On today’s date in 1991, the American Composers Orchestra gave a concert at Carnegie Hall, celebrating the 80th birthday of Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness. Hovhaness was on hand, and conducted the world premiere performance of his Symphony No. 65.

By the time of this death in 2000, Hovhaness had composed 67 symphonies, and ranks as one of the most prolific composers of symphonies in the 20th century.

“I write too much, far too much,” he once wrote to a friend. “This is my insanity.” Even so, performers and audiences seemed to respond to the emotional forthrightness of his music.

Hovhaness rejected the mid-20th century trends towards complexity and atonality, and instead turned to archaic and Eastern musical models. Many of his works were inspired by Armenian themes, real or imagined.

In reviewing the premiere of his Symphony No. 65, the New York Times critic wrote, “Mr. Hovhaness seems to have used liturgical roots to create his own imaginary Armenia, a music that may exist only in [his] imagination.”

Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000): Symphony No. 2 (Mysterious Mountain); Chicago Symphony; Fritz Reiner, conductor; RCA 61957

If, on today’s date in 1930, you happened to be flipping through the pages of the New York Times, you would have seen several ads for radios, including one that argued that purchasing a radio was a good investment.

This was only one year after the infamous 1929 stock market crash, so New Yorkers might have been a little leery of investing in anything, and disposable income for most Americans was severely limited during the Great Depression that followed.

Still, that same October 5 edition of the Times announced that the New York Philharmonic would commence live nationwide broadcasts of its Sunday afternoon concerts that very day, with visiting German conductor Erich Kleiber leading the orchestra. The rest of the Philharmonic’s 1930-31 season, led by the orchestra’s new music director, Arturo Toscanini, would also be broadcast live on subsequent Sunday afternoons.

For music lovers, that radio purchase started to look like a pretty good investment after all.

And over the following decades, in addition to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, the New York Philharmonic’s radio audiences coast-to-coast were introduced as well to new works of American composers like Roy Harris, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791): Symphony No. 39; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 60973

Roy Harris (1898-1979): Symphony No. 3; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 60594

On today’s date in 2000, King’s Chapel in Boston presented a festival of music by the early American composer William Billings, honoring the 200th anniversary of his death in 1800.  As the Chapel’s records of 1786 stated, Billings taught singing “to such persons of both sexes as incline to sing psalm-tunes.” They must have liked him, because in 1790, when Billings was in financial trouble, the Chapel held a benefit concert for him.

When Billings was born in 1746, America was still a British colony. The last record we have of him as a composer dates from 1799, when he wrote music for a memorial concert for George Washington, the first president of the United States, who had died in December of that year.

Today, Billings is regarded as America’s first truly original composer. His contemporaries agreed. The Reverend William Bentley of Salem was moved to write in his diary: “Many who have imitated him have excelled him, but none had better original powers … he was a singular man, short of one leg, with one eye, and with an uncommon negligence of person. Still, he spake and sung and thought as a man above common abilities.”

William Billings (1746-1800): Emmaus and Shiloh; His Majestie's Clerkes; Paul Hillier, conductor; Harmonia Mundi 90.7048

In the 1920s, German composer Paul Hindemith wrote a set of seven concertos, which he collectively titled Kammermusik or Chamber Music. This generic title was part of Hindemith’s goal to foster a more “objective” musical style, modeled on 18th century composers like J.S. Bach.

Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 4, a work for solo violin and chamber orchestra, had its first performance in Dessau on today’s date in 1925. The soloist was Licco Amar, the first violinist of the Amar String Quartet, an ensemble in which Hindemith played viola.

Hindemith’s father had been killed in World War I, and Hindemith himself had been called up, but avoided being sent to the front by forming a string quartet that played nightly to ease the nerves of his commanding officer. Then during the World War II, despite being considered a so-called “Aryan” composer, Hindemith fell out of favor with the Nazi regime and eventually emigrated to America, where he became a very influential teacher.

To address the role of music in society, Hindemith suggested composers should revive the idea of writing works amateur musicians could play at home with family and friends.

“People who make music together cannot be enemies,” he observed, “at least while the music lasts.”

