Despite its relation to both the physics of sound and pure mathematics, music, for most people — including composers — is essentially an emotional language.

Despite its abstract sound, that’s the case of this orchestral piece, which premiered in Rochester, New York, on today’s date in 1938. The music, Elegy in Memory of Ravel, was by 22-year-old American composer David Diamond.

Nine years earlier, as a precocious adolescent, he had met Ravel during the French composer’s American tour of 1928. Ravel was impressed with the lad’s talent, and encouraged him to pursue a career in music, as did George Gershwin, who served on a jury that awarded one of Diamond’s works first prize. He lost both these important mentors in 1937, with the sudden deaths of first Gershwin, then Ravel. The day after learning of Ravel’s death, he began work on his Elegy.

“It is an expression of terrible loss,” Diamond recalled in an interview decades later. “As the piece began to take shape, almost unconsciously, I heard it as a ritual — an elegy, but a ritualistic one. I asked that there be no applause at the end.”

The work’s 1938 premiere performance was conducted by Howard Hanson, then the head of the Eastman School of Music and the conductor of its famous orchestra. Diamond’s modern, frankly dissonant idiom didn’t sit well with Hanson’s more conservative tastes. He recalled Hanson asking “David, why do you have to write such modern music?” Even so, Hanson respected both Diamond and his music enough to conduct the new piece.

David Diamond (1915-2005): Elegy in Memory of Maurice Ravel; Orchestra of St. Luke’s; John Adams, conductor; Nonesuch 79249

We have a special Datebook birthday to note today, for on this date in 1894, one of music’s great “date-meisters,” Nicholas Slonimsky, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia.

A self-described “failed wunderkind,” Slonimsky became an accomplished conductor and relentless new music promoter, giving the first performances of avant-garde works by Charles Ives, Henry Cowell and Edgard Varese, to name just a few. A composer himself, Slonimsky’s own works include settings of actual advertisements he found in the Saturday Evening Post circa 1925, and a symphonic work that culminates in the triple-forte explosion of 100 colored balloons.

Slonimsky was an obsessive collector of the dates, venues, and premiere performers of concert music in the 20th century. Slonimsky’s chronicle, Music Since 1900, runs over 1000 pages and went through several editions during his long lifetime. Slonimsky also served as the editor for several editions of Baker’s Biographical Dictionary, writing many of the wittiest contributions himself.

Slonimsky’s scholarly writings include a 1947 Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, an inventory of all conceivable and inconceivable tonal combinations, a work that became a cult classic among BeBop jazz musicians, including legendary saxophonist John Coltrane. In 1952, Slonimsky published his Lexicon of Musical Invective, a collection of some of the juiciest bits from the devastatingly bad reviews many musical masterpieces received at the hands of contemporary critics, and in 1968, for the Music Library Association of America, a painstakingly researched report, Sex and the Music Librarian.

Slonimsky died in Los Angeles in 1995, just four months shy of his 102nd birthday.

Charles Ives (1874-1954): Three Places in New England; San Francisco Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; BMG 63703

On today’s date in 1891, a small group of music patrons gathered at one of New York’s docks to greet Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who had been invited to America to take part in the grand opening of a new music hall. Back then, it was just called “The Music Hall,” but over time it took on the name of wealthy steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, who funded its construction.

“Carnegie is an amazing eccentric,” Tchaikovsky wrote to his friends back in Russia. “He rose from being a telegraph boy, transformed with the passing of years into one of America’s richest men, but one who has remained a simple, modest man who does not at all turn up his nose at anyone.”

And, despite his legendary melancholic funks and chronic bouts of homesickness, the composer admitted he found the rest of New York rather impressive. “American customs, American hospitality, the very appearance of the town, the remarkable comfort of my accommodations — this is all very much to my taste and if I were younger I would probably be greatly enjoying my stay in an interesting new country,” he noted.

On the down side, Tchaikovsky reported you couldn’t buy cigarettes on a Sunday, and it was sometimes hard to find a public bathroom when you needed one — a common complaint of New York tourists even today!

“All told, I am a much bigger fish here than in Europe. Incidentally, Central Park is magnificent,” Tchaikovsky concluded.

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): Orchestral Suite No. 3; Detroit Symphony; Neeme Järvi, conductor; Chandos 9419

Today’s date marks the anniversary of the first performance of two 20th century chamber works.

On April 25, 1931, Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 1 received its premiere performance by the Brosa Quartet at the Library of Congress. Accepting the commission from the Library’s Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation, Prokofiev set about studying pocket scores of the string quartets of Beethoven, which he perused on trains while shuttling between concert engagements.

