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.
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 3 days 20 hours 52 minutes
Mozart says, 'Call me Amade'
Synopsis On this date in 1785, a new Piano Concerto in C major was given its premiere at the Burgtheater in Vienna, with its composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, at the keyboard. Years later, this piano concerto was labeled as Mozart’s 21st, and given the number 467 in the chronological list of his works compiled by Ludwig Ritter von Koechel, an Austrian botanist, mineralogist and Mozart enthusiast...
Mahler's musical love letter?
Synopsis On today’s date in 1902, composer Gustav Mahler, 41, married Alma Schindler, 22. Mahler was the famous director of the Vienna Court Opera, and by 1902 had written four symphonies. Schindler was considered one of the most beautiful women in Vienna, and also independent, unpredictable and remarkably free-spirited. Perhaps that, as much as her beauty, appealed to Mahler, but many of the composer’s longtime friends did not approve and predicted disaster...
Carter's last premiere
Synopsis At Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 2015, the Met Chamber Ensemble gave the posthumous premiere of a new work by American composer Elliott Carter, who died in November 2012, a month or so shy of what would have been his 104th birthday. The debut of The American Sublime marked the last world premiere performance of Carter’s 75-year-long composing career...
Piston's Viola Concerto
Synopsis Perhaps there is some poetic justice in the fact that maverick American composers like Charles Ives had a hard time getting performances of their music during their lifetime, only to be both lionized and frequently performed after their deaths. Conversely, many mainstream American composers who were lionized and frequently performed when they were alive seldom show up on concert programs anymore — and in some cases, that’s a darn shame...
Sleep on it, Giuseppe
Synopsis Have you ever sent someone an email you regretted the second you hit send? Even in the 19th century, it was often prudent to sleep on a message before sending off words written in the heat of passion. On today’s date in 1853, Giuseppe Verdi sent a barrage of short notes to friends after what he felt was the disastrous premiere of his latest opera at the Teatro la Fenice in Venice...
Mozart, Stalin and Yudina
Synopsis What’s your favorite recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23?
It is said that Joseph Stalin’s was one with Russian pianist Maria Yudina, and that recording was spinning on his turntable when the dictator was found dead on today’s date in 1953. In 1944, Stalin had heard Yudina perform this concerto on the radio and called the Soviet broadcaster and asked for the recording...
Happy birthday, Antonio Vivaldi
Synopsis Antonio Lucio Vivaldi came into the world on today’s date in 1678 a few days after an earthquake shook Venice. The newborn was baptized immediately — just in case little Antonio’s first day also turned out to be his last. Vivaldi’s father was a violinist, and even though Antonio quickly became a virtuoso on that instrument himself, he became a Roman Catholic priest...
Margaret Bonds
Synopsis Today marks the birth in 1913 of American composer Margaret Bonds. Her mother was a church musician in Chicago; her father was a physician and one of the founders of a medical association for Black physicians denied membership in the American Medical Association. One of the visitors to Bonds’ childhood home was composer Florence Price, with whom she studied composition...
One of our 'Favorite Things'?
Synopsis On today’s date in 1965, the now-classic and mega-iconic musical film The Sound of Music officially debuted at the Rivoli Theater at Broadway and 49th Street in New York City...
A fanfare for Women's History Month
Synopsis For most of the 20th century, women’s history was almost totally ignored in American schools. To address this situation, an education task force in Sonoma County, California, initiated a women’s history celebration in March 1978. What began as an annual Women’s History Week grew over the years into a national celebration, and in 1987, Congress declared the whole of March to be Women's History Month...