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963): Kammermusik No. 4; Konstanty Kulka, violin; Concertgebouw Orchestra; Riccardo Chailly, conductor; London 433 816

Today’s date in 1914 marks the birthday of Polish-born composer and conductor Andrzej Panufnik, whose life was dramatic — and romantic — enough for a Netflix mini-series.

It involved resisting the Nazis in war-torn Warsaw, struggles with the Communist Party in the post-war years, a daring Swiss escape to Great Britain worthy of a John Le Carré novel, love affairs and marriages with beautiful women, the tragic death of one of his children, and long years trying to balance the demands of his conducting and composing careers. And, despite the admiration of some of the biggest names in classical music, for years his music met with indifference from the general public.

But at this point in the mini-series, cue the triumphant grand finale soundtrack theme. In the closing decades of his life, Panufnik won increasing recognition as one of the 20th century’s finest composers and was showered with high-profile commissions by major orchestras around the world.

Panufnik refused to return to Poland until democracy was restored in 1990. Shortly before his death in 1991, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, and posthumously awarded the Polonia Restituta Medal by his native land.

Andrzej Panufnik (1914-1991): Old Polish Suite; Polish Chamber Orchestra; Mariusz Smolij, conductor; Naxos 8.570032

It was on today’s date in 1835 that Romantic opera composer Vincenzo Bellini died at a country home near Paris. He was only 34 but had achieved great fame in his brief lifetime. 

The long, elegant melodic lines Bellini spun out in his operas were much admired and proved to be a major influence on the solo piano works of his contemporary, Frederic Chopin.

Bellini’s first success was Il Pirata or The Pirate from 1827, and just three years later, he could truthfully report:  “My style is now heard in the most important theatres in the world …and with the greatest enthusiasm.” He settled in Paris, where his final opera, I Puritani di Scozia or The Puritans of Scotland premiered early in 1835.

If Bellini’s life had followed the Romantic story-lines of his operas, he would have been a dispossessed outcast who dies for love. In fact, Bellini was financially successful, moved in the highest social circles, and — rather than dying for love — was planning to marry for money at the time he succumbed to chronic gastroenteritis. 

At his requiem mass, four leading composers of his day, Paer, Cherubini, Carafa and Rossini, each held a corner of the coffin shroud. 

Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835): Sinfonia from Il Pirata; German Opera Orchestra, Berlin; Marcello Viotti, conductor; Berlin Classics 11152

On today’s date in 1910, a young Austrian composer had his first major work staged at the Vienna Court Opera. It was quite a prestigious affair, all in all, with the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit and none other than Franz Josef, the Austrian Emperor, in the audience.

All that was enough to go to any young composer’s head — and the composer in question, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, was very young indeed. He was 13 when his ballet-pantomime The Snowman premiered in Vienna. Actually, he’d written the piano version of The Snowman in 1908, when he was 11. Korngold’s teacher, composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, orchestrated the piece for the Vienna Court Opera performance, but it wasn’t very long before little Erich was preparing his own orchestrations, thank you very much.

By his 20s, Korngold was celebrated throughout Europe as composer of operas and concert hall works. Korngold settled in Hollywood in the late 1930s, as his Jewish heritage made a career in Nazi Europe impossible. His film scores for classic Errol Flynn adventure movies — “SVASH-boo-klers” as Korngold called them in his thick Viennese accent — made him famous in America.

Erich Wolfgang von Korngold (1897-1957): The Snowman; Northwest German Philharmonic; Werner Andreas Albert, conductor; CPO 999 037

Erich Wolfgang von Korngold (1897-1957): Violin Concerto; Chantal Juillet, violin; Berlin Radio Symphony; John Mauceri, conductor; London 452 481

One of the last chamber works by American composer Aaron Copland received its first performance on today’s date in 1971 in Philadelphia as a benefit for that city’s Settlement Music School. Copland was present for the premiere of his Duo for flute and piano. The work was commissioned by friends and students of William Kincaid, who had been the principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra for many years.

By 1971, thorny, complex, and atonal music was the fashion in both Europe and America. Copland, for his part, had composed some challenging orchestral works along these lines as well. His Duo, however was unashamedly lyrical.

As Copland put it: “What can you do with a flute in an extended form that would not emphasize its songful nature? Lyricism seems to be built into the flute. Some expressed surprise at the tonal nature of my Duo, considering that my recent works had been in a more severe idiom.”

Copland needn’t have worried. As music critic Michael Steinberg put it, reviewing its first performance in Boston, “Copland’s Duo is a lightweight work of a masterful craftsman. It is going to give pleasure to flutists and their audiences for a long time.”

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Duo; Jennifer Stinton, flute; Malcolm Martineau, piano; Collins 1385

Today we celebrate the birthday of Leroy Bernard Shield, an American composer whose name might not ring a bell, but whose music you might instantly recognize — and with a smile.

Shield’s name rarely appeared on the credits for the classic Our Gang and Laurel & Hardy comedies from the 1930s, but his music was used in most of them.

Shield was born in Waseca, Minnesota, on today’s date in 1893. At five he was already an accomplished pianist and organist, and by 15 a professional arranger, composer and concert pianist.

In 1923, he joined the staff of the Victor Talking Machine Company, supervising their East Coast recording sessions. Then in 1930, he was appointed Victor’s Musical Director in charge of Hollywood, California, Activities, and it was in this capacity that he wrote and oversaw the recording of music for the famous comedies produced by the Hal Roach Studios.

In 1945, Shield moved back to New York and became the orchestral contractor for the NBC radio network and worked closely with the famous conductor Arturo Toscanini and his NBC Symphony. He retired in 1955, moved to Florida, and died in Fort Lauderdale in 1962.

Leroy Shield (1893-1962): Good Old Days and Hide and Go Seek; Beau Hunks Orchestra; Koch 8702

Today’s date in 1922 marks the birthday of Héctor Campos Parsi, one of Puerto Rico’s finest composers.

Campos Parsi originally planned to become a doctor, but after a meeting with the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, ended up studying music at the New England Conservatory in 1949 and 1950 with the likes of Aaron Copland, Olivier Messiaen and Serge Koussevitzky, and between 1950 and 1954 with Paul Hindemith at Yale and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.

Returning to Puerto Rico, Campos Parsi pursued a dual career: as a writer, he contributed short stories, essays, poems to Puerto Rican magazines, and wrote music reviews and articles for island newspapers. As a composer, he wrote instrumental and vocal works for chamber, orchestral, and choral ensemble. Two of his best-known works are Divertimento del Sur, written for string orchestra with solo flute and clarinet, and a piano sonata dedicated to Puerto Rican pianist Jesús María Sanromá.

As a musicologist, Campos Parsi wrote entries for music encyclopedias and served as the director of the IberoAmerican Center of Musical Documentation and as composer-in-residence at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, where died in 1998 at 75.

Héctor Campos Parsi (1922-1998): Divertimento del Sur; Members of the Casals Festival Orchestra; Milton Katims, conductor; Smithsonian Folkways COOK-01061

The old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” pretty much sums up the career of the French composer Georges Bizet.

Bizet died at 36 in 1875, the same year his opera Carmen premiered. Now, Carmen soon became acknowledged as one of the great masterworks of French opera, but poor Monsieur Bizet wasn’t around to experience any of that.

Moreover, Carmen was preceded by Bizet’s no less than 30 attempts writing a hit opera. Most never made it to the stage, and the few that did, achieved only modest success.

Set in exotic Ceylon, Les Pêcheurs de Perles, or The Pearl Fishers, the most famous of the “pre-Carmen” Bizet operas premiered on today’s date in 1863. 

It ran for 18 performances, and, although applauded by its first audiences, was roundly panned by the press. Only one music critic saw any merit in Bizet’s opera, and that critic just happened to be the great French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz.

Even so, Pearl Fishers wasn’t revived until long after Bizet’s death, and some 30 years after its premiere. Today, after Carmen of course, it’s his second most popular opera.

Georges Bizet (1838-1875): Prelude from The Pearl Fishers; Mexico City Philharmonic; Enrique Batiz, conductor; ASV 6133

Georges Bizet (1838-1875): Au Fond du Temple Saint, from The Pearl Fishers; Placido Domingo, tenor; Sherrill Milnes, baritone; London Symphony; Anton Guadagno, conductor; BMG 62699

Yes, Juliet, a rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a catchy title alone can’t help a piece of music that’s uninspired or just plain boring. An intriguing title, however can sometimes help put audiences into a more receptive frame of mind — or at least pique their curiosity.

