his brother [the baritone], who then expresses his emotion and surprise on learning of the transaction as the curtain falls. As to the music — there are some charming, popular, ingenious, artistic … points; [but] there are others egregiously vulgar and rowdy. The Anvil Chorus, for example, is about the equal to a scene of mending a sewer set to music; or repairing a pair of cast-off leather breeches.”

Music Played in Today's Program

William Henry Fry (1813-1864): Macbeth Overture; Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Tony Rowe, conductor; Naxos 8.559057

If your dad wrote music for silent movies and you also want to write music, does that increase the odds you’ll end up a film composer, too? That was the case with David Raksin, who was born in Philadelphia in 1912, and who died in Los Angeles on today’s date in 2004.

When he was 23, he moved to Hollywood to help Charlie Chaplin arrange Chaplin’s music for the film, Modern Times, and stayed on in Hollywood, working without credit on dozens of B-rated films.

A big break came in 1944 with the tremendous success of Raksin’s haunting score for the 1944 film noir classic, Laura. By the time of his death, he had written scores for hundreds of films and TV shows.

In 1960, for the Horn Club of Los Angeles, he wrote Morning Revisited. He explained the odd title as follows: “They needed a piece [for] their entire ensemble … two antiphonal groups of six French horns, four Wagner tubas, a baritone horn, two contrabass tubas, and seven timpani. I was busy working on a picture, so I’d start work at four or five a.m., and that’s how I wrote Morning Revisited.”

Music Played in Today's Program

David Raksin (1912-2004): Morning Revisited; The Horn Club of Los Angeles; David Raksin, conductor; EMI 63764

Just about any time is a good time to be in Paris, but chances are, given your druthers, you wouldn’t have chosen to be there in 1942. The city was occupied by German troops, and World War II had several more dismal years to grind on.

But if you were in Paris on today’s date in 1942, you could have visited the Paris Opera for the premiere of a new ballet by French composer Francis Poulenc: Les Animaux Modeles or The Model Animals, with a scenario based on animal fables by French writer La Fontaine.

In 1924, in happier times, Poulenc had made his name with another one-act ballet. Les Biches or The Does and was written for the Ballets Russes of Monte Carlo. That work’s scenario described the flirtations and seductions of some bright young things at a house party in the country. “Everything was simple and carefree, sunshine and good humor,” as Poulenc himself put it.

Not surprisingly, Poulenc’s 1942 ballet was a darker, often grimmer affair, expressing perhaps the quiet desperation of the German occupation, mingled with a fervent hope for better days to come.

Music Played in Today's Program

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963): Les Animaux Modeles; French National Orchestra; Charles Dutoit, conductor; London 452 937

On today’s date in 1893, a talented Italian composer died of tuberculosis at 39. His name was Alfredo Catalani, and, in his short lifetime, he completed six operas. The last of these, La Wally, premiered the year before his death and proved the most successful.

The opera had some passionate fans — including the famous Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, who even named one of his daughters Wally, after the title character.

These days Catalani’s operas are rarely staged, but one aria from La Wally has kept his name alive. In Act One, the mountain maid Wally sings “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” (“Well, then? I’ll go far away”) as she decides to leave her home forever.

This aria became very popular with sopranos and has been recorded by artists ranging from Maria Callas to Renée Fleming.

Oddly enough, the aria plays a major role in a movie — a 1981 French crime thriller, Diva, about an obsessed opera fan who has a secret recording made of his favorite soprano singing it — an artist who (in the movie) refuses to be recorded, so (of course) everyone wants to get their hands on his bootleg.

Music Played in Today's Program

Viardot-Garcia, Pauline (1821-1910): 12 Poems by Pushkin, Fet and Turgenev: No. 12. Les Étoiles; Laetitia Grimaldi, soprano; Ammiel Bushakevitz, piano; Bis 2546

In 1942, the 19th Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music was held in Berkeley, California. Over 30 composers from 13 nations were represented. All of them were male­ — with one exception. On today’s date, the Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale for clarinet and viola written by Rebecca Clarke was premiered at the Festival.

Clarke was born in England, in 1886, to an American father and a German mother. She grew up a British citizen, studied music in London, and became one of the U.K.’s first female professional orchestral violists. She was stranded in the United States at the outbreak of World War II and settled permanently in New York City.

In notes for the 1942 Festival, she modestly described her Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale as: “… very unpretentious: a short, unassuming little prelude … The second movement should sound very spirited … The third movement, Pastorale, is rather melancholy and nostalgic…”

This work, and much of her music, remained unpublished during her lifetime, but, over time, its quality and range increasingly came to light. When she turned 90 in 1976, she was interviewed by the BBC, and seemed both gratified and bemused by all the renewed attention.

Music Played in Today's Program

Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979): Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale; Robert Plane, clarinet; Philip Dukes, viola; Naxos 8.557934

On today’s date in 2012, at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the BBC’s Scottish Symphony, under the direction of Scottish conductor Donald Runnicles, gave the world premiere of a new orchestral piece by Scottish composer Thea Musgrave.

You might be forgiven for asking, “Were any bagpipes involved?” No, but the piece did involve the next best thing­ — ­if you’re Scottish that is — namely the Loch Ness monster. Here’s how Thea Musgrave described her new work, Loch Ness – A Postcard from Scotland:

“This Scottish loch is famous for its monster — only very occasionally seen. In this lighthearted work he, the monster (a tuba), emerges from the depths (E flat) to find the sun (A major) coming out from a thick mist (string clusters).

“As he plays he is warmed by the sparkling sun (trumpets) and by the strains of an ancient Scottish melody. As the sun goes down, he dives back into the deep waters with a big splash. Then a cool moon rises, a light breeze ruffles the surface of the waters, and all is at peace.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Thea Musgrave (b. 1928): Loch Ness – A Postcard from Scotland; BBC National Orchestra of Wales; William Boughton, conductor; Lyrita 372

By the time of his death in 1998, pop singer Frank Sinatra was such a domineering figure in his field that he was known as “The Chairman of the Board.” By the time of his death in 1992, the same nickname might have applied to the American composer William Schuman, who was, at various times, director of publications for G. Schirmer, president of the Juilliard School, president of Lincoln Center, and on the board of many other important American musical institutions. He even looked the part of a distinguished, well-dressed CEO. Oddly enough, he came rather late to classical music.

Schuman was born on today’s date in 1910, and, as a teenager in New York City, was more interested in baseball than music, even though his dance band was the rage of Washington High School. It was with some reluctance that 19-year old Billy Schuman was dragged to a New York Philharmonic concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini. The program included a symphony by someone named Robert Schumann, and Billy was pretty impressed.

When he heard the Symphony No. 1 of contemporary American composer Roy Harris in 1933, Schuman was hooked, and soon was writing concert music himself. By 1941, when his Symphony No. 3 premiered, he was recognized as a major talent, and in 1943 he was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Music Played in Today's Program

William Schuman (1910-1992): Symphony No. 3; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony Classical 63163

Robert Schumann (1810-1856): Symphony No. 1 (Spring); Berlin Philharmonic; James Levine, conductor; DG 435 856

Roy Harris (1899-1979): Symphony No. 1; Louisville Orchestra; Jorge Mester, conductor; Albany/Louisville First Edition 012

On today’s date in 1778, Italy’s most famous opera house opened with a performance of L’Europa Riconosciuta, or Europa Revealed, a work written specially for the occasion by Antonio Salieri. The new theater took its name from its location, previously occupied by the church of Santa Maria della Scala, which in turn was named after a Milanese nobleman’s wife, Beatrice della Scala.

These days Milan’s Teatro alla Scala — or “La Scala” for short — is still in operation, although today performances of Salieri operas are not as common as those of his 18th century rival, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

In the 19th century, La Scala was at the center of the golden age of Italian opera, which boasted the greatest works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi.

In August of 1943, 165 years after it opened, La Scala was damaged by Allied bombers as World War II drew to a close. The theater was repaired and reopened in 1946 with a series of gala concerts conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

Over 60 years later, the theater was newly refurbished and re-opened in December of 2004 with a gala production of the same Salieri opera written for its original opening 226 years earlier.

Music Played in Today's Program

Antonio Salieri (1750-1825): Falstaff Overture; London Mozart Players; Matthias Bamert, conductor; Chandos 9877

American composer John Harbison was born in 1938, and so, as a young lad, grew up at the tail end of the Golden Age of radio and the big band Era of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, the Dorsey Brothers, and Benny Goodman.

“Over the radio came sounds played by bands in hotels and ballrooms, now distant memories that seemed to a seventh-grade, small town, late-night listener like the pulse of giant imagined cities,” he wrote.

Decades later, he translated those early musical memories into a three-movement composition for a big band orchestra. “These sounds, layered with real experience of some of their places of origin, magnified, distorted, idealized and destabilized, came into contact with other sounds, some of recent origin, and resulted in a celebratory, menacing suite I titled Three City Blocks,” he recalled.

The U.S. Air Force Band gave the premiere performance of Three City Blocks on today’s date in 1993. And, keeping in the spirit of the old days when every major hotel could boast its own dance band, Harbison’s Three City Blocks premiered at the Hilton Hotel in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Music Played in Today's Program

John Harbison (b. 1938): Three City Blocks; New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble; Frank Battisti, conductor; Centaur 2288

Today’s date in 1914 marks the birthday of one of Puerto Rico’s most fascinating composers! Born in Ukraine under the name Yakov Ovcharov, he came to the United States in 1923, changed his name to Jack Delano, and in the 1930s became a photographer for Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. In 1941, he was sent to Puerto Rico on a shoot and fell in love with the island. After Pearl Harbor, he was drafted by the Army Air Corps to film U.S. forces in the South Pacific, but in 1946 returned to Puerto Rico to stay.

Delano then started writing music incorporating Puerto Rican folk material, and even works performed by the island’s symphony orchestra.

In his spare time he was also a notable cartoonist, poet, professor, architectural designer and founder of Puerto Rico’s first publicly funded educational television station. In 1951, he directed Los Peloteros, a movie about poor rural kids’ love of baseball which became a classic of Puerto Rican cinema, and he composed its film score as well — why are we not surprised?

As they would say on the island, Jack Delano was chévere — a quite remarkable fellow!

Music Played in Today's Program

Jack Delano (1914-1997): “Allegretto Grazioso” from Sonatina; Duo Classico; Suellen Hershman, flute; David Witten, piano; Musical Heritage Society; MM-512502

On today’s date in 1892, The Washington Post’s headlines included one that read: “Sousa’s farewell toot — last appearance of the Marine Band under his baton — admirers of the popular conductor crowd forward for a farewell shake of the hand at the close of his final concert on the White House grounds.”

In his 12-year tenure with the Marine Band, Sousa had made it one of the finest touring ensembles in his day. He was famous coast-to-coast — but not all that well paid. While on tour early in 1892, he had been approached in Chicago by an impresario with a business proposition: “Why not form your own band, Mr. Sousa? I can offer you four times your Marine Corps salary, plus a percentage of the new band’s profits.” He thought it over, and upon his return to Washington, D.C., submitted his resignation effective July 31, 1892. His final concerts with the Marine Band took place on July 29 and 30 that year.

With that, one important chapter of his musical career had ended, but another was just beginning. Over the next four decades, the Sousa Band would go on to become famous worldwide.

Music Played in Today's Program

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932): Manhattan Beach; Dallas Wind Symphony; Jerry Junkin, conductor; Reference 94

On today’s date in 1950, the Michigan All-Star Band, under the direction of Dale Harris, gave the premiere performance of a new work, George Washington Bridge at Interlochen Summer Music Camp. This music was written by American composer William Schuman, who was experiencing an especially creative period in the early 1950s. Schuman was living in New Rochelle, New York, but as president of the Juilliard School, spent much of his time in Manhattan, and, as Schuman explained:

“There are few days in the year when I do not see the George Washington Bridge. I pass it on my way to work as I drive along the Henry Hudson Parkway on the New York shore. Ever since my student days when I watched the progress of its construction, this bridge has had for me an almost human personality, and this personality is astonishingly varied, assuming different moods, depending on the time of day or night, the weather, and, of course, my own mood as I pass by … I have walked across it late at night when it was shrouded in fog, and during the brilliant sunshine hours of midday … It is difficult to imagine a more gracious welcome or dramatic entry to the great metropolis.”

The piece is in ABCBA form — a little like the rising and falling arch of a suspension bridge, in fact, and, since its 1950 premiere at Interlochen, Schuman’s George Washington Bridge has won a secure place as a classic of the wind band repertory.

Music Played in Today's Program

William Schuman (1910-1992): George Washington Bridge; Rutgers Wind Ensemble; William Bertz, conductor; Naxos 572230

On today’s date in 1962, the Symphony No. 5 for strings, by German-born American composer Gene Gutchë, received its premiere performance at Chatauqua, New York.

Romeo Maximilian Eugene Ludwig Gutchë was born in Berlin in 1907. His father, a well-to-do European businessman, was not amused by the notion of his son “wasting” his time on music, even though famous Berlin-based composer-pianist Ferruccio Busoni confirmed the young man’s talent. So he ran away from home, abandoning any hope of a sizeable inheritance in the process, and came to America.

He studied at the Universities of Minnesota and Iowa, and, in 1950, at 43, produced his first symphony. He would go on to compose six symphonies in all, plus an hour-long symphonic work for chorus and orchestra, Akhenaten, premiered by Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony in 1983. For most of his life, despite fellowships and commissions, Gutchë lived modestly with his wife, Marion, in a cottage in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

He died in the fall of 2001 — one year after this Cincinnati Symphony recording of his Symphony No. 5 was reissued on compact disc.

Music Played in Today's Program

Gene Gutchë (1907-2001): Symphony No. 5; Cincinnati Symphony; Max Rudolf, conductor; CRI 825

On today’s date in 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, effectively beginning World War I.

Early in the course of that war, French composer Albéric Magnard became a national hero when he died defending his home against invading German troops. Maurice Ravel tried to enlist as a French pilot but was refused because of his poor health. Instead, he became a truck driver stationed at the Verdun front. British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was too old to be drafted, but he enlisted as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Another British composer, George Butterworth, would be killed by a sniper during the Battle of the Somme.

Austrian violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler served briefly in the Austrian Army in 1914 before being wounded and honorably discharged. He arrived in then-neutral New York on November of 1914 and remained in America through the war years.

In 1915, Kreisler made a recording of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto, performing with the Russian violinist Efrem Zimbalist. Austria and Russian may have been at war in Europe, but in a cramped New Jersey recording studio, at least, the music of Bach provided a brief island of peace and harmony.

Music Played in Today's Program

J.S. Bach (1685-1750): Double Concerto (recorded 1915); Fritz Kreisler, Efrem Zimbalist, violins; string quartet; Buddulph CD 21/22

Alfred Hitchcock’s cold war spy film Torn Curtain, opened in New York Theaters on today’s date in 1966. It was the swinging 60s, and Hitchcock had asked his long-time collaborator, composer Bernard Hermann, for a pop score that would be “with it” with a possible hit single as a main title. What Hitch did not want was, as he put it, “more Richard Strauss.” Hermann assured Hitch he knew exactly what was required — and then ignored him completely.

Herrmann thought Torn Curtain was a dangerously weak film, and one that needed a huge symphonic score with an eerie choir of massed flutes and ominous, oppressive brass to make it effective. When Hitch heard a Hollywood studio orchestra rehearsing the main title music, he fired the composer on the spot and called in someone else to score the film.

Herrmann was crushed. He had thought that Hitch should have been grateful. “You call in the doctor to make you healthy, not to make you rich!” he later quipped. Hermann may well have right. Torn Curtain is regarded as one of Hitchcock’s lamest efforts, while Herrmann’s rejected score has gone on to be recorded and admired on its own.

