Today marks the anniversary of the creation of a famous classical music nickname, “Les Six”—French for “The Six.” That’s what Parisian music critic Henri Collet dubbed six composers on this day in 1920, in a magazine article.

The composers Collet named include three still often heard today—Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger and Francis Poulenc. Performances of the other three composers, George Auric, Louis Durey, and the only woman in the group, Germaine Tailleferre, are still relatively rare.

Though is counted among the neglected half of Les Six, Tailleferre’s music has been having something of a revival lately. Perhaps this is part of a general renewal of interest in concert works written by women composers, or perhaps it’s a belated recognition that much of her best work remains fresh and appealing, like her Violin Sonata No. 1, composed in 1921 and dedicated to the great French violinist Jacques Thibaud.

Born near Paris in 1892, Tailleferre was a prodigy with an astounding memory. Erik Satie proclaimed her his “musical daughter,” and she was also close friends with Maurice Ravel. The Second World War, financial insecurity, and increasing arthritis inhibited Tailleferre’s career in her later years, but she continued to compose and teach until her death at age 91, in 1983.

In the fall of 1784, Mozart and his wife moved into an elegant apartment near St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. The house belonged to the Camesina brothers, whose father made ornamental rococo plasterwork, and the ceiling of one of the larger apartments in the house was decorated in a lavish style as a kind of show room for prospective clients.

In that apartment on today's date in 1785, Haydn heard a few of the new string quartets Mozart had recently completed and would eventually dedicate to the older composer. It's likely that Mozart himself performed the viola part on that occasion.

A month later, when Mozart's father paid a visit to Vienna, the rest of the new quartets were performed, again with Haydn present. That was the occasion that Haydn turned to Mozart’s father and said: "Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name."

It was probably the most deeply appreciated compliment Mozart ever received, but one the following evening wasn't too shabby either. After a performance of one of his Piano Concertos, his majesty the Austrian emperor waved to Wolfgang as he left the stage and called out: "Bravo, Mozart!"

On today’s date in 1900, “Tosca,” a new opera by Giacomo Puccini had its premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Rome was, in fact, the opera’s setting and those in the audience would have instantly recognized the real-life landmarks depicted on stage.

Puccini composed “Tosca” at the height of the “verismo” or “realism” craze in opera. It might seem downright silly that a theatrical form as UNREAL and stylized as opera could ever be described as “realistic” – but the idea was to depict “a slice of real life” – even if that slice includes melodramatic characters like a sadistic, lecherous police chief and a beautiful opera diva he lusts for.

To be as realistic as possible, Puccini visited Rome to listen to the early morning church bells from the ramparts of the Castel Sant'Angelo, the setting of his opera’s third act and to consult with a Roman priest on the details of the liturgy for the Te Deum that concludes Act I.

Some early audiences for “Tosca” thought Puccini had taken this realism thing way too far. One proper British reviewer wrote: “Those who were present were little prepared for the revolting effects produced by musically illustrating torture ... or the dying kicks of a murdered scoundrel.”

Today’s date in 1904 marks the birthday of Richard Addinsell, a versatile British musician who became one of the most famous film score composers of his generation.

Addinsell was born in London, studied music at the Royal College of Music, and pursued additional studies in Berlin and Vienna before heading off to America in 1933 for some practical education at Hollywood film studios. He put both his theoretical and practical learning to good use when he returned to England, where he began composing for a series of successful British movies, like the Oscar-winning 1939 film “Goodbye, Mr. Chips.”

Addinsell also became a popular songwriter and accompanist for British comediennes and cabaret singers of the day.

But Addinsell is best known as the composer of the “Warsaw Concerto,” a piano concerto consciously modeled on the big Romantic scores of Rachmaninoff. This music originally appeared in the 1941 British adventure film “Dangerous Moonlight,” retitled “Suicide Squadron” when it was released in the States in 1942.

After that mega-hit, Addinsell’s fluent and versatile writing continued to grace a goodly number of Post-War British films and TV dramatizations, ranging from historical epics to psychological thrillers, gritty “slice-of-life” dramas, and whimsical, light-hearted comedies.

Addinsell died in London at the age of 73 in 1977.

Composers and publishers don’t always see eye to eye. Simrock, the German publisher of Dvorak’s music, irritated the patriotic Czech composer by issuing his scores with his first name printed in its Germanic form “Anton” rather than its Czech form “Antonin.” They finally came up with a compromise: Simrock ABBREVIATED Dvorak’s first name, printing it as “A-N-T-period” on the music’s title page: Germans could read that as “Anton” and Czechs as “Antonin.” Everyone was happy.

Simrock would also have liked Dvorak to stick to writing small-scale chamber works — which sold well— rather than large-scale symphonic works — which didn’t.

“You counsel me that I should write small works,” writes Dvorak in 1891, “but this is very difficult . . . At the moment my head is full of LARGE ideas and I will have to do as dear Lord wishes.” A few years later, Dvorak would make Simrock very happy by sending them some large- AND small-scale works that would sell tremendously well, including his “New World” Symphony and “American” Quartet . . . plus this music — an “American” QUINTET published by Simrock as Dvorak’s Op. 97.

Dvorak’s Quintet was composed in Spillville, Iowa, in the summer of 1893 and was first heard at Carnegie Hall in New York on today’s date in 1894.

The German composer Johannes Brahms would probably have nodded in approval if he could have heard Orson Welles intone “We will sell no wine before its time” in those old TV ads for Paul Masson. Brahms was a notorious perfectionist, an obsessive polisher, and a cautious taste-tester of any of his own musical fermentations.

So, if one notes that Brahms appeared at the piano on today’s date in 1895, accompanying clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld at a high-profile Viennese performance of his Clarinet Sonata No. 1, one can safely assume there had been a number of trial performances beforehand.

In the summer of 1894, during his annual holiday in the Austrian countryside, Brahms composed this sonata. The very first performances of the new Clarinet Sonata followed in the fall of 1894 for the Duke of Meiningen and his sister, with an additional test run in Frankfurt for Clara Schumann. After Clara gave the new work a thumbs up, Brahms apparently felt it was fit for public consumption: first on January 7, 1895 for members of Vienna’s Tonkünstler Society, and four days later for an even more “toney” audience attending the Rosé String Quartet Quartet’s chamber music series.

After all, as Brahms and Mühlfeld might have put it: “We play NO sonata before its time!”

On today’s date in 1998, the Lark Quartet gave the first performance of the String Quartet No. 2 by the American composer Aaron Jay Kernis. Like much of Kernis’s music, the new Quartet drew upon an eclectic variety of influences.

As Kernis himself put it: “My Second String Quartet uses elements of Renaissance and Baroque dance music and dance forms as its basis and inspiration. For years I’ve played various Bach suites and pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book at the piano for my own pleasure, and I suspected for some time that their influence would eventually show up in my own work.”

The Lark Quartet had commissioned Kernis’ FIRST String Quartet, and, like the composer, were over the moon when they learned the Second had won the Pulitzer Prize for music. Just three months after its premiere, Kernis got the news by phone as he was headed to the airport to catch a flight to Spain. “I haven’t had a martini in years,” recalled Kernis, “but that’s sort of what it felt like.”

Kernis’ Second Quartet was a triple commission from Merkin Concert Hall in New York, Ohio University, and The Schubert Club of St. Paul, Minnesota, and was dedicated to Linda Hoeschler, the former Executive Director of the American Composers Forum.

In January of 1939, the famous jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman was playing each night at New York’s Paramount Theater. On today’s date that year he also appeared on the stage of Carnegie Hall.

The occasion was the American premiere of a new chamber trio by the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, commissioned by Goodman at the suggestion of Bartok’s compatriot, violinist Joseph Sizgeti. The work was billed as a two-movement “Rhapsody” for clarinet, violin and piano.

Now, in 1939 Goodman was at the peak of his popularity with the swing-crazed youth of America, and the New York Times music critic felt the need to write: “There is no indication that Bartok wrote the clarinet part for Benny’s clarinet, so jitterbugs reading this review have been simply wasting their time. The work is as Hungarian as goulash, and Mr. Goodman was artist enough to restrain himself from any insinuation of swing. Indeed, considering that he had probably left the stage of the Paramount Theatre some minutes before he appeared on that of Carnegie Hall, the purity of his style and the bright neatness of his technique were particularly admirable.”

The following year, Goodman and Szigeti recorded the trio with Bartok himself at the piano. For that occasion, Bartok added a third movement, and the resulting work was re-titled “Contrasts.”

If the late 18th century is the “Classical Age,” and the 19th “The Romantic,” then perhaps we should dub our time “The Eclectic Age” of music. These days, composers can—and do—pick and choose from a wide variety of styles.

The American composer William Bolcom was loath to rule anything out when he approached the task of setting William Blake’s "Songs of Innocence and of Experience” to music. Bolcom calls for a large orchestra, multiple choruses, and more than a dozen vocal soloists versed in classical, pop, folk, country, and operatic styles. There are echoes of jazz, reggae, gospel, ragtime, country and rock idioms as well.

As Bolcom put it: "At every point Blake used his whole culture, past and present, high-flown and vernacular, as sources for his many poetic styles. All I did was use the same stylistic point of departure Blake did in my musical settings.”

The massive work received its premiere performance in Stuttgart, Germany, on today’s date in 1984.

Most of the work was completed between 1973 and 1982, after Bolcom joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and it was there that the work received its American premiere a few months following its world premiere in Germany.

In 1935 Aaron Copland finished a new orchestral work that was to be premiered by the Minneapolis Symphony and its young conductor Eugene Ormandy.

The work was entitled “Statements for Orchestra,” and consisted of six short movements, each with a descriptive title, namely: “Militant,” “Cryptic,” “Dogmatic,” “Subjective,” “Jingo,” and “Prophetic.” The “Jingo” movement alludes to the popular tune “Sidewalks of New York” – where Copland completed the orchestration of his new score.

The last two movements were premiered by the Minneapolis Symphony early in 1936, first on an NBC radio broadcast, then on one of the orchestra’s subscription concerts. The conductor, however, was not Ormandy but rather Dimitri Mitropoulos, who would become the Music Director of the Minneapolis Symphony the following year. And it was Mitropoulos who would lead the first COMPLETE performance of all six of Copland’s “Statements” on today’s date in 1942 during a concert by the New York Philharmonic.

The new piece got good reviews, and Copland quoted with pride one given by his friend and colleague Virgil Thomson, which called the music “succinct and stylish, cleverly written and very, very personal …“

Much to Copland’s surprise this music never really caught on with orchestras or audiences. “To my disappointment,” wrote Copland, “Statements remains one of my lesser-known scores.”