Discover
Composers Datebook

Composers Datebook
Author: American Public Media
Subscribed: 531Played: 27,707Subscribe
Share
© Copyright 2025 Minnesota Public Radio
Description
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.
363 Episodes
Reverse
SynopsisToday’s date marks the 1925 premiere in New York City of a classic operetta The Vagabond King by Rudolf Friml, the source of many once-popular sentimental tunes, including “Love Me Tonight,” and “Only a Rose.”Friml was born in Prague in 1879, and he studied composition there with no less a master than Antonín Dvořák. He started his career as a piano accompanist to the famous Czech violinist Jan Kubelik, then emigrated to the U.S. in 1906. In 1907, he appeared as a soloist in his own Piano Concerto No. 1 with the New York Symphony, and decided to make America his home.Friml wrote two piano concertos, a symphony, solo piano pieces — and three film scores for Hollywood. But he’s remembered today chiefly for 24 stage works, beginning in 1912 with The Firefire, his first big musical success, and continuing with many others, including the 1924 operetta Rose Marie — which in 1936 was made into a successful film starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Their rendition of Friml’s “Indian Love Call” has become a campy cult classic.Even Friml was occasionally embarrassed by the success of some of his flufflier pop works, and would publish some of these under the pseudonym of Roderick Freeman. He died in Los Angeles in 1972 at 92.Music Played in Today's ProgramRudolf Friml (1879-1972): Song of the Vagabonds from The Vagabond King; Eastman-Dryden Orchestra: Donald Hunsberger, conductor; Arabesque 6562 Rudolf Friml (1879-1972): Chanson ‘In Love’; New London Orchestra; Ronald Corp, conductor; Hyperion 67067
SynopsisToday’s date commemorates the death, in 1957, of the most famous Finnish composer of modern times, Jean Sibelius. Born in 1865, Sibelius studied at the University of Helsinki, developed a strong sense of nationalism in the 1890s, and achieved world fame in the first years of the 20th century. He wrote little after the World War I, however, and lived his last 30 years in almost complete seclusion.Even so, he was one of the most popular composers of his time. In 1938, a recording of his tone-poem Finlandia was selected as one of only three pieces of music to be deposited along with other artifacts of modern civilization in an indestructible time capsule buried on the site of the New York World’s Fair.By 1957, the enormous acclaim that Sibelius enjoyed during his lifetime had faded somewhat, but these days his reputation seems on the rise once again, as does the influence of Finnish music in general.A remarkable number of talented composers are thriving in that tiny nation today, and operas, orchestral works and chamber pieces by contemporary Finnish composers like Aulis Sallinen, Einojuhanni Rautavaara, Magnus Lindberg and Kaija Saariaho are increasingly finding worldwide audiences.Sibelius would have been very pleased.Music Played in Today's ProgramJean Sibelius (1865-1957): Alla Marcia from Karelia Suite; Finnish Radio Symphony; Jukka-Pekka Saraste, conductor; (RCA 7765)
SynopsisOn today’s date in 2002, a little over one year after two passenger jetliners had crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the New York Philharmonic gave the premiere performance of a new work by American composer John Adams.On the Transmigration of Souls, this high-profile commission sought to address a nation still in shock and grief at the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.“I realized right up front that the public didn't need any more reiteration of the narrative of that day,” Adams said in an interview. “Certainly it didn't need some tasteless dramatization of the events … If I was going to do something meaningful, I was going to have to go in the opposite direction.”Adams chose to set some of the words scribbled on posters plastered around Ground Zero by families searching for their loved ones. “They were a mixture of hope and a slowly dimming acceptance of reality,” Adams said. “When people are deeply in shock … they don't express themselves in fancy language … they speak in the most simple of terms.”Adams said he hoped his new piece would provide “memory space,” a musical work that could be at once a platform for either communal or personal reflection.Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Adams (b. 1947): On the Transmigration of Souls; New York Philharmonic; Lorin Maazel, conductor; Nonesuch CD 79816
