 
### Repertoire Tips for Classical Music Radio Stations

Alonso Delarte

Published by Alonso Delarte at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Alonso Delarte

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### Table of Contents

Introduction

Forgotten Gems from Famous Composers

What Else Did the One-Hit Wonders Write?

Little-Known Masters

Local Composers

About the Author

### Repertoire Tips for Classical Music Radio Stations

Introduction

It doesn't matter what your favorite genre of music is, you probably know what songs or tracks are played over and over again on certain radio stations. Around the turn of the millennium, you may have gotten sick of hearing the man who wanted a little bit of Erica by his side (and not the whole woman, for some strange reason). Or the girl who proclaimed to know what boys want and what boys like (why, her, of course). And even if you liked certain TV shows, it probably got tiresome to hear the woman who didn't want to wait for her life to be over, or the man who declared no one would bend or break him because he's "got faith of the heart."

But the repertoire for those popular genres is generally limited, spanning at most four or five decades. With classical music, you have four or five centuries' worth of music to choose from. And yet, it sometimes seems like there is a small subset of classical music that classical stations generally limit themselves to: the greatest hits of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky; the overtures of the most popular operas, maybe a few film cues.

I do of course know that "classical" is a convenient label that goes beyond the strict definition of "Classical" to also encompass the Baroque (such as Bach), the Romantic (such as Tchaikovsky) and the first half of the 20th Century (such as Vaughan Williams). More adventurous stations might also dare play music from the medieval era, the late 20th Century and maybe even from this century. One advantage of music prior to the 20th Century is that no royalties for the composers need be paid.

I have not set out to write a book about the business of music, but the impact of business on repertoire formation needs to be considered, at least briefly. We are moving away from the economy of mass production and towards the economy of the replicator. As fantastical and magical as that device depicted in science fiction fantasies such as _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ might seem, real technologies like 3D printers suggest that if the replicator does not become a reality, it won't be for lack of trying.

Consider a candy company, for example, that might make a million rabbit-shaped chocolates but zero lobster-shaped chocolates. Why not? They would probably need to make at least a thousand lobster-shaped chocolates to justify the effort and expense of resetting the machinery. And then would there be enough customers to buy up a thousand lobster-shaped chocolates?

But once we are fully in the economy of the replicator, a candy company's ability to manufacture a million of the same candy will be irrelevant. They will instead be expected to provide a million combinations of shapes and flavors: one customer wants a mongoose-shaped milk chocolate while another for some reason wants a dozen dark chocolate tetrahedrons; both customers will be satisfied. Of course there will also be customers who want candy made the old-fashioned way.

For music, thanks to technologies such as the CD-R, the Internet and the iPod, the economy of the replicator is a reality. Will anyone want to download a Vivaldi _Four Seasons_ album if they already have one? However, classical FM radio stations will continue to be relevant in this era of YouTube and the podcast, but at the same time they will have to keep in mind the realities of the replicator economy.

Notice for example that both Sirius and XM Radio offer three different classical channels, with the same descriptions for each: "Opera/Classical Vocals," "Classical Pops" and "Traditional Classical." Presumably, the place for the Pachelbel Canon in D major (that piece they often play at weddings) would be the "Traditional Classical" station; that piece should come up on that station from time to time. But it should not come up every week, much less every day or every hour. Nor does it have to.

The classical repertoire might as well be infinite. Naturally, this presents somewhat of a barrier of entry for those interested in classical who don't know where to start. So what winds up happening with the famous composers is that neophytes gravitate towards the best-known works. Under the economy of the assembly line, it made sense to make thousands of copies of recordings of these best known works.

But now with the economy of the replicator, more knowledgeable listeners want more than just the same parade of worn-out hits, and even for the neophytes the thrill of discovering the original context of a well-known melody might wear off if they're not presented with fresher music.

By no means am I suggesting that each piece of music should be played just once on your station and then never again. Some degree of repetition is necessary. What must be avoided is the "auto-complete" syndrome: that as soon as your announcer says the name of the composer, the listeners already know exactly which piece is going to be played.

Nor am I suggesting that the warhorses of the repertoire should no longer be played. Does your station have a request show? Something tells me that there will always be someone who requests the Pachelbel Canon in D major, no matter how much or how little your station schedules that particular piece. One thing I am suggesting, though, to do instead of those giveaways for the _n_ th caller, is to give a prize to someone who calls in the most interesting request (the music has to exist, and be available on a commercial recording, of course).

Writing in _Classical Music: The Listener's Companion_ , Davis writes that he and other classical radio DJs are often told "not too new, not too old, not too vocal, not too heavy." Given the breadth of the classical repertoire, it is actually quite easy to obey this dictum while at the same time wandering far away from the overplayed staples.

In compiling these tips, I am assuming that your classical station plays commercials, and must therefore not go more than 20 minutes without a commercial break, at least during peak listening hours. (I remember sometimes the old WQRS would play an entire Bruckner Symphony at night).

Besides my own compact disc collection, the Naxos Music Library and Amazon.com were immensely helpful in compiling this book. The IMSLP was also of great help. For the most part I won't be recommending any specific recording of a given piece, though there is some really good obscure stuff that has been recorded only once if at all.

This book is organized into four sections, with the composers in each section except the last arranged alphabetically. In the first section, I aim to uncover lesser known works by famous composers. In the second section, I investigate the entire oeuvre of some one-hit wonders and present some other works people might even grow to like more than the one hit. In the third section, I present only two or three works by some rather obscure composers I really enjoy and which I think your listeners might, too. The fourth section, on local composers, is of necessity rather short; most likely you don't live in metro Detroit, but at least I hope that what I write about metro Detroit composers encourages you to seek out the composers in your city or town.

Notice that I'm careful not to use the term "minor composer," which of course has nothing to do with a propensity to write music in minor keys. The distinction between "major" and "minor composers" is too ill-defined and arbitrary, and rarely has anything to do with the actual technical merit of the musical compositions.

Consider for example those scientists who were also composers. Why is Alexander Borodin a "major composer" but Sir William Herschel a "minor" one? Is it because Borodin wrote "better" music than Herschel? Or is it because Borodin's music is played much more often in concert that his scientific achievements pale in comparison to Herschel's, while Herschel's scientific achievements have consigned his music to obscurity?

You can't really measure the quality of music objectively. Maybe we can agree that one composer is much better at counterpoint and orchestration than another, but that does not automatically mean that the composer who is better at counterpoint and orchestration is much better overall than the other.

How many concert performances and recordings are there of one composer's work? That is something that can give us a good, hard number that we can say is greater than, less than or equal to the number of concert performances and recordings of another composer's oeuvre. But these things fluctuate.

By the measure of concert performances, we might conclude that at the end of the 18th Century, Antonio Salieri was a much greater composer than Johann Sebastian Bach (the measure of recordings, at least in the modern sense, was not available at the time). Salieri's music was getting played a lot more back then, while Bach was forgotten to almost everyone except a few composers.

We might also come to the absurd conclusion that although Salieri was "greater than" Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the time of the latter's death, Mozart has somehow become a better composer after his death (Salieri lived for a few more decades, but retired as the truly great opera composers were often able to do). This conclusion is all the more absurd when you consider that so many people confuse Salieri's music for Mozart.

If we wish to be fair to these composers and judge each of their compositions solely on the merits of each individual composition (even if those merits be philosophical rather than technical), we must not let ourselves be distracted by the vagaries of passing fame. There may be discoveries that challenge minor assumptions about the way a particular score has been read and interpreted in the decades since the composer wrote it and today, but for the most part, the essence of a musical composition remains immutable through the centuries.

I had thought about doing a chapter on flavors of the month like wunderkind Jay Greenberg but decided not to. Even for an e-book, the information would be outdated too quickly. All I will say about Greenberg for now is that perhaps with maturity he will write some music worth hearing more than once (I hope that does not sound like sour grapes from an older composer yet to have any success).

A point that I wish to emphasize is that there is nothing in the general repertoire formation process to guarantee the best music gets the concert and recording frequency it deserves. Maybe composers like Beethoven and Tchaikovsky have achieved lasting fame. The idea that their music could ever fall out of favor in the future seems rather preposterous. And yet today Robert Schumann would be surprised to learn that composers like Ludwig Spohr are sometimes but a footnote in biographies of composers like Beethoven.

And even for those composers lucky enough to get some kind of hold on the standard repertoire, the music they themselves consider to be their best may be ignored by performers and listeners. There are of course composers who think that whatever they're working on at the moment is their best composition ever. But circumstances that may or may not have anything to do with the musical attributes of a particular composition can cause that music to be under-appreciated or altogether ignored by the public.

Many great composers have been left out, arbitrarily, it might seem. If there is one which you think a future edition of this book ought to cover, please don't hesitate to contact me to let me know about them. The time came for me to realize that if a classical radio station explored even a tenth of the suggestions given here, it would be enough to lead to a greater variety of music and many pleasant discoveries. And since this is an e-book, it is quite a simple matter to add more suggestions after the first publication.

Forgotten Gems from Famous Composers

If we were to compile a list of Beethoven's greatest hits during his lifetime, and another list of his greatest hits today, there would be some overlap between the two lists, but also a lot of works on one list but not the other. But of course Beethoven wrote more, a lot more, than what is listed on his greatest hits. Composers are sometimes surprised about which of their works become popular and which don't. Except of course the most avant-garde composers, who are perhaps not at all interested in writing for the general public. In this section, I will strive to give a more complete view of these composers' works than a list of greatest hits would give.

I will admit that in this section of the book, I have been somewhat liberal in the meaning of "famous composer." I have included composers who were famous in their lifetime but have become somewhat obscure, and composers who are better known for being the spouse, mentor or pupil of a more famous composer than they are for their own music, and a few famous conductors who have written music that has been recorded, as well as composers who are famous today but for something other than writing music, and in one case the composer is infamous for a crime he did not actually commit.

John Adams

Perhaps the most famous of the American minimalists, John Adams, whose name reminds us of early American history, considers himself a "maximalist," making the most of minimum material. This means a style not as ascetic as Steve Reich and not as religious as Arvo Pärt. I wouldn't count _Short Ride in a Fast Machine_ as a forgotten gem, but the truth is that I almost forgot to put Adams in this book at all; the track came up on my iTunes playlist of music that hasn't been played in a while. However, _Tromba Lontana_ is probably the true forgotten gem.

John Adams is still very much active in this century. Fairly recently (in 2012), the Saint Lawrence String Quartet and the San Francisco Symphony premiered a new piece of his for string quartet and orchestra titled _Absolute Jest_ , in which the composer takes bits and pieces from late Beethoven String Quartets and a few other Beethoven works to create a brand new composition.

Isaac Albéniz

"Asturias" from _Suite Española_ is such an integral part of the guitar repertoire that all your listeners probably think the piece was in fact originally written for guitar, and if your station plays the version for piano, they will think _that_ is the arrangement. Since Albéniz used guitar idioms in his piano piece, transcription to the guitar is rather easy. You might also consider the arrangement for violin once in a while.

So strong is Albéniz's association with the guitar that some of his other compositions have been arranged for guitar, like _Chant d'Espagne_ and _Mallorca_ , to name just two.

Johann Georg Albrechtsberger

Teaching Beethoven is where Albrechtsberger's fame today rests upon. But he was a very good composer in his own right, and one of the few to write concertos for Jew's harp. If your station has gotten a reputation for being stuffy and uptight, play one of those concertos a few times to dispel that reputation fast.

Albrechtsberger's Harp Concerto as well as a Partita for Harp and Orchestra have also been recorded. As far as I can tell, none of Albrechtsberger's Symphonies have been recorded. Perhaps your town's local orchestra could make history with a world premiere recording. I recommend the Symphony in C major of 1768 for this purpose.

Leroy Anderson

You know about "The Typewriter," "Bugler's Holiday," "Sleigh Ride," "Fiddle Faddle," etc. But did you know that Leroy Anderson wrote a Piano Concerto? The Finale of the Piano Concerto would make for a nice change of pace. Although, on the other hand, some classical radio stations take themselves so seriously that playing any Leroy Anderson would make for a change of pace.

Kurt Atterberg

In 1928, Kurt Atterberg won a prize of $10,000 for his Symphony No. 6 in C major, which then became known as the "Dollar" Symphony. That was back in the days when winning a composition contest actually meant something, and even the money was more meaningful back then: Atterberg's prize would be worth about $133,800 as of 2012, and this is a result of inflation alone. But after World War II, Atterberg more or less fell off the radar, and for a while I seriously considered placing him in the category of lesser known composers.

Rather than the "Dollar" Symphony, I will be recommending Atterberg's very first, the Symphony No. 1 in B minor. The whole work is imbued with both lush melancholy and forthright energy. Although technically in three movements, it is in a way really in five movements, any of which can be reasonably excerpted. The Horn Concerto is also very much worth hearing.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

One of Johann Sebastian Bach's oldest sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was about as prolific as his father. We can roughly divide the large volume of keyboard music that C. P. E. wrote into two categories: for professional musicians and for amateurs. But alas, the "easy sonatas" may be too difficult for today's amateurs. Both categories of sonatas are played and recorded by professional pianists and are enjoyable listening.

Like his father, C. P. E. wrote a number of Concertos for multiple keyboard instruments. Particularly noteworthy is the Double Concerto in E-flat major, for harpsichord and fortepiano, sparkling music that does not feel one bit outdated despite using two instruments that are, for most practical purposes, essentially obsolete (although some producers might be able to get away with using a modern piano instead of an authentic fortepiano). And the "Sonatina" in D major for two harpsichords and orchestra (a Concerto in all but name) is full of a rambunctious martiality.

But let's not forget C. P. E.'s choral music. The Magnificat is magnificent.

Johann Christian Bach

After the death of Maria Barbara Bach, Johann Sebastian married Anna Magdalena, who bore him thirteen children. Of these, the most famous is perhaps Johann Christian, whose earliest musical instruction came from his father. Later on he was also taught by Carl Philipp Emanuel.

Along with Leopold Mozart and the Haydn brothers, Johann Christian Bach was an important influence on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Symphonies, or Grand Overtures, as they are sometimes called, have much in them that Mozart fans will like. In particular, check out the Symphony in G minor from his Opus 6 set, which strongly foreshadows both of Mozart's Symphonies in that key.

Johann Sebastian Bach

With a catalogue of more than a thousand compositions, there is plenty of Johann Sebastian to go around beyond the greatest hits. It is understandable that the Concerto in C major for 3 Harpsichords and Strings, BWV 1064, doesn't get played as often in concert as the Brandenburg Concertos, for, after all, even world-class orchestras probably only have one harpsichord on hand. But once it's recorded (and it has been recorded), it is available to radio stations to play as much as they want. It's a very nice piece, with the same rich melodiousness of the Brandenburg Concertos but different in its own way.

The Brandenburg Concertos should of course be played, and one way to spice up these pieces is by playing transcriptions. They have been transcribed for guitars, marching bands, even synthesizers. Indeed all of Bach's greatest hits and even some of his lesser known works have been transcribed for various instruments, and there are many orchestrations. Some pretty famous 20th century composers have tackled orchestrating Bach, including Sir Edward Elgar, Ottorino Respighi, Max Reger and Arnold Schönberg.

Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor is not as worn-out as one might think, given that in pop culture only the Toccata is heard regularly (though seldom in its entirety), the Fugue almost completely ignored. So, as long as your DJs are playing both the Toccata and the Fugue, there is no problem with playing this piece every now and then.

If you ever take a course in counterpoint (canons, fugues and things of that nature), a frequent question that comes up is "What would Bach do?" Even today, Bach is recognized as the absolute genius of counterpoint. Besides the various chorale harmonizations, counterpoint students assiduously review the preludes and fugues of _The Well-Tempered Clavier_ , Books I and II. But these pieces need not be the exclusive domain of piano and composition students: your DJs may very well pick a major or minor key at random and then the play the corresponding prelude and fugue from Book I or II.

P. D. Q. Bach

P. D. Q. was the twenty-first of Johann Sebastian's twenty children, the "last and least." According to Prof. Peter Schickele of the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, P. D. Q. Bach's defining trait is his "manic plagiarism." P. D. Q.'s manic plagiarism was so intense that not only did he steal from past and contemporary composers, he stole from future composers, with such forward-looking works as _Classical Rap_ and _Einstein on the Fritz_.

Or the 1712 Overture, which has much in common with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. If you like those _Saturday Night Live_ skits in which real celebrities confront their impersonators, you might get a kick out of having your DJs play sets containing both a piece by P. D. Q. Bach and the piece by the other composer which provided most of the purloined material, such as for example P. D. Q.'s Prelude and Fugue in C major from _The Short-Tempered Clavier_ , and Johann Sebastian's Prelude and Fugue in C major from _The Well-Tempered Clavier_.

But, as you probably know, Bach was not content to steal from a single composition for one of his new compositions. Thus, a single Bach composition might quote, besides the piece suggested by the title, a Beethoven Symphony, a traditional American melody, something from a Broadway musical, a jazz riff, etc.

The Minuet Militaire could very well be paired with the more serious Military Minuet by Antonio Salieri, though I doubt Bach was aware of this particular composition. Not all of Bach's humor is dependent on a particularly deep and broad knowledge of the repertoire, and if you are unaware of anything being quoted in a particular piece, the infectious charm and energy of the music should nevertheless carry you along.

_Oedipus Tex_ is quite hilarious, and although it is not as long as Stravinsky's _Oedipus Rex_ , is probably too long to play in its entirety at those hours of the day requiring frequent commercial breaks. But the Prologue, in which the chorus actually sings "T-R-A-G-E-D-Y," is suitable for excerpting. The album on which _Oedipus Tex_ originally appeared, Oedipus Tex _and Other Choral Calamities_ on Telarc, also includes the _Knock, Knock Cantata_ , of which the four songs aside from the Introduction and Conclusion may readily be played individually.

If there are any dumb pedants reading this, there is no need to answer any of their "Are you aware that..." questions.

Sir John Barbirolli

You've certainly heard Sir John Barbirolli conducting Sibelius, Vaughan Williams or some other famous 20th Century composer. But did you know that Barbirolli himself also wrote music? If nothing else, check out his Oboe Concerto in C major on Themes of Pergolesi.

Béla Bartók

One of the reasons that Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra feels a lot more overplayed than it actually is, is that a lot of flavor-of-the-month composers take it as a template for their own works: Wunderkind Jay Greenberg with his Fifth Symphony, Jennifer Higdon with her own Concerto for Orchestra, to name just two.

In this adulation of the Concerto for Orchestra, Bartók's three Piano Concertos have been largely ignored. Each is in three movements, lasting 20 to 30 minutes total; therefore, a single movement can be put on a 20-minute block. These have Bartók's intense rhythmic drive familiar to us from the Concerto for Orchestra without triggering that "not that again" response.

The six volumes of _Mikrokosmos_ form a compendium of solo piano pieces usually known only to piano and composition students. Some are barely two minutes long, others almost ten. In particular I recommend the homage to Robert Schumann from Volume 3 and the Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm from Volume 6.

Although Bartók was not a violinist, his six String Quartets are held in high esteem by violinists, composers and music critics. Though much shorter in duration than Beethoven's late Quartets (in some interpretations, some barely overrun a 20-minute block), the Bartók Quartets are far too much more demanding to play in their entirety on the radio. It is more advisable to instead play individual movements, like the fascinating Prestissimo with mutes from Quartet No. 4, or the vivid Allegro pizzicato, also from Quartet No. 4.

Amy Beach

A century ago, Amy Beach, or Mrs. H. H. A. Beach as she was almost invariably referred to, was a well-known composer in America, with almost all of her compositions performed within her lifetime, even such large works as the Mass in E-flat major. Nowadays her name probably comes up more often in trivia questions than in concert or radio playlists.

If the bent of your station is more towards instrumental than choral, she wrote plenty of solo piano pieces (she was a touring pianist prior to her marriage and after her husband's death) as well as a Violin Sonata in A minor, a String Quartet, a Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor and a Symphony in E minor.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Sometimes it's enough to just say "the 9 Symphonies," people automatically understand you're referring to Beethoven's Symphonies. And yet, some of them are just not as well known as the others. Have your DJs tally how often they play each Symphony. This can be as detailed as you want, perhaps distinguishing full plays from excerpts. Either way, the Fourth Symphony will likely be low on the tally.

The Wellington's Victory Symphony is worth the occasional play. It would probably be just fine by Beethoven that nowadays the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies are played more often than the Wellington. However, the Wellington makes a good follow to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, and I will go so far as to say that it is much better music than the 1812.

Sometimes things go in and out of fashion. The Septet in E-flat major, Opus 20, was so popular in Beethoven's time that he got sick of it, while the late string quartets remain to this day kind of obscure. It is worth bringing the Septet out every now and then. The last movement, lasting about seven minutes, is a good choice to program before a commercial break.

The late String Quartets are as modern today as when they were written and as when Igor Stravinsky famously made a remark to that effect. Perhaps that explains why radio stations shy away from them. But they also have unusual features that make excerpting difficult, like extremely short fast movements sandwiched between very long slower movements.

The Große Fuge, Opus 133, originally written for the Quartet in B-flat major, Opus 130, is certainly worth playing on the radio, whether in its original form, arranged for string orchestra or arranged for full orchestra (Stokowski did such an orchestration, if I recall correctly). Both Beethoven himself and Anton Halm made arrangements for piano 4-hands (Beethoven's was published as Opus 134); if ever there is the danger of playing Opus 133 too much, substitute Opus 134.

Given that Opus 133 is a "great" fugue, maybe Opus 137 is a "small" fugue, though it requires a slightly larger ensemble, namely a string quintet (with two violas). Beethoven was often angry over the numerous printing errors his publishers made, but the Fugue in D major, Opus 137, was perhaps his most creative response to the problem.

Of Beethoven's pieces without an opus number, perhaps the most famous is "Für Elise." But there are plenty of piano pieces without opus number that are also pretty good, like various ecossaises. In orchestral music without opus number, a nice one is the Triumphal March from _Tarpeja_.

We know that Beethoven thought about writing a Tenth Symphony. But we also know that for him, the path from initial conception to finished work was often filled with twists and turns; sometimes the finished work would have very little resemblance to the initial conception. The sketches for the Fifth Symphony are a powerful demonstration of this fact. Nevertheless, this is not a good reason to deprive ourselves of Beethoven's Tenth Symphony as can best be reconstructed today.

As far as we can tell, in his last years, Beethoven conceived the first movement as an Andante in E-flat major, framing an inner Allegro in C minor. Vintage Beethoven. Indeed we wonder if Hans von Bülow knew of these sketches when he referred to the Symphony No. 1 in C minor by Brahms as "Beethoven's Tenth." If Beethoven sketched anything for the later movements, it hasn't been identified. There are at least two different recordings of Barry Cooper's reconstruction of the first movement; the one on the Chandos label (which also includes the Triple Concerto) is almost 16 minutes and thus suitable for a 20-minute block.

The "Jena" Symphony is actually by Friedrich Witt. But to ignore it now that its true authorship is known is extremely silly: it is wonderful music regardless of who wrote it.

Beethoven wrote five Piano Concertos but only one Violin Concerto, the one in D major, Opus 61. I'm not worried about any of these being underplayed, but if you ever wished that Beethoven had written more Piano Concertos, you should check out the arrangement of his Violin Concerto for piano (published as Opus 61a). Clementi was the one who asked Beethoven to make this arrangement of the Violin Concerto, but historians believe that the actual task of transcription was mostly carried out by a copyist. Beethoven did write cadenzas specifically for the piano version (which 20th Century violinist Max Rostal arranged for violin).

Both versions of the Concerto were published in 1808, with the violin original dedicated to Stephan von Breuning and the piano version to his wife Julie. Some think Julie von Breuning was the Immortal Beloved; I suppose it doesn't hurt if your DJ wants to mention this bit of speculation as a way of introducing the piano version.

Once in a while classical stations play the Overture to _The Creatures of Prometheus_ , though nowhere near as often as the Overtures for _Egmont_ (a play with incidental music), _Fidelio_ (an opera) or _The Consecration of the House_ concert overture. What you might not know is that _Prometheus_ is a 2-act ballet with more than an hour of music, but each number is less than ten minutes. You really can't go wrong picking one of these at random, as the whole ballet is full of unfamiliar but thoroughly engaging Beethoven (except for the finale, which ought to be familiar to you for a melody that Beethoven reused in his Third Symphony).

For some reason Act I of _Prometheus_ is very short compared to Act II: Act I consists of an introduction and three dance numbers, the last one being a minuet. Act II consists of twelve numbers, culminating with the aforementioned foreshadowing of the Third Symphony.

There is still more forgotten dramatic music from Beethoven to explore. As far as I can tell, _King Stephen_ has never been recorded in its entirety, though there is a recording of excerpts and a more than a few recordings of the Overture. As far as orchestral music goes, there's the Overture and a Victory March. I doubt the Priestly March could reach the same level of popularity as Verdi's Anvil Chorus.

For classical stations friendlier to choral music, consider the Missa Solemnis, exhilarating music that foreshadows the high-octane adventure Masses of Anton Bruckner. If your listeners like that, they might also enjoy the Mass in C major, Opus 86. The Resurrexit is not as impressive as in the Missa Solemnis or in Bruckner's Masses, but is quite nice nonetheless.

For a more secular take on choral music from Beethoven (besides the Ninth Symphony), there is also the Choral Fantasy, for piano, chorus and orchestra, which is sometimes grouped with his Piano Concertos in boxed sets.

Vincenzo Bellini

For some reason it seems that classical music stations prefer to concentrate almost entirely on instrumental music, eschewing opera and religious music. If it weren't for the Texaco Met Opera broadcasts, Bellini might never be heard on such stations. And this even though his operas like _Norma_ , _Il Pirata_ and _I Sonambuli_ have overtures and act preludes.

But Bellini did write purely instrumental music for the concert hall. His Oboe Concerto in E-flat major, for example, appears on the _Naxos Italian Oboe Concertos, Vol. 1_ album. And there's also a Symphony in D major, which may sometimes be found bundled on albums with other such works by composers better known for their operas.

Alban Berg

Maybe Berg's opera _Lulu_ was played once on a Texaco Metropolitan Opera broadcast. Or maybe it was _Wozzeck_ , I don't remember. That might be one of the very few times that Berg's music has been heard on American radio. Perhaps the fear of the grinding dissonances of atonality should be abided, but we can find tonality in Berg's oeuvre, even as late as _Wozzeck_ : Act III, Scene 4 features an interlude clearly in D minor. And the tone row of the Violin Concerto is so contrived as to make reference to major and minor keys.

But like Webern, Berg did not start out writing atonal music. When Arnold Schönberg met Berg, he complained that the young man was excessively preoccupied with lieder. A lot of these "Jugendlieder" have been recorded, and these are perhaps more pleasant to listen to than Berg's later music.

Hector Berlioz

Before Mahler burst on the scene, the prime exponent of emotional exhibitionism was Hector Berlioz. His famous _Symphonie Fantastique_ , for example, is more an expression for his adolescent feelings for the actress Harriet Smithson than a cogent symphonic argument. Much better to play Berlioz's overtures, such as the _Corsaire_ Overture.

Leonard Bernstein

There probably doesn't go a week that your station doesn't play some orchestral music by one of the classics conducted by Leonard Bernstein. But you do know that Bernstein was also a composer, and your station probably does play the _Candide_ Overture or excerpts from _West Side Story_ every now and then.

Another tuneful and thoroughly enjoyable work by Leonard Bernstein is _Prelude, Fugue and Riffs_. Bernstein's Symphonies are dreadfully serious affairs and perhaps better reserved for night-time play. Even the Scherzo of Symphony No. 3 hardly lives up to the name (the word "scherzo" is Italian for "joke").

Georges Bizet

Almost all the excerpts from _Carmen_ in the Suites are very famous, at least in the sense that almost everyone has heard them in a cartoon or movie trailer at some point in their lives. Most classical stations love to play Bizet's Symphony in C major and marvel at how good it was for someone as young as he was when he wrote it. (By the way, if you find yourself in a situation that you want to play this overplayed Symphony yet again, choose Leonard Bernstein's recording with the New York Philharmonic, crackling with energy, rather than Sir Neville Marriner's plodding recording with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields).

I personally prefer the _L'Arlesienne_ Suites, though these hardly qualify as "forgotten gems." As for a Symphony in C major by a French composer, I much prefer the one by Dukas. Nor does Bizet's _Roma_ qualify as a forgotten gem either, though it has been recorded significantly less often that the Symphony in C major.

From some descriptions, one might get the impression that _Roma_ is a collection of four tone poems on Italian subjects, a sort of precursor to Respighi, and it seems that's how Bizet originally conceived the piece. But it feels like a Symphony, and it would be an excellent substitute for playing the Symphony in C major yet again.

There is an early Overture in A major, roughly contemporary with the famous Symphony in C major, that has scarcely been recorded, with Naxos and Warner Classics being the only labels I know to have it in their catalogues. It is a competent and enjoyable though forgettable work, whereas the later _Patrie_ Overture is much more immediately appealing work that has been recorded about as frequently as _Roma_.

Even a composer like Bizet, who boasts some of the most immediately recognized melodies in all of classical music, has to some extent been wronged by the music appreciation racket, which has so thoroughly ignored his solo piano music.

The only reason I became aware of Bizet's Variations Chromatiques (loosely based on Beethoven's 32 Variations in C minor) was because I was researching completions of Schubert's unfinished Symphonies (notice the plural—more on these later in this book). The pianist, conductor and composer Felix Weingartner orchestrated what is today sometimes known as Schubert's Seventh Symphony. Weingartner also orchestrated Bizet's Variations Chromatiques.

Weingartner has a special significance to Bizet in that Weingartner was the one who conducted the world premiere of Bizet's Symphony in C major, something which the producers of a recording of the Symphony, _Jeux d'Enfants_ and the Weingartner orchestration of the Variations Chromatiques made sure to take note of. In orchestral garb, the Variations have been recorded only a few times. In the original piano version, a few more recordings are available, thanks mainly to Glenn Gould.

Alexander Borodin

Borodin was by no means a prolific composer. With his day job as a doctor and chemist, he didn't have as much time left for musical composition. However, he did write much more than just the Symphony No. 2 in B minor, the unfinished Symphony No. 3 in A minor orchestrated by Glazunov and the Polovtsian Dances from _Prince Igor_.

For starters, the Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major is a very enjoyable work, showing the same tendencies for lyricism and rhythmic drive found in his better known later Symphonies. Borodin also wrote chamber music, though it would appear that the ensemble named the Borodin Quartet spends more time playing and recording Quartets by Beethoven. The Joachim Quartet has recorded both of Borodin's Quartets.

Pierre Boulez

Odds are your station has played something from the 19th Century conducted by Pierre Boulez. But the French conductor and recording artist is also a composer, and a rather avant-garde one at that. Perhaps his music is better reserved for short excerpts during low listening hours.

Johannes Brahms

The first few _Hungarian Dances_ are so good and deserving of their airplay that it is quite easy to see the later pieces as merely milking a cash cow. That's probably how the publisher Fritz Simrock saw the later ones, but they are actually quite good too and worthy of the occasional play.

If you like Brahms but wish he had written more orchestral music, don't forget about Schönberg's orchestration of the Brahms Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor. The Finale, Rondo alla Zingarese, feels even more like one of the _Hungarian Dances_ in the Schönberg orchestration. The wonderful Horn Trio doesn't get even half as much radio play as it deserves.

Brahms also wrote two String Quartets which are unrelentingly thick and depressing. These are worth using only occasionally to get away from the usual Brahms warhorses. For chamber music by Brahms, better to go with pieces like the Clarinet Quintet in B minor.

Benjamin Britten

_The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra_ , or Variations on a Theme of Purcell, is an excellent piece for radio play. Your DJs don't necessarily have to play the whole thing. They could choose the variations for the string instruments and follow that with a String Quartet by Beethoven. Or play some of the variations for brass instruments and follow that with a Bruckner Symphony. Many more possibilities should suggest themselves.

Anton Bruckner

I know, I know, Bruckner's Symphonies are so damn long. In the time it takes to play Mozart's entire Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, K. 22, you can't play a single movement out of Bruckner's Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major. But wait a minute... why is it OK to excerpt the Adagietto out of Mahler's Fifth Symphony? (I'm certain your DJs have been doing that). Mahler wrote (on average) even longer Symphonies than Bruckner.

In general, the Scherzos of Bruckner's Symphonies (except perhaps the last two) are very amenable to excerpting. Just try putting on the Scherzo from Symphony No. 3 in D minor on the same 20-minute block as something from a Hollywood score and seeing if anyone still dares say Bruckner is boring. But perhaps it is the perky Scherzo of Bruckner's String Quintet in F major that is most suitable for radio play.

For an early work, the Overture in G minor gets quite a bit of radio play. This suggests that since music radio is no longer really live (as in the days of Toscanini), that radio is in a unique position to broaden the palette of musical taste to include works that for one reason or another don't get the amount of concert play they deserve.

The complicated layerings of the Bruckner rhythm in the first movement of Bruckner's Sixth Symphony is sometimes given as a reason for why that work is so rarely played in the concert hall. But once an orchestra records it for commercially available CD, a radio station can play it as often as they like. I would recommend putting the first movement of the Sixth Symphony on the same 20-minute block as the Superman March by John Williams.

The first movements and finales of Bruckner's earlier Symphonies are short enough for radio play during the day. Consider Symphonies No.s 0 and 1, and maybe even the Study Symphony in F minor. In general, early Bruckner works very well for commercial classical radio. Consider also the March in D minor (at most five minutes) and the Three Orchestral Movements.

I hesitate to recommend playing the Finale of Bruckner's Ninth Symphony, whether the fragments available at the time of the recording or a realization of the sketches by a musicologist (some work alone, some in teams), and not just because a lot of these run over 20 minutes. I have often insisted that Bruckner's Ninth needs to be heard in as close as possible a way to what he intended, and that means a Finale after the Adagio, and that the Finale should not be heard alone so as to strengthen in the minds of concertgoers the connection between this music and the rest of the Symphony.

However, for radio, I think it would be quite acceptable to play _Bruckner Dialog_ , an original composition by Gottfried Einem that incorporates the chorale theme from the sketches of Bruckner's Ninth (lasts just a tiny bit over 16 minutes in a recording by a Czech conductor) or the fragments that were available in 1985 as recorded by Yoav Talmi (lasts almost 16 minutes).

Bruckner's piano music, which dates to fairly early in his career, has been dismissed as just being "terrible." One reviewer of Wolfgang Brunner's album on CPO wondered if even Bruckner fans would listen to the album more than once. It's true that these are early pieces written before Bruckner's crucial period of study with Simon Sechter and give little hint of his mature style. But the four Lancer-Quadrilles are charming enough, and "Stille Betrachtung an einem Herbstabend" could very well be put in the same 20-minute block as Mendelssohn's "Venetianischer Gondolierlied."

For a narrower but deeper look at Bruckner's music, read my eBook The 20 Crucial Compositions of Anton Bruckner, available from SmashWords.

John Cage

He is a famous composer and must be mentioned in this book. But he is really unsuitable for radio play. His most famous piece consists of almost five minutes of silence. Imagine the calls your station would get if one of your DJs were to play that piece. They would think you are having technical difficulties.

Cécile Chaminade

Listening to the old WQRS, one might have gotten the impression that the only thing Cécile Chaminade ever wrote was the Flute Concertino in D major, Opus 107. But can you blame them? The Concertino starts out with a beautiful mood similar to the Meditation from Massenet's _Thaïs_ , but there is some clouds and tension later on, with some passages almost foreshadowing developments in rock flute. Still, it is worth asking if this was her only piece with orchestra.

The Concertino's relatively high opus number (her highest is Opus 171, compared to Beethoven's Opus 138), points up the fact that a lot of her music was published in her lifetime. In her life, Chaminade enjoyed some successes that would have been unthinkable to Fanny Mendelssohn or even Clara Schumann. Successes like fan clubs across America clamoring for her to tour here (and she did, in 1908, playing in twelve cities).

But she also suffered some discrimination that would not surprise Ellen Taafe Zwillich or Sylvie Bodorová. Chaminade was a brilliant pianist (not a flutist), but it probably would have been very difficult to convince her publisher to publish her music with orchestra. Thus, her oeuvre consists almost entirely of piano pieces, which were assured publication with greater ease than any orchestral composition.

Charlie Chaplin

The famous comic actor and director also fancied himself a composer. It doesn't really matter to what extent the music was really by Chaplin and not by his orchestrators, it's very nice music. In particular I recommend cues from _Modern Times_ , in which Chaplin's most famous character goes from incompetent factory worker to unwitting union leader. An excerpt is available on at least one anthology of movie music, such as for example _Cinema Serenade Vol. 2: The Golden Age_ , with solo violinist Itzhak Perlman joining the Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by John Williams.

Frederic Chopin

Of the Opus 28 Preludes by Chopin, No. 4 in E minor and No. 7 in A major are the only ones I can play halfway decently. All the other ones in that set are beyond my ability. The one that professional pianists have to play if they don't play the whole set is No. 15 in D-flat major, nicknamed "Raindrop." But there are 21 other Preludes in the set, and with durations ranging from 30 seconds to 5 minutes, any one of them could be suitable filler, especially if there is time to kill after playing some big, heavy Symphony.

Chopin, as you know, was a pianist, and it is not at all surprising that the vast majority of his oeuvre consists of piano music. The various waltzes, mazurkas, impromptus, polonaises, sonatas, etudes, etc., are all consistently brilliant and virtuosic. The sonatas are generally too long to play in their entirety, but movements may be readily excerpted.

The only orchestral works Chopin are wrote are for piano and orchestra: of course the two Piano Concertos, as well as some Variations on a melody from Mozart's _Don Giovanni_ , a Fantasy on Polish Airs, a Rondo à la Krakowiak and the Grand Polonaise Brilliante. Chopin also wrote songs and chamber music.

Muzio Clementi

The first thing that comes to mind when people think of Muzio Clementi is piano music. And his piano music is certainly good on its own merits and very suitable for radio play. But he also wrote some orchestral music, not as much as his teacher Beethoven, but enough to add variety to your station's coverage of Clementi. In particular, I recommend the early Symphony in D major, Opus 18, No. 2, which contains a melody Clementi tried recycling in his later Symphonies, and the Minuetto Pastorale.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Named after the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the son of an African doctor and an Englishwoman was in his day more famous for setting a poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. _Hiawatha's Wedding Feast_ made Coleridge-Taylor as famous back then as Andrew Lloyd Webber is today, according to Norman Lebrecht.

The piece that introduced me to Coleridge-Taylor, and still a favorite of mine, is the "Danse Negre" from the _African Suite_ , in orchestral garb (the original is for piano solo). Coleridge-Taylor also wrote a Violin Concerto and a Symphony, as well as some chamber music.

Coleridge-Taylor was on occasion called "the Black Mahler," but this had much more to do with his conducting than with his composing. In this book it seems quite fitting to quote Stephen Banfield and Jeremy Dibble in that "Coleridge-Taylor was an excellent conductor of catholic tastes."

Aaron Copland

The Fanfare for the Common Man, the _Rodeo_ Suite, "Simple Gifts" from the _Old American Songs_ , these are some of Copland's greatest hits.

But also consider the other _Old American Songs_. Though politically incorrect because of the final verse, "I Bought Me a Cat" is hilarious. The story of "The Golden Willow Tree" will stick in your mind. The standard interpretation of these songs, at least the one that will set the bar for a long time to come, is of course the one by bass singer William Warfield with an orchestra conducted by Aaron Copland. But many tenors have sung them with piano accompaniment (it seems at least one of them has played the piano himself as he sang). I don't really like the idea of choirs singing these songs, but at least it gives you a way to mix things up a little bit.

Copland also set some poems by Emily Dickinson to music, and these are worth the occasional hearing. An interesting purely orchestral piece by Copland is titled _John Henry: A Railroad Ballad for Orchestra_ , which includes an interesting evocation of a train accelerating as it leaves the station.

I am almost embarrassed to admit that I didn't know that Copland's _Lincoln Portrait_ , for narrator and orchestra, was the basis for the hilarious _Bach Portrait_ (about Johann Sebastian Bach) by Peter Schickele, included in one of the P. D. Q. Bach albums. There's an idea right there for two 20-minute blocks right there: some padding and the _Lincoln Portrait_ , commercial break, and then the _Bach Portrait_.

Carl Czerny

Serious piano students know Czerny, one of Beethoven's pupils, for his piano etudes, exercises, drills, etc. Those pieces are perhaps best confined to the practice rooms. But he also wrote some very intense orchestral music. Of his six Symphonies, at least four have been recorded, as far as I know. No. 1 in C minor and No. 6 in G minor are very much worth hearing.

While Czerny was not a carbon copy of Beethoven, Czerny's music has an athleticism to it quite like Beethoven's. I should also mention that Czerny wrote down some of his cadenzas for Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major.

Gaetano Donizetti

The Marco Polo label did a great service to Donizetti with their _Instrumental Concertos_ album. In addition to concertos for various wind instruments, violin and cello, the album also includes the Symphony in D minor which Donizetti wrote in memory of the violinist Capuzzi; in one movement, it has somewhat the feel of an opera overture.

Of course Donizetti is best known for opera. The Overture to _Don Pasquale_ is known well enough.

Felix Draeseke

At first I was going to put Felix Draeseke in the little known masters category. But the fact is that Draeseke, like Spohr, was very much admired in his lifetime and his music was frequently played in concerts, and after his death pretty much vanished to complete obscurity. Except that, also like Spohr, histories of music are filled with so many mentions of him.

For example, in researching the Wagner tuba, you will probably come across William Melton's article on Draeseke's unique take on the instrument in his _Jubel-Ouvertüre_ , which led to Draeseke's falling out with Richard Strauß. Or in reading Alan Krueck's article on Raff's Symphony No. 7, you will read that Raff missed a chance to anticipate how Bruckner piles up themes from the whole Symphony in No. 8 in C minor, something Draeseke does in his Symphony No. 3 in C major.

Paul Dukas

I had trouble deciding on whether or not to put Dukas in the one-hit wonders category. It seems to me that besides _Sorcerer's Apprentice_ , the Fanfare "to precede" _La Peri_ is at least somewhat popular.

An intense perfectionist, Dukas destroyed a lot of the music he wrote. Besides _Sorcerer's Apprentice_ and _La Peri_ , we also have left the entire _Arianne et Barbe-bleue_ opera and a Symphony in C major. If your station doesn't like playing vocal music, the preludes to Acts II and III of _Arianne_ are good choices. The famous fanfare of course shows off an orchestra's brass section, but in arrangement for organ, it also shows off pipes.

As Symphonies in C major by French composers go, my favorite is the one by Dukas. I am quite pleased to report that WCPE played the entire Dukas Symphony as I was writing this. The first movement has a nocturnal atmosphere quite removed from that of a Haydn Symphony in the same key. The profound melancholy of the slow movement is genuine and not one bit sentimentally manipulative. And in the Finale we find Bruckner-like heroics and even one passage that really does sound quite like Bruckner. But the use of muted trumpets for a fanfare is decidedly French.

Antonín Dvořák

One thing that annoys me about many programme listings and classical shopping sites is the writing of "Antonín Dvorák." If you're not going to write the caron (or háček), you might as well write "Antonin Dvorak." I am aware that on the Internet the háček does not always come across intact, getting replaced by a box or a question mark. In fact, in this book you're reading right now, you might be seeing "Dvo?ák" rather than the correct spelling. I sometimes avoid writing about this Czech composer (or other Czech composers) precisely because I don't want that to happen. Other times I use some circumlocution to refer to him, such as "Czech contemporary of Brahms." But writing about Dvořák here is unavoidable. So if you're seeing a bunch of those annoying boxes or question marks in the text that follows, I apologize.

The _Carnival Overture_ , which comes out of a set of three melodically-connected pieces about "nature, life and love," is nice but played way too often. _In Nature's Realm_ is played sometimes, and inexplicably _Othello_ hardly ever. This is the all-Dvořák programme I would construct for a concert: the _Othello Overture_ , the Piano Concerto in G minor and the Symphony No. 4 in D minor.

But this is the all-Dvořák programme more likely to get put together: the _Carnival_ Overture, the Cello Concerto in B minor and the Symphony No. 9 in E minor, "From the New World." While we're talking about Overtures, let's not forget _Vanda_ , Dvořák's opera of which only the overture has been published. There's also _Alfred_ , a heroic opera in three acts of which the overture is sometimes called the "Tragic Overture" (leading to inevitable confusion with the Brahms concert overture).

Dvořák wrote eight other Symphonies besides the Ninth and they are all worth playing at least partially. The Sixth and Seventh have wonderful Furiant Scherzos, and the Eighth has a wonderful chance for the trombones to shine in the Finale. The Finale of the Fifth is a surprising burst of drama considering the pastoral nature of what has gone on before; hence it makes sense to play just the Finale on the radio. I love the strongly repetitive nature of the Finale of the Fourth, though I am perhaps quite alone in this assessment.

The Ninth Symphony isn't the only thing Dvořák wrote in America. The String Quartet No. 12 in F major, the "American," though it does get some radio play, is worth playing more often. The Ninth Symphony should never be played again unless a listener specifically requests it.

As for concertos, Dvořák's Violin Concerto in A minor and Cello Concerto in B minor are both nice, but the Piano Concerto in G minor is undeservedly neglected. Dvořák's main instrument was the viola, but it is reasonable to assume that he was at least competent on the piano. Nevertheless, his Piano Concerto soon gained a reputation for being completely unplayable, and Vilém Kurz took it upon himself to revise the solo part. Kurz's revision has not only been performed in concert, it has even been published together with the original. But don't worry yourself over such details. This work will be new and pleasant to your listeners regardless of which pianist's recording you choose.

Some of the _Slavonic Dances_ get played quite often, and there's nothing wrong with that. But, just for the sake of spicing things up, encourage your DJs to alternate between playing them in their piano duet and orchestral versions. The _Prague Waltzes_ are also very nice and worth playing more often.

In 1896, with the Ninth Symphony behind him, Dvořák wrote four tone poems, the titles of which I will give in English rather than Czech: _The Water Goblin_ , _The Noon Witch_ , _The Golden Spinning Wheel_ and _The Wood Dove_ (or _Wild Dove_ ). _A Hero's Song_ followed in 1897. Fritz Simrock of course preferred piano pieces (and indeed Dvořák arranged _The Wood Dove_ for piano). But these tone poems have in this day found some degree of popularity as filler for recordings of Dvořák's Symphonies.

Sir Edward Elgar

It is actually because of _Wallace & Grommit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit_ that I've gotten to know the music of Sir Edward Elgar. A snippet of the Symphony No. 1 in A-flat major is used in that film, though oddly not played by a British orchestra. I haven't bought the soundtrack to the movie, but I did buy a London Symphony Orchestra CD of the whole Symphony and have loved it ever since. The whole Symphony lasts an hour, and even the first movement fills up a 20-minute block, but it would be very much worthwhile to overrun such a block by a minute or two.

Elgar is of course best known for the _Enigma Variations_ , and WCPE is quite fond of playing "Nimrod." "Troyte" and "Dorabella" are also quite nice and suitable for radio play.

Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington was of course a famous jazz band leader. But some of his music has been played very nicely by symphony orchestras, and here I would like to specifically recommend the Detroit Symphony Orchestra with Neeme Järvi on the Chandos label playing a Suite from _The River_. I especially recommend the third piece, "Giggling Rapids."

Manuel de Falla

The Ritual Fire Dance from _El Amor Brujo_ was played quite often on the old WQRS, and I suspect it is played quite often on most classical stations today. But did you know that Falla also wrote a Concerto for Harpsichord, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Violin and Cello? If you like Joaquin Rodrigo's _Concierto de Aranjuez_ , odds are you will also like this concerto.

Wilhelm Furtwängler

Your station has very likely played something conducted by Furtwängler recently: perhaps one of the Bach Brandenburg Concertos, a Beethoven Symphony, the Haydn Variations by Brahms, maybe even a Bruckner Symphony. But Furtwängler thought of himself primarily as a composer, though later in life, in a fit of self-pity, declared that conducting was for him a refuge after floundering as a composer.

Furtwängler wrote three big Symphonies, of which No. 2 in E minor has been taken up by some other conductors, like Daniel Baremboim with the Chicago Symphony. "Brucknerian" is a term critics like to use to describe Furtwängler's music, but other than the large time scale, Furtwängler has much more in common with Brahms than with Bruckner. Unfortunately, the long durations, even of individual movements, make programming Furtwängler's music on the radio rather difficult. If nothing else, the Scherzo of Symphony No. 2 can fill up a 20-minute block.

Philip Glass

Tink, tink, tink, ti-ri-rin, ti-ri-rin; tink, tink, tink, ti-ri-rin, ti-ri-rin; tink, tink, tink, ti-ri-rin, ti-ri-rin; tink, tink, tink, ti-ri-rin, ti-ri-rin; tunk, tunk, tunk, ti-ri-rin, ti-ri-rin; tink, tink, tink, ti-ri-rin, ti-ri-rin; tink, tink, tink, ti-ri-rin, ti-ri-rin; tank, tank, tank; tink, tink, tink, ti-ri-rin, ti-ri-rin; tink, tink, tink, ti-ri-rin, ti-ri-rin; tink, tink, tink, ti-ri-rin, ti-ri-rin; etc.

That's the impression most people have of Philip Glass, and that's the impression that I had for a long time (I didn't even include Philip Glass in the first draft of this book). But then I heard his Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra. In three movements, the whole thing takes up a half hour, but playing just the first movement should be enough to get your listeners hooked. I would even go so far as to suggest that you instruct your DJs not to identify the composer until after the track is done. This is all I will say about Philip Glass for now.

Reinhold Glière

Best known for the Horn Concerto in B-flat major, Glière also wrote some very good concertos for other instruments (such as cello and harp) and even voice: the Coloratura Soprano Concerto, Opus 82 is wonderful: in two movements, the opening Andante is filled with a touching melancholy, while the closing Allegro is genuinely joyful, but of course a good performance will manage a gradual transition from the mood of the Andante. The whole thing fits within a 20-minute block and still leaves time for commercials.

Glière also wrote Symphonies and String Quartets, and even organ music. In some radio markets he may be better known for the _Red Poppy_ Suite than for the Horn Concerto.

Henryk Mikołaj Górecki

The old WQRS used to play a track out of most of the top-selling classical CDs every Sunday. Soon after the release of Dawn Upshaw's album with the London Sinfonietta and David Zinman, the second movement was played at the end of that programme almost every Sunday. In fact, it seems that a classical composer was actually outselling Michael Jackson at some point. But why the second movement, in which a young woman in a concentration camp pleads the Virgin Mary not to cry? Because it's just short of 10 minutes in the Upshaw performance; the other two movements are considerably longer.

Personally I much prefer the first movement of Symphony No. 2, the "Copernican." The work is in honor of Polish astronomer Mikołaj Kopernik, better known as Nicolaus Copernicus, who was able to teach the truth of heliocentrism without incurring the wrath of the church like Galileo. However, the first movement of this Symphony, even abridged (easily done due to the long pauses built into it) may be unsuitable for radio play on account of being much more obviously avant-garde than the Third Symphony. However, the second movement does point ahead to the Third Symphony.

Beatus Vir and Miserere are much too long for radio play and difficult to abridge or excerpt from. Totus Tuus and Amen are shorter and fit easily into a 20-minute set. The Three Pieces in the Olden Style, especially the second with its catchy motoric rhythm, are eminently suitable for radio play. The Three Dances are somewhat more avant-garde but quite worthwhile.

Charles-François Gounod

Here we have another composer who was famous during his lifetime but fell into obscurity after his death, or perhaps even during his old age. Today, Gounod is mostly known for _Faust_ , though none of the songs from that opera could be said to compare in popularity with, say, Bizet's hits from _Carmen_. An argument could be made for counting the Jewel Song from _Faust_ among Gounod's greatest hits, but even that is nowhere near as popular as "Ave Maria."

The reason I'm not including Gounod among the one-hit wonders for "Ave Maria" is because that's technically an arrangement. Gounod took a famous prelude by Bach and added a descant. To make matters more confusing, Gounod also wrote an entirely original setting of "Ave Maria" which has been published, but I can't tell you for sure if it's been recorded because the Bach-based one drowns out the original in search results.

Gounod completed two vigorous Symphonies that recall Beethoven's famous nine. Gounod's Symphony No. 2 in E-flat major is especially worthy of more radio play. The Symphony No. 1 in D major turned out to be very influential, with Georges Bizet's Symphony in C major being perhaps the most famous example of a work influenced by Gounod. In fact, there are passages in the Gounod that might make your listeners think that Gounod plagiarized Bizet, when chronologically it would have to be the other way around.

It is quite unfair to prejudge composers based on how much they pre-date or post-date Beethoven. Werner Ehrhardt admits for example that he hesitated with Wilms because he thought Wilms came decades after Beethoven, making Wilms's music quite antiquated. But in fact Wilms was a near contemporary of Beethoven, having been born less than two years later and outlived him by twenty years.

And so it is necessary to remind listeners of details like the fact that when Méhul wrote his First Symphony, he could not have known Beethoven's Fifth. For a French composer in the middle of the 19th Century, it would have been inescapable to know Beethoven's nine Symphonies. But we should not write off Gounod for supposedly being unoriginal, and if we did, we'd also have to write off Bizet.

Musical inspiration does not happen in a vacuum. Beethoven himself was inspired by French composers like Méhul. And so, when we listen to Gounod's Second Symphony, instead of trying to identify a Beethovenian precedent for each passage, we should allow ourselves to be propelled forward by its momentum and energy. If it indeed has momentum and energy (and I say that it does), then that's what determines whether we like it as music or not.

Purely in terms of box office revenue, Gounod was not a successful opera composer, despite the success of _Faust_ and _Le médecin malgré lui_. But he did not complete another Symphony. What would have been his Third Symphony could have been irretrievably lost if Oleg Caetani had not asked Gounod's family for access to the sketches.

Edvard Grieg

Almost everything Grieg wrote seems to be quite overplayed. The _Peer Gynt_ Suites, the Piano Concerto in A minor, the music from _Sigurd Jorsalfar_ , to name just a few. I do like _Wedding Day at Troldhaugen_ , preferably in its orchestral version, but even that piece has a good chance of being overplayed by your station.

George Frideric Handel

The oratorio _Messiah_ contains what is with hardly any doubt the most famous setting in music of the word "Alleluia." But that was of course not the only time Handel got to set that word to music. Check out the end of _Judas Maccabeus_ ; the whole oratorio if you have the time, it is well worth it.

Howard Hanson

To this day, Howard Hanson's most popular work remains his Symphony No. 2. But it is not played as often on American radio stations as it should. Here is my suggestion for a 20-minute block: that Symphony and John Williams's music for _E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial_. And in the next 20-minute block, Salieri's Organ Concerto in C major.

Roy Harris

Here is another American who ought to be played more often on American radio. The duration of his one-movement Third Symphony makes it a little inconvenient, but it is very worthwhile music to play. Schedule it in a 20-minute block, and follow that with a 20-minute block with lots of short pieces (like preludes) and enough commercials to make up for the lack of commercials in the previous block.

Joseph Haydn

Though it is a bit of an oversimplification to call Joseph Haydn "the Father of the Symphony," it must be acknowledged that each of the more than one hundred Symphonies he wrote has been tremendously influential in the development of the form. And yet, with so many to choose from, there is a tendency to concentrate on a dozen or two of them, both in the concert hall and on the airwaves. Those Symphonies of his that have a nickname seem to have been helped in their popularity by the assignment of a nickname. So at this point I will try to say something about each Symphony without a nickname.

No. 1 in D major was identified by Haydn himself as his very first Symphony. Note the mildly minimalistic slow movement of Symphony No. 2 in C major. No. 3 in G major points ahead to Haydn's later contrapuntal achievements. By comparison No. 4 in D major does not make as strong an impression, but it is still quite worth hearing. No. 5 in A major is thought to be a "church sonata," as it starts out with a full-fledged slow movement (as opposed to a slow introduction for an ensuing fast movement). I skip over the "Day" trilogy.

It would be silly to expect from No. 9 in C major the kind of metaphysical seriousness we would expect from a 19th Century composer's final Symphony, and in Haydn's case, his Ninth, which may have served as an opera overture, comes at the beginning of a new chapter in Haydn's life, when he was just starting out at Esterháza. The chronology is not quite certain regarding No. 10 in D major, which may well be Haydn's most underrated Symphony. The chronology is a little more certain for No. 11 in E-flat major, the modest instrumentation of which suggests Haydn wrote it shortly before Count Morzin was forced to give up his orchestra due to financial difficulties. No. 12 in E major dates to Haydn's time at Esterháza. No. 13 in D major, another Esterháza Symphony, points ahead to Beethoven's vigor.

Notice the cello obbligato in the Andante of Symphony No. 14 in A major. The structure of the first movement of Haydn's Symphony No. 15 in D major is unique among his Symphonies, and the only similar thing that comes to mind is the first movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 10 in E-flat major (as reconstructed by Barry Cooper).

The somewhat serious No. 16 in B-flat major could well be nicknamed "The Hunt," mainly because of its finale. No. 17 in F major is longer than most of the previous Symphonies, with a first movement development that fakes out the recapitulation before going on to more development. Even among the early Symphonies, No. 18 in G major is quite obscure; it is believed to have been written for Count Morzin's orchestra. Symphony No. 19 in D major has some touches that suggest it was written later; in any case it anticipates some much later Haydn.

Antony Hodgson regards No. 20 in C major as "not a developed work" which however "has that confident stateliness that was to become a hallmark of Haydn's grander style." The opening Adagio of No. 21 in A major Hodgson calls almost a fantasia; he also points out a melody that should be familiar to anyone who has heard all of _Eine kleine Nachtmusik_ and not just the famous opening bit.

No. 23 in G major ends on a surprising note, that's all I'm going to say about it here. Is No. 24 in D major actually a concerto? Not really, but it does include a flute cadenza which was meant for the virtuoso Franz Sigl; also, it alludes to Gluck's Dance of the Blessed Spirits from _Orfeo ed Euridice_. No. 25 in C major is an interesting spin on the sonata da chiesa model used by Haydn himself and some of his contemporaries.

Franz Koglmann famously took bits and pieces of Haydn's light-hearted Symphony No. 27 in G major for his own cool jazz piece _Nocturnal Walks_ , which features a tape of Emil Cioran philosophizing about the night. Both that piece and the Haydn would be excellent for night-time play. The minuet of No. 28 in A major has "gypsy" qualities to it, while the trio of the minuet of No. 29 in E major is very interesting for its not really having a melody (in homage I did something similar in the trio of the minuet of my own String Quartet in A major).

Much of No. 32 in C major has that "glorious sonority in the brass worthy of Bach in his most triumphant church music," according to Hodgson. Note the judicious use of trumpets and timpani playing softly in the minuet of No. 33 in C major. One of the earliest Symphonies in a minor key is Haydn's No. 34 in D minor, and it could even be the first minor key Symphony in Haydn's own oeuvre (a couple other of his minor key Symphonies have conjectural dates of 1768, while No. 34 is believed to have been written in 1766).

No. 35 in B-flat major is another example of Haydn's scoring for high B-flat horns. Haydn uses the recap transition gambit again in No. 36 in E-flat major. The trumpets and timpani in No. 37 in C major are believed to be a late addition to the score, though this seems to be based more on forensic evidence than musical analysis. A similar situation holds for No. 38 in C major (there are recordings omitting the trumpets and drums) but this one can be easily distinguished from the previous one by the unexpected oboe solo in the finale, which may have been written to show off the skill of Vittorino Colombazzo, a brilliant new oboist in the Esterházy orchestra. No. 39 in G minor is nicknamed "The Fist," according to ClassicalArchives.com; this is the first time I have ever seen that nickname.

The fugal finale of No. 40 in F major is not one of Haydn's best, but is nevertheless pretty good. No. 41 in C major ends with a moto perpetuo finale. The very jolly No. 42 in D major marks one of the first uses of rondo form for the finale.

No. 46 is in B major, a very unusual key for the Classical period. The most obviously interesting feature of No. 47 in G major is the "reverse" minuet, which goes through normally and then repeats backwards. No. 50 in C major could be the real Maria Theresia Symphony, and some commentators have even said it is actually more regal than No. 48. Notice the two trios for the minuet of No. 51 in B-flat major. The powerful No. 52 in C minor is full of fierce Beethovenian energy in the first movement, but also note how the minuet points ahead to the minuet of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor.

No. 54 in G major has more interesting parts for the trumpets than was the norm at the time. No. 56 in C major displays both martial grandeur and sensitive elegance. No. 57 in D major has no nickname, but Eckhardt van den Hoogen suggests several: "Lost Drum," "Raging D," "Gentleman with a Thick Head," etc.

Some details to notice in No. 58 in F major include the limping Minuet, the suggestion of Balkan music in the Trio, and an unexpected wrong key unison in the finale. No. 61 in D major has a clucking that somewhat foreshadows the famous "Hen" Symphony, while No. 62 in D major, written at about the time Haydn met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, foreshadows the latter's "Haffner" Symphony.

No. 65 in A major was composed near a vineyard, but that's too simple an explanation for its various humorous devices. H. C. Robbins Landon called No. 66 in B-flat major "insipid." Symphony No. 67 in F major has been suggested to be the true "Surprise" Symphony, while the slightly more conventional No. 68 in B-flat major foreshadows the "Clock" Symphony.

Notice the C minor section in the finale of No. 69 in C major, the "Laudon," which commemorates the exploits of Field Marshall Ernst Gideon Freiherr von Loudon; "not one of Haydn's greatest creations," Hodgson says, so that "an unsympathetic performance... creates an impression of superficiality in the listener's mind which does unfair discredit to the composer."

No. 70 in D major is in the main part of the book at #70. No. 71 in B-flat major recalls No. 51 in the same key but is altogether very different. The chronological misplacement of No. 72 in D major in Hoboken's catalog is very pronounced (with the information available to us today, 31A would be a more appropriate number) but it should not distract us from the work's many merits, which include the inclusion of four horns in the orchestra, the exclusion of strings for the Minuet's Trio, and the slow tempo for the finale.

No. 73 in D major, "La Chasse," turns the Overture to _La fedeltà premiata_ into a symphonic finale. The Adagio of No. 74 in E-flat major is unsettled and Hodgson hears a hint of Mozart. No. 75 in D major is in the list of 104 as #75. Robert Simpson quotes Haydn's Symphony No. 76 in E-flat major for his own Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major (see #4 in the main part of the book). The high B-flat horns make one of their last appearances in Haydn's oeuvre in No. 77 in B-flat major. No. 78 in C minor, though quite serious, could hardly be considered tragic.

Haydn had apparently wanted to go to England long before the opportunity materialized, as musicologists theorize that the next three Symphonies form a trilogy Haydn intended for London. The first of the set is No. 79 in F major, which starts off with a sonata form movement that suggests in its formal design the statement and counterstatement form that Bruckner used for his Ninth Symphony. We can rightly call the powerful No. 80 in D minor tragic, and it is quite puzzling that it is not more famous (though there are one or two bland recordings out there that don't do it any favors). Hodgson says No. 81 in G major could use a colorful nickname.

Now we come to the Paris Symphonies, a half dozen set of Symphonies that Haydn wrote for the Loge Olympique in Paris. Musicologists can argue and argue about the order these were composed in, but the issue is moot for radio stations because you probably don't want to schedule more than one Haydn Symphony within a DJ's single shift.

The Paris Symphonies without nicknames deserve more airtime: No. 84 in E-flat major is a rather understated, subtle work. The Trio of the Minuet of No. 86 sounds a little bit like a Christmas carol, so perhaps that could be the basis of a nickname for it. The Adagio of No. 87 in A major gives the woodwinds opportunities to shine.

No. 88 in G major, sometimes called "Letter V" from a catalogue that was used in England at one time, has always been one of Haydn's most popular Symphonies, with Brahms exclaiming that its Largo is what he'd want his own Ninth Symphony to be like. Often on the same CD as No. 88, No. 89 in F major tends to be overlooked. Its finale has a surprising minor key episode, a bit of Sturm und Drang, which nevertheless fits in very well, because it elaborates a brief moment of discord in the first movement with sneering brass.

Then we come to another trilogy, this one for the Comte d'Ogny in Paris. The trilogy starts off with Symphony No. 90 in C major: note how a theme from the slow introduction becomes an important theme in the ensuing Allegro assai. No. 91 in E-flat major has a very contrapuntal first movement. No. 92 in G major, written for Paris, came to be nicknamed "Oxford" because Haydn used it for one of the concerts at Oxford University leading up to his being awarded an honorary degree from that school.

In 1790 Haydn was finally able to go to London. Soon enough he started work on the dozen Symphonies now called "the London Symphonies." The first of these was not No. 93 in D major, but possibly the third. The finale of No. 93 has a cello solo close to the end. No. 95, being in C minor, is the only minor key Symphony in the dozen (though No. 104 has a D minor introduction). No. 97 in C major would become the prototypical Symphony of the Classical period, very clearly influencing the "Jena" Symphony attributed to Beethoven (actually by Friedrich Witt) and less directly Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 in C major. At around this time, harpsichord continuo was not considered as essential as it had been in the Baroque (though according to Leopold Mozart, Michael Haydn still considered it essential), and Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 98 in B-flat major is an interesting documentation of this trend.

The second half dozen Symphonies for London starts out with No. 99 in E-flat major. The true miracle Symphony, during the premiere of which legend has it that a chandelier fell down but hurt no one, is believed to be No. 102 in B-flat major.

Hob. I:105 is the Sinfonia Concertante in B-flat major. Hob. I:106 was declared lost, but apparently a fragment has emerged which the Cornell Orchestra recorded.

I hope the preceding does not give the impression that Haydn only wrote Symphonies. He was quite prolific, though his Symphonies represent a significant portion of his oeuvre, accounting for one of three volumes in Hoboken's catalog and the very first Roman numeral. The Concertos, on the other hand, get the Roman numeral VII, and while not as numerous as the Symphonies (even when counting the Concertos by other composers but attributed to him) still form quite an impressive production.

We all know the regal Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major so well that we seldom need to refer to its Hoboken number of VIIe:1 (unlike Michael Haydn and Leopold Mozart, Joseph never wrote a concerto for natural trumpet). Hob. VIIa consists of four violin concertos known for sure to be by Joseph Haydn and five that may have been written by Carl Stamitz, Michael Haydn or some other mostly forgotten composer.

The Cello Concertos are listed in Hob. VIIb, but only two of the six listed seem to certainly by Joseph Haydn, and those are precisely the ones that have been recorded by famous cellists like Jacqueline du Pré: No. 1 in C major and No. 2 in D major. It is too much to hope for a recording of the Cello Concerto No. 3 in C major, that score is listed as lost (same goes for what could Haydn's only Double Bass Concerto, Hob. VIIc:1). The Cello Concerto No. 4 in D major is now attributed to Costanzi and No. 5 in C major to David Popper, a name that sounds familiar to me, suggesting that perhaps it's possible for a piece attributed to a famous composer to still have somewhat of a life after its true authorship is discovered.

Five Horn Concertos are listed in Hob. VIId, but only one, No. 2 in D major, Hob. VIId:4, seems to have survived to this day but that's not good enough for it to clear doubts. There are nonetheless plenty of Hadyn concerti of undisputed authorship, of course, so let's not forget about Haydn's two Cello Concertos. Haydn not himself being a piano prodigy, his Piano Concertos just aren't held in the same high esteem as Mozart's and Beethoven's. However, these Piano Concertos are always tuneful and energetic, and any of them make for a good alternative when your DJs reach for the Trumpet Concerto.

Michael Haydn

At first I put Michael Haydn in the Little Known Masters section of this book. But given the criterion by which I put Leopold Mozart in the same section of this book as his famous son Wolfgang, it only makes sense to extend the same treatment to Joseph Haydn's younger brother, who enjoyed a good share of well-deserved fame for his own music during his lifetime.

I am pleased to report that WRCJ occasionally plays two of the Symphonies Michael Haydn wrote in 1788, while WCPE occasionally plays No. 22 and No. 23 (there is a little bit of confusion over the numbering but they have played both of these). In his day, Haydn was better known as a composer of church music. From that side of his oeuvre, I thoroughly recommend the Credo and the Agnus Dei of the St. Francis Mass (yes, the one which Wikipedia for a long time asserted was commissioned by fictional _Star Wars_ character Emperor Palpatine).

When Charles Sherman catalogued the Symphonies of Michael Haydn in 1982 for Garland Publishing, he left out four Symphonies; since these are early works, record labels like CPO have simply numbered them 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D. When Sherman joined forces with T. Donley Thomas to catalog _all_ of Michael Haydn's music, Sherman changed his thinking on the dates for Symphonies No.s 22 and 23. Though these are minor issues, some other record companies prefer to stick to the old Perger numbers of 1907, even though Perger incorrectly identified three Symphonies by other composers as being by Michael Haydn.

There is little disagreement over the numbering of the set of six Symphonies which Haydn wrote in 1788: in Sherman's 1982 catalog they run from 34 to 39, while in Perger's 1907 catalog they run from 26 to 31. The last of these, a concise but masterful Symphony in C major, ends with a fugato, inspiring Mozart to do the same with his famous, rambling "Jupiter" Symphony. The one in B-flat major has a rare example of the kind of wit more commonly encountered in his brother Joseph's work.

As far as I know, there is no book just about the Symphonies of Michael Haydn, but there really needs to be one. I have actually drafted quite a bit of one. What now follows is a very brief summary of my draft for that book.

Not as prolific as Joseph, but Michael Haydn still wrote quite a few Symphonies, forty-odd of them, but he has not enjoyed the same consistency of catalogue numbering as his older brother. Here I will be using the "Sherman-adjusted" numbers, but in some cases I will give some other numbers that could possibly be needed to identify those Symphonies at the record store—and these sometimes include Hoboken numbers (for Symphonies attributed to Joseph Haydn at one time or another) and in two instances a Köchel number (for attributions to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart).

Michael Haydn's Symphony No. 1 in C major is festive, like No. 2 in the same key. No. 3 in G major has also been called a Divertimento. No. 4 in B-flat major, "La Confidenza," may have come from some stage work, or it could be that the slow movement came from a stage work and the rest of the Symphony was written around that.

One of the details that sets No. 5 in A major apart from other Haydn Symphonies is the trio of the minuet is in a minor key. No. 6 in C major has neither trumpets nor drums, nor a minuet. No. 7 in E major has a very interesting (but unintentional) example of the Bruckner rhythm; this should of course remind us that the Bruckner rhythm has its roots in old Austrian music, predating even Haydn, perhaps.

No. 8 in D major is not Haydn's first to use flute, but it may be his first to use trumpets and drums in the key of D major. No. 9 in D major is somewhat more typical, and No. 10 in F major more so. Of No. 11 in B-flat major I can only say that it is competent music; perhaps in the future I will appreciate it.

No. 12 in G major is one of those Symphonies by Michael which Hoboken listed among those attributed to Joseph. The same goes for No. 13 in D major, which is unusual for having two minuets, one right after the other (Microsoft Word so much balks at this unconventional pattern that it strongly suggests I meant to write "two minutes" instead). The more conventional No.s 14 in B-flat major, 15 in D major, 16 in A major, 17 in E major, and 18 in C major also appear in Hoboken's 'back pages.' That last one, No. 18 in C major, is notable for its use of the piffaro, a kind of old flute that is hardly played nowadays outside of a few Italian villages.

No. 19 in D major has a minuet in D minor. No. 20 in C major was among those selected by the American musicologist Charles H. Sherman for a representative selection of Michael Haydn's oeuvre for publication by Garland Press in 1982, almost two decades after British musicologist H. C. Robbins Landon put out an edition of No. 21 in D major.

With No.s 22 and 23 we come to a bit of numbering conundrum. By Sherman's catalogue of 1982, No. 23 is in F major, and corresponds to 14 in Perger's catalogue, while No. 22 is in D major, corresponds to 43 in Perger's catalogue (to section B, for those works Perger did not have enough information to pin down chronologically) and still has a place in the Köchel catalogue (formerly K. 291, now K. Anh.A:52). When Sherman joined forces with T. Donley Thomas, they pegged Perger 43 as being later than Perger 14, allowing for the possibility that it could have been written as late as 1781, while Perger 14 was definitely written in 1779; but, for all we know, Perger 43 could have been written in 1777.

The "Sherman-adjusted" numbering of Symphony No. 22 in F major, Perger 14 and Symphony No. 23 in D major, Perger 43, is not a notion endorsed by either Sherman or Thomas: the former is MH 284 and the latter is MH 287 in their catalogue of all of Michael Haydn's music. No. 24 in A major does not make much of an impression apart from its use of the posthorn.

Then there is No. 25 in G major, which Haydn gave to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, apparently as a token of gratitude for writing two Duos for Violin and Viola to round out a half dozen Haydn was expected to write. Mozart added a slow introduction to Haydn's Symphony and in the 18th Century this composition became known as Mozart's Symphony No. 37.

Michael Haydn's Symphony No. 26 in E-flat major has been attributed to Joseph Haydn, but regardless of attribution, has been of greater interest to Mozart scholars because of many traits suggesting that it influenced Mozart's nearly contemporaneous Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major, K. 543.

Only three of Michael Haydn's Symphonies were published in his lifetime: the Opus 1 set of three Symphonies, by Artaria. The first of these is No. 27 in B-flat major, which I've nicknamed "The Hornblipper" on account of some high horn notes in the finale. No. 28 in C major has a fugal finale and is thus a precursor to both Michael Haydn's and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphonies in C major of 1788. No. 29 in D minor is probably the only Symphony Michael Haydn ever wrote in a minor key.

No. 30 in D major is a bit unusual for having only three movements but with the first movement having a slow introduction (remember that No. 25 has a slow introduction because Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote one for it). No. 31 in F major is tuneful as always but not much of a stand-out, at least not compared to No. 32 in D major, "L'Aragonesa," which stands out for structural reasons as well as for its cheerful vitality, or No. 33 in B-flat major, "The Foghorn," which has some surprising low horn notes: the first time you listen to it these may take you by surprise.

Haydn wrote a lot of music in 1787, but no Symphonies until 1788, the year in which he started a set of six Symphonies, forming a cycle with each Symphony cleverly interconnected in ways musicians and musicologists have only begun to notice; here I will only list a very few of the more obvious connections. The connection between the first and last of the set, No.s 34 in E-flat major and 39 in C major is obvious: they both have fugal finales. Both No.s 36 in B-flat major and 39 include trumpets and timpani in their instrumentation. I have yet to detect a connection between No.s 35 in G major and 38 in F major, other than what the smart-aleck would say, so I will only mention a connection to Mozart and Beethoven: the former strikes me as being particularly Mozartian, while the latter I call Haydn's "Pastoral," thus suggesting Beethoven.

The half-dozen of 1788 would have been a great crowning achievement for Haydn's symphonic oeuvre. But he followed these with No. 40 in F major and No. 41 in A major, which has a fugal finale. And we can only speculate as to why he added a Minuet to No. 33 thirteen years after he wrote the other three movements and eight years after his last Symphony.

The Trumpet Concerto in C major remains to this day a peak student trumpeters are expected to climb; the high notes for the trumpet are even higher than the high notes for the flute. This Concerto is typically recorded with contemporary works for trumpet and orchestra, such as Leopold Mozart's Concerto in D major.

As for chamber music, there is some doubt that Michael Haydn even wrote the six String Quartets commonly attributed to him. Regardless, of these, the ones in A major and G minor are worth playing every so often.

There is no doubt that Michael Haydn wrote four Duos for Violin and Viola. He was expected to write six of them for Archbishop Colloredo but fell ill and called in a favor from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who wrote the remaining two of the set (Köchel numbered them 423 and 424 in his catalog). Those who blindly admire Mozart are very surprised that Colloredo did not recognize that Haydn did not write all six Duos. However, all six pieces are of high quality, and it is only an idiotic kind of brand loyalty that prevents the four Haydn wrote from being more popular.

Sir William Herschel

If you study up for _Jeopardy!_ , you'll probably come across the fact that in 1781, with the aid of a telescope, Sir William Herschel discovered that planet beyond Saturn but before Neptune, and that he originally named it "Georgium Sidus" (this probably helped him earn the Astronomer Royal post in King George III's court). You might also read some fascinating speculation about that planet's unique equatorial tilt.

What you might not come across in that survey is that Herschel lived most of his life as a professional composer and an amateur astronomer. In an article for the _Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific_ , Vincent Duckles talks about the time the Griller Quartet performed two concertos by Herschel at a general assembly of the International Astronomical Union.

Herschel composed several several Symphonies, of which at least a few have been recorded, two Oboe Concertos, plus various sonatas and other keyboard compositions that have yet to be recorded. Herschel also wrote some songs and choral church music, but none of it seems to be available on CD either.

After the royal appointment as astronomer, Herschel seems to have completely abandoned his musical ambitions. But at the time of his death, there were still one or two planets in our solar system left to discover, depending on how you count these things (we can only speculate how Herschel would have felt about the "demotion" of Pluto from planet to planetoid).

Gustav Holst

I have to admit that for now I'm kind of sour on Holst but it's not his fault. There is this two-faced guy with an orchestra heavy on brass and light on strings. He said he'd play one of my arrangements (not an original composition of mine, mind you) but immediately started backpedaling. I could respect him if, instead of martyrizing himself over the plight of modern local composers ("they're just dying to have their stuff played" but there's no need to seek them out and offer your services), he had said from the start "I really only feel like playing Holst and Mahler."

It's of course instructional to watch an understaffed orchestra valiantly try to go through "Mars, the Bringer of War" and "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" from _The Planets_. It's very famous music and student musicians want to tackle it, and it doesn't help when the orchestra professor, instead of explaining why they're not ready for it, merely forbids it, or worse, laughs it off. So they get together after class for the purpose of doing forbidden repertoire. At times their enthusiasm for the music is infectious. At other times it becomes painfully clear that one saxophone can't really substitute for a full cello section.

Some of those musicians may have in high school band played one or both of Holst's Suites for Military Band, or in middle school string orchestra the _St. Paul's Suite_ (the latter makes an occasional appearance on the radio, played by a professional ensemble, of course, and so I hesitate to class Holst amongst the one-hit wonders).

Some other pieces besides _The Planets_ include _The Mystic Trumpeter_ (which sometimes pads out a _Planets_ disc) _The Cloud Messenger_ and _Beni Mora_. You can add variety to _The Planets_ by playing "Neptune, the Mystic" immediately followed by "Pluto, the Renewer" by Colin Matthews. Another idea for a 20-minute block: follow "Uranus, the Magician" with something by Sir William Herschel, who discovered that planet and named it after King George III.

James Horner

Classical music snobs will certainly scoff at my inclusion of Hollywood film composer James Horner (and maybe more so John Williams later on). Horner is best known for his _Titanic_ score, which has overshadowed the excellent _Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan_ score.

The _Khan_ soundtrack album arranges selections from the score out of chronological story order and into a kind of Symphony that can be enjoyed as a purely abstract progression of themes. For _Star Trek III: The Search for Spock_ , Horner doesn't seem to have put the same kind of effort John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith put into sequels.

Alan Hovhaness

Of the many Symphonies Hovhaness wrote, only No. 2, "Mysterious Mountain" and No. 50, "Mt. St. Helens" (with a dramatic evocation of a volcanic eruption) really stand out to me, but both works could really use radio play. Though the Finale of No. 50, with all its noise to depict the volcano, might scare off some listeners. The previous movement, depicting the Spirit Lake, is a much safer bet and a better introduction to Hovhaness.

_And God Created Great Whales_ features the orchestra and recorded whale song. Hovhaness Symphony discs are sometimes padded out with the _Prayer of St. Gregory_ (very nice music for trumpet and string orchestra) or the Quadruple Fugue.

So as to prolong the outer space thread started with Herschel, I will now mention the Symphony No. 53, "Star Dawn," by Alan Hovhaness. Unfortunately, in this case, the title is much more evocative than the music.

Charles Ives

The Second Symphony famously ends with a full 12-note discord. But don't take this to mean that the Second Symphony shouldn't be played on the radio: 99% of it is entirely tuneful, and that famous conclusion, more read about than heard, can certainly spice up the playlist and pique your listeners' interest.

The Symphony No. 1 in D minor, in excerpts or whole, is entirely well suited for the radio, being a very nice, enjoyable work from beginning to end. If your listeners are feeling more adventurous, the Third and Fourth Symphonies can be tried out.

_Central Park in the Dark_ is one of those wonderful concert works that might be too much of a risk for radio play. Ives was a pioneer in the use of alternate tunings. He wrote some quarter-tone piano pieces which unfortunately will sound to most listeners like the instruments are out of tune.

Who would have guessed that it would fall to a choir from Stuttgart to teach Americans that Ives wrote Psalms, too? American stations occasionally play the Variations on "America, My Country 'Tis of Thee," but it wouldn't hurt to play that more often.

Salomon Jadassohn

Here is another one of those great forgotten composers the CPO label is bringing to our attention. A contemporary of Brahms and Bruckner, Jadassohn may be more familiar to composers today as the author of several books on various compositional topics, like counterpoint, harmony and orchestration, many of which may be available in English translations at your local library.

Jadassohn also made anthologies of music by "famous composers," and these include composers who are still famous today, like Bach, Beethoven and Borodin. But in one such anthology, Jadassohn also includes composers whose names were unfamiliar even to me, like Jan Blockx, L. A. Bourgault-Ducoudray and P. de Bréville, to name just three. Jadassohn also included Cécile Chaminade, who demonstrated that in that day and age, women could achieve success as composers.

In that anthology, Jadassohn also includes his own Barcarolle. This shows some modesty on his part, as he could easily have included a lot more of his own music in the anthology. The rather more obscure Stcherbatcheff gets three selections in the anthology, while Brahms, and, inexplicably, Joseph Haydn, get none. (The absence of Brahms from the anthology could have been due to Fritz Simrock, who published most of Brahms's music in his lifetime).

I wouldn't say that Jadassohn was jettisoned from the repertoire, but more likely faded into obscurity gradually. Maybe the fact that Jadassohn was a Jewish composer working in Germany prior to the rise of the Nazi regime contributed to his obscurity. Even the more prominent Gustav Mahler was almost forgotten for years after World War II. There was perhaps no incentive in those years to rediscover the music of Jewish composers that had been suppressed by the Nazis.

If this is the case, it reinforces my point about a lot of musical compositions being forgotten for reasons that have nothing to do with their musical merits. Therefore it behooves us to examine Jadassohn's compositions one by one instead of wrongly assuming that his obscurity is deserved. The words "shamefully neglected" have come up at least once, such as in Gareth Vaughan's booklet for a recording pairing Jadassohn with Paul Pabst (see the Little Known Masters section for more about him).

Jadassohn's Symphony No. 1 in C major, Opus 24, might be the best introduction to his symphonic oeuvre. Some composers of this period seem to have trouble with major key music (including Jadassohn himself), but in this C major Symphony he finds the right spots to create interest with minor key shading.

I have to admit that I have been unimpressed by Jadassohn's later Symphonies. The Symphony No. 2 in A major, Opus 28, is pleasant enough in excerpts, but it's probably best not to play the whole thing despite its being only a half hour. No. 4 in C minor, Opus 101, fails to deliver the kind of Sturm und Drang one has come to expect from this key after Beethoven's Fifth.

But I skipped over No. 3 in D major, Opus 50! I suppose I went into it with much lower expectations than for the Fourth, but as with the First, Jadassohn puts in the right amount of tension to liven up what could otherwise have been just another major key ramble.

The CPO recording of Jadassohn's four Symphonies also includes two beautiful Cavatinas, Opus 69 and Opus 120.

Scott Joplin

Everyone knows _The Entertainer_ and the _Maple Leaf Rag_ , but the _Paragon Rag_ and the _Country Club Rag_ are also good choices to get the benefit of familiar melodies without the downside of melodies so familiar they are worn out.

Did you know Joplin wrote an opera? In fact, _Treemonisha_ was premiered in 1976, decades after Joplin's death, to celebrate the American bicentennial. The entire opera has been recorded on, of all labels, Deutsche Grammophon.

Dmitry Kabalevsky

I am pretty sure that the _Colas Breugnon_ Overture is the only piece of music by Kabalevsky I have ever heard on the radio. Or maybe I have also heard excerpts from _The Comedians_ on the radio. But there is in fact enough by Kabalevsky to do an all-Kabalevsky concert: start with the _Colas Breugnon_ Overture, continue with one of the concertos for cello or piano, and conclude with one of the Symphonies.

The Overture Pathetique might be a good start to a program that also includes Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B minor. A personal favorite of mine is the symphonic poem titled _Spring_ , and since it's barely ten minutes in the slowest interpretation, it can fit well within a 20-minute block.

Gustav Mahler

Once you get past adolescence, Mahler starts to seem quite needlessly melodramatic and hysterical. In his lifetime, Mahler was better known as a conductor, performing the music of others, and his own music was derided for being rather derivative. After the Mahler revival that started in the 1960s, we have reached a saturation of Mahler's music that teenage classical music fans appreciate but older listeners perhaps not quite so much.

Mahler is often bracketed with Bruckner, and those who know better have gotten tired of pointing out that the similarities are few, such as that both wrote long Symphonies and used chorale melodies. But one important difference between Bruckner and Mahler as far as radio play is concerned, is that the long durations of the latter's pieces just aren't as much of a deterrent to radio play.

In an alternate universe where Mahler is a one-hit wonder, his one hit would be the Adagietto of the Fifth Symphony. It comes near the end of a Symphony that starts out with a dire funeral call from the trumpet, sandwiched between a long-winded, convoluted Scherzo and a cute Rondo, what could very well be the most genuinely happy music Mahler ever wrote. It would be worthwhile overrunning a 20-minute block with both the Adagietto and Rondo (the two are practically connected) from one of the faster interpretations of the Symphony, such as Valery Gergiev's with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Mahler's Symphonies are closely connected with his Lieder, and thus it would be a good idea to play a movement of one Symphony in a 20-minute block and follow it with the quoted Lied, such as for example, either the first or third movement of the First Symphony in one block and the _Lieder eine fahrenden Gesellen_ after the commercial break.

Both the Resurrection Symphony, No. 2 in C minor, and No. 3 in D minor are lengthy works which have shorter movements that can easily be placed into a 20-minute block and still have time for something else. Don't forget that the first movement of Resurrection started out as sort of a symphonic tone poem titled _Totenfeier_ , though this usually in most performances still longer than 20 minutes.

The tragic Sixth Symphony is perhaps too heavy for the radio, except for an orchestra concert broadcast. But the Seventh Symphony is vastly underrated. The first movement is a little too long for the radio, but the central Scherzo, wonderfully spooky, and the Andante amoroso, a viable alternative to the worn-out Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony, would both make for brilliant radio selections.

From the unfinished Tenth Symphony, any of the middle movements, in whatever completion, would be excellent choices for radio play. The Cooke, Mazzetti and Wheeler completions, though divergent in their approaches, are credible attempts to finish what Mahler started. The Carpenter completion is fascinating because it often sounds like he's trying to outdo Mahler, adding a great deal of his own freely composed countermelodies that compete for the listener's attention.

Felix Mendelssohn

Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Opus 25, and Piano Concerto in D minor, Opus 40. No need to play the Violin Concerto in E minor again. That's all I will say about Mendelssohn. Oh, wait a minute: there is a Violin Concerto in D minor that's rarely heard for some reason, so have your DJs play that the next time they itch to play the E minor. Just in case your listeners get tired of the Piano Concertos I mentioned earlier, there is a Piano Concerto in A minor without an opus number.

Overplayed as it is, the Italian Symphony is nowhere near as annoying as the Violin Concerto in E minor. But Mendelssohn's other Symphonies, like No. 5 in D major, are deserving of more radio play. And the youthful String Symphonies are worth checking out, too.

Gian Carlo Menotti

Around Christmas, there are sometimes productions of Menotti's opera _Amahl and the Night Visitors_. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have any purely instrumental numbers that classical instrumental stations could use. However, Menotti did write orchestral music: considering playing his Violin Concerto in A minor.

Leopold Mozart

After Wolfgang Amadeus was born, Leopold composed very little, focusing his attention on turning little Amadeus into a child prodigy phenomenon. In this, Leopold succeeded, and if he had outlived his son by two centuries, would have raked in massive profits. Some have speculated that Leopold Mozart could have been a far more significant composer if he had kept up his composing, but it seems far more reasonable to speculate that even back then he had some idea of the greater marketing potential of a child prodigy over a seasoned composer.

The "Toy" Symphony that was once attributed to Joseph Haydn is now more often attributed to Leopold Mozart, but we still can't for sure rule out other contemporaries whose names might not even appear in the _New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians_. There are other Symphonies by Leopold Mozart that we can ascribe to him with greater certainty, thanks mainly to the scholarship of Cliff Eisen, and which have been recorded on compact disc.

Mozart's Trumpet Concerto in D major, for the old natural trumpet, is a work that could not be attributed to Joseph Haydn, who famously wrote the first Trumpet Concerto for a trumpet with valves. Like Michael Haydn's Trumpet Concerto in C major, Mozart's is in two movements, the first slow, the second fast.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Ludwig von Köchel counted 626 distinct compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, yet some classical radio stations play only a subset of about twenty or forty of these.

Mozart wrote about forty Symphonies, of which less than a dozen get regular play (most of the ones with numbers in the 30s, plus No.s 40 and 41). Symphony No. 1 seems to get a lot of concert and radio play, as if to underline the fact that Mozart was a child prodigy. What most people forget or don't even know is how Wolfgang's father Leopold laid the groundwork for his son's achievements in the genre.

In between No. 1 and No. 25, Wolfgang wrote a lot of thoroughly competent and even pleasant Symphonies. Because of something I wrote earlier in this book about Bruckner, I dug up Mozart's Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, K. 22. I like it. I had probably never heard it before and I might have never heard it in my lifetime.

There are also overtures besides those to _Magic Flute_ and _Marriage of Figaro_ , like _Mitridate_ and _Ascanio in Alba_ , which your listeners will probably enjoy just as much. And Mozart's arias, duets, choruses and other such selections from his operas are pretty good provided your station doesn't have a bias against vocal music.

Because of my particular experience with Mozart I've grown to like his chamber music. The Quartets dedicated to Haydn, the Flute Quartet No. 1 in D major, the Duos for Violin and Viola, these are all worthy of radio play, and excellent substitutes for any unnecessary plays of _Eine kleine Nachtmusik_ , which should never again be played by your radio station unless either a listener specifically requests it or you have a new recording by a local ensemble.

But really, with Mozart, you can practically throw darts or spin a wheel and come up with reliably pleasant selections. Or you can use a random number generator (there are a few available online for free). I tried this with the random number generator from Random.org, set to give me ten numbers from 1 to 626, and these are the selections it gave me: a Canon in G major for four voices, K. 232; the Symphony No. 32 in G major, K. 318; Regina coeli, K. 108 (K. 74d in the amended catalog); an Adagio in B minor for piano, K. 540; a Fantasia in C minor for violin and piano, K. 396 (K. 385f amended); an aria, "Nehmt meinen Dank, ihr holden Gönner!" K. 383; the Symphony No. 34 in C major, K. 338; an aria, "Alcandro, lo confesso," K. 294; another aria, "Mentre ti lascio, o figlia," K. 513; and a Piano Sonata in C major, K. 545. Aside from the two Symphonies, I am 99% sure I have never heard any of these in any way, and certainly not on classical radio. And after weeding out the vocal selections, this still leaves three or four instrumental pieces your listeners have probably never heard before.

If I may make a note to Hollywood music editors: if you need some sad music because one of the characters in the movie died, please pick something other than the Lacrymosa from Mozart's Requiem in D minor. Among many possible suggestions, consider Michael Haydn's Requiem in C minor for the death of Archbishop Sigismund, a piece which Mozart studied in preparation for his own Requiem.

Carl Nielsen

World-famous in Denmark, goes the joke about Nielsen. It has a kernel of truth: some general knowledge almanacs will list one-hit wonders like Leoncavallo and Massenet as "notable composers" but mysteriously leave out Carl Nielsen. The fact is that Nielsen is so far the most important Danish composer. Having rejected the influence of Wagner early on, Nielsen himself became a tremendous influence on almost all later Danish composers, and even one or two British composers, such as Robert Simpson.

Of Nielsen's Symphonies, the obvious choices for radio would seem to be the Second, a musical depiction of the Four Temperaments, and the Fourth, subtitled "Det Uudslukelige" (roughly translated as "The Inextinguishable"). We should however not deprive ourselves of the youthful charm of the First Symphony nor the frank message of the Fifth Symphony; the former is however more suitable for radio play on account of the latter being essentially in two movements that are not always subdivided into smaller tracks. The Third Symphony, the "Espansiva" (so titled by the composer) bears a spiritual kinship with Beethoven's Third, and it would be a good idea to put the first movements of each on either side of a commercial break.

As for Overtures, there is the ebullient _Maskerade_ Overture, and the more pensive _Helios_ Overture. As for the music from _Aladdin_ , the only caution I would give is that your DJs might unintentionally utter a racial slur in identifying the titles of some of the excerpts.

Ignacy Paderewski

Poland's first prime minister was a lion at the piano. His solo piano pieces, though not considered as essential to a pianist's repertoire as those by Chopin, are nevertheless quite important. Just the same your station would do well to look beyond the Menuet Celebre in G major or the Melodie in G-flat major.

The Piano Concerto in A minor, lasting just a little over a half hour total, can have one of its three movements as part of a 20-minute block. The Polish Fantasy is a beautiful work but over 20 minutes in most interpretations. And the thrilling Symphony in B minor is not only long as a whole but each of its three movements would overrun a 20-minute block by a wide margin. But... what about just skipping ahead in the first movement to 15:32 or 19:59 in the Maksymiuk recording? There is much thrilling music in that 15- or 20-minute stretch.

Paul Paray

Years ago I went to a Detroit Symphony concert at Orchestra Hall. I think Neeme Järvi was the conductor that day. During intermission, in one of the hallways, I noticed a photograph of Paul Paray (one of Järvi's predecessors) conducting the DSO, and the photo was taken in such a way that we can read the name of the composer on the score: Paul Paray.

This Frenchman can almost be counted as a local Detroit composer, as the Assumption Grotto Orchestra (rumored to include at least a few DSO players) led by Eduard Perrone has released a few different recordings of various Paray compositions.

The Joan of Arc Mass is bland and forgettable, but the Symphony No. 1 in C major is replete with the tuneful elegance we would expect from a French composer. However, I might be better disposed towards the Mass if instead of the James Paul recording with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus, I had Paray's own recording with the Detroit Symphony and the Rackham Symphonic Choir: that is the opinion of a reviewer at Amazon.com. It's possible your radio station already has in the library Paray's recording of Saint-Saëns's worn-out Third Symphony: the Paray Mass is "filler" on that album.

Mel Powell

So how exactly did I choose the composers for this book? At the outset, it was clear that Bach, Beethoven and Bruckner were in. Everyone else had to prove themselves. However, if they were listed as a "notable composer" in the _World Book Almanac 2003_ , that was good enough for me. I don't think I had ever heard of Mel Powell before. His String Quartet, which has been recorded by the Composers Quartet, is your usual, run-of-the-mill avant-garde stuff. But he's an American composer, so American radio stations should play his music if for no other reason than that.

Sergei Prokofiev

Some stations play Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1 in D major, Opus 25, the "Classical," so often that listeners should start to wonder whether or not Prokofiev wrote any other Symphonies. Those listeners who also go to concerts may have heard his Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, which ends with one of the most frenetically energetic sardonic triumphs in all Soviet music. The Sixth Symphony, while not being entirely unique for being in the remote key of E-flat minor (at least a couple other Soviet symphonists also used this key), would be worth playing on the radio for this reason alone.

In Hollywood, Prokofiev could have found a success similar to that of John Williams. Eisenstein's film _Alexander Nevsky_ foreshadows _Star Wars_ in quite a few ways, not the least of which is how Prokofiev's score clearly delineates the good guys from the bad guys. Of course in real life, with the Soviet Union involved in World War II, things were far less clear-cut. Prokofiev's music for _Alexander Nevsky_ is most commonly available as a cantata fashioned from the film score, but the film score in its entirety has been recorded anew in the era of the compact disc. Either way, the "Battle on the Ice" cues are exhilarating.

Prokofiev does not seem to have had as much success on the opera stage. His opera _The Fiery Angel_ was supposed to have premiered in the late 1920s, but the first complete performance didn't occur until after his death. So he reworked some of the music into his Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Opus 44, which is as characteristic of Prokofiev's style as it is unfamiliar. For radio it can work well either in whole or in excerpts.

Such is the dominance of Prokofiev's First Symphony that a recent Naxos recording of Prokofiev's first two Symphonies by the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop features on the cover the words "Symphony No. 1 'Classical'" in a significantly larger font than "Symphony No. 2," which takes up more than twice as much space on the disc. The Second Symphony is in a rather unusual format compared to Prokofiev's other Symphonies, consisting of a sonata form first movement followed by a final movement theme and variations.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Far more interesting than the overplayed Symphony No. 2 in E minor are both the Symphony No. 1 in D minor and the Symphony No. 3 in A minor.

The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is a deservedly popular piece. However, I would strongly advise against excerpting the famous 18th Variation by itself. The whole piece lasts a little over 20 minutes, so it would not be all bad to go that long without commercials, and a better option over excerpting a movement of the Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor.

However, the Paganini Variations are not the only Variations that Rachmaninoff wrote. He also wrote Variations on the famous "La Folia di Spagna" melody, though he attributed the tune to Arcangelo Corelli. For those who prefer their Variations in orchestral guise, Corneliu Dumbraveanu has orchestrated the Corelli Variations competently without trying to outdo the orchestral flair of the Paganini Variations.

Maurice Ravel

Given that _Bolero_ runs between 15 and 20 minutes, it is surprising that it gets as much radio play as it does. On top of the issue of duration, it is a piece that starts out softly, and DJs often feel the need to warn listeners of this fact, lest they think the station has gone off the air. _La Tombe de Couperin_ gets a lot of play on WCPE, but I don't think the old WQRS played it all that often, nor now WRCJ.

A vastly underrated piece by Ravel is _La Valse_ , a wonderfully unique Impressionist take on the Viennese waltz. More underrated still are the Piano Concerto in G major and the String Quartet in F major. Also check out the various minuets.

Max Reger

Something that really spices up a set of variations is putting a fugue at the end. I especially recommend Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Beethoven. He also did Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart, the theme coming from Mozart's Piano Sonata in A major, K. 331, but not the famous Rondo alla Turca, but the first movement, which as it happens is also a theme and variations. There is something almost Brucknerian to the Reger's fugue based on Mozart's theme. And Bach and Telemann also got the Variations and Fugue treatment from Reger.

But I don't mean to give the impression that Reger only wrote music based on other people's themes. He wrote a Piano Concerto and a Violin Concerto based on his own themes. The Symphonic Prologue to a Tragedy is such a lengthy work (more than half an hour) that it makes more sense as a concert work than an overture to some tragic play in the theater. The Sinfonietta in A major, a very pleasant work, is another example of Reger's titles being misleading as to dimension, as this is a work that could rightly be called a Symphony.

Ferdinand Ries

Here is another name connected with Beethoven and the piano, perhaps more famous for the Beethoven biographical material he wrote with Wegeler than for his own music, of which there is a lot. Ries wrote several Piano Concertos. Surprisingly, Ries wrote a lot more Violin Sonatas than Piano Sonatas.

And Symphonies, too, many of which strongly allude to Beethoven; for example, what does the beginning of his Symphony No. 5 in D minor remind you of? In fact, your listeners should be forgiven if they think you have dug up some forgotten Beethoven compositions. These Symphonies, while perhaps more Mozartian in their more contemplative moments, also have plenty of thrilling Beethovenian electricity.

Joaquín Rodrigo

With all the horrible things that happened in the 20th Century, even those composers who did not eschew tonality seemed obligated to write music that somehow commented on those horrors. Case in point: Shostakovich. Rodrigo's music, on the other hand, is remarkably untroubled by modern anxieties.

The slow movement of the _Concierto de Aranjuez_ , while not joyous, has a melancholy that would not be too out of place in the Baroque. It is certainly beautiful, but the other two movements are also very nice and take up less radio time. And let's not forget that not only did he write other concertos, he also wrote other music including guitar. Of the concertos for other instruments, I recommend the _Concierto Serenata_ , for harp and orchestra.

Gioachino Rossini

Those classical radio stations that can only do instrumental works would seem to be limited in their coverage of Rossini to his opera overtures. Rossini did write Symphonies, though some were reworked as opera overtures: for example, a Symphony in E-flat major became the Overture to _La Cambiale di Matrimonio_. A Symphony in D major stayed that way, and as far as I can tell has never been recorded.

But even among the opera overtures, we are not limited to the handful of overtures played most of the time ( _Barber of Seville_ , _Thieving Magpie_ , _Semiramide_ , _William Tell_ perhaps being the core four that are guaranteed to be on almost every album titled _Rossini: Overtures_ ). Depending on how you count these things, Rossini wrote almost forty operas, and although he did occasionally recycle music, there are still more than two dozen overtures that will sound both fresh and familiar to your listeners.

Naxos is undertaking a recording of all Rossini overtures, and already Volume 1 has brought attention to the little-known _Le Siège de Corinthe_ and _Otello_. Both of these are serious, and pleasant alternatives to _Semiramide_.

There is also chamber music by Rossini that we can draw upon. The Duetto in D major is pleasant enough, as are the various string sonatas. As for classical stations that are not limited against vocal music, there are Rossini's religious works to draw upon, such as the Stabat Mater and the Petite Messe Solenne. I will just say one thing about the latter: don't expect an adventure mass like would get from Beethoven or Bruckner.

Antonio Salieri

The first nonsensical, stupid misconception about Salieri that I will address is that "he was not as good as Mozart." Salieri was in fact better than Mozart, a disciplined man seasoned in his craft who wrote music that was deservedly popular in his lifetime. Part of the reason Mozart was good in the first place is because he studied Salieri's music (and that of many other composers), and Salieri helped him in these studies. What Salieri lacked was a lifestyle ready-made for theatrical treatment. Not that facts have ever stopped those who enjoy disrespecting the dead with ridiculous falsehoods.

Initially I had wanted to put Salieri in the "Little-Known Masters" chapter. Sadly, however, Salieri is today a famous composer for the wrong reason, namely because of the heinous slander against him, instead of any actual knowledge of his music. This means that he must be included in this chapter.

Salieri did not kill Mozart. More than not guilty, he is innocent of this charge. There is almost no evidence to support the rumor that Salieri even confessed to such a thing. And if he did confess, it was certainly due to the illness of his final years, and not out of a conscious effort to have his posthumous reputation ride the coattails of Mozart's growing fame.

The idiotic myth of the alleged low quality of Salieri's music needs to be dispelled and dismissed with strong prejudice. In order to support the murder myth, the incorrect assumption was made that Salieri's music is somehow inferior to Mozart's. As one of the best composers of his day, his operas were assiduously studied by Mozart, and we can see in Mozart's operas where he emulated the older master. Come to think of it, the mythology is also insulting to Mozart, whose seemingly effortless composition was the result of a thorough and continuing education, and a keen awareness of what his contemporaries were doing. Furthermore, Salieri was busy and in demand, not just in Austria but also in France.

_Les Danaïdes_ , written for France, has been recorded in full. But the Overtures to many of his operas have been recorded and collected like Rossini's Overtures. Indeed there are certain innately Italian traits in his operas that have been associated so much with Rossini that you might have to remind yourself that Salieri came first.

But there was a rivalry between the Italian poets who wrote the words for the operas and Leopold Mozart, who took any slight against his son quite personally and attributed it to Salieri. Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were once pitted in a sort of compositional duel, which resulted in Mozart writing _Der Schauspieldirektor_ , K. 486, and Salieri _Prima la parole, poi la musica_. Salieri "won" the duel back then, but today Mozart is slightly ahead, though _Schauspieldirektor_ remains one of Mozart's lesser known works. If your station prefers the instrumental side of classical, both of these have excellent Overtures.

As for Concertos, I have always found the two Piano Concertos by Salieri to be just as boring as those by Mozart. Salieri's Concerto in C major for Flute and Oboe makes a much stronger impression. From the score I can tell that Salieri's Organ Concerto in C major is a wonderful piece. Unfortunately, there are not many recordings to choose from.

Salieri wrote very few Symphonies but they're all winners. "La Veneziana" is tuneful and concise, while "Giorno Onomastico" has a delightfully belligerent minuet; though its Finale points the way to the rambling Finale of Beethoven's Ninth.

I have to admit that I am not a big fan of Variations, but I really do like Salieri's 26 Variations on "La Folia di Spagna." These Variations have the distinction of being the very first set of orchestral variations ever written not part of a larger orchestral work (such as a Symphony). It would be appropriate to put Salieri's Variations on one 20-minute block, and after the commercial have the St. Anthony Chorale Variations by Johannes Brahms.

Domenico Scarlatti
I don't think I could get tired of the Sonata in E major, K. 380, whether played on harpsichord or piano. Nevertheless, he wrote hundreds of other sonatas that are also very nice; you can't go wrong even if you pick them at random. And to add variety, many of these have been transcribed for guitar. To narrow down the selection, you could pick a key, say, D minor, and try scattering those throughout a week's playlist).

Peter Schickele

Having studied the music of P. D. Q. Bach for so long, Schickele freely admits that some traits of Bach's have rubbed off on him. The Unbegun Symphony (lacking a first and a second movement because he was born too late to write them), _Bach Portrait_ and the Chaconne a son Gout are good examples of this.

Seriously, though, Peter Schickele has written music with serious intent. But none of it really stands out and should only be played to satisfy the curiosity of your listeners. Without the jokes, Schickele's music is rather monotonous.

Arnold Schönberg

I don't think I have ever heard Schönberg's music on the radio. I'm sure it has happened on American radio, most likely in the context of an orchestra's broadcast concert. And who can blame classical DJs from shying away from Schönberg with all that atonal stuff? Generally credited with the invention of serialism, a technique meant to replace those major and minor scales that had served us so well for the past 200 years or so, Schönberg had of necessity be the standard bearer for the New Viennese School.

But how did he write before he invented serialism? He took baby steps towards atonality, to be sure, but also wrote some unabashedly tonal music, and there is enough of it that your DJs can impress your listeners with it. The String Quartet No. 1 in D minor and the String Quartet No. 2 in F-sharp minor are just two examples of such works. Long and feverish, a movement at a time is good enough.

Another tonal work of Schönberg's is the Chamber Symphony No. 1 in E major (and let's not forget that Schönberg sponsored a chamber arrangement of Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 in E major).

Franz Schubert

The greatest portion of Schubert's catalog, compiled by Otto Erich Deutsch, is made up of Lieder (songs in German, often dealing with topics pertaining to love). But he also wrote a significant amount of orchestral music. Most of his symphonic oeuvre dates to the years between Beethoven's Eight and Ninth Symphonies. I am certain that the old WQRS played Schubert's Symphonies No.s 6 and 9 every week; the DJs were fond of identifying the former as "the Little C major" and the latter as "the Great C major." Personally, I much prefer No. 3 in D major.

No. 8 in B minor is called "Unfinished," but it is not the only Symphony that Schubert started and then dropped without explanation, though each of these various incomplete works is incomplete in its own different way. The B minor was orchestrated by Schubert up to about the middle, while No. 7 in E major was sketched, apparently beginning to end, and two different musicians have tried orchestrating it: Felix Weingartner in between the World Wars, and Brian Newbould in the 1970s. Also, there are two different Symphonies in D major that Schubert sketched in between No. 6 and No. 7, D. 615 and 708a.

Why did Schubert abandon these gestating Symphonies? Impending death justifies only the incompleteness of No. 10 in D major, also realized by Brian Newbould. More than one critic has expressed the sentiment that No. 7 is not worth completing, but No. 10 is. Having heard both the Weingartner and Newbould completions of No. 7 a few times, and No. 10 just once, I am now ready to say that I almost agree with that sentiment. In Schubert's shoes I can understand why he dropped No. 7, while No. 10 presents a very worthy successor to No. 9.

All these unfinished Symphonies have prompted some to renumber Schubert's Symphonies, and "the Great C major" has suffered the most from the ensuing confusion: you don't have to look far to find it variously referred to as "No. 7 in C major," "No. 8 in C major" or "No. 9 in C major." In fact, your DJs may even have differing opinions on the matter and added to this disagreement with their on-air identification of this particular work. According to the IMSLP, only the 1 to 10 numbering (the one with the drafted Symphony in E major as No. 7 and the partially completed Symphony in B minor as No. 8) is anywhere close to "stable," and should be preferred to any other numbering.

Of the completed Symphonies, the first two are entirely competent and worthy of occasional play. I have already mentioned the fresh and energetic No. 3 in D major. No. 4 in C minor is nominally "tragic," but there is so much major key music in it that the overall impression is one of exuberance rather than melancholy or any kind of pathos. The earliest Schubert Symphony to get its proper due is probably No. 5 in B-flat major.

In the field of chamber music, everyone seems to go ga-ga for "Death and the Maiden" and the "Trout." One piece that I really like is the String Quartet No. 15 in G major arranged for string orchestra. As a show of gratitude to Jessica Enderle after her quartet gave a brilliant performance of my Quartet in A-flat major, I gave her as a gift the Bärenreiter edition parts of the Schubert Quartet in G major.

Clara Schumann

Famous today as the wife of Robert Schumann and for the rumors of a relationship with Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann was a very good composer in her own right. I suspect one of these days Hollywood will make one of those hilariously inaccurate historical films in which Johannes and Clara give in to their passion. If such a film at least included some actual music by Clara Schumann, it would not be all bad.

I think I would like her music more if she had written more orchestral music. Like her husband, she wrote a Piano Concerto in A minor, and I honestly prefer hers to his.

Robert Schumann

Did you know that Mahler tinkered with the orchestration of Schumann's Symphonies? His re-orchestrations have been performed and recorded by conductors like Riccardo Chailly and Thomas Zehetmair; these are a nice way to mix up your station's coverage of Schumann. You may perhaps find it predictable that my favorite of Schumann's Symphonies is No. 2 in C major.

To this day Schumann has a reputation for excessively thick, heavy orchestrations. But as the 1841 version of his Symphony No. 4 in D minor shows, his orchestration is not all bad. In fact, this particular version, which has been recently recorded, is as full of fascinating surprises as an early version of a Bruckner Symphony to someone more familiar with a later version. I would even go so far as to say that Schumann's original orchestration is downright sparkling. It's also a wonderful piece of music in the more commonly heard 1851 version.

I won't go too in depth about the chronology of Schumann's Symphonies. The official First, the Symphony No. 1 in B-flat major, "Spring," Opus 38, which was written after the first version of the Fourth, is an adequate work but overplayed work. The underappreciated gem of Schumann's symphonic oeuvre is the Symphony No. 2 in C major, Opus 61, which he said he wrote at the height of a severe depression, but which hardly shows any signs of this. The vigorous energy of the first movement of the Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, the "Rhenish," Opus 97, is hardly matched by the following movements, but there's nothing wrong with putting the first movement into a 20-minute block with something else.

I have already mentioned Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor. There is no need to play that unless a listener specifically requests it. Opt instead either for the Violin Concerto in D minor, WoO 23, or the Cello Concerto in A minor, Opus 129.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Perhaps the happiest thing Shostakovich ever wrote was the Festive Overture. But for the most part, the music of Shostakovich is suffused with a spirit of suffering, occasionally sarcasm, and sardonic expressions of triumph. Of the 15 Symphonies he wrote, the most played are perhaps No. 1 in F minor (a "graduation piece") and No. 5 in D minor, billed "a Soviet artist's response to justified criticism" by the composer; of course the joke went over Stalin's head.

The rest of Shostakovich's Symphonies are for the most part discovered only by the curious. The Symphony No. 7 in C major, famously written during the 1941 siege of Leningrad, is of such length that even just the Scherzo takes up a huge portion of a 20-minute block. Aside from orchestra broadcast concerts, Shostakovich's enigmatic last two Symphonies are never heard on radio. No. 15 is perhaps more amenable to daytime radio than No. 14, which consists of eleven songs about death in a kind of 20th century _Das Lied von der Erde_.

Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues for piano solo, which follow the same organizational principle of the circle of fifths as the Opus 28 Preludes of Chopin, have for the most part been mostly the domain of piano and composition students. At most, one Prelude and Fugue lasts about 10 minutes, and your listeners will likely be grateful to discover this music.

Jean Sibelius

Of the seven Symphonies Sibelius completed, No. 2 in D major and No. 5 in E-flat major are probably the most often played, both on the radio and in the concert hall. As late as No. 3 in C major, Sibelius was still working at ridding himself of the excesses of the Romantic era exemplified by Tchaikovsky. And though No. 5 shows great progress towards the ascetic purity of the last two Symphonies, it is too often played and the other ones besides No. 2 are worth hearing more often.

I would even argue in favor of playing No. 1 in E minor more often, despite its moments of unbridled undiscipline (especially in the Finale), for, despite these faults, it contains much that is exciting and characteristically Sibelian.

The single-movement Symphony No. 7 in C major, although running a little bit over twenty minutes, can be an excellent substitute any time your DJs want to play a movement of the Second Symphony again. It is so worthwhile that I would even suggest programming very short pieces in the following block so as to compensate for the lack of commercials prior.

Another genre where we can see Sibelius expelling the excesses of the Romantic era is in the Violin Concerto: compare for example his sober Violin Concerto in D minor to the flamboyant Violin Concerto in D major by Tchaikovsky.

Bedřich Smetana

Are you as sick as I am of the "Moldau" from _Ma Vlast_? The usual excerpts from _The Bartered Bride_ (you know, the Overture, the Dance of the Comedians) may be played as often, but at least I don't find them as annoying as the "Moldau."

Smetana wrote two String Quartets which seem to be very well known among violinists, violists and cellists, but which are hardly ever played on the radio. These ought to be played more. Smetana's piano music is worth checking out: according to Prof. John Guinn, former music critic for the _Detroit Free Press_ , those piano pieces constitute great piano music that is very much off the beaten path.

John Philip Sousa

Anyone who has served in the Marine Corps should have a special place in their heart for Sousa's "Semper Fidelis" march. The "Stars & Stripes Forever" is of course every American's favorite, but Sousa wrote hundreds of other marches, some of which you might only know if you are a member of the particular institution for which Sousa wrote the march in question. Of the lesser known marches, I recommend the "New Mexico," which apparently tries to incorporate Mexican instruments.

Louis Spohr

You wouldn't know it from a music appreciation class these days, but Spohr was a famous composer in his day, admired by and influential to composers we still appreciate today, such as Schumann and Wagner. Also, Spohr may have been responsible for certain innovations in music, such as conducting with a baton and the use of rehearsal letters in scores. I won't be recommending any specific piece by Spohr: whatever Violin Concerto or Symphony you can get your hands on is sure to be good.

