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Synopsis Today’s date in 1928 marks the birthdate in 1928 of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, famous for more than 400 scores he wrote for films and TV. If you’re a fan, you already know that he wrote the music for a series of spaghetti western movies like the 1964 classic A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood as a taciturn, sun-burnt, cigar-chomping gunman. If you’re an oboist, you’ve probably played his haunting Gabriel’s Oboe at weddings or funerals. It’s a melody originally heard in his soundtrack to the 1986 film The Mission. But in a 2006 interview for Dazed magazine, he revealed some things even his fans might not have known: He collected bars of hotel soap as a hobby. And if he hadn’t become a composer, he would have liked to have been a professional chess player. He also offered a bit of wise advice when asked about scores that were not successes: “A long time ago, I really loved a film that I was working on and I became too involved. That was kind of unbalanced. It made me realize that you can’t love things too much if you want them to work.” Music Played in Today's Program Ennio Morricone (1928-2020): Gabriel’s Oboe from The Mission; Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; Ennio Morricone, conductor; Sony 57872

Synopsis On today’s date in 1967, the New York Philharmonic gave the premiere performance of a new piece, November Steps, by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, a work commissioned by the orchestra as part of its 125th-anniversary celebrations. In addition to the usual instruments of the Western symphony orchestra, he included in his score two traditional Japanese instruments: the shakuhachi flute and the biwa, a kind of Japanese lute. Eight years after the Takemitsu premiere, an organization called Music from Japan was founded to help make other Japanese contemporary music feel “at home” in America. Music from Japan has presented about 400 works across the U.S. and premiered over 40 new works, many of them specially commissioned. On today’s date in 2000, to celebrate its 25th anniversary, Music from Japan presented a gala concert at Carnegie Hall, which included the premiere of a new orchestral work by talented young Japanese composer Karen Tanaka, one of the rising stars of her generation. Among her recorded works is Night Bird, a piece for two decidedly Western instruments: saxophone and piano. Music Played in Today's Program Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996): November Steps; Katsuya Yokoyama, shakuhachi; Kunshi Isuruta, biwa; Concertgebouw Orchestra; Bernard Haitink, conductor; Philips 426 667 Karen Tanaka (b. 1961): Night Bird; Claude Delangle, saxophone; BIS 890

Synopsis On today’s date in 1830, 11-year-old piano virtuoso Clara Wieck took the stage of the Leipzig Gewandhaus for her first solo recital. Her father was a piano teacher, who had prepared Clara for a solo career since infancy. This was the age of the great composer-pianists Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin, and little Clara also wrote original works for her performances. Her Four Polonaises was published the following year. Her career as a composer and performer would eventually span five decades, and, like her father, she became one of the most famous piano teachers of her time. Nowadays, composer-performers are more common in the world of jazz than classical music, although there are exceptions. One of them is Judith Lang Zaimont, who, like Schumann, developed a triple career as composer, performer and teacher. “Composing is the central fact of my life. My music seeks to appeal both to the heart (the ‘Ahh!’ response) and to the head (the ‘Aha!’ response). When this mix is just right, I can sense it — and reactions from audiences can be positive, too,” she said. Music Played in Today's Program Clara Schumman (1819-1896): Four Polonaises; Josef de Beenhouwer, piano; CPO 999 758 Judith Lang Zaimont (b. 1945): “September” from Calendar Collection; Judith Lang Zaimont, piano; Four Tay 4001

Synopsis The Nov. 7, 1950, issue of Look magazine included a record review of a new LP of music by avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse. “Varèse is unlike anything else in music, and well worth knowing,” the review suggested. Frank Zappa, a young Californian just short of his 10th birthday, was fascinated by the Look magazine photo of Varèse accompanying the review, which made the composer look a little like a mad scientist in vintage horror films. The young Zappa felt compelled to hunt down the record and begin composing music himself. For his 15th birthday, he chose to spend a $5 gift from his parents on a long-distance phone call to Varèse, who he correctly guessed must live in New York’s Greenwich Village. Today, Zappa is best remembered as the head of the iconoclastic rock band of the ‘60s and ‘70s the Mothers of Invention, but in 1983, he also conducted works of Varèse at a San Francisco concert honoring the composer’s centenary, and always acknowledged Varèse as a major influence. One of his final projects, recorded in 1993, the last year of his life, was an orchestral tribute to Varèse. Music Played in Today's Program Edgar Varèse (1883-1965): Ionisation; New York Philharmonic; Pierre Boulez, conductor; Sony 45844 Frank Zappa (1940-1993): Dog Breath Variations; Cincinnati Conservatory Wind Symphony; Eugene Corporon, conductor; Mark 1116