From the very beginning of his career in the 1980s, the young American composer Michael Torke had the knack of coming up with evocative titles. His early works had titles like Ecstatic Orange and Bright Blue Music. A piece composed for the 1994 Olympic Games in Atlanta was titled Javelin, and this music, an orchestral suite that premiered in Amsterdam on today’s date in 1997, was titled Overnight Mail.

And each of the three movements of his orchestral suite had an additional title, as Torke explains:

“The titles of the suite’s three movements, Priority, Standard, and Saturday Delivery present the options for expediency when sending things, but musically, they represent different reactions to an abstract compositional problem I set up for myself … for me this was important, because I want to write music that follows all the old rules of voice leading and counterpoint, but sounds fresh.”

Michael Torke (b. 1961): Overnight Mail; Orkest de Volharding; Jurjen Hempel, conductor; Argo 455 684

Today’s date in 1913 marks the birthday of American composer Vivian Fine in Chicago.

At the tender age of five, she became a scholarship piano student at the Chicago Musical College. As she grew up she became enthralled with the great composers and performers she heard at her regular visits to the Chicago Symphony. Fine initially intended to be a concert pianist, but theory studies with American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger nudged her towards composition. 

Fine became an avid follower of the emerging Ultra-Modern school of composers, including Henry Cowell, who proved to be one of her early mentors. Her debut as a composer came in Chicago when she was 16, and at 17 she moved to New York City to she studied composition with Roger Sessions and orchestration with George Szell.

When Roger Sessions saw her sketches for her Concertante for Piano and Orchestra in 1944, he commented, “Now we are colleagues,” and George Szell praised its orchestration. Teaching became an important part of Fine’s own professional life, first at New York University and Juilliard, and ultimately at Bennington College.

Following a traffic accident in Vermont, Fine died at 86 in March of 2000.

Vivian Fine (1913-2000): ‘Concertante’; Reiko Honsho, piano; Japan Philharmonic; Akeo Watanabe, conductor; CRI 692

On today’s date in 1956, the English composer Gerald Finzi died in Oxford at 55. Finzi suffered from Hodgkin’s disease, and shortly before his death had caught chickenpox from some children he had visited, an infection that proved fatal.

Finzi was born into a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family. His mother was musical, and an amateur composer. Even with talent, wealth, support from the likes of Ralph Vaughan Williams and several golden opportunities for career advancement, Finzi proved to be a rather diffident soul who seemed to prefer to work in seclusion and relative obscurity.

He collected rare books and scores by 18th century English composers but is most famous for his settings of poems by Thomas Hardy, a contemporary of his parent’s generation.

Himself an agnostic, Finzi produced a small body of sacred choral works, as well as two instrumental pieces that have endeared him to clarinetists: a set of clarinet Bagatelles from 1943 and this Clarinet Concerto from 1949.

British critic Norman Lebrecht offers this assessment of Finzi’s appeal: “a confluence of Elgar without bluffness and Vaughan Williams at his most delicate. His concerto for clarinet and strings is a light and lovely lament for lost times.”

Gerald Finzi (1901-1956): Clarinet Concerto; Richard Stoltzman, clarinet; Guildhall String Ensemble; Robert Slater, conductor; BMG 60437

From 1976 to 1984, Estonian composer Arvo Pärt kept revising and adjusting his chamber piece If Bach had Raised Bees.

On today’s date in 1983 one version of this piece — for harpsichord, electric bass guitar, tape and small chamber ensemble — received its premiere performance at a new music festival in Graz, Austria.

Pärt’s work opens like a minimalist piece, with repeated notes perhaps imitating the buzzing of the bees mentioned in the title. What he meant by If Bach had Raised Bees is open to various interpretations, but technically speaking, the piece is a slow transformation of an instrumental humming in the key of B-flat into a Bach-like cadence in the key of B-minor. Was the deeply religious-minded Estonian composer suggesting that bees somehow symbolized a harmonious community of God’s creatures? Or was the title, in English at least, a pun on the shifting key of “BEE-flat” to “BEE-minor?”

In any case, this piece was one of several Bach-inspired works, “Bach collages,” as Pärt called them, each he said “an attempt to replant a flower in alien surroundings … if they grow together into one, then the transplantation was the right move.”

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935): If Bach had Raised Bees; Philharmonia Orchestra; Neeme Järvi, conductor; Chandos 9134

The Russian Revolution of 1917 wiped out many family fortunes, and many penniless Russian émigrés who fled the Bolsheviks had to start from scratch in exile.

Natalie Koussevitzky, however, was not one of them. Her family fortune was fairly diversified, which meant that even the loss of her large Russian holdings left her with considerable wealth elsewhere. And since she was married to the Russian émigré music publisher, conductor and new music impresario Serge Koussevitzky, that meant a number of famous 20th century composers benefitted as well. It’s not an exaggeration to say that, culturally speaking, without her fortune, the history of 20th century music would have been noticeably poorer.

When Natalie died, Serge Koussevitzky established a Music Foundation in her honor. One of the Foundation’s memorial commissions was premiered on today’s date in 1943 by the Boston Symphony, led by Serge Koussevitzky. This was a three-part symphonic Ode written by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, and dedicated to Natalie’s memory.

Curiously, the second movement of Stravinsky’s Ode was actually a bit of recycled film music originally intended for the Orson Welles version of the English novel Jane Eyre. In the final cut, Welles opted for a Bernard Herrmann score instead.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): Ode; London Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; BMG 68865

On today’s date in 1999, the Lyric Opera of Chicago premiered a new opera by American composer William Bolcom, based on A View from the Bridge, a powerful play by Arthur Miller.

Now, not all stage plays “translate” well into opera, as Bolcom was well aware.

“In theater, you have the text and then below it you have the subtext,” Bolcom said. “In opera it is pretty much the opposite, the subtext is what you are really dealing with first and foremost: big, raw emotions, which are supported by the text.”

In fact, Miller’s play, although set in Brooklyn in the 1950s, has often been likened to a Greek tragedy, a theatrical form in which the chorus plays an important role.

Bolcom saw that as a real opportunity: “If you are going to do an opera from a play, it better have a dimension that the play doesn’t. In a play, you can’t have your chorus speak because it is financially prohibitive: as soon as the chorus opens up its mouth the price goes up because of actors’ equity. So, naturally one of the great resources of opera houses is an opera chorus, a resource you can use much more easily.”

William Bolcom (b. 1938): A View from the Bridge; Lyric Opera of Chicago; Dennis Russell Davies, conductor; New World 80558

On today’s date in 1943, Cuban Independence Day was celebrated with a big concert at Carnegie Hall. The first half of the concert, which was relayed to Cuba and South American by NBC radio, was devoted solely to works by Ernesto Lecuona, the best-known and most successful Cuban composer of the day.

Lecuona was born in Havana in 1895, when Cuba was still part of the Kingdom of Spain. He died in 1963, as an expat of choice after Fidel Castro came to power. In the 1920s, after successful piano recitals in Paris, Lecuona’s popularity brought him to concert halls in not only Europe, but North and South America as well. His over 600 compositions include songs, zarzuelas for the stage, contributions to musical films, and pieces for solo piano and symphony orchestra.

His most famous concert work, Rapsodia Negra, or Black Rhapsody, for piano and orchestra, received its premiere at the 1943 Carnegie Hall concert. As the New York Times review noted, “[Lecuona] may be termed the Gershwin of Cuba, … like Gershwin [he] is an outstanding performer of his own music at the piano and has composed music of the more serious type, based on the popular idiom.”

Ernesto Lecuona (1895-1963): Rapsodia Negra; Thomas Tirino, piano; Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra; Michael Bartos, conductor; BIS CD-754

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then composers must really have a thing about birds. For centuries, composers have imitated bird song. Vivaldi’s Goldfinch concerto for flute is one of the best-known examples from the 18th century, and there are a flock of other examples.

On today’s date in 1953, at the Donaueschingen Music Festival in Germany, one of the most famous 20th century examples of “music for the birds” had its premiere performance. Le Réveil des Oiseaux, or The Awakening of the Birds, was a piece by French composer Olivier Messiaen for piano and orchestra.

The musical themes for this work were all based on Messiaen’s precise notation of the songs of 38 different French birds. The piece’s structure progresses from midnight to midday, with the birds’ actual “awakening” occurring precisely at 4 a.m. at the first light of a spring day.

Messiaen’s interest in bird songs and nature was as deep as his religious faith. As he put it, “I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none."

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741): Flute Concerto (Goldfinch); Patrick Gallois, flute; Orpheus Orchestra; DG 437 839

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992): Le Reveil des Oiseaux; Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano; Cleveland Orchestra; Pierre Boulez, conductor; DG 453 478

On today’s date in 1945, Serge Koussevitzky conducted the Boston Symphony in the premiere performance of the Symphony No. 3 by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu.

Martinu had finished the first two movements of his symphony as World War II was rushing to a close and later claimed he had Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, the Eroica, very much on his mind, convinced that there was somehow an ethical force at work in the creation of a symphony, and, just as in Beethoven’s Eroica, it was possible to express moral and ethical ideals in music.

As an exile from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and France, Martinu had come to the United States in 1941, and his mood is understandable in the anxious yet hopeful spring and summer of 1945.

After liberation of Czechoslovakia, he returned to his homeland and was offered a teaching post in Prague. Martinu, unhappy with Czechoslovakia’s new Communist rulers, declined the offer, and returned to America, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1952. After his death in 1957, his remains were eventually returned to his family mausoleum in Czechoslovakia, and in 1990, the centenary of his birth was celebrated in that country as a major cultural event.

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959): Symphony No. 3; National Orchestra of Ukraine; Arthur Fagen, conductor; Naxos 8.553350

On today’s date in 1944, 29-year-old American composer David Diamond had his Symphony No. 2 premiered by the Boston Symphony under the famous Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky.

Diamond said he had written this music for charismatic Greek maestro Dimitri Mitropoulos, then the music director of the Minneapolis Symphony.

“Mitropoulos had given a fine performance of my Symphony No. 1,” Diamond said. “When I showed him the score of the Symphony No. 2 he said, ‘you must have the parts extracted at once!’ As these were readied, I asked him whether he was planning to perform the work. He then told me he thought he would not stay on in Minneapolis, but said, ‘Why don’t you send it to Koussevitzky?’ I did so, and Koussevitzky [invited me to a] trial reading at Symphony Hall. When it was over, the orchestra applauded like crazy. Koussevitzky turned to me and said, ‘I will play!’”

Successful as Diamond was back in 1944, for many decades thereafter his neo-Romantic symphonic scores were neglected until Gerard Schwartz’s CD recordings of some of them with the Seattle Symphony sparked a revival. By then, Diamond was in his 70s, and commented, “The romantic spirit in music is important because it is timeless.”

David Diamond (1915-2005): Symphony No. 2; Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Delos 3093

Imagine the cocktail party bragging rights you’d have if you had attended the first night of Girl Crazy, a musical that opened in New York on today’s date in 1930. That show marked the Broadway debut of Ethel Merman, and co-starred Ginger Rogers.

But that’s just for starters.

The pit orchestra that night included Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey and Jack Teagarden — gentlemen who would all go on to become famous band leaders in their own right.

Speaking of band leaders, for the opening night of Girl Crazy, the show’s composer, George Gershwin himself, was there conducting that all-star ensemble.

For his part, Gershwin recalled, “With the exception of some dead head friends of mine, especially the critics, I think the notices, especially of the music, were the best I have ever received.”

Gershwin was right; Girl Crazy included two songs that quickly became classics: “I Got Rhythm” and “Embraceable You.” The show ran for 272 performances — an impressive statistic in the first year of the Great Depression, and Hollywood produced not one but two cinematic versions of the show in 1932 and 1943.

George Gershwin (1898-1937): Girl Crazy; Studio Cast Recording; Sony 60704

Expatriate American composer Conlon Nancarrow came to the conclusion that the rhythmically complex, intricate contrapuntal music he wanted to write would be too difficult for mere mortals to tackle, so he composed for a mechanical instrument: the player piano.

Despite its complexity, Nancarrow’s music drew some of its inspiration from the human, all-too-human jazz stylings of Art Tatum and Earl Hines, and the complex rhythmic patterns of music from India.

Nancarrow was born in 1912 in Texarkana, Arkansas. At 18, he heard Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which sparked his life-long interest in rhythmic complexity. Soon after, Nancarrow began private studies with American composers Roger Sessions and Walter Piston. He moved to Mexico City in 1940, where he lived and worked until his death.