Music Played in Today's Program

Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975): Unused Torn Curtain film score; Los Angeles Philharmonic; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; Sony 62700

On today’s date in 1882, the first performance of Richard Wagner’s new opera Parsifal took place at the Bayreuth Festival in Bavaria. In the audience was 25-year-old American Gustav Kobbé, an ardent opera fan who would go on to write Kobbé’s Complete Opera Book, a standard reference work on the subject.

As he watched the opening scene of Parsifal, his gaze became fixed on one spot of the painted scenery, depicting a pile of rocks. Was that Wagner’s face painted on one of the rocks? Or was that Wagner himself, staring out at the singers on stage? During the intermission, he asked others if they had seen what he had, but they just looked at him as if the heat of the Bavarian summer had affected the young American’s brain.

But after the opera he asked one of the singers, who was surprised at his sharp eyesight — but confirmed what he saw. To ensure that singers followed his specific directions where to stand and when to move, Wagner had, in fact, been standing on stage amid the painted rocks. To all eyes but Kobbé’s, Wagner’s craggy, sun-tanned face had blended in perfectly with the painted scenery.

Music Played in Today's Program

Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Act I excerpt from Parsifal; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; James Levine, conductor; DG 437 501

On today’s date in 1976, an unusual opera premiered at the Théatre Municipale in Avignon, France. It ran for five hours with no breaks between acts. The audience was invited to wander in and out as it pleased. The libretto consisted of numbers, solfege syllables and some cryptic poems written by a pupil from a New York School for Disturbed Children. Even the title of this new opera, Einstein on the Beach, was unusual, suggesting something at once serious and surreal.

In the opera, a violinist dressed up like Albert Einstein wanders in and out of some scenes, a reference to the fact that, in real life, the famous physicist was also a talented amateur violinist. Einstein on the Beach was collaboration between two Americans: composer Philip Glass and set designer Robert Wilson. It made the rounds in Europe, attracted a great deal of attention, and came to America in November of 1976 for two sold-out performances in New York staged at the Metropolitan Opera with Glass and his ensemble.

Its music was even referenced as a kind of “in joke” during a famous TV commercial in which Einstein debates the merits of Coke vs. Pepsi. For the record, Albert chooses Pepsi.

Music Played in Today's Program

Philip Glass (b. 1937): Violin Solo from Einstein on the Beach; Gregroy Fulkerson, violin; New World 80313

The composer of this familiar theme was born on today’s date in 1904 in Lyon, France. He was christened Noel Arnaud, but is better known as Leo Arnaud, the name he adopted after emigrating to the United States. He studied music in his native France with two of its leading composers, Vincent d’Indy and Maurice Ravel. In the 1930s, Arnaud settled in Hollywood, where he churned out scores for everything from Blondie Goes Latin to The Ice Follies of 1939. The high point of his cinematic career was an Oscar nomination for his work as an arranger for the 1964 musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

Some years earlier, Hollywood Bowl conductor Felix Slatkin commissioned Arnaud to write some music for a 1958 LP sonic spectacular designed to show off the new “stereophonic” recording process. The album was titled Charge! and featured military style fanfares and suites, including Bugler’s Dream.

In 1968, when ABC television was looking for a musical theme for its Olympic coverage, it chose Bugler’s Dream. By 1988, when the NBC network secured TV rights for the Olympics, Arnaud’s theme had become the instantly recognizable signature theme for the games.

Music Played in Today's Program

Leo Arnaud (1904-1991): Olympic Theme; Cleveland Symphonic Winds; Frederick Fennell, conductor; Telarc 80099

On today’s date in 1757, Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti died in Madrid. He was 71, and for the last 38 years of his life was employed at the court of Princess Maria Barbara, first in her native Portugal, and then, when the princess married the heir to the Spanish throne, in Madrid.

