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 54 minutes
Beethoven's Second on first?
Hold on tight—we’re about to cover 150 years of musical—and presidential—history in just 2 minutes! On today’s date in 1821, back when James Monroe was president, Beethoven’s Second Symphony was p...
Thomson's "Mother of Us All"
On today’s date in 1947, a new opera entitled “The Mother of Us All” debuted at Columbia University in New York City. The libretto was by the American poet Gertrude Stein, and dealt with the life...
Larsen's "Lyric" Third
On today’s date in 1992, Joel Revzen conducted the Albany Symphony in the premiere of the Third Symphony of American composer Libby Larsen. Larsen subtitled her new work a “Lyric Symphony.” Now, t...
Debussy's Violin Sonata
The French composer Claude Debussy was too sick to be called up for service when World War I broke out in 1914. His private battle with cancer on top of his nation’s battle with Germany plunged hi...
Dvořák salutes the flag
On today’s date in 1895, the New York Choral Society gave the premiere of a choral work by Antonin Dvorak entitled “The American Flag.” Mrs. Jeannette Thurber, who brought Dvorak to New York City t...
A chamber quintet by Cowell
By the 1960s, the prevailing trends dictated that modern music should be austere, brainy, complex, and preferably written in the 12-tone “serial” technique developed by Arnold Schoenberg and his pu...
"Tempest Fantasy" by Paul Moravec
When Patrick Stewart began his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Los Angeles Times called him an "unknown British Shakespearean actor." Ouch! That must have cau...
Graupner (and Haydn) in Boston
Today in 1825, a benefit concert was arranged in Boston for one of that city’s favorite musicians: Johann Christian Graupner—not a household name for music lovers today, but in the early 19th centu...
Del Tredici's In Wartime
On today’s date in 2003, the Wind Ensemble of the University of Texas at Austin, led by Jerry Junkin, premiered a new work for wind band by the American composer David Del Tredici. Its title was “...
Herbert's Earthquake Benefit
April 29th fell on Sunday in the year 1906, and readers of The New York Times photogravure supplement were able to view scenes of the terrible destruction in San Francisco that followed the great e...