Synopsis American composer Florence Price wrote three symphonies in all. Her Symphony No. 1 was premiered by the Chicago Symphony in 1933 and marked the first time a composition by an African-American woman was played by a major American orchestra. The score for her second symphony is lost. Her Symphony No. 3, commissioned by the WPA Federal Music Project, was premiered on today’s date in 1940 by the Detroit Civic Orchestra. Price was born in 1887, in Little Rock, Arkansas, one of three children in a mixed-race family. Her mother was a music teacher who guided her early musical training. At 14, she enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music, where she pretended to be Mexican to avoid the Ivy League racial prejudice of that time. After teaching in the south, she moved to Chicago in 1927, where she became acquainted with the writer Langston Hughes and contralto Marian Anderson, both prominent figures in the African-American arts scene, who both helped promote her music. Price died in 1953. After decades of neglect, early 21st-century performances and recordings of her works have helped revive interest in her life and career. Music Played in Today's Program Florence Price (1887-1953): Symphony No. 3; Women’s Philharmonic; Apo Hsu, conductor; Koch 7518-2

Synopsis Into the Woods, a musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, opened on Broadway on today’s date in 1987, and brought to the stage characters from the world of fairy tales: Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and not one, but two Prince Charmings. But in Lapine and Sondheim’s fairy tale, bad things happen to good people who make morally questionable decisions in their quest to “live happily ever after.” At the time, Sondheim said, “All fairy tales are parables about steps to maturity. The final step is when you become responsible for the people around you, when you feel connected to the rest of the world.” The New York Times review noted that this fairy tale’s quest was “the same painful, existential one taken by so many adults in Sondheim musicals past.” Granting the musical was “potent stuff,” some complained there was simply too much of it, with multiple plot lines resulting in a complicated story hampering Sondheim’s lyrical gifts from really taking off on their own. Even so, since its 1987 premiere, Into the Woods has gone on to become one of the most performed and popular of all Sondheim’s musicals. Music Played in Today's Program Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021): Into the Woods; original Broadway cast members; RCA 60752

Synopsis Today we honor one of America’s greatest patrons of chamber music, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who died on this date in 1953. Born in 1864, Coolidge was the daughter of a wealthy wholesale grocer. She put her inheritance to good use. In 1924, she proposed to the Library of Congress that an auditorium be constructed in Washington, D.C., that would be dedicated to the performance of chamber music. A year later it was built, and Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress still stands today. Not content with just a superb venue for chamber music, she diligently commissioned new works to be played there. The list of important chamber pieces her foundation commissioned is impressive, and includes Bartok and Schoenberg string quartets, the original chamber versions of Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Stravinsky’s Apollo ballets, and modern works by American composers as diverse as Samuel Barber, Milton Babbitt, George Crumb and John Corigliano. Coolidge was an amateur composer and accomplished pianist. Her passion for music and enthusiasm for the creation of new works was all the more remarkable considering that tragically she battled deafness from her mid-30s. Music Played in Today's Program Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): Apollo ballet; Stockholm Chamber Orchestra; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; Sony Classical 46667

Synopsis At Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 2002, the American Composers Orchestra presented new works inspired by the Hebrew Psalms. The program included the premiere of a new work by American composer David Lang, How to Pray. In his program note, Lang wrote: “[The] Psalms are so central to religious experience [because] they are a comprehensive catalogue of how to talk to the Almighty. ... Of course, it's like reading one side of a correspondence. ... I am not a religious person. I don't know how to pray. I do, however, know some of the times and places and formulas that are supposed to help make prayer possible. Sometimes I find myself sending those messages out. And then I wait, secretly hoping that I will recognize the response.” The minimalist-style, patterned repetition in Lang’s How to Pray, reminded some listeners of a “mandala” — those intricate graphic patterns intended to be an aid to meditation for Hindu or Buddhist believers. Stravinsky fans with sharp ears might also recognize the running piano line from the beginning of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, which Lang borrows and weaves into the pattern of How to Pray as both a tribute and inspiration. Music Played in Today's Program David Lang (b. 1957): How to Pray; Real Quiet ensemble; Gil Rose, conductor; Naxos 8.559615

Synopsis On today’s date in 1979, a new play by Peter Schaffer, Amadeus, opened at the National Theatre in London. Schaffer’s play tells the story of Mozart’s final years in Vienna, including some posthumous gossip that it was the petty jealousy and back-stabbing intrigue of Mozart’s Italian contemporary Antonio Salieri that hastened his untimely demise. There was even a Romantic legend that Salieri had actually poisoned Mozart, a legend Shaffer gave a psychological spin. Music historians were quick to attack Shaffer’s play as wildly inaccurate and downright unfair to poor old Salieri, who, they said, was not all that bad a fellow. Accurate or not, Schaffer’s play was a big hit, and five years later was made into a wildly successful film. That movie version of Amadeus prompted millions of new classical music fans to snap up any recordings of Mozart’s Requiem they could find. And what about the music historians? They couldn’t even find comfort in the old public relations adage, “There’s no such thing as bad press as long as they spell your name right!” They felt even the movie’s title was bogus. Mozart never signed his middle name “Amadeus,” preferring the French version, “Amadé.” Music Played in Today's Program Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791): Requiem; La Chapelle Royale and Orchestre des Champs Elysees; Philippe Herreweghe, conductor; Harmonia Mundi 901620

Synopsis In France, today is “la Fete de la Toussaint” — All Saints’ Day — observed as both a sacred and secular national holiday, a time to visit cemeteries and put flowers on the graves of relatives. In 1947, when memories of the dead of World War II were still fresh, French Radio broadcast three premieres at a special concert from the Salle Gaveau in Paris. First on the program was the French premiere of Hungarian composer Lazlo Lajhta’s somber In Memoriam. This had been the first new orchestral work to be performed in Budapest when concert life had resumed after the war. Second was the world premiere of the Symphony No. 6 by Polish composer Alexandre Tansman, who, being Jewish, found refuge in France in 1938, then, during the German occupation, had fled to the United States. In 1946, he returned to Europe in time for the premiere of his symphony, In Memoriam, at this concert. The third work on the program was another world premiere: a newly completed Requiem Mass by French composer Maurice Duruflé, originally commissioned as an orchestral work in 1941 during the German occupation of France, which morphed into a choral Requiem Mass by the time of the liberation. Music Played in Today's Program Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986): Requiem; Westminster Choir; Joseph Flummerfelt, conductor; Avie 46

Synopsis Since today is Halloween, how about a tale from the crypt — with a composer’s skull or two tossed in for good measure!Music lovers have always had a “thing” about composers’ skulls. In 1820, for example, Prince Esterhazy ordered that Haydn’s remains be transferred from Vienna to Eisenstadt, only to discover that Haydn’s skull was missing. It had been stolen by two of Haydn’s closest friends, who had bribed the gravediggers, claiming they did it for pseudo-scientific phrenological research. In 1888, it was the remains of Beethoven and Schubert who were dug up and moved to Vienna’s new Central Cemetery. Nothing was missing, but on both occasions, the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner was present, and, according to witnesses, managed somehow to lovingly hold the skulls of both Beethoven and Schubert in his hands and speak to them before they were reburied. For his part, Bruckner insisted that he buried under the organ at St. Florian Monastery in upper Austria, and if you pay your respects today, you will see that Bruckner’s coffin is in an underground crypt, sharing space with a wall of thousands of stacked skulls looking out at you, bones belonged to early Christians who, like Bruckner, wished to be buried there. Music Played in Today's Program Kevin Puts (b. 1972): Marimba Concerto; Ji Su Jung, marimba; Baltimore Symphony; Marin Alsop, conductor; Naxos CD 8.559926

