Composers Datebook®

On today's date in 1907, the "Pomp and Circumstance" March No. 4 by Sir Edward Elgar had its premiere performance in London.

On today's date in 1944, the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky completed an orchestral score he titled "Scenes de Ballet" or "Ballet Scenes."

On today's date in 1929, Walt Disney released his first "Silly Symphonies" cartoon.

For over 120 years the late summer music festival known as the BBC Proms has been presenting memorable concerts in London, but one of the most memorable occurred on today’s date in 1968.

Two concert overtures – one very famous and one not so famous – had their premiere performances on today's date.

If you were in Washington, D.C. on today's date in 1957, and wanted to escape the summer heat, tickets for a new musical at the air-conditioned National Theater would run you between $1.10 and $5.50 – and you could boast for years afterwards that you attended the world premiere performance of Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story."

Today is the birthday of Antonio Salieri, one of the most unjustly maligned composers in history.

On today's date in 1928, the Columbia Phonograph Company of New York announced that the Symphony No. 6 by the Swedish composer Kurt Atterberg was the winner of its $10,000 Schubert Memorial Prize.

American composer Michael Daughtery’s bassoon concerto titled "Dead Elvis" is inspired by Elvis Presley – born on this date in 1977.

In our day, Guillaume de Machaut's Notre Dame Mass is his most famous work, but in his own time, the age of Chaucer, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, he was far better known as a secular poet of Courtly Love.