As the proverbial saying goes: "Necessity is the mother of invention." It was, frankly, a matter of economic necessity that led a 36-year-old Austrian conductor named Clemens Krauss to program an all-Johann Strauss concert by the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Music Festival on today's date in 1929. The Salzburg Festival was established in 1920 with high ideals but insecure funding. Its mission was to offer world-class performances of theater and music, old and new, programmed to reflect Austria's unique mix of cosmopolitan European values and parochial Catholic traditions. To succeed, the Festival needed both strong local support and wealthy visitors from abroad. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but in 1929, as the Festival approached its 10th anniversary, its finances and future seemed uncertain. Now, Krauss knew that Strauss waltzes were popular with both the natives and the Festival's international visitors, so why not offer a whole concert program consisting of nothing but the dance music of Johann Strauss? The August 11, 1929, concert proved to be a resounding success, and the idea was repeated at the Festival several times over the next decade. Back home in Vienna, Krauss again revived the idea of an all-Strauss concert on December 31, 1939, this time to boost wartime morale, not box office. That year-end tradition continues to this day, as the Philharmonic presents its annual New Year's Concert, broadcast worldwide from Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna.

On today's date in 1813, William Henry Fry was born in Philadelphia. As a journalist, he was one of the most vociferous champions of American concert music, and put his money where his mouth was by becoming a composer himself.

Fry composed a number of programmatic works, including a "Niagara" symphony and another titled "Santa Claus." Above all else, Fry was passionate about opera, and wrote several of his own that never quite caught on.

Fry was a colorful—if understandably biased—music critic. Here's an excerpt from his 1862 review of a New York performance of Verdi's "Il Trovatore"—an opera only 9 years old at that time:

"The opera last evening was the Trovatore. It has a wonderful plot, beyond human comprehension; though finally we learn that [the tenor] is made into soup in the last scene by the order of his brother [the baritone], who then expresses his emotion and surprise on learning of the transaction as the curtain falls. As to the music—there are some charming, popular, ingenious, artistic, great points; then there are some others egregiously vulgar and rowdy. The Anvil Chorus, for example, is about the equal to a scene of mending a sewer set to music; or repairing a pair of cast-off leather breeches."

OK, if your dad wrote music for silent movies and you want to be a composer yourself, does that increase the odds that you may end up a film composer, too? At least that’s the case of David Raksin, who was born in Philadelphia in 1912, and who died in Los Angeles on today’s date in 2004.

After music studies at home and in New York, in 1935, when he was 23, Raksin moved to Hollywood to help Charlie Chaplin arrange Chaplin’s own music for his film, ''Modern Times.'' Raksin stayed on in Hollywood, working without credit on dozens of B-rated films, and took lessons from Arnold Schoenberg, then living in Los Angeles.

A big break came in 1944 with the tremendous success of Raksin’s haunting score for the 1944 film, “Laura,” an opportunity that came his way only after more famous composers like Alfred Newman and Bernard Herrmann had turned the job down. By the time of his death, Raksin would score 100 films and 300 TV shows, teach at USC and UCLA, and on occasion, compose concert works as well.

In 1960, for the Horn Club of Los Angeles, Raksin wrote “Morning Revisited.” Explaining its genesis and title, Raksin said, “They needed a piece that would use their entire ensemble … two antiphonal groups of six French horns each, four Wagner tubas, a baritone horn, two contrabass tubas, and seven timpani. I was busy working on a picture, so I'd start work at four or five a.m., and that's how I wrote ’Morning Revisited.’”

Just about ANY time is a good time to be in Paris, but chances are, given your druthers, you wouldn't have chosen to be in Paris on this date in 1942. The city was occupied by German troops, and the World War had several more dismal years to grind on. Courageous acts of overt resistance to the occupation did occur occasionally, but might cost you your life. But if you were in Paris on today's date in 1942, you could have visited the Paris Opera for the premiere performance of a new one-act ballet by the French composer Francis Poulenc. The ballet was called "Les Animaux modeles" or "The Model Animals," with a scenario based on animal fables by the French writer La Fontaine. Some 20 years earlier, in happier times, Poulenc had made his name with another one-act ballet. That 1924 work was titled "Les biches" or "The Does" and was written for the Ballets Russes of Monte Carlo. That work's scenario described the flirtations and seductions of some bright young things at a house party in the country. "Everything was simple and carefree, sunshine and good humor," as Poulenc himself put it. Not surprisingly, Poulenc's 1942 ballet was a darker, often grimmer affair, expressing in music some of the quiet desperation the French must have felt under the German occupation, mingled with a fervent hope for better days to come.

Summer music camps have become a fixture of American cultural life, offering young talent a chance to rub shoulders with seasoned professional musicians, and to perform both old and new musical works. On today's date in 1977, American composer, conductor, and music educator, Howard Hanson, conducted the premiere performance of his Seventh Symphony at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. Hanson subtitled his Seventh, "A Sea Symphony," and it includes a choral setting of passages from Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." For 40 years, Hanson headed the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Closer to our own time, Eastman professor Augusta Read Thomas follows in Hanson's footsteps as composer-in-residence at various summer music camps. On today's date in 2001, at the annual Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, one of her pieces entitled "Murmurs in the Mist of Memory" received its world premiere performance. Thomas has also served as composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Thomas writes, "Music of all kinds constantly amazes, surprises, propels and seduces me into a wonderful and powerful journey. I am happiest when listening to music and in the process of composing music. I care deeply that music is not anonymous and generic or easily assimilated and just as easily dismissed."

