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

The life story of George Gershwin usually runs something like this: an incredible string of successes cut short by Gershwin’s tragically early death. But on today’s date in 1922, Gershwin suffered one of his rare flops when his one-act opera Blue Monday opened and closed on the same day.

For five years, beginning in 1920, Gershwin had provided the music for an annual Broadway revue, The George White Scandals. The impresario Mr. White provided the money and the leggy showgirls; Gershwin provided the catchy tunes and light-hearted dances.

But in 1922, Gershwin was eager to try something different: a modern, jazz-age version of an Italian verismo opera. The plot was simple: he does her wrong, and then she shoots him. The reviews were devastatingly bad — one critic suggesting the soprano with the pistol should have shot the rest of the cast before anyone had a chance to sing.

And so White pulled Blue Monday from his revue before it could have a second performance. A concert revival by the Paul Whiteman band at Carnegie Hall in 1925, and a 1953 CBS-TV production didn’t fare all that much better.

Even today Blue Monday is rarely staged.

Music Played in Today's Program

George Gershwin (1898-1937): Blue Monday; Cincinnati Pops; Erich Kunzel, conductor; Telarc 80434

Around this time in 1956, the hot ticket on Broadway was for a musical based on the old Greek legend of Pygmalion, a sculptor so good that he fell in love with one of his beautiful female statues. The playwright, George Bernard Shaw, had updated the legend to modern-day London, and in 1956, the Broadway team of Lerner and Loewe had in turn transformed Shaw’s stage play into the smash Broadway musical, My Fair Lady.

But 208 years before all that, on today’s date in the year 1748, another very successful musical adaptation of the Pygmalion legend opened in Paris. This Pygmalion was an opera-ballet by great French Baroque composer, Jean-Philippe Rameau.

He was born in 1683, two years earlier than Bach and Handel, but unlike them, was something of a late bloomer. He was 50 before he became famous, and his opera-ballet Pygmalion opened shortly before his 65th birthday.

Rameau was famous for imitating natural sounds and noises in his music. One of his contemporaries, in praising the overture to Pygmalion, even suggested the repeated notes of his theme represented the chipping of Pygmalion’s chisel as he worked on his lovely creation.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764): Pygmalion; La Petite Bande; Gustav Leonhardt, conductor; BMG/Deutsche; Harmonia Mundi 77143

Piero della Francesca was a 15th century Renaissance painter, whose series of frescoes, Legend of the True Cross, inspired one of the best orchestral works of 20th-century Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu.

In 1952, he made a trip to the Tuscan hill town of Arezzo, where he saw the frescoes and got the idea for a new symphonic work that would attempt to capture in music what Piero had captured in painting.

What he sought to replicate was, as he put it, “a kind of solemn, frozen silence and opaque, colored atmosphere … a strange, peaceful and moving poetry.”

He linked the first movement of his score to one Tuscan fresco showing the Queen of Sheba and some women kneeling by a river; and the second to another depicting the dream of the Emperor Constantine. The third movement was intended, in his words, as “a kind of general view of the frescoes.”

Martinu’s orchestral triptych, The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca, received its premiere performance on today’s date at the 1956 Salzburg Festival in Austria, with the Vienna Philharmonic led by the eminent Czech conductor, Rafael Kubelik.

Music Played in Today's Program

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1950): Les Fresques de Piero della Francesca; Vienna Philharmonic; Rafael Kubelik, conductor; Orfeo C521-991 (recorded August 26, 1956)

On today’s date in 1959, Leonard Bernstein celebrated his 41st birthday in Moscow. The New York Philharmonic was embarked on an extensive world tour, which included three weeks in the Soviet Union.

Their August 25th concert proved controversial, offering two works of Igor Stravinsky, a composer still condemned in the Soviet Union as “bourgeois” and “decadent.” Even more daring, Bernstein opened his concert with The Unanswered Question, a short piece by American composer, Charles Ives.

Even worse, Bernstein broke traditional Soviet protocol by talking directly to the audience through an interpreter, explaining Ives’ unusual philosophy of music. The enthusiastic audience response after the Ives led to it being encored.

This really upset the Soviet authorities, and the music critic of the Ministry of Culture wrote, “Before this four-minute piece Bernstein spoke for six minutes. Only the good manners of the hospitable public resulted in a ripple of cool applause. Nevertheless, the conductor, setting modesty aside, himself suggested that the piece be repeated.”

Bernstein, although furious at what he called “an unforgivable lie,” was persuaded to forgo any further controversial lectures from the podium for the remainder of the Soviet tour.

Music Played in Today's Program

Charles Ives (1874-1954): The Unanswered Question; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony Classical 46701

We tend to think our time has had a monopoly on bitter religious conflicts, but on today’s date in 1572, which happened to be St. Bartholomew’s Day, the Catholic queen dowager of France, Catherine de Medici, and her son, King Charles IX, decided that the best way to rid their kingdom of troublesome Protestants would be simply to kill them off.