Synopsis American opera composer Jake Heggie and his librettist Terrence McNally decided to follow their Dead Man Walking — a successful but harrowing opera about capital punishment — with a lighter, more comic work, Great Scott. Now, McNally winced when people called Great Scott a “comic” opera, since it deals with a serious topic — for opera lovers, at least, namely, “Does opera still matter?” Great Scott is set in a large U.S. city with a respected, but struggling, opera company. The city also has a powerhouse professional football team. In Great Scott, international opera star Arden Scott returns to her hometown to save the opera company by staging the world premiere of a long-lost Italian bel canto work, Rosa Dolorosa, Figlia di Pompei. Unfortunately, the scheduled premiere falls on the same day as the home team’s first Super Bowl. Does the diva save the opera company? And who wins the Super Bowl? Well, you’ll just have to listen to the opera to find out! Fortunately, a Dallas Opera recording of Great Scott was made at its premiere on today’s date in 2015 — featuring powerhouse American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in the title role. Music Played in Today's Program Jake Heggie (b. 1961): Rosa Dolorosa Overture from Great Scott; Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano; Dallas Opera; Patrick Summers, conductor; Erato 9029594078

Synopsis On today’s date in 1739, George Frideric Handel took out an advertisement, announcing that he was now accepting subscriptions for his new set of 12 Grand Concertos for strings. He had, in fact, finished the first concerto one month before, on Sept. 29, and spent the next five weeks polishing off the other 11 at the rate of one every two or three days. Handel’s publisher was John Walsh Jr., who had a shop in London at the sign of the harp and oboe in Catherine Street on the Strand. One hundred twenty-two copies of the music were to be printed and sold at a prepublication price of two guineas each. Among the initial 100 subscribers were three royal princesses and the duke of Cumberland, and two copies each were sold to the Academy of Music in Dublin and a certain Charles Jennens. It was Jennens who was to provide the text for Handel’s next major oratorio, Messiah, and the city of Dublin the venue for its famous premiere. So, in 1739, just as today, it pays to advertise! Music Played in Today's Program George Frederic Handel (1685-1757): Concerto Grosso No. 5; I Solisti Italiani; Denon 6305

Synopsis In St. Petersburg on today’s date in 1893, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducted the first performance of his latest symphony, his sixth. From the beginning, this symphony has been commonly known by its French subtitle, the Pathétique, a designation suggested by the composer’s brother, Modest. Now, by Pathetique, Modest meant something like “passionate” or “emotional,” with overtones of “pathos” and “suffering,” but in plain old English, “pathétique” translates as “pathetic,” a word with a slew of negative connotations. The French sounds much better, thank you. Tchaikovsky had originally wanted to call it A Program Symphony with, apparently, no intention of cluing anyone in on what that program might be. In any case, nine days after he conducted the premiere, Tchaikovsky was dead. Was his death the result of a fatal glass of unboiled water recklessly drunk during the height of a cholera epidemic? Or was it a deliberate suicide to avoid the scandal of a homosexual affair becoming public? Did his Symphony Pathétique encode the answer? Speculation has raged around Tchaikovsky’s last symphony ever since, surrounding this last work with what one critic has called “voluptuous gloom.” Music Played in Today's Program Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique); Russian National Orchestra; Mikhail Pletnev, conductor; DG 449 967

Synopsis On today’s date in 1994, Dennis Russell Davies conducted the Chicago Symphony in the premiere performance of a 23-minute orchestral work by American composer Steven Mackey. The new piece was titled Eating Greens, after a painting of the same name that the composer purchased at an African art store in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Eating Greens is a colorful orchestral suite of seven movements. The fourth movement is only 46 seconds long and is playfully labeled “The Title Is Almost as Long as the Piece Itself.” Other movements’ titles acknowledge the influence of the colorful and playful visual artist Henri Matisse and the quirky but brilliant jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Monk. In the liner notes for the recording of Eating Greens, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, Mackey wrote, “On more than one occasion, Michael has used the word ‘wacky’ to describe my music. Composers usually blanch at such attributions — nobody wants to be captured in a single word — but I can live with ‘wacky.’ It is not a common adjective, does not end with ‘ism’ and clearly the rhyme with my last name personalizes it.” Music Played in Today's Program Steven Mackey (b. 1956): Eating Greens; New World Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; RCA/BMG 63826