Although Domenico could very well have stayed in Italy and become a famous opera composer like his father, Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico spent the better part of his life composing over 600 virtuoso sonatas for Maria Barbara. Only a handful of these were published during his lifetime. In the 19th century, Liszt and Brahms took the trouble to hunt down additional Scarlatti sonatas in manuscript, but the bulk of them remained unpublished and unknown until a complete edition was published in the 20th century.

While not coming anywhere close to matching Scarlatti’s output, one 20th century American composer, Philadelphia-born Vincent Persichetti, composed ten harpsichord sonatas of his own.

The growing number of modern-day harpsichordists has meant that in addition to the wealth of old music for the instrument, many contemporary composers have followed Persichetti’s example, and are writing new works for this old instrument.

Music Played in Today's Program

Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757): Sonata in C Minor; Elaine Comparone, harpsichord; Laurel 838

Vincent Pershichetti (1915-1987): Sonata No. 4; Elaine Comparone, harpsichord; Laurel 838

On today’s date in 1847, Giuseppe Verdi conducted the premiere performance of his newest opera, I Masnadieri or The Robbers, at Her Majesty’s Theater in London. And speaking of her Majesty, Queen Victoria was in the audience, as were other state dignitaries, including the Duke of Wellington and Louis Napoleon of France.

It was the first time in over twenty years that a world-famous composer had composed an opera specifically for London. As one of Verdi’s young assistants put it, “Neither Rossini, Bellini, or Donizetti had ever pitched their tents on the banks of the Thames.”

As an added attraction, 27-year old Swedish soprano, Jenny Lind, topped an all-star line-up of singers. It was Lind’s London debut and the first time ever that an operatic role had been specially written for her.

The premiere was a great success for all concerned, with Verdi and the singers called to the stage again and again to cheers from the audience. The critics, for their part, were less than kind. “We take this to be the worst opera that has been given in your time at Her Majesty’s Theater. There does not exist an Italian composer more incapable of producing what is commonly called melody,” wrote one.

I Masnadieri fared a little better back in Italy, but gradually faded from the active repertory until the revival of interest in all of Verdi’s opera in the 20th century.

Music Played in Today's Program

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901): I Masnadieri Overture; Hungarian State Opera Orchestra; Iper Giorgio Morandi, conductor; Naxos 8.554077

In London on today’s date in 1938, the Ballet Russe of Monte Carlo presented Nobilissima Visione, a work by German composer Paul Hindemith based on the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.

The idea may have been suggested by his wife, who had recently converted to Catholicism. The Hindemiths had visited the Church of Santa Croce in Florence were deeply impressed by its frescoes depicting scenes from the life of St. Francis. He originally intended to incorporate melodies by 14th-century French composer Machaut into his ballet but ended up writing original themes in an archaic style. As a staged ballet or as a concert suite, Nobilissima Visione proved to be one of his most popular works.

“My ballet is not an eye-catcher in the old style. It is not exactly full of sparkling wit, but all the same it makes a fine impression, with all the trappings of success that a composer greedy for recognition could wish. Even the earthshaking impresario Sol Hurok was so impressed that he pressed me to his smart businessman’s heart and is insisting on my conducting the piece myself in New York and surrounding villages,” Hindemith wrote in 1938.

Music Played in Today's Program

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963): Nobilissima Visione; San Francisco Symphony; Herbert Blomstedt, conductor; London 433 809

Today a tip of the hat to a much-beleaguered and frequently unacknowledged species: the piano teacher. Do you, for example, remember the name of your first piano teacher?

In the case of Duke Ellington, it was not a name one could easily forget. She was a certain Mrs. Clinkscales, and Ellington always gave her credit for her persistence. “Because of my enthusiasm for playing ball and racing through the street, I missed more lessons than I took. When she had her piano recital with all her pupils, I was the only one who could not play his part. So Mrs. Clinkscales had to play the treble, and I just played the umpy-dump bottom!” Ellington wrote.

Avant-garde American composer Morton Feldman immortalized the name of his piano teacher in an elegiac chamber piece, Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety. This music was premiered in France on today’s date in 1970. Madame Maurina Press had taught the children of the Czar and knew the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. She started teaching Feldman when he was twelve, and his tribute to her is scored for 12 instruments — with the piano conspicuous by its absence!

Music Played in Today's Program

Morton Feldman (1926-1987): Madame Press died last week at 90; Orchestra of St. Luke’s; John Adams, conductor; Nonesuch 79249

During WWII, German troops encircled Leningrad for 900 days, a siege that caused immense suffering for that city’s residents. One of them, composer Dmitri Shostakovich, appeared on the cover of a July 1942 issue of TIME magazine, grim-faced and wearing the helmet of a Leningrad fireman.

The publicity was for the American premiere of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad), as a live NBC Symphony radio broadcast on today’s date in 1942. The broadcast was dedicated to the Russian War Relief, and the NBC announcer explained how the score of the recently-completed symphony had been flown from the Soviet Union to the West via Teheran.

Two famous conductors, Leopold Stokowski and Arturo Toscanini, had been hotly contesting who would conduct the American premiere. The older conductor pulled rank. “Don’t you think, my dear Stokowski, it would be interesting to hear the old Italian conductor play this work of a young Russian anti-Nazi composer?” Toscanini wrote.

Friends of Shostakovich later suggested he may have had more than just the Nazis on his mind and quote him as saying: “Fascism is not simply National Socialism. This is music about terror, slavery, and oppression of the spirit.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Dimtri Shostakovich (1906-1976): Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad); NBC Symphony; Arturo Toscanini, conductor; RCA Toscanini Edition Vol. 22

Today we pay tribute to Pauline Viardot-Garcia, born in Paris on today’s date in 1821. Her father was Manuel Garcia, the tenor for whom Rossini had written the role of Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville. Her older sister was legendary operatic diva Maria Malibran, a famous interpreter of operas by Bellini and Donizetti.

Little Pauline wanted to be a piano virtuoso and took lessons from Liszt, but at 15, her mother decided she, too, should become a singer. Chopin adored her voice, and together they arranged some of his mazurkas as songs. Meyerbeer and Gounod wrote operatic roles for her.

In 1860, with the composer at the piano croaking out the tenor part of Tristan, Viardot-Garcia sang the role of Isolde at the first private reading of music from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, and it was she who gave the premiere performance of Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody in 1870.

She married Louis Viardot, the director of the Theatre Italien in Paris, and at their home one was just as likely to meet Charles Dickens or Henry James as Berlioz or Tchaikovsky. She was also a composer of songs and chamber operas, which are receiving renewed attention.

Music Played in Today's Program

Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821-1910): 12 Poems by Pushkin, Fet and Turgenev: No. 12: Les Étoiles; Laetitia Grimaldi, soprano; Ammiel Bushakevitz, piano; Bis 2546

On today’s date in 1877, the Vienna Philharmonic performed for the first time in Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart, during a three-day music festival that included works by Mozart and others, including two living composers of that day, 44-year-old Brahms and 64-year-old Wagner.

The Philharmonic would return to Salzburg six more times for mini-festivals through 1910, some led by composer-conductors like Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler.

In 1925, an annual Salzburg Festival was established, with the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera as the main musical participants. World War II disrupted the festival in the 1940s, but soon after it reestablished itself among the most prestigious of international musical happenings.

Traditionally, a familiar brass fanfare opens each Salzburg Festival radio broadcast, but probably few music lovers know the name of its composer.

It was written by Joseph Messner, who wrote over 700 works. He was born in 1893 in the Austrian Tyrol and died in 1969 in a village near Salzburg, where he had served as church organist, conductor and composer for decades, leading many Festival concerts featuring sacred music by Mozart and others.

Music Played in Today's Program

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791): Menuetto and Trio from Haffner Symphony; Vienna Philharmonic; Rafael Kubelik, conductor; Seraphim 68531

Joseph Messner (1893-1969): Salzburg Festival Fanfare; Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra; Ivor Bolton, conductor; Oehmns CD 734