A few days earlier, Catholic and Protestant nobles from across France had come to Paris to attend a noble wedding which, ironically, was intended to bring the rival religious factions closer together.

Things quickly turned ugly, and on the 24th of August the infamous “Massacre of St. Bartholomew” began and quickly spread across the entire country. Among those who perished was a French Protestant composer named Claude Goudimel, who was killed when the massacre reached Lyons.

Fortunately for posterity, not all Reformation era rulers were so bloodthirsty. English Catholic composer Thomas Tallis managed to keep his head through the reigns of alternating Catholic and Protestant monarchs, and the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I admired and supported the music of William Byrd, despite his openly Catholic sympathies.

Music Played in Today's Program

Claude Goudimel (1510-1572): Comfort, Comfort Ye my People; Cathedral Singers; Richard Proulx, conductor; GIA 290

Tanglewood is one of America’s most famous summertime classical music festivals and can boast a long and impressive list of premieres and performances by famous American composers and conductors. It takes place each year around this time in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts.

Tanglewood has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home for more than 60 years, but it wasn’t the symphony’s first location in the Berkshires. In August of 1936, the first in a three-concert series was performed at Holmwood, a former Vanderbilt estate.

The great Russian-born conductor of the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzky, moved the festival to Tanglewood and expanded the concert series into a kind of intensive summer camp for young musicians and composers. Among those who particularly benefited were two young composer-conductors, Leonard Bernstein and Lukas Foss.

In 1940, the Berkshire Music Center (now the Tanglewood Music Center) opened, and to mark the occasion, American composer Randall Thompson’s famous choral work, Alleluia, received its premiere performance.

Music Played in Today's Program

Randall Thompson (1899-1984): Alleluia; Dale Warland Singers; Dale Warland, conductor; Minnesota Public Radio 201

Angel Fire is a village in the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico, home to ski slopes and hiking trails, plus a summer mountain-bike park and zip line. And, since 1983, it’s also the home of a late summer music festival called Music from Angel Fire.

Early on, violinist Ida Kavafian was invited to serve as the Festival’s Artistic Director, a position she maintained through 2019. Kavafian returned on today’s date in 2001 to perform in the premiere of a newly commissioned trio by Libby Larsen — along with cellist Peter Wiley and pianist Melvin Chen — this just one of over 45 premieres that have taken place at the Festival to date.

The trio is a classically-proportioned work in three movements: the first movement, Sultry, and the third, Burst, are rhythmic, fast, and hauntingly jazz-like. In between, the second movement, Still is serene, free flowing, and quiet.

Larsen said, “I compose music for the concert hall. I chose this type of music because I love physics. Flutes, cellos, trumpets, tubas, all of the orchestral instruments emit natural sound, and they operate on the laws of physics. I can hear those laws working in the air when those instruments play.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Libby Larsen (b. 1950): Movement 3 (Bursts) from Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano; Curtis Macomber, violin; Norman Fischer, cello; Jeanne Kierman, piano; Navona Records NV-6014

At the BBC Proms on today’s date in 2004 Proms a new piece by the British composer Judith Bingham was premiered by the BBC Chorus. The Secret Garden was inspired by several events: a conversation about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, a BBC TV series, The Private World of Plants, some rather racy descriptions of the sex life of plants by the 18th century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, and a disturbing news story about the bombing of the so-called “Adam Tree” in Iraq at a site that locals believe was where the Garden of Eden once stood.

Bingham wrote her own text, which includes many Latin names of plants, which led to The Secret Garden’s subtitle: Botanical Fantasy.

“This is meant to be a magical piece. It has a Christian framework with opening and closing quotations from Genesis and Matthew … but the piece also seems to wonder whether the world is better off without humans, and that, should humans cease to exist, Paradise would very soon re-establish itself …” she said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Judith Bingham (b. 1952): The Secret Garden; BBC Symphony Chorus; Thomas Trotter, oboe; Stephen Jackson, conductor; Naxos 8.570346 (live Proms recording of the premiere performance)

Details on the lives and careers of composers born before 1700 tend to be a bit skimpy, at best. For example, we know Italian Baroque composer Jacopo Peri was born on today’s date in 1561, but we’re not sure if that was in Rome or Florence.

As a point of reference, remember William Shakespeare was born in 1564, just three years after Peri. And by the 1580s, around the same time Shakespeare was learning to be a playwright, Peri and some of his Italian contemporaries were experimenting with a new art form that we call now call “opera.”

There was much discussion at the time about what the music of the ancient Greek dramas must have been like, and how dramatic stories might be told in music. Peri was instrumental in the production of two of the earliest operas for which the complete music survives: Dafne, which premiered around 1597, and Euridice from 1600.

