Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco is one of America’s foremost reform congregations. For some 50 years its cantor was Reuben Rinder, who, in addition to his liturgical duties, was a composer, impresario, and musical mentor. Cantor Rinder influenced the careers of two of the 20th century’s greatest violinists, Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern, and also commissioned two of the 20th century’s most famous concert versions of the Jewish liturgy, the Evening and Morning Sabbath Service settings of Ernst Bloch and Darius Milhaud.

Milhaud’s Sabbath Morning Service was first heard at Temple Emanu-El on today’s date in 1949, with its composer conducting.

Milhaud was born in Provence and wrote that the Provencal Jewish tradition evoked in his score differs somewhat from the more standard Ashkenazi liturgy prevalent in most American synagogues then and now. The composer’s intention was to create a personal musical statement that could serve as both an actual liturgy for the faithful and as an ecumenical musical experience for any and all who hear the work, whether in temple or concert hall.

In that respect, Milhaud’s Sacred Service was a great success. Alongside Bloch’s setting, written in the early 1930s, shortly before the onset of the Holocaust, Milhaud’s setting, written in the years following the conclusion of World War II, remains a powerful and moving affirmation of religious faith.

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974): Sabbath Morning Service; Prague Philharmonic Choir; Czech Philharmonic; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Naxos 8.559409

While many great composers have also been great conductors, this can be the exception rather than the rule. On today’s date in 1959, American composer Ned Rorem tried his hand at conducting the premiere of one of his own compositions, the chamber suite Eleven Studies for Eleven Players.

Rorem recalled, “I learned that the first requisite to becoming a conductor is an inborn lust for absolute monarchy, and that I, alone among musicians, never got the bug. I was terrified. The first rehearsal was a model of how not to inspire confidence. I stood before the eleven players in all my virginal glory, and announced: ‘I’ve never conducted before, so if I give a wrong cue, do try to come in right anyway.’”

Fortunately for Rorem, his eleven musicians were accomplished faculty at Buffalo University, and, despite his inexperience, he certainly knew how his new piece should sound. His suite incorporated a few bits recycled from music he had written for a successful Broadway hit — Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer — plus a bit from the unsuccessful play Motel that never made it past a Boston tryout.

Rorem’s own tryout as a conductor convinced him to stick to composing, although he proved to be a fine piano accompanist for singers performing his own songs. As for Eleven Studies for Eleven Players, it’s gone on to become one of his most-often performed chamber works.

Ned Rorem (1923-2022): Eleven Studies for Eleven Players; New York Chamber Ensemble; Stephen Rogers Radcliffe, conductor; Albany 175

On today’s date in 1868, Czech composer Bedrich Smetana helped lay the foundation stone for Prague’s future National Theatre. As the stone was driven into the soil with a ceremonial mallet, Smetana exclaimed, “In music is the life of the Czechs!” That same evening at Prague’s New Town Theatre, Smetana conducted the premiere performance of his new opera Dalibor. It’s worthy of note that one of the players in the orchestra was 26-year old violist and fellow composer Antonín Dvořák.

The subject matter of Dalibor seemed theatrically apt for the occasion: a Czech legend about a rebellious 15th century knight imprisoned for supporting a peasant uprising. During his imprisonment, according to the legend, Dalibor learned to play the violin so beautifully that people came to listen to him outside the window of the Prague Castle tower in which he was held.

Thirteen years after the premiere of Dalibor, the National Theatre opened on June 11, 1881. For that gala occasion, another Smetana opera, Libuse, received its premiere performance. Sadly, by that time Smetana was completely deaf, mentally ailing and desperately poor.

To add insult to injury, the directors of the new theater had neglected to invite him to the gala premiere of his own opera! Despite the inexcusable snub, Smetana found his way into the theater, and, when called on the stage and recognized by the audience, was acknowledged with thunderous applause.

Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884): Act I Prelude and opening chorus, from Dalibor; Prague National Theatre Orchestra and Chorus; Zdenek Kosler, conductor; Supraphon ‎SU0077-2 632

American composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and its Composer-in-Residence. He was born in Norman, Oklahoma, and his chamber and orchestra works, all infused with themes and musical elements from his Native heritage, have been performed by major orchestras like the Detroit Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Colorado Ballet, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

But during the fall of 2011, Tate began working with a non-professional ensemble closer to home — at Dickson Middle School in Dickson, Oklahoma. Tate had been commissioned by the American Composers Forum to write a new work for their ChoralQuest series for middle-school choirs. The resulting work, Taloowa’ Chipota, which in the Chickasaw language means Children’s Songs, was premiered on May 15, 2012, by the children at the Dickson School.

