Synopsis

At 6:05 p.m. on today’s date in 2007, the Interstate 35W Bridge in Minneapolis collapsed, plunging dozens of cars and trucks into the Mississippi River. Thirteen people died. Investigators said a design flaw was to blame, and the event served as a wake-up call about America’s crumbling infrastructure.

It also inspired a new piece of music.

In 2007 Minnesota composer Linda Tutas Haugen had been commissioned to write a piece for solo instrument and organ for performance at the next American Guild of Organists’ national convention. Haugen had been looking at various hymn tunes for inspiration when the I-35 bridge collapsed.

As she recalled, “I had family members who’d been over the bridge a day before. Many were feeling, ‘It could have been me.’ I reread texts of the hymns I had been considering, and there was one that talks about ‘God of hill and plain, o’er which our traffic runs’ and ‘wherever God your people go, protect them by your guarding hand.’ That inspired my writing.”

Haugen scored her new piece for trumpet and organ and titled it “Invocation and Remembrance.” “For me,” said Haugen, “it’s a prayer, an invocation for protection, and also a remembrance of what happened.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Linda Tutas Haugen Invocation and Remembrance Martin Hodel, trumpet; Kraig Windschitl, organ Augsburg Fortress Music CD (with ISBN: 9780800679118)

On This Day
Births

• 1779 - Baltimore lawyer Francis Scott Key, who in 1814 wrote the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner," setting his text to the tune of a popular British drinking song of the day, "To Anacreon in Heaven," written by John Stafford Smith; The text and the tune became the official national anthem by and Act of Congress in 1931;




• 1858 - Austrian composer Hans Rott, in Vienna;




• 1913 - American composer Jerome Moross, in Brooklyn;




• 1930 - British pop song and musical composer Lionel Bart, of "Oliver!" fame, in London;

Deaths

• 1973 - Gian-Francesco Maliperio, Italian composer and first editor of collected works of Monteverdi and Vivaldi, age 91, in Treviso;

Premieres

• 1740 - Thomas Arne: masque, “Alfred” (containing “Rule, Brittania”), in Clivedon (Gregorian date: August 12);




• 1921 - Hindemith: String Quartet No. 3, Op. 16, by the Amar Quartet (which included the composer on viola) in Donaueschingen, Germany;




• 1968 - Webern: "Rondo" for string quartet, written in 1906, at the Congregation of the Arts at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire;




• 1993 - Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Concerto for Horn and String Orchestra, at the Bravo! Music Festival in Vail, Colo., by soloist David Jolley with the Rochester Philharmonic, Lawrence Leighton Smith conducting;

Others

• 1892 - John Philip Sousa , age 37, quits the U.S. Marine Corps Band to form his own 100-piece marching band;




• 1893 - In Spillville Iowa, Antonin Dvorák finishes his String Quintet in Eb, Op. 97 ("The American") during his summer vacation at the Czech settlement.

Links and Resources

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  On Linda Tutas Haugen