Nancarrow composed in almost total isolation until the late 1970s, when some of his piano roll compositions appeared on record. These created quite an impact, and the MacArthur Foundation awarded him its Genius Award. Late fame even brought a series of commissions from performers willing to take on the challenge of performing his difficult music. One of these pieces, his String Quartet No. 3, was premiered on today’s date in 1987 by the Arditti Quartet.

Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997): String Quartet No. 3; Arditti Quartet; Grammavision 79440

There are some operas which are rarely — if ever — staged, but whose music becomes famous — even wildly popular — in the concert hall. Everyone has heard the overture to Rossini’s William Tell, for example, but only a few fortunate (or very determined) opera fans ever get to see the whole opera staged.

Zoltán Kodály’s opera Háry János falls into this strange class of works both popular and obscure. This comic opera debuted at the Royal Hungarian Opera House in Budapest on today’s date in 1926 and recounts the adventures of an old veteran of the Napoleonic Wars named Háry János.

In the village tavern, Háry boasts of his heroic exploits: how he singlehandedly won a battle against Napoleon, for example, and how the emperor’s wife fell in love with him, and she would have run off with him if he’d wanted, but he chose to remain true to his Hungarian sweetheart back home.

You get the idea.

Kodály’s opera was a hit in Budapest but was not taken up elsewhere. But a concert suite of excerpts from its brilliant score depicting Háry János’s imaginary adventures became a popular showpiece for orchestras, an unbeatable combination of great tunes, colorful orchestration and smile-inducing wit.

Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967): Háry János Suite; Budapest Festival Orchestra; Ivan Fischer, conductor; Philips 462 824

By the mid-1940s, famous American bandleader Paul Whiteman was not as popular as he once was during the 20s and 30s. Even so, his name and orchestra were still a draw, and Whiteman was ever hopeful of introducing new pieces that might prove as popular as Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite — both commissioned by Whiteman in those earlier decades.

In 1944, Whiteman commissioned a number of short chamber orchestra works, or “symphonettes” as he dubbed them, for his new radio show Music out of the Blue, which aired at midnight.

“So if the pieces are too bad, few people will know it,” Whiteman explained to his radio bosses.

And so it was on today’s date in 1944 that one of these new pieces, commissioned from Aaron Copland, had its radio premiere. Its title was A Letter from Home.

In the context of an America still at war in Europe, this title had a special resonance for those with loved ones serving abroad. Copland himself had a brother in the army, and wrote the work while living in Mexico, where he, too, received letters from his sister back home.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Letter from Home; St. Louis Symphony; Leonard Slatkin, conductor; EMI 49766

In 1958, Minnesota was celebrating its centennial and decided to commission a symphony in honor of the occasion.

Just about everyone these days knows there are a lot of Norwegians in Minnesota, but even back in 1958, that was still fairly obvious, and so it seemed a good idea to ask a Norwegian composer to write a Minnesota Symphony.

And who better than Harald Saeverud, one of the most distinguished composers of that day, and a composer who had just been granted Norwegian knighthood in the order of Saint Olaf, no less.

Nor was Saeverud new to the symphony-writing game. His Minnesota Symphony was his Symphony No. 8. Its premiere performance occurred at Northrop Auditorium in Minneapolis on today’s date in 1958, with the Minneapolis Symphony led by Antal Dorati. The capacity audience of 4000 gave Saeverud and his symphony a warm welcome.

For his part, Saeverud was equally gracious, writing, “With the map of Minnesota above my desk and with my thoughts and feelings concentrated on Minnesota’s history, I dove into the work, which proved increasingly fascinating as I became aware that it was simultaneously growing into a history of mankind.”

Harald Saeverud (1897-1992): Symphony No. 8 (Minnesota); Stavanger Symphony; Ole Kristian Ruud, conductor; BIS 972

According to Wikipedia, an art song is “a vocal music composition, usually written for one voice with piano accompaniment … often a musical setting of an independent poem or text intended for the concert repertory as part of a recital.”

The 600-plus art songs of the Viennese composer Franz Schubert are the most familiar examples of the genre and rank among the greatest achievements of the Romantic Era in music.