Prokofiev himself described the work’s opening as “rather classical,” but when the new quartet was premiered in Moscow, the verdict of the all-powerful Association of Proletarian Musicians was that it was too “cosmopolitan,” a pejorative adjective in Soviet arts criticism in the Stalinist Era that meant something like “unacceptably modern.”

Our second chamber music premiere occurred on April 25th in 1980, when the Octet for Winds and Strings by American composer George Rochberg was performed for the first time at Alice Tully Hall in New York City. The occasion was a concert by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, who had commissioned the new piece.

At the time, Rochberg was a rather controversial figure for shifting from his earlier, strictly atonal style into a more emotionally charged neo-Romantic approach to music making, often referencing earlier composers and musical styles of the past. The music critic of The New York Times thought he heard a touch of Rachmaninoff in Rochberg’s new piece — an observation that some at the time would translate as really meaning the work was “unacceptably old-fashioned.”

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953): String Quartet No. 1; St. Petersburg String Quartet; Delos 3247

George Rochberg (1918-2005): Octet (A Grand Fantasia); New York Chamber Ensemble; Stephen Rogers Radcliffe, conductor; New World 80462

“In an ideal musical world, a composer should have a friendly, creative, and ongoing working relationship with performers for whom she writes,” composer Joan Tower said.

For Tower, who has emerged as one of the most successful American composers of her generation, a friendly, creative and ongoing relationship with chamber ensembles, symphony orchestras, and soloists has resulted in a number of musical works.

Her Violin Concerto, for example, was written for American violin virtuoso Elmar Oliveira, who gave its premiere performance on today’s date in 1992, at a Utah Symphony concert.

Tower wrote the piece with Oliveria in mind. “A lot of violinists are speed freaks, but Elmar can play both virtuosically and with an innate singing ability,” she wrote. The more lyrical and emotional heart of the work was written as memorial to Olivera’s older brother, also a violinist, who died of cancer during work on the new concerto. That’s not to say she didn’t supply some flashy, pyrotechnical passages for her star soloist, however.

As Oliviera put it, “It’s the kind of flashiness an audience can relate to. Joan doesn’t need avant-garde gimmicks, because now she’s completely comfortable speaking her own language, one that is expressive and natural to her.”

Or, as Tower put it, “Sometimes it’s a struggle to find out what you’re good at. It took me a number of years to decide how I wanted to write with my own voice.”

Joan Tower (b. 1938): Violin Concerto; Elmar Oliveira, violin; Louisville Orchestra; Joseph Silverstein, conductor; D’Note 1016

On today’s date in 2004, the Utah Symphony and conductor Keith Lockhart premiered Three Latin-American Dances by American composer Gabriela Lena Frank. Just a few days later, the same forces recorded Frank’s music for a release, to be sandwiched between Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances.

Frank’s first dance, Jungle Jaunt opens with what she calls “an unabashed tribute” to the urban jungle evoked in Bernstein’s West Side Story. Her second dance, Highland Harawi, is more melancholy, perhaps a nod to that strain in Rachmaninoff’s music, and evokes the sounds of the bamboo quena flute of the Andes.

Her third dance, The Mestizo Waltz, is a pun on the famous Mephisto Waltz by Franz Liszt. As Frank explained: “This final [dance] is a lighthearted tribute to the mestizo or mixed-race music of the South American Pacific coast. It evokes the romancero tradition of popular songs and dances that mix influences from indigenous Indian cultures, African slave cultures, and western brass bands.”

Frank is of mixed Peruvian and Jewish background. When asked about how her heritage affects her music, she replied, “Sometimes the Latin influences are quite evident, and sometimes they are quite subtle. And of course, ‘Latin’ can mean so many different things. There is no one single Latin identity, as any Latino/Latinoamericano would tell you.”

Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972): Three Latin American Dances; Utah Symphony; Keith Lockhart, conductor; Reference Recording 105

Today is Earth Day — an annual event started in 1970 by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin as an environmental teach-in.

Senator Nelson wasn’t the only one concerned back then, either: Czech-born composer Karel Husa had noticed dead fish floating on a lake located near a power plant. “The plant was producing hot thermal pollution which in turn killed all those fish,” he recalled. “In addition, I noticed more beer cans in the water and algae in greater quantities.”

A wind band commission provided Husa with an opportunity to create Apotheosis of this Earth. In explaining its title, he wrote:

“Man’s brutal possession and misuse of nature’s beauty — if continued at today’s reckless speed — can only lead to catastrophe. The composer hopes that the destruction of this beautiful earth can be stopped, so that the tragedy of destruction — musically projected here in the second movement — and the desolation of its aftermath – the ‘postscript’ of this work — can exist only as fantasy, never to become reality.”

Apotheosis of this Earth was commissioned by the Michigan School Band and Orchestral Association, and its premiere performance took place on April 1, 1970, with Husa conducting the University of Michigan Symphony Band at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor. It proved a powerful piece of music.

“As the postscript finished, I saw that the students in the band were somehow moved — there were even some tears,” the composer recalled.

Karel Husa (1921-2016): Apotheosis of this Earth; Ithaca College Wind Ensemble; Rodney Winther, conductor; Mark 3170

On today’s date in 1937, one of Aaron Copland’s least known work had its premiere performance. The Second Hurricane was an opera written for high school students, New York’s Henry Street Settlement Music School, to be exact.

In his memoirs, Copland recalled that at the time he wrote it, he was living at the Empire Hotel in Midtown Manhattan for $8.50 a week, and that he wrote the score in a studio he rented, located at what is now the site of Lincoln Center. To direct the premiere of his school opera, Copland hired young actor-director Orson Welles. Copland’s score also called for some adult performers, including one professional actor, Joseph Cotton, who was paid $10 for his performance.

“The newspapers seem to enjoy the idea that a dyed-in-the wool modernist was writing an opera for schoolchildren, so they gave a great deal of attention to every step along the way, particularly the casting,” Copland recalled. “Those kids must have gotten a kick out of seeing their names in the Times and Tribune! The idea of an opera for high school performers appealed to the press, I suppose, for the same reason it appealed to me. My motives were not all unselfish, either: the usual run of symphony audiences submitted to new music when it was played at them, but never showed signs of really wanting it. The atmosphere had become deadening. Yet the composer must compose. A school opera seemed a good momentary solution for one composer, at any rate.”

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): The Second Hurricane; High School of Music and Art; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 60560

Religious music, like the religious experience itself, comes in all shapes, forms, moods, and colors.

On today’s date in 2002, for example, this setting of the Song of Isaiah had its premiere performance at the Milwaukee Art Museum during a concert by the Present Music ensemble. The composer of the new setting was Milwaukee native Michael Torke, who wrote:

“I have always considered that a central religious experience is one of uplifting joy, as opposed to other spiritual expressions of pleading, suffering, atonement or wrath. It is that state of joy and thanksgiving I am trying to express.”

Song of Isaiah was commissioned for Present Music’s 20th anniversary, and to honor the Archbishop Rembert Weakland. The piece is scored for a singer, clarinet, bass clarinet, string quintet, piano, vibraphone and a percussionist who plays the rhythmic underpinning with a tambourine, claves and in the center of the piece, a triangle.

“This spirited rhythm embodies slower embedded forms that are etched out melodically by the clarinets in octaves, and also by the strings and piano in octaves,” Torke wrote. “In essence, there are no climaxes, as I wish the music to be a meditation, though the feeling is quite lively. Nine sections of the piece serve as episodic variations, and explore different small chunks of text from the Book of Isaiah. The form is a mirror: the first and ninth sections relate, as do the second and eighth, and so on; the fifth section (using the triangle) is in the exact center.”

Michael Torke (b. 1961): Song of Isaiah; Present Music; innova 590

In the 19th century, Richard Wagner composed The Ring of the Nibelungen, a cycle of four operas lasting 16 hours in performance. In the 20th century, another German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, wrote a cycle of seven, collectively titled Light, which runs about 29 hours. Not to be outdone, for several decades a 21st-century American composer has been working on Trillium, a cycle of twelve operas, which, if completed, will probably last much longer.

This composer’s name might not be familiar to opera fans, since MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Anthony Braxton is better known in jazz circles. As a saxophonist, he has made over a hundred recordings, sometimes with jazz greats like Dave Brubeck or Chick Corea. Braxton resists being labeled, however, stating, “Even though I have been saying I'm not a jazz musician for the last 25 years, in the final analysis, an African-American with a saxophone? Ahh, he’s jazz!”

The sixth opera in the cycle, Trillium J, or The Non-Unconfessionable, had its first complete performance at Roulette in Brooklyn on today’s date in 2014. To the question “Why write operas?” Braxton said, “I believe the medium of opera is directly relevant to cultural alignment and evolution.” Time will tell if Trillium unfolds a culturally relevant message to rival Wagner and Stockhausen’s, or simply acts as a framework for the wide-ranging moods and colors of Braxon’s music.

Anthony Braxton (b. 1945): excerpt from Act 2 of Trillium J; soloists and ensemble; Anthony Braxton, conductor; New Braxton House 906