“The songs, are reminiscent of traditional stomp dancing and are based on old Chickasaw melodies,” explained Tate. “Stomp dances begin at dusk and end at dawn. The first movement depicts the beginning sunlight of the morning. The second is full of abstracted textures emulating the shell shaking in stomp dances.”

For his part, Tate says he’s pleased how it all turned out: “I was able to introduce a Chickasaw experience to a diverse group of students … I strengthened my own relationship with my Chickasaw community and demonstrated to the Chickasaws in the chorus how our culture can positively impact classical music.”

Jerod Tate (b. 1968): Taloowa Chipota (Children’s Songs); Minnesota Boy Choir; Hal Leonard 00119300 (sheet music)

On today’s date in 1897, John Philip Sousa was in Philadelphia and leading his band in the premiere performance of The Stars and Stripes Forever! Sousa wrote his most famous march on Christmas Day, 1896, in a New York hotel room — completing the score, he said, in just a couple of hours. The work’s title was a tribute to one of Sousa’s mentors, legendary bandmaster Patrick S. Gilmore, whose favorite toast was, “Here’s to the Stars and Stripes forever!”

The 1897 premiere of the march went over well, but at first sales didn’t surpass the other Sousa marches available at the time. It was the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the subsequent national eruption of patriotic fervor, and some cagey showmanship on Sousa’s part that catapulted The Stars and Stripes Forever! into its unique status. Sousa crafted a touring patriotic pageant involving hundreds of performers, which ended with The Stars and Stripes Forever! playing, as soldiers from all three branches of the military marched on stage with flags unfurled, culminating in the entrance of an attractive local beauty decked out in red, white and blue.

Despite the thousands of times Sousa and his band were required to play The Stars and Stripes Forever! they claimed they never tired of it. And in its now 100+ year history, it’s become one of the most frequently performed pieces of American music worldwide.

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932): The Stars and Stripes Forever; Royal Artillery Band; Keith Brion, conductor; Naxos 8.559093

On today’s date in 1862, the front page of The New York Times offered some encouraging news to the Northern side in the American Civil War: Union troops had captured Norfolk, Virginia, and there were other advances being made by General McClellan’s troops.

Under “Amusements” on the inner pages of that same edition could be found an announcement of a Grand Vocal and Orchestral Concert at Irving Hall to be conducted by 27-year-old musician Theodore Thomas.

Thomas had been a major figure on the New York music scene since 1855, performing as the principal violinist in that city’s first ensemble giving a regular series of chamber concerts. That chamber group presented hot-off-the-press works by Brahms and other ultra-modern composers of the day. This big orchestral concert, which marked Thomas’ debut as a conductor, was no different.

The Times noted, “We have never before had so much musical novelty presented to us. Such plentiful instrumental music equally new to our musical world, under the capable conductorship of the young musician, must insure a crowded audience of the more critical as well as the more fashionable portion of our public.”

Tickets were $1 each — quite a lot of money in 1862 — and the program offered the American premieres of orchestral pieces by Wagner, Meyerbeer and Liszt’s flashy orchestration of Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) arr. Franz Liszt (1811-1896): Wanderer Fantasy; Leslie Howard, piano; Budapest Symphony; Karl Anton Rickenbacher, conductor; Hyperion 67403

American composer and singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane claims someone once described one of his songs as having been from the wastepaper basket of Schubert — but, Kahane hastened to add, “I think he meant that as a compliment.”

Certainly Kahane is a successful songwriter, and if not quite as prolific as the 19th century Viennese composer, is quite productive on a number of 21st-century platforms and takes his inspiration from quintessential 21st-century experiences. On today’s date in 2018, for example, the Oregon Symphony premiered his Emergency Shelter Intake Form, a song-cycle or oratorio inspired by the questionnaire homeless people have to take to secure a shelter bed.