Peri outlived his English contemporary Shakespeare by 17 years. Shakespeare died in 1616 at 52, while Peri died sometime in August of 1633, at 72, a ripe old age for the 17th century.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jacopo Peri (1561-1633): Euridice; Sylva Pozzer, soprano; Ensemble Albalonga; Anibal E. Cetrangolo, conductor; Pavane Records 7372/3

In the 19th century, anybody who had the means would flee the stifling heat of the cities and head for someplace green and shady and cool: a country house, a spa perhaps, or maybe just a modest cabin by a lake.

In the 19th century, it was Brahms who set the fashion for composers to spend their summer months in the countryside working on their music. His violin concerto and Symphony No. 2 were the products of leisurely weeks spent in the lake district of Austria’s Carinthian Alps.

For American composer Edward Collins, the city to be escaped was Chicago, and his country refuge was Cedar Lake, Wisconsin. In 1931, Collins composed a concert piece for piano and orchestra. Like much of Collins’ music, it was premiered by the Chicago Symphony under conductor Frederick Stock, who encouraged young American talent, especially from a local boy like Collins, a native of Joliet, Illinois.

These days the music of Edward Collins has all but disappeared from American concert halls, but conductor Marin Alsop and the Concordia Orchestra recorded a sampling of his major orchestral works for a compact disc series funded by the late composer’s family.

Music Played in Today's Program

Edward J. Collins (1889-1951): Concert Piece in A minor; Leslie Stifelman, piano; Concordia Orchestra; Marin Alsop, conductor; Albany 267

August 1613 proved to be an especially eventful month in the life and career of Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi. The previous summer his old employer, Duke Vincenzo of Mantua, had died, and Monteverdi was looking for a job. Fortunately, the position of Master of Music for the Republic of Venice opened up, and, on today’s date Monteverdi was probably rehearsing musicians for a trial concert of his music at St. Mark’s Cathedral. The concert was a success. Monteverdi got the job, a generous salary, and even a cash advance to cover the move from his home.

So much for the good news — on his trip back home, Monteverdi was robbed by highwaymen armed with muskets. In a surviving letter, Monteverdi described the incident in some detail, noting that the muskets were very long and of the flint-wheel variety, and that he lost more than a hundred Venetian ducats.

Despite the trauma — and the humiliation of being strip-searched for valuables by one of the robbers — Monteverdi recovered his fortunes in Venice. In addition to his church duties at St. Mark’s, he became famous writing a newfangled sort of commercial entertainment called opera, and lived to the ripe old age of 77.

Music Played in Today's Program

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643): “Che dar piu vi poss’io” from Fifth Book of Madrigals; Consort of Musicke; Anthony Rooley, conductor; L’oiseau Lyre 410 291

In 1980, Estonian composer Arvo Pärt emigrated from his Soviet-controlled homeland and settled in Austria. Since the 1960s, Pärt’s increasingly spiritual and overtly religious music, imbued with mystical and contemplative rituals of the Russian Orthodox Church, did not sit well with the communist authorities, and Pärt found it increasing hard to live and work in Estonia.

On today’s date in 1980, at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, another Baltic artist, the Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer, gave the premiere performance of a new violin-piano arrangement of Part’s Fratres, or Brothers — an instrumental work from 1977 that Pärt subsequently rescored for a variety of ensembles.

In the version commissioned by the Salzburg Festival, the original harmonic material resides in the serene piano part, while the violin plays virtuosic variations above it. That serenity is the result of Pärt’s effort to — as he put it — “learn to walk again as a composer.” He came up with a term, tintinnabulation, for the simplicity and directness of expression he sought.

“Tintinnabulation is like this,” writes Pärt. “I am alone with silence. I work with very few elements … The three notes of the triad are like bells. And that is why I called it tintinnabulation.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935): Fratres; Gidon Kremer, violin; Keith Jarrett, piano; ECM 1275

In the 1950s, if you said the words “Cuban music,” perhaps Desi Arnez, a.k.a. Ricky Ricardo, singing Babaloo might come to mind. These days, it’s more likely the Buena Vista Social Club.

On today’s date back in 1932, George Gershwin had Cuban music on his mind when the New York Philharmonic premiered his Cuban Overture under its original title Rumba. Cuban dance music has always proved appealing to North American composers and long before Gershwin, the 19th century piano virtuoso Louis Moreau Gottschalk toured Cuba and imitated some of the sounds and rhythms he heard there in his original works.

In the early 1940s, a young hay fever sufferer named Leonard Bernstein escaped the New England pollen of Tanglewood for a time in Key West. There he was inspired by the Latin dance bands he heard on radio Havana to write a jaunty little Cuban-style dance of his own that would resurface some 15 years later as the song “America” in Bernstein’s hit musical, West Side Story.

And in 1990, American composer Michael Daughterty composed his orchestral conga line, Desi, a symphonic tribute to Cuban bandleader Desi Arnez, in his pop icon role of Ricky Ricardo.

Music Played in Today's Program

George Gershwin (1898-1937): Cuban Overture; New York Philharmonic; Zubin Mehta, conductor; Teldec 46318

Michael Daugherty (b. 1954): Desi!; Baltimore Symphony; David Zinman, conductor; Argo 444 454

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