Composers Datebook – Details, episodes & analysis

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Composers Datebook

American Public Media

Music

Frequency: 1 episode/1d. Total Eps: 30

Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.

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🇨🇦 Canada - musicHistory
16/08/2026
#83
🇺🇸 USA - musicHistory
16/08/2026
#22
🇨🇦 Canada - musicHistory
15/08/2026
#72
🇺🇸 USA - musicHistory
15/08/2026
#22
🇨🇦 Canada - musicHistory
14/08/2026
#58
🇺🇸 USA - musicHistory
14/08/2026
#21
🇨🇦 Canada - musicHistory
13/08/2026
#47
🇺🇸 USA - musicHistory
13/08/2026
#18
🇺🇸 USA - musicHistory
12/08/2026
#26
🇺🇸 USA - musicHistory
11/08/2026
#21

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Score global : 42%

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Bernard Herrmann gets a pink slip from Hitch

Monday, July 27, 2026 • Duration 02:00

Synopsis

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

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Seeing things at Wagner's 'Parsifal'

Sunday, July 26, 2026 • Duration 02:00

Synopsis

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

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Salzburg and Messner

Friday, July 17, 2026 • Duration 02:00

Synopsis

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

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Violinist, conductor and composer Eugene Ysaye

Thursday, July 16, 2026 • Duration 02:00

Synopsis

Today we note the birthday of a remarkable composer, conductor and virtuoso violinist: Eugéne Ysaÿe, who was born in Liége, Belgium, on today’s date in 1858. After studies with two of the most famous violin composers of his day, Henyrk Wieniawski of Poland and his Belgian compatriot, Henri Vieuxtemps, he soon was touring Europe and Russia as a star performer himself.

In 1886, when 28-year old Ysaÿe married, great Belgian composer Cesar Franck presented the young couple with his Violin Sonata as a wedding present. That same year, Ysaÿe founded a famous string quartet, and in 1893 it was the Ysaÿe Quartet that gave the premiere performance of Claude Debussy’s String Quartet, a work its composer dedicated to the ensemble in admiration.

In 1918, he made his American debut as a conductor with the Cincinnati Symphony, and made such a great impression there that he remained as music director of the Cincinnati Symphony from 1918 to 1922.

As a composer, he wrote eight concertos and a set of six solo sonatas for the violin. In 1928, at 70, the patriotic Belgian began work on an opera, Peter the Miner to a libretto in his native Walloon language, and was at work on a second opera when he died at 72, in 1931. In 1937, Queen Elizabeth of Belgium inaugurated the annual Eugene Ysaÿe International Prize for promising young violinists.

Music Played in Today's Program

Cesar Franck (1822-1890): Violin Sonata; Itzhak Perlman, violin; Martha Argerich, piano; EMI 56815

Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931): Chant d’hiver; Aaron Rosand, violin; Radio Luxembourg Orchestra; Louis de Froment, conductor; Vox Box 5102

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Villa-Lobos premieres

Wednesday, July 15, 2026 • Duration 02:00

Synopsis

For decades, Russian-born American composer, conductor and witty musical lexicographer Nicolas Slonimsky compiled the reference work Music Since 1900. It’s a year-by-year, month-by-month, day-by-day chronicle of musical events he deemed significant, interesting, or simply amusing.

Here, for example, is Slonimsky’s entry for July 15, 1942:

“Heitor Villa-Lobos conducts in Rio de Janeiro the first performances of three of his orchestral Choros: No. 6, No. 9 and No. 11, exhaling the rhythms, the perfumes and the colors of the Brazilian scene, with tropical birds exotically chanting in the woodwinds against the measured beats of jungle drums.”

Slonimsky did have a way with words, and certainly had fun compiling his mammoth (and highly readable) reference work.

For his part, Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos was equally diligent, so much so that he claimed he couldn’t always remember everything that he had written. His Choros No. 11 for piano and orchestra lasts some 65 minutes and is one of his most ambitious works. Originally the word “choro” meant improvised music by Brazilian street musicians, but Villa-Lobos always used the word in its plural form to describe over a dozen of his instrumental works.

Music Played in Today's Program

Heitor Villa Lobos (1887-1959): Choros No. 9; Hong Kong Philharmonic; Kenneth Schermerhorn, conductor; Naxos 8.555241

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Ingram Marshall's 'Dark Waters'

Tuesday, July 14, 2026 • Duration 02:00

Synopsis

A famous commercial for magnetic recording tape once asked the question: “Is it live — or Memorex” — suggesting it was hard to tell the difference. These days, at concerts of some contemporary composers’ works, the correct answer would be “It’s live and Memorex” — as there is a growing body of works that involve both live performers and prerecorded tape.

A 1995 work by American composer Ingram Marshall, Dark Waters, was written for an English horn soloist accompanied by a prerecorded tape of fragments from old 78-rpm recordings of Jean Sibelius’ chilly tone-poem The Swan of Tuonela. Both the live English horn part and the prerecorded tape are digitally processed and mixed at each live performance. “Those who know the Sibelius will recognize familiar strains,” Marshall said.