In August of 1942, the 19th Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music was underway in Berkeley, California. Over 30 composers from 13 nations were represented. All the composers were male–with one exception. On today's date in 1942, at the fifth Festival concert, the "Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale" for clarinet and viola written by Rebecca Clarke was premiered.

Clarke was born in Harrow, England, in 1886, to an American father and a German mother. She grew up a British citizen, studied music in London, and became one of the U.K.'s first female professional orchestral violists. She was stranded in the United States at the outbreak of World War II and settled permanently in New York City.

In program notes for the 1942 Festival, Clarke described her "Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale" as follows: "The whole thing is very unpretentious: a short, unassuming little prelude… The second movement should sound very spirited… The third movement, Pastorale, is rather melancholy and nostalgic…"

This work, and much of Clarke's other music, remained unpublished during her lifetime, but, over time, its quality and range increasingly came to light. When Clarke turned 90 in 1976, she was interviewed by the BBC, and seemed both gratified and bemused by all the renewed attention. Clarke died at her home in New York at the age of 93. In the year 2000, a Rebecca Clarke Society was founded in Massachusetts to help promote her music.

In the summer of 1764, the eight-year-old child prodigy, Wolfgang Mozart, was in England, accompanied by his 13-year old sister, Nanerl, and their father, Leopold. The Mozarts had arrived in London wearing what back home in Salzburg would pass as fashionable French-style clothing. Since England had just ended the Seven Years' War with France, this faux pas resulted in the Mozarts receiving some rude words and even ruder gestures from London street urchins. Papa Leopold quickly acquired more "politically correct" attire for himself and the children. On August 5th, 1764, the family settled at a country home in Chelsea for a time, as Leopold had taken ill. Temporarily forbidden to make any noise or even play the piano while their father recovered, Wolfgang and Nanerl had to amuse themselves quietly. Mozart had already written some keyboard pieces and chamber works, but it was in Chelsea that he decided to try his hand at writing his first symphony. Perhaps as compensation for having to keep so quiet, Mozart suddenly was keen on writing for as many instruments as possible. As Nanerl later recalled, "While he composed and I copied, he said to me, 'Remind me to give the horn something worthwhile to do!'" And so, Mozart's Symphony No. 1 in E-flat, written in London in the summer of 1764, is scored for two oboes, TWO horns and strings.

By the time of his death in 1998, pop singer Frank Sinatra was such a domineering figure in his field that he was known as "The Chairman of the Board." By the time of HIS death in 1992, the same nickname might have applied to the American composer William Schuman, who was, at various times, director of publications for G. Schirmer, president of the Juilliard School, president of Lincoln Center, and on the board of many other important American musical institutions. William Schuman even LOOKED the part of a distinguished, well-dressed CEO. Oddly enough, he came rather late to classical music. Schuman was born on today's date in 1910, and, as a teenager in New York City, was more interested in baseball than music, even though his dance band was the rage of Washington High School. It was with some reluctance that 19-year old Billy Schuman was dragged to a New York Philharmonic concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini. The program included a symphony by someone named ROBERT Schumann, and Billy was pretty impressed. A few years later, in 1933, when he heard the First Symphony of the contemporary American composer Roy Harris, Schuman was hooked, and soon was writing concert music himself. By 1941, when his Third Symphony premiered, Schuman was recognized as a major talent, and in 1943 he was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Music.

On today's date in 1778, Italy's most famous opera house opened with a performance of "L'Europa riconosciuta," a work written specially for the occasion by Antonio Salieri. The new theater took its name from its location, previously occupied by the church of Santa Maria della Scala, which in turn was named after Bernabo Visconti's wife, Beatrice della Scala.

These days Milan's Teatro alla Scala—or "La Scala" for short—is still in operation, although today performances of Salieri operas are not as common as those of his 18th century rival, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

In the 19th century, La Scala was at the center of the golden age of Italian opera, which boasted the greatest works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. It should be noted that while dozens of major operas had their premieres at La Scala, the reception they received from the hypercritical Milanese audiences was not always friendly. Even in the 20th century, La Scala is famous—or infamous—for audience members who are more than willing to express their LOUD disapproval of composers, singers, or sets that rub them the wrong way, as even a Maria Callas or Luciano Pavarotti could attest.

In August of 1943, 165 years after it opened, La Scala was damaged by Allied bombers as World War II drew to a close. The theater was repaired and reopened in 1946 with a series of gala concerts conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

A newly refurbished La Scala re-opened in December of 2004 with a new production of the Salieri opera "L'Europa riconosciuta," written for its original opening some 226 years earlier.

The American composer John Harbison was born in 1938, and so, as a young lad, he grew up at the tail end of the Golden Age of radio and the big bands—the age of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, the Dorsey Brothers, and Benny Goodman.

"Over the radio," writes Harbison, "came sounds played by bands in hotels and ballrooms, now distant memories that seemed to a seventh-grade, small town, late-night listener like the pulse of giant imagined cities."

Decades later, John Harbison translated those early musical memories into a three-movement composition for a big band orchestra. "These sounds," he recalled, "layered with real experience of some of their places of origin, magnified, distorted, idealized, and destabilized, came into contact with other sounds, some of recent origin, and resulted in a celebratory, menacing suite I titled 'Three City Blocks.'"

The music was the result of a coast-to-coast commission by the New England Conservatory, and the Universities of Cincinnati, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and Southern California, plus the U.S. Air Force Band, which gave the premiere performance of "Three City Blocks" on today's date in 1993. And, keeping in the spirit of the old days when every major hotel could boast its own dance band, Harbison's "Three City Blocks" premiered at the Hilton Hotel in Fort Smith, Arkansas.