SynopsisOn this day in 1918, Russian composer Serge Prokofiev arrived in America to give a recital of his piano works in New York. He told interviewers that despite the revolution in his homeland and widespread conditions of famine, Russian musicians continued to work.Prokofiev, however, stayed away from his homeland for years. His opera The Love for Three Oranges and his Piano Concerto No. 3 received their premieres in Chicago in 1921. From 1922 to 1932, Prokofiev lived mainly in Paris before eventually returning home for good.Another temporary expatriate composer, Jón Leifs of Iceland, has an anniversary today, when in 1950, his Saga-Symphony was performed for the first time in Helsinki. Leifs was born in Iceland in 1899 and died there in 1968. He studied in Leipzig, where, in his words, he (quote) “began searching whether, like other countries, Iceland had some material that could be used as a starting-point for new music … some spark that could light the fire.”Leif’s years in Germany coincided with the rise of the Nazis, who at first found him a sympathetic Nordic composer. When Leifs married a Jewish woman, however, he soon fell out of favor and eventually fled to Sweden with his family. After the war he returned home and today is honored as Iceland’s first great composer.Music Played in Today's ProgramSergei Prokofiev (1891-1953): Piano Concerto No. 3; Martha Argerich, piano; Montréal Symphony; Charles Dutoit, conductor; EMI Classics 56654Jón Leifs (1899-1968): Saga Symphony; Iceland Symphony; Osmo Vänskä, conductor; BIS 730
SynopsisIn 1962, American jazz composer, performer and bandleader Duke Ellington was 63 — an acknowledged master, but trends in American jazz were changing, and there were much younger figures emerging, with more challenging styles.Take, for example, bassist Charles Mingus, Jr., a master of collective improvisation, and drummer Max Roach, a pioneer in the be-bop movement. Despite their age and stylistic differences, these three jazz titans went into a recording studio on today’s date in 1962 and, while tape rolled, using bare-bones charts provided by Ellington of melodies and harmonies, the three jazz titans improvised. The results were issued the following year as a classic LP, Money Jungle. Despite his fame, Ellington did not have a recording contract in 1962, and, perhaps after decades experiencing the highs and lows of life as a Black jazz musician in a segregated society, Money Jungle reflects a certain bitterness. Along with the charts he gave Mingus and Roach, Ellington also provided poetic story lines for each track, like: “Crawling around on the streets are serpents who have their heads up; these are agents and people who have exploited artists. Play that along with the music.”Music Played in Today's ProgramDuke Ellington (1899-1974), Charles Mingus (1922-1979) and Max Roach (1924-2007): Money Jungle; Blue Note 31461
SynopsisBritish composer Sally Beamish was born in London and studied music there and in Germany, but more recently has come to be associated with both Scotland and Sweden due to successful composer residencies in those two countries. Her saxophone concerto, The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone, is a perfect example of this association. “The piece begins with a reference to a Swedish herding call, a special high-pitched song which carries over long distances… after this the music becomes more fragmentary, half-heard glimpses, as if the shaft of light has somehow released sounds stored in stone for millennia, layers of music long forgotten… drawing on psalms and chants from different tradition celebrating the enlightenment of [Pentecost],” she explained. The work was a joint commission of the St. Magnus Festival which takes place at midsummer on the islands of Orkney off the north coast of mainland Scotland, a landscape of wind-swept cliffs, and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. The premiere performance took place at the St. Magnus Festival in June of 1999, and on today’s date that same year, the concerto’s Swedish herding call was heard in that country at its Örebro premiere.Music Played in Today's ProgramSally Beamish (b. 1956): The Imagined Sound of Sun on Stone; John Harle, saxophone; Swedish Chamber Orchestra; Ola Rudner, conductor; BIS 1161
SynopsisIf you’ve ever witnessed a spectacular display of the Northern Lights, you’ll know the feeling: jaw-dropping wonder at the powerful forces unleashed in the vast spaces of the night sky.American composer Henry Brant experienced something like that in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1982 during a visit, and later translated the experience into his Northern Lights over the Twin Cities, a work commissioned by Macalester College in St. Paul to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 1985.Like most of Brant’s works, this piece employs several distinct groups of performers separated by space, a technique called spatial composition. For his Macalester Centenary commission, he utilized all the musical ensembles the College had to offer, including its chorus and orchestra, its wind, marching and jazz bands, and even its bagpipe ensemble, all positioned at various points around the college’s cavernous field house.Brant said his own spatial works were inspired by the antiphonal works of the Renaissance composer Giovanni Gabrieli, the multiple brass ensembles in the Requiem Mass by French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz, but above all by The Unanswered Question, by modern American composer Charles Ives.Brant was born on today’s date in 1913. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2002, and died at 94 in 2008.Music Played in Today's ProgramHenry Brant (1913-2008): Northern Lights Over the Twin Cities; Combined musical forces of Macalester College; with six conductors, including Henry Brant; Innova CD 408
SynopsisThe year 2002 marked the 10th anniversary of BBC Music Magazine and to celebrate the magazine’s editor asked British composer Colin Matthews to coordinate a bold commissioning idea: a set of seven orchestral variations on a theme by Henry Purcell: Hail, Bright Cecilia.The resulting suite, Bright Cecilia Variations, had its premiere on today’s date in 2002 at a Last Night of the Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, with the BBC Symphony led by American conductor Leonard Slatkin.Colin Matthews’ orchestration of the Purcell theme was followed by Matthews’ original variation, and in turn by six other variations composed by three additional British composers, namely Judith Weir, David Sawer and Anthony Payne, plus one each by the Danish composer Poul Ruders, Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg, and American composer Michael Torke.Torke had this to say about his variation: “I wanted to create almost a jungle frenzy, by having four drummers from the percussion section playing tom-toms and shadowing those rhythmic beatings with melodic woodwind and brass fragments all drawn from the original theme … The result is vigorous.” Music Played in Today's ProgramColin Matthews (b. 1946): Bright Cecilia: Variations on a Theme by Purcell; (BBC Philharmonic; Gianandrea Noseda, conductor; BBC Music Vol. 11, no. 3
SynopsisOn today's date in 1993, the first gala preview screening of a new film, The Age of Innocence, based on the novel by Edith Wharton, took place at the Ziegfield Theater in Manhattan, as a benefit for the New York Historical Society. That was only appropriate, since Wharton’s historical novel describes upper-class New York society of the 1870s — an age, if the film is to be believed, so emotionally repressed that the unbuttoning of a woman’s glove can be a breathtakingly sensual moment.The new film was directed by Martin Scorsese, famous for decidedly un-repressed thrillers likes Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Cape Fear — and initially some thought Scorsese a poor choice to film Wharton’s novel. The skeptics were proven wrong.Much of the success of the film can be attributed to its ravishing orchestral score by American composer Elmer Bernstein. “It was my personal tribute to the music of Johannes Brahms,” he said, who also credited Scorsese for appreciating the importance of music in bringing a movie to life: Unlike most directors today, Scorsese brought in Bernstein before Age of Innocence was filmed — not after.“We started talking about the character of the music long before Scorsese ever shot a frame of film,” Bernstein recalled, with admiration. Bernstein’s Age of Innocence score was nominated for an Academy Award — the 12th time he had been so honored in his long and productive cinematic career.Music Played in Today's ProgramElmer Bernstein (1922-2004): Farewell Dinner from The Age of Innocence; Studio Orchestra; Elmer Bernstein, conductor; EMI Classics 57451
SynopsisDuring her lifetime, pianist Nadia Reisenberg was regarded as one of this country’s finest concert artists. She performed at Carnegie Hall 22 times, often with the New York Philharmonic.But she made history on today’s date in 1939 as she embarked on a series of concert performances encompassing of all 27 of the Mozart Piano Concertos. These were live radio broadcasts conducted by Alfred Wallenstein, originating at WOR in New York, relayed coast-to-coast via the Mutual Network and the CBC in Canada, and overseas via short wave. There were 29 broadcasts in all, one a week, starting on September 12, 1939 and ending on March 26, 1940.Mozart’s 27 piano concerts were first published in 1850, almost 60 years after the composer’s death, but before Reisenberg’s broadcasts, no one had performed all of them in such a series. French composer and pianist Camille Saint-Saens played nine Mozart concertos in Paris in 1864/1865, and 11 during a series in London in 1910, but Reisenberg was the first to perform all 27 in one concert sequence, since even Mozart never played them all in just one season.Amazingly, live aircheck recordings of most of these historic radio broadcasts have survived and are now part of the Nadia Reisenberg Collection in the International Piano Archives at Maryland.Music Played in Today's ProgramWolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Piano Concerto No. 26 (Coronation); Nadia Reisenberg; WOR studio orchestra; Alfred Wallenstein, conductor; (recorded March 19, 1940); IPA of Maryland Reisenberg Mozart Piano Concertos CD 13
SynopsisOn today’s date in 1950, Decca recording engineers committed to disc seven short works by American composer Leroy Anderson, with him conducting top-notch New York freelance musicians.Since 1938, Anderson had been associated with the Boston Pops, for whom he had composed a string of very successful pieces, beginning with Jazz Pizzicato and Jazz Legato, complimentary works designed for the two sides of a 78-rpm disc. Anderson recorded both those pieces at his 1950 Decca session and also the first performance of a new work, The Waltzing Cat. In fact, after 1950 most of his premieres took place at Decca recording sessions. One of them, Blue Tango, sold over a million copies.By 1953, one national survey found Anderson was the most-performed American composer of his day. That was the year he wrote his only extended orchestral work, a piano concerto. With the exception of a short-lived Broadway musical from 1958 Goldilocks, the bulk of his works are short, witty orchestral pieces, superbly crafted works intended to make audiences smile.“I just did what I wanted to do, and it turned out that people liked it,” Anderson once said. Music Played in Today's ProgramLeroy Anderson (1908–1975): Jazz Pizzicato and The Waltzing Cat; Decca studio orchestra; Leroy Anderson, conductor; MCA 9815
SynopsisWe tend to think of Paris as the most sophisticated and worldly of European capitals — a city whose residents are unlikely to be shocked by anything they see or hear.Ah, but that’s not always the case, as poor Hector Berlioz discovered on today’s date in 1838, when his new opera Benvenuto Cellini premiered at the Paris Opéra. One line in the libretto about the cocks crowing at dawn was considered, as Berlioz put it, “belonging to a vocabulary inconsistent with our present prudishness” and provoked shocked disapproval. And that was just the start of a controversy that raged over both the morality and the music of this new opera.Following the dismal opening night, Berlioz wrote to his father: “It’s impossible to describe all the underhanded maneuvers, intrigues, conspiracies, disputes, battles, and insults my work has given rise to … The French have a positive mania for arguing about music without having the first idea — or even any feeling — about it!”From the fiasco of the opera’s premiere, however, Berlioz did retrieve some measure of success. His famous contemporaries Paganini and Liszt both admired the work — and said so — and one flashy orchestral interlude from Benvenuto Cellini did prove a lasting success when Berlioz recast it as a concert work: his Roman Carnival Overture.Music Played in Today's ProgramHector Berlioz (1803-1869): Benvenuto Cellini and Roman Carnival Overtures; Staatskapelle Dresden; Sir Colin Davis, conductor; BMG/RCA 68790
SynopsisToday is the birthday of American composer and teacher Edward Burlingame Hill, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872.Hill studied at Harvard, which was not surprising, since his grandfather had been President of the college, and his father taught chemistry there. “My father sang the songs of Schubert, and was a great admirer of Bach. Thus at an early age I was imbued with a deep love for serious music,” he recalled. Hill studied with 19th-century American composer John Knowles Paine, who had established at Harvard the first music department in any American university. After he took all of Paine’s courses, he went on to study in Paris with Charles Widor.Hill’s early works were in the French style, and you might say that he “wrote the book on the subject” — literally. In 1924, he published a study, French Music, and was awarded the French Legion of Honor for his efforts. During his lifetime, major American orchestras performed his music, but today, if he’s remembered at all, it’s as a teacher at Harvard. Toward the end of tenure, one his students was Leonard Bernstein, who, in 1953, made a recording of his teacher’s Prelude for Orchestra. Hill died at 88 in New Hampshire in 1960.Music Played in Today's ProgramEdward Burlingame Hill (1872-1960): Prelude for Orchestra; Columbia Symphony; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; CBS/Sony 61849
SynopsisOn today’s date in 1971, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., was inaugurated with a gala performance of a new work by Leonard Bernstein. Mass was a musical and visual extravaganza which reinterpreted the text of the Latin liturgy and involved more than 200 singers, dancers, and instrumentalists.Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had asked Bernstein to write a piece to open the new Center but was conspicuous by her absence. President Richard Nixon also chose to stay away, rightly fearing that Bernstein’s Mass would be interpreted as an embarrassing protest against the war in Vietnam.The Washington Post’s front-page review, “A Reaffirmation of Faith,” was glowing in its praise, but Time magazine’s assessment was condescending, quoting some New York wits who dubbed it the “Mitzvah Solemnis.” The New York Times review was brutal, calling Bernstein’s Mass “a combination of superficiality and pretentiousness…[and] the greatest mélange of styles since the ladies’ magazine recipe for steak fried in peanut butter and marshmallow sauce.”But Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, when she finally did hear Bernstein’s work, sent the composer an inscribed photograph which read: “Lenny — I loved it, yes, I did, and I love you, too. Thank you for making Mass so beautiful.”Music Played in Today's ProgramLeonard Bernstein (1918-1990): Sanctus, from Mass; Empire Brass; Telarc 80159 Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): Simple Song, from Mass; Boston Pops; John Williams, conductor; Philips 416 360
SynopsisThe Three Choirs Festival is one of England’s oldest musical traditions. Established around 1715, it showcases the cathedral choirs of Gloucester, Worcester and Herford, and presents both choral and orchestral works by British composersVaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis was premiered there in 1910, and in the audience was an 18-year-old aspiring composer named Herbert Howells, who later would relate how Vaughan Williams had sat next to him for the remainder of the concert and shared his score of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with him.Howells studied music at Gloucester Cathedral before heading off to London and the Royal College of Music. He also got married and had two children. In 1935, his 9-year-old son Michael contracted polio and died three days later. The grief-stricken Howells began composing a memorial work as private therapy, choral sketches he considered too painful to complete and too personal to have performed.But in 1950 Howells was asked for a new work to be premiered at Three Choirs Festival, and, at the urging of Vaughan Williams and others who had seen Howell’s private sketches, Howells completed his work Hymnus Paradisi, and led the premiere himself on September 7, 1950, one day after the 15th anniversary of his son’s death.Music Played in Today's ProgramHerbert Howells (1892-1983): Hymnus Paradisi; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra; Vernon Handley, conductor; Hyperion 66448
SynopsisWorks by Henry Kimball Hadley rarely shows up on concert programs anymore, but in the early years of the 20th century, he ranked as a major and very popular American composer. In 1910, Gustav Mahler conducted Hadley’s tone poem The Culprit Fay during his tenure at the New York Philharmonic, and in 1920, Hadley’s opera Cleopatra’s Night was staged at the Metropolitan Opera.But by the time of his death on today’s date in 1937, Hadley’s full-blown, late-Romantic style was falling out of fashion in the modernist age of Stravinsky and Schoenberg.In other aspects of his musical career, however Hadley was quite avant-garde and forward-looking: In 1921 he became associate conductor of the New York Philharmonic — the first American-born conductor to hold a full-time post with any major American orchestra. In 1926, he was invited by Warner Brothers to conduct the Philharmonic at the New York premiere of their silent film Don Juan, starting legendary actor John Barrymore, and the following year wrote an original score for a second Barrymore silent feature, When A Man Loves.Hadley is also credited with making the first symphonic video, a 10-minute Vitaphone film of Hadley conducting Wagner’s Tannhauser Overture that was shown in movie theaters back then and you can still see today via YouTube!Music Played in Today's ProgramHenry Kimball Hadley (1871-1937): The Culprit Fay; Ukraine National Symphony; John McLaughlin Williams, conductor; Naxos 8.559064
SynopsisAmy Marcy Cheney Beach was born in Henniker, New Hampshire, on today’s date in 1867. Amy Beach — or, Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, as she was also called — was one of America’s first major women composers and a gifted concert pianist to bootWe probably have Mr. Beach to thank for Amy’s decision to devote herself more to composition than performance. In the spring of 1885, at 18, she debuted as a soloist with the Boston Symphony, and it seemed a major concert career was in the offing. But later that same year, she married Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a prominent New England physician. In respect to his wishes and the custom of the day for women in high society, Mrs. H.H.A. Beach curtailed her concert career and concentrated instead on writing music. Her first published work was a setting of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a long-time family friend.Only after her husband’s death in 1911, did Amy revive her career as a concert pianist with a concert tour throughout Germany, returning to America at the outbreak of World War I. In her later years, she acted as mentor to a whole new generation of American women pursuing careers in music. She died in New York in 1944.Music Played in Today's ProgramAmy Beach (1867-1944): Piano Concerto; Joanne Polk, piano; English Chamber Orchestra; Paul Goodwin, conductor; Arabesque 6738
SynopsisOn today’s date in 1996, Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the San Francisco Symphony in the first performance of Lost and Found, a five-minute toccata for orchestra. Its composer was Steve Mackey, an American whose music Tilson Thomas championed and recorded.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. My music tends to explore fringe modes of consciousness rather than brand name emotion or logical thought.”He also avoids conventional titles. His Concerto for Electric Guitar is titled Tuck and Roll, and among his other works can be found Banana/Dump Truck and Eating Greens.Mackey said, “I think a lot about momentum, inertia, and even gravity, allowing the music to get stuck and tip over, lurch headlong, tumble with limbs akimbo as well as to move fluidly gives it a ‘road runner’ cartoon kind of physicality, a fantasy, but not completely unhinged from the physical world.”Music Played in Today's ProgramSteven Mackey (b. 1956): Lost and Found; New World Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; BMG 63826
SynopsisOn today’s date in 1931, a short notice appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, which began: “Music never before heard in San Francisco will make up the program of the New Music Society to be conducted by Nicolas Slonimsky of Boston tonight in the Community Playhouse.” In addition to new works by Stravinsky and Prokofiev, Slonimsky conducted pieces by three American composers, including the world premiere of Washington’s Birthday, by Charles Ives.Ives had written Washington’s Birthday in 1909, and the following year had talked some theater musicians into giving the work a run-through. “They made an awful fuss about playing it, and only after some of the parts that seemed to me to be the best and strongest were cut,” he recalled. About 10 years later, he asked some players of the New York Symphony to give the score a private reading at his home. Again, the musicians complained it was just too difficult.Slonimsky’s 1931 performance in San Francisco presented the score complete and as originally written. Ives, who lived on the East Coast, was not present for the San Francisco premiere, but was delighted to learn — as he put it: “Neither the audience nor the critics were disturbed to the point of cussing.Music Played in Today's ProgramCharles Ives (1874-1954): Washington’s Birthday; Chicago Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; CBS/Sony 42381
SynopsisOn today’s date in 1773, Austrian Empress Maria Theresa was visiting the country estate of Prince Nikolaus of Esterhazy. Among the attractions there were an opera house, a marionette theater, and the prince’s impressive chamber orchestra led by Franz Joseph Haydn.It’s possible that Haydn’s Symphony No. 48 was performed for the Empress — in any case, this symphony came to be nicknamed the Maria Theresa. We do know that Haydn and his orchestra did perform for the empress — and that they were all dressed up in Chinese costumes for one performance during her visit! Among other “duties as assigned,” Haydn shot three wild game hens that were cooked up for the Empress’s dinner. Ah, the life of a court musician in the 18th century!It’s also reported that Haydn told the empress an amusing story from his childhood in Vienna. Apparently repair work was being done on St. Stephens Cathedral when Haydn was a boy soprano in the Cathedral Choir. The empress was annoyed at the racket made by choirboys playing on the scaffolding and ordered that the next one caught playing up there would get a spanking. The following day Haydn climbed the scaffold, was caught, and received the promised punishment.Apparently they both got a good laugh out of recalling the story.Music Played in Today's ProgramFranz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): Symphony No. 48 (Maria Theresa); Polish Chamber Orchestra; Jerzy Maksymiuk, conductor; EMI Classics 69767