On today’s date in 1998, Marshall and Libby Van Cleve, the English horn player for whom Dark Waters was written, recorded the work at St. Casimir’s Church in New Haven, Connecticut. “You can actually hear the sound of that church in the recording,” recalled Van Cleve. “We finished at about 3 a.m., and it was stiflingly hot — how ironic that Ingram’s music — and Sibelius’ — is always associated with cold climates!”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ingram Marshall (1942-2022): Dark Waters; Libby van Cleve, English horn; Ingram Marshall, electronics; New Albion 112

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Mendelssohn sees double

Monday, July 13, 2026 • Duration 02:00

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1829, German composer Felix Mendelssohn was in London, participating in a gala concert to raise funds for the victims of a flood in Silesia. “Everyone who has attracted the slightest attention during the season will take part,” wrote Mendelssohn. “Many offers of good performers have had to be declined, as otherwise the concert will last till the next day!”

Mendelssohn performed his Double Concerto for two pianos and orchestra, joined by his friend and fellow composer/pianist Ignaz Moscheles. Mendessohn and Moscheles jointly prepared a special cadenza, and jokingly bet each other how long the audience would applaud it — Mendessohn predicting 10 minutes, and Mosceheles, more modestly, suggesting five.

In the Baroque age, double concertos were very popular, but by Mendelssohn’s day they had become less common. In our time, concertos for two pianos are even rarer. One of the most successful American Double Concertos was written between 1952 and 1953 by American composer Quincy Porter. Also known as the Concerto Concertante, commissioned by the Louisville Orchestra. It proved to be one of the most popular of Porter’s works, and even won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1954.

Music Played in Today's Program

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Double Concerto; Güher and Süher Pekinel, pianos; Philharmonia Orchestra; Neville Marriner, conductor; Chandos 9711

Quincy Porter (1897-1966): Concerto for Two Pianos; Joshua Pierce and Dorothy Jonas, duo pianists; Moravian Philharmonic; David Amos, conductor; Helcion 1044

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Bolcom's 'Sonata Stramba'

Sunday, July 12, 2026 • Duration 02:00

Synopsis

The Violin Sonata No. 3 by American composer William Bolcom had its premiere on today’s date in 1993 at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado. The work was commissioned to honor the 75th birthday of Dorothy Delay, a legendary violin teacher who taught at Juilliard for many years.

The violin is a strange animal for composers to master, especially if they aren’t violinists already, and Bolcom subtitled this work Sonata Stramba, “stramba” being the Italian word for “strange” or “odd.”

Bolcom confessed to being fascinated by two musical sounds more than any other: the voice and the violin. “When I was about ten, we trundled out my maternal grandfather’s imitation Stradivarius, made in Czechoslovakia, and I took a few not-very-successful lessons. When the violin was stolen out of the back seat of my father’s Buick that was the end of my studies of the instrument,” Bolcom recalled.

Bolcom did become a talented pianist, however, and befriended violinist Gene Nastri, who initiated the young composer into the mysteries of the instrument by performing Mozart and Beethoven Violin Sonatas with him, as well as the fledgling violin works written by the young composer.

Music Played in Today's Program

William Bolcom (b. 1938): Violin Sonata No. 3; Irina Muresanu, violin; Michael Lewis, piano; Centaur 2910

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MacDowell goes modern

Saturday, July 11, 2026 • Duration 02:00

Synopsis

These days, when modern music is on the program, a sizeable chunk of the concert hall audience might start nervously looking for the nearest exit — but that wasn’t always the case.

On today’s date in 1882, 21-year old American composer and pianist Edward MacDowell took the stage in Zurich, Switzerland, to perform his Modern Suite for piano at the 19th annual conference of the General Society of German Musicians, a showcase for new music whose programs were arranged by none other than Franz Liszt.

Liszt had met MacDowell earlier that year, and when MacDowell sent him the music for his Modern Suite for solo piano, Liszt asked the young composer to play it himself at the Society’s conference in Zurich.

The success of his Modern Suite No. 1 lead to the creation of a second, and both were published a year later by the Leipzig firm of Breitkopf & Hærtel. These two suites were the first works of MacDowell to appear in print, and launched his career as one of the major American composers of the late 19th century.

Music Played in Today's Program

Edward MacDowell (1860-1908): Modern Suite No. 1; James Barbagallo, piano; Naxos 8.559011

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Elgar lights up?

Friday, July 10, 2026 • Duration 02:00

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1919, British composer Edward Elgar finished a work he labeled jokingly as his Opus 1001 — a 50-second Smoking Cantata, intended, according to the manuscript score, as “an edifying, allegorical, improving, expostulatory, educational, persuasive, hortatory, instructive, dictatorial, magisterial, inadautory work.”

The score was completed at the Hertfordshire home of a wealthy banker named Edward Speyer, one of his oldest friends, to whom the manuscript was given. When he came to stay, Speyer had only one request, that the composer and his musician friends, “Kindly do not smoke in the hall or on the staircase.”

That’s also full text of Elgar’s cantata.

In the middle of his manuscript, he drew a medieval hell’s mouth, belching smoke. The little score was discovered, performed, and recorded for the first time in July of 2003.

Music Played in Today's Program

Edward Elgar (1857-1934): Smoking Cantata; Andrew Shore, bar; Hallé Orchestra; Mark Elder, conductor; Hallé CD HLL-7505

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Composers Datebook – Details, episodes & analysis

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Composers Datebook – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify