Composers Datebook
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.
- Update frequency
- every day
- Average duration
- 2 minutes
- Episodes
- 100
- Years Active
- 2025
Berlioz gets hot
Synopsis
Playing in a marching band isn’t always as easy as it looks. Imagine the predicament in which composer Hector Berlioz found himself on today’s date in 1840, conducting 210 musicians under a b…
Lindberg by Weill, Hindemith and Waxman
Synopsis
It was on this day in 1929 that the first performance was given of a radio cantata — not on the radio, oddly enough, but in a concert hall in Baden-Baden, Germany. Lindbergh’s Flight featured…
'Parsifal' in Bayreuth
Synopsis
On today’s date in 1882, eminent German conductor Hermann Levi led the first performance of Richard Wagner’s new opera, Parsifal — a work that would also turn out to be his last, as Wagner wo…
Copland and Kernis on the air
Synopsis
On today’s date in 1937, one of Copland’s less familiar works had its premiere performance — on the radio. The radio premiere was the result of a commission from the Columbia Broadcasting Sys…
Hindemith for winds
Synopsis
In 1926, the German composer Paul Hindemith was the director of that year’s Donaueschingen Music Festival, which, since its inception in 1921, had quickly established itself as an important s…
A West-Coast premiere for Still
Synopsis
On today’s date in 1940, the “Standing Room Only” signs went up early as a crowd of 23,000 stormed the Hollywood Bowl to hear the great Paul Robeson perform.
On the program was Earl Robinson’s…
de Falla and Sierra
Synopsis
London might seem an unlikely venue for the premiere of this quintessentially Spanish music — but it was a decidedly international affair when Manuel de Falla’s ballet The Three-Cornered Hat …
Mendelssohn for winds
Synopsis
In the summer of 1824, the fifteen-year-old Mendelssohn spent a holiday with his father in the fashionable spa town of Bad Doberan, on the Baltic coast near Rostock. Writing home to his famil…
Music at Watergate
Synopsis
In the summer of 1972, five burglars broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and soon the term “Watergate” came to sig…
The long and the short of it
Synopsis
“Time is a funny thing,” as one of the more philosophically-inclined Viennese characters so wisely observed in Richard Strauss’ opera Der Rosenkavalier.
Der Rosenkavalier had its premiere in 1…
Sallinen and Kronos
Synopsis
To some it seemed an act of sheer madness for a string quartet to announce in the 1970s that it would not perform the classic repertory of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but devote itself inste…
Water music by Handel and Larsen
Synopsis
On today’s date in 1717, King George and his entourage took a barge trip on the river Thames, traveling from Whitehall to Chelsea, accompanied by about 50 musicians, also on barges. A contemp…
Dale Trumbore's 'How to Go On'
Synopsis
Following the death of a loved one, American poet Barbara Crooker wrote, “How can we go on/knowing the end of the story?”
American composer Dale Trumbore attempted to answer that question with…
Bernstein's sabbatical psalms
Synopsis
In 1965, Leonard Bernstein took a sabbatical year from his duties as music director of the New York Philharmonic. In 1964, the busy Mr. Bernstein had just finished conducting Verdi’s opera Fa…
'La Marseillaise' by Lambert
Synopsis
Today is Bastille Day, and on today’s date in 1900, the Opera-Comique in Paris premiered a patriotic opera, La Marseillaise, which melodramatically depicted how, on a spring night during the …
Strauss, Shostakovich, Hitler and Stalin
Synopsis
Decades after their deaths, Richard Strauss and Dmitri Shostakovich still remain politically controversial. Strauss worked in Nazi Germany under Hitler, and Shostakovich in the Soviet Union u…
Requiems and Elegies by Faure and Rouse
Synopsis
On this day in 1900, the world first heard the Requiem of Gabriel Fauré in its full orchestral version at a concert at the Paris World Exhibition. Faure’s Requiem ranks today among his best-k…
Hollywood anniversaries
Synopsis
Today’s date marks two events in American musical history — one sad, one happy.
It was on today’s date in 1937 that George Gershwin died at 10:35 in the morning in a Hollywood hospital after a…
Handel declines, Schuman accepts
Synopsis
On today’s date in 1733, Georg Friderich Handel paid a visit to Oxford to conduct the premiere performance of his new oratorio, Athalia, at the Sheldonian Theater.
Handel had been invited by t…
Respighi's 'The Pines of Rome'
Synopsis
Today marks the birthday in 1879 of Ottorino Respighi, a rare Italian composer more famous for orchestral works than operas. And no wonder — Respighi was a master orchestrator, learning his c…