The short career of the very talented composer Charles Tomlinson Griffes is one of the more tragic “might-have-beens” of American music history. Griffes died young, just 35 years old, in 1920, and just at the time his music was being taken up by the major American orchestras of his day.

As most young American composers of his time, Griffes had studied in Germany, and his early works were, not surprisingly, rather Germanic in tone. But beginning around 1911, Griffes turned away from the Germanic style and began composing works inspired by French impressionism and the art of the Far East.

The Boston Symphony under Pierre Monteux premiered his tone-poem “The Pleasure Dome of Kubla-Khan,” and the New York Symphony under Walter Damrosch his “Poeme” for flute and orchestra. On today’s date in 1919, the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski premiered four orchestral pieces: “Nocturne,” “Bacchanale,” “Clouds,” and this music, entitled “The White Peacock.” The Philadelphia newspaper reviews of the premieres called Griffes’ work, “one of the hopeful intimations for the future of American music.”

A severe bout of influenza left Griffes too weak to attend these Philadelphia premieres under Stokowski, and he died of a lung infection the following spring.