On today’s date in 1814, Schubert was just 17 when he finished one of the most famous of them, Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel, a remarkably empathetic setting of a scene from Goethe’s Faust in which the naïve young Gretchen confesses being both terrified and thrilled by falling passionately in love.

British pianist Graham Johnson has recorded all 600-plus Schubert songs with some of the greatest singers of our day, and said, “The most amazing thing is that a 17-year-old boy can somehow enter into the female psyche with such an incredible amount of understanding as if he himself had experienced such feelings … there is a real distinct feeling of Schubert blown away by the drama and the story he has read.”

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Gretchen am Spinnrade, D118; Elly Ameling, soprano; Dalton Baldwin, piano; Phillips 420870

On today’s date in 1950, famous oboist Marcel Tabuteau gave the premiere performance of this Pastorale for solo oboe, harp, and strings, with his colleagues from the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The music was by Howard Hanson, who dedicated the piece to his wife Peggy.

Hanson was born in Wahoo, Nebraska in 1896. As a talented teenager, he recalls a German-born musician in New York asking him, “Well, now, Hanson, why do you waste your time at futile efforts in composition when you could became a great concert pianist?” This, he said, from someone who had never heard one note he had written.

“In the true German tradition, he figured that nobody from Nebraska could possibly write good music. It took 40 years to get rid of that kind of thinking in the U.S. — and we’re not over it yet,” Hanson recalled.

Hanson was a successful composer, conductor and educator in his early 80s when he made those comments, but he retained his sense of humor, as evidence by this comment from the octogenarian: “Peggy will say to me, ‘What are you going to do now?’ and I’ll say, ‘I’m going upstairs to waste my time in futile efforts at composition.’”

Howard Hanson (1896-1981): Pastorale; Randall Ellis, oboe; Susan Jolles, harp; Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Delos 3105

Let’s face it. Brevity and wit are not always qualities one associates with new music.

But today we offer a sample: this comic overture is less than five minutes long, and opens, as you just heard, with a Fellini-esque duet for piccolo and contrabassoon.

Quantum Quirks of a Quick Quaint Quark is a rather burlesque celebration of modern theoretical physics. Its alliterative title evokes those subatomic particles known as “quarks” that, we’re told, make up our universe. And, since this music changes time signature so often, perhaps Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” is thrown in for good measure.

The music is by Marga Richter, who was born on this date in 1926 in Reedsburg, Wisconsin. Richter received her early music training in Minneapolis, and then moved to New York’s Juilliard School. By the time of her death in 2020, she had composed over 75 works including an opera and two ballets, as well as two piano concertos and a variety of solo, chamber and symphonic works.

“Composing is my response to a constant desire to transform my perceptions and emotions into music … music is the way I speak to the silence of the universe,” Richter said.

Marga Richter (1926-2020): Quantum Quirks of a Quick Quaint Quark; Czech Radio Orchestra; Gerard Schwarz; MMC 2006

Handel is the composer credited with “inventing” the organ concerto in the 18th century. Handel was a virtuoso performer on the organ, and, as a special added attraction during the London performances of some of his oratorios, one of his concertos would be featured as a kind of intermission feature. This served to showcase his skill as an organist — and perhaps to give his singers a chance to catch their breath between sections of the full-length oratorio.

Since then, a number of composers have added to the organ concerto repertory started by Handel.

On today’s date in 1990, on a CBC radio broadcast from the Calgary Organ Festival Competition, Snow Walker, a new organ concerto by the American composer Michael Colgrass had its premiere performance. Colgrass’ concerto is cast as an impressionistic musical picture of the Far North and the fortitude, humor and spirituality of Canada’s native Inuit peoples. The work is dedicated to Farley Mowat, the author of a true-life story of life in the Far North, Never Cry Wolf, familiar from a popular Disney movie. The Colgrass concerto provides musical evocations of a polar landscape, Inuit throat singing and a rambunctious dance finale.

George Frederic Handel (1685-1757): Organ Concerto, No. 4; Simon Preston, organ; Festival Orchestra; Yehudi Menuhin, conductor; EMI 72626

Michael Colgrass (1932-2019): Snow Walker; David Schrader, organ; Grant Park Orchestra; Carlos Kalmar, conductor; Cedille 90000 063