“I live in Brooklyn, and I had volunteered at a shelter in Manhattan,” Kahane said. “I started thinking about the banality of going through that crushing bureaucracy on top of experiencing extreme poverty. That led to the intake form as a jumping-off point for the libretto. It is somewhere between found text and my own extrapolations that began with this sterile administrative form.”

The Oregon Symphony’s premiere performance of Gabriel Kahane’s Emergency Shelter Intake Form was recorded, and, in equally quintessential 21st-century fashion, is available as a download.

Gabriel Kahane (b. 1981): ‘What brings you here?’ from Emergency Shelter Intake Form; Alicia Hall Moran, mezzo-soprano; Oregon Symphony; Carlos Kalmar, conductor; Digital download

In 1987, Telarc Records asked conductor Lorin Maazel if he would make a purely orchestral distillation of the four operas that make up Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung. Telarc wanted it all to fit on just one CD.

Now, with these four Wagner operas clocking in at about 15 hours, that’s a slimming-down assignment worthy of The Biggest Loser.

Maazel crafted a 75-minute sequence, played without pause, beginning with the opening pages of the first opera and ending with the closing pages of the last, with all the music appearing in the same order as it does in Wagner’s four operas.

For the Telarc CD release, Maazel recorded his Ring without Words with the Berlin Philharmonic. But what had started as a purely studio affair proved an attractive orchestral showcase for other ensembles, so on today’s date in 1990, Maazel led the Pittsburgh Symphony in the debut of his Ring without Words as a concert hall work. Since then, he has performed it with orchestras ranging from the New York to the Vienna Philharmonic.

Maazel confessed he resisted the idea at first. “I said … it would be desecrating a unique masterpiece. But they kept after me.” In the end, Maazel capitulated, but insisted there couldn't be one note by Lorin Maazel. When one instrumentalist shuddered at a particularly abrupt transition, Maazel told him, “Sorry! That's the composer.”

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) arr. Lorin Maazel (1930-2014): Ring without Words; Berlin Philharmonic; Lorin Maazel, conductor; Telarc 80154

In 1970, British composer Peter Maxwell Davies moved to the remote and rugged Orkney Islands off the northern coast of Scotland. At first, he said, the natives thought he was just some weirdo from the south, and the more Puritanical islanders would pray the might find a more respectable means of earning a living than writing music.

But over time, Davies and the islanders got used to each other. The composer found inspiration in the landscape and legends of the area, while the community warmed to the fact that the newcomer found them so fascinating. In 1978, he attended a neighbor’s wedding, which inspired a musical work he called An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise.

“It is a picture postcard,” Davies said. “We hear the guests arriving, out of extremely bad weather. This is followed by a processional and first glass of whiskey. The band tunes up and we get on with the dancing, which becomes ever wilder, until the lead fiddle can hardly hold the band together. We leave the hall into the cold night. As we walk home across the island, the sun rises to a glorious dawn.”

“The sun is represented by the highland bagpipes, in full traditional splendor,” he concluded.

Despite its local color, An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise was actually an American commission from the Boston Pops, who gave its premiere on today’s date in 1985, with John Williams conducting.

Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016): An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise; George MacIlwham, bagpipes; Royal Philharmonic; Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, conductor; Collins 1444

One today’s date in 2004, a new concerto for marimba and orchestra had its premiere in San Francisco, with soloist Matthew Cannon and the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra.

The new concerto was written by Alexis Alrich, who studied composition out east at the New England Conservatory, and out west at Mills College, where one of her teachers was Lou Harrison, who introduced her to Asian music through Javanese gamelan. Her own music, she says, blends American minimalism, Asian music and Western classical and folk music, a mix some have described as “California impressionism.”

“[My] Marimba Concerto is highly demanding for the soloist and fully exploits the technical possibilities and sound palette of the five-octave marimba,” Alrich said. “The opening movement with its string tremolos and whispering wind motifs provides an atmospheric entrance for the solo marimba … The middle movement starts with a gently pulsating theme that recurs between contrasting sections, including one in Mexican folk style. The final movement climaxes with a multi-layered, Asian-inspired chorale … with a toccata-style cadenza for the soloist.”

In 2010 British percussion virtuoso Evelyn Glennie and City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong gave the Asian premiere of the concerto and made its first recording.

Alexis Alrich (b. 1955): Marimba Concerto; Evelyn Glennie, marimba; City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong; Jean Thorel, conductor; Naxos 8.574218