William Grant Still

Mahler included guitars and mandolins in a Symphony, but William Grant Still included the banjo, specifically in his Symphony No. 1, the "Afro-American." You can hear it in the third movement, a kind of American Scherzo with a tune that may have inspired Gershwin's "I've Got Rhythm."

Richard Strauß

Yes, I like _Till Eulenspiegel_. And _Don Juan_. The Horn Concertos are nice and not as overplayed. Had you ever heard of the Symphony in F minor (the same key as Bruckner's analogous Study Symphony)? And the Fanfare for the Vienna Philharmonic would go nicely before a recording of that orchestra playing a Bruckner Symphony.

Strauß wrote concertos for instruments other than the horn. There is a Violin Concerto and an Oboe Concerto. The Finale of the Oboe Concerto in particular will have you wondering why this music is not more popular.

Igor Stravinsky

Excerpts from _The Firebird_ ballet, or even the entire Suite, are sometimes heard on classical radio stations. _Rite of Spring_ is heard only in the context of orchestra concert broadcasts. But these works come from early in the career of a man who lived for almost a century, and whose oeuvre shows quite a few significant stylistic fluctuations.

The Symphony in E-flat major is a student work that could, on casual listening, easily be mistaken for something by Rimsky-Korsakov or Glazunov. Listeners who would complain about _Rite of Spring_ being too noisy should have no trouble with this Symphony. The three ballets for Diaghilev in the 1910s ( _Petrushka_ plus the two already mentioned) catapulted Stravinsky to international fame. The plot of _The Rite of Spring_ harks back to primitive societies, but the music is of such modernity that people are willing to believe that was the cause of the riot at the premiere.

After those ballets, Stravinsky turned to neoclassicism. He returned to the ballet stage with _Pulcinella_ , which evokes the music of Baroque composer Pergolesi. The Symphony in C and the Symphony in Three Movements were major improvements over the forgettable Symphony in E-flat. And the _Symphony of Psalms_ , famously dedicated to God and the Boston Symphony both, is perhaps more what one would expect from the composer of Rite of Spring.

Stravinsky's move to serialism was not as big a change of style as many commentators make it out to be. With serial compositions like the ballet music for _Agon_ , Stravinsky demonstrated that serialism is a method of composition that can easily suit a composer with as strong a personality as Stravinsky's. None of Stravinsky's serial pieces could be mistaken for something of Schönberg's or Webern's or Berg's.

Shorter pieces by Stravinsky worth putting on playlists include the Circus Polka, the Scherzo à la Russe, _Fireworks_ and a Greeting Prelude based on the copyrighted "Happy Birthday to You" song. The Scherzo Fantastique is somewhat longer than these pieces but still only slight more than half of a 20-minute block.

The old WQRS used to play _The Star Spangled Banner_ every weekday at noon. If your station does this, there is no need to play the same recording every day. One day, for example, your DJ could instead play Stravinsky's arrangement, which features some rather interesting harmonies mixed in with the more familiar ones we're accustomed to hearing. Incidentally, the best way to clear out a computer lab at closing time is to play Robert Goulet singing the anthem (in a more traditional arrangement) a few minutes before closing.

Franz von Suppé

Like Leroy Anderson, Franz von Suppé has written several famous tunes without quite becoming a household name (though his rather long full birth name, which some note writers are fond of starting their notes off with, is not an obstacle to fame). Suppé wrote several operettas, of which only the overtures seem to survive. Though I don't get tired of _Poet & Peasant_ or _Light Cavalry_ , there are several other Suppé overtures to explore. Even _Boccaccio_ gets you a little bit off the beaten track.

Alfred Walter has recorded every single Suppé overture, waltz, polka and march he could get his hands on, resulting in several discs on the Marco Polo label. _Mozart_ could very well be paired with an overture by Mozart in a given 20-minute block. Also check out the Solemn Overture and the ominously titled _Paragraph 3_.

If your station is open to playing arias, duets, choruses, etc., and you don't mind tracking them down, you can get complete recordings of a two or three Suppé operettas. To my knowledge, _Pique Dame_ and _Boccaccio_ are thus available. Occasionally Suppé uses music from the overture later on in the plot, triggering a pleasant recognition of the familiar tunes in an unfamiliar context.

But the gold tip here is Suppé's intense Requiem. While being appropriately solemn and serious, you will still recognize the style of the master of operetta in this excellent setting of the Requiem. And fortunately there are a number of different recordings to choose from, which is not quite the case with some of the obscure Suppé overtures.

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

What could I possibly recommend by this rather overplayed composer? Lots of things, actually. As often as Tchaikovsky's music gets played on American radio, the stations don't come close to exhausting the entirety of his oeuvre because they tend to play a few core works a lot, just as is the case with Mozart.

Apparently there has been so much desire for a Tchaikovsky Seventh Symphony that at least two separate attempts have been made. To my knowledge, the most credible one is the one by Semyon Bogatryryev and based on actual sketches by Tchaikovsky for a Symphony in E-flat major, with the gaps filled out with orchestrations of actual Tchaikovsky piano pieces. But it has more in common with Schubert's Seventh Symphony than with Bruckner's Ninth in that it is a work he abandoned in favor of other works, and not a work he couldn't complete due to impending death. The other Tchaikovsky Seventh effort that I know of is by a computer program called TCHAIKOVSKY, which tried to 'learn' Tchaikovsky's style and imitate it in the kind of Symphony Tchaikovsky would have written after the famous Sixth Symphony.

Georg Philipp Telemann

From the old WQRS, I somehow got the impression that Telemann wrote little besides the _Tafelmusik_. In fact he wrote a lot besides that; he was an extremely prolific composer even by Baroque standards. It is amazing that I was unaware of the wonderful Concerto in E minor for Flute, Recorder and Strings, TWV 52:e1, until very recently.

As more concertos by Telemann are recorded, your station should avail itself of these compositions that can be consistently relied on to deliver charming melodies, great rhythmic drive and full advantage of the solo instrument's capabilities. For example, I recommend the Double Horn Concerto in F major, TWV 52:F4, which starts out with a rather visionary Adagio, followed by a very pleasant but by no means superficial Allegro.

Telemann's concerti are generally in four movements in the slow-fast-slow-fast pattern, with durations ranging from 7 to 18 minutes. You really can't go wrong picking these at random.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

The gravest mistake in the first edition of this book was to leave out Ralph Vaughan Williams. He is the perfect example of a composer who, although not as prolific as Bach or Haydn but not as self-critical as Dukas, nevertheless has a much wider catalog than radio play would suggest. There is more to Vaughan Williams than the Fantasia on "Greensleaves," the Tallis Fantasia, the Five Variants on "Dives and Lazarus" and the random excerpt from one of the Symphonies.

The Overture to _The Wasps_ also gets a decent amount of radio play, but this ignores the other music that Vaughan Williams wrote for that Aristophanes play, including a "March of the Kitchen Utensils" and some entr'actes. Indeed I wonder why I had never heard that amusing March on the radio before (and it's only 3 or at most 4 minutes long).

Of the Symphonies, No. 8 is the best suited for the radio, whether in individual movements or the whole thing. No. 7 is the Sinfonia Antarctica, sometimes derided for being a glorified film music suite than a real Symphony, but well worth hearing regardless. And No. 6 in E minor, despite the composer's objection, is entrenched in the minds of many as a depiction of war and its bloody, desolate aftermath.

Heitor Villa-Lobos

Seems like WCPE often plays _Bachianas Brasileiras_. Thanks to Sharon Isbin's recent album I learned of the Villa-Lobos Guitar Concerto (the disc also includes a nice concerto by Manuel Ponce and the familiar Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez).

Antonio Vivaldi

Vivaldi wrote dozens of concertos, some of which have been recorded hundreds of times. In light of this, would it surprise you to know that there are still Vivaldi works that have never been recorded?

The violinist Giuliano Carmignola with Andrea Marcon and the Venice Baroque Orchestra recently recorded five Violin Concertos by Vivaldi that had never been recorded before. Any concerto on that disc is worth playing on the air in its entirety; each of them should become an instant classic now that they are available on CD. In particular I recommend the one in G minor, RV 325. If you search for this album, Google is likely to assume that you're interested in _The Four Seasons_ , which Carmignola has also recorded (as well as lots of other famous violinists).

The Rustic Concerto in G major, RV 151, has been recorded more often the one in G minor I just mentioned, but not as often as any from _The Four Seasons_ , and it sometimes comes as filler for the latter.

The next time anyone tells me that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto five hundred times, I will ask them if they have heard the Bassoon Concerto in A minor, RV 499. The first time I heard it, it was such a shock I wondered if I even had the right track. The strong percussive effect Vivaldi achieves on the strings sets it apart from other Vivaldi concerti I had heard before. (However, examination of other recordings showed that some other ensembles downplay this percussiveness whereas L'Aura Soave Cremona with soloist Sergio Azzolini play it up). Each piece Vivaldi wrote is different from the others, though some more so than others.

For any standard orchestral instrument you can think of, odds are good Vivaldi wrote a concerto for it, or in some cases for two or three of them. Search for "Vivaldi horn concerto" and you might find the very charming Concerto in F major for 2 Horns and Strings, RV 539 recorded by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The relatively recent CD I'm referring to also includes concerti for other instruments, such as flute, oboe, cello.

Vivaldi also wrote chamber music, including various trio sonatas. The most famous of these is perhaps the one in D minor, in one movement, consisting of variations on the famous "Folia di Spagna" theme that later on would be attributed variously to Arcangelo Corelli (by Rachmaninoff) and Fernando Sor (by Miguel Llobet).

Richard Wagner

To what extent was Bruckner a Wagnerian symphonist? Some will say not very and point to traits generally considered 'Wagnerian' in music Bruckner wrote before hearing one note of Wagner's music. But Wagner himself tried his hand at the Symphony, though it appears the only one he completed was one in C major when he was very young. Clara Wieck wrote to her future husband Robert Schumann that Wagner had beat him to the punch in writing a Symphony modeled on Beethoven's Seventh. To my ears, however, Wagner's youthful Symphony in C major sounds rather Schumannesque. Being in four movements and about forty minutes long, any of its four movements are suitable for playing singly; I specially recommend the Scherzo.

It is of course in the field of opera (ahem, "music drama") that Wagner's fame lies. Most classical stations, seeming to interpret "classical" as "classical instrumental only," tend to limit their playing of Wagner's music to a small selection of overtures, preludes and interludes, plus the _Siegfried Idyll_ (which incorporates material from the opera _Siegfried_ but must not be considered an excerpt, like the Rhine Journey—which, by the way, is also a good idea for instrumental classical stations to play).

The famous "Ride of the Valkyries" is essentially the Prelude to Act III of _Die Walküre_ and a little bit after that, with the singing removed. From that same opera, the Preludes to Acts I and II are very nice and even more predominantly instrumental, the only problem being that these are not common concert hall excerpts and thus have not been prepped for such use; the DJ would have to be ready to stop at a musically appropriate point before the singing starts, or maybe even execute a very careful fade-out. But the Prelude to Act II is worth it: it includes the famous Valkyrie leitmotif in such a way that will be both fresh but listeners will foresee (or should I say 'forehear'?) its appearance with delicious anticipation.

Sir William Walton

The _Crown Imperial_ and _Orb & Sceptre_ marches by which Walton is usually represented on American radio, worthy successors to Elgar's _Pomp & Circumstance_, show Walton as a proper and prim British composer. But there is much more to Walton. For instance, not many people know that he is the author of one of the few instances of the words "What the hell" in opera, namely, _The Bear_.

Walton is also one of few composers to write a Viola Concerto, a favorite of violists who don't much like the idea of having to appropriate violin repertoire. But let's not ignore his more extroverted Violin Concerto or his Cello Concerto; a Double Bass Concerto suggests itself.

The Second Symphony is not as obvious in its appeal as the First, but well worth of more radio play. But heck, some radio stations would do well to play any Walton besides _Crown Imperial_ or _Orb & Sceptre_. The Spitfire Prelude and Fugue comes from Walton's score for the film _The First of the Few_ , but as far as I can tell, no other Walton movie music is available on disc apart from the movie.

Going further afield, there are the Variations on a Theme of Hindemith and the Johannesburg Festival Overture. If all these seem "too heavy," we can also choose from Walton's chamber music, which includes a String Quartet in A minor and a Piano Quartet.

Carl Maria von Weber

My favorite part of Paul Hindemith's _Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Weber_ is the Turandot Scherzo. Doesn't that make you the least bit curious to hear those themes in their original context? I started by looking for the complete opera _Turandot_ , an early example of European orientalism. The other themes come from Weber's Piano Duos.

Of the overtures, some radio stations love playing those to _Oberon_ and _Der Freischütz_. I would like to recommend _Abu Hassan_ : it's short, energetic, very tuneful, and very likely to already be in your station's library, likely on the same disc from which the DJs play the _Oberon_ Overture.

Felix Weingartner

Of course Felix Weingartner is most famous as a conductor, a little famous as an arranger and rather forgotten as a composer. Unfortunately, I can't say I'm impressed with any of his original music that I've heard. But maybe your listeners will think much better of Weingartner than I have. It's worth a try.

The Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Opus 74, is subtitled "Tragica," but I'd rather call it "Pathetic": the first movement pretty much just wallows in sadness, and the Scherzo has some interesting ideas but seems not to go anywhere. The Symphony No. 7 in C major, Opus 87, starts off better, but then there's singing in the second movement for apparently no reason.

John Williams

Your DJs can and should play familiar cues from such John Williams scores as _Superman_ , _Star Wars_ , _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_ , _E.T._ , _Close Encounters of the Third Kind_ , _Schindler's List_ , _Jaws_ , etc. After so many decades in Hollywood, Williams has also written music for other films that have not attained as strong a grip on the public consciousness, as well as films for which people might not guess John Williams was the composer for. In the former category, I am fond of the Midway March, which comes at the end of the film _Midway_ , while in the latter category, _Memoirs of a Geisha_.

I wish to emphasize the importance of playing cues other than his music for opening and closing credits of a movie. Take for example _Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith_ : after the opening scroll, the battle music is so overpowered by some really obnoxious sound effects more appropriate for a race track scene than a space battle that you might not even notice how Obi-Wan's leitmotif figures in the music. On a CD of just the music, listeners can enjoy and more fully appreciate Williams's use of leitmotif, which is far subtler and poetic than it generally gets credit for.

John Williams has also written some excellent music for NBC News shows and for the Olympics. Those who envy his Hollywood success often criticize his contributions to the concert hall as the work of someone who is hopelessly lost without the aid of visuals to guide his musical inspiration. I will admit that his Violin Concerto has not made much of an impression on me. But the Tuba Concerto, on the other hand, is an excellent refutation of the criticism. The Cello Concerto, written for Yo-Yo Ma, is very nice, but being long and in four connected movements, it is not as amenable to excerpting as the Tuba Concerto.

There of course are snobs screaming that John Williams is not a classical composer. But the snobs should be a rather small percentage of your listeners.

What Else Did the One-Hit Wonders Write?

Imagine for a minute that Beethoven's _Für Elise_ is his most famous piece. Once in a blue moon, we would hear one of the nine Symphonies as some sort of curiosity, and if a pianist were to play one of the Piano Concertos in concert, he or she would be expected to play _Für Elise_ as an encore. The late String Quartets would be unknown. Our musical culture would be much poorer as a result.

Fortunately, that is not actually the case in today's world. But we are doing a similar injustice to quite a few composers, like the guy who wrote that tune that's often played at weddings, or the guy who wrote the music for the dancing hippos in Walt Disney's _Fantasia_. We might also be doing ourselves an injustice, missing out on music we would really like if we knew it existed.

The challenge with these one-hit wonders is in two parts: first finding out what else they wrote besides the one hit, and second finding recordings of the other things that they wrote. For that reason, in this chapter, I will say more about specific recordings. If your station's library doesn't already have the recordings I mention, then perhaps your local music store might be able to get them on special order, though searches are likely to be frustrating, with the lesser known piece a needle in the haystack of different recordings of the one hit. Many of these one-hit wonders were prolific composers, boasting very long lists of works in the _New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians_. Much of that music was almost certainly played in the lifetimes of those composers, yet a lot it would be a world premiere recording if it was recorded today.

Such music will likely strike you as being singularly unknown. But learning such music doesn't have to be a cannonball jump into cold, unfamiliar waters. Some of the one-hit wonders' hits are small pieces that come out of larger works. Hearing those selections that surround the well-known piece is an excellent start in this journey of discovery. In the process, we may find that the composer's original context for the excerpt we've come to know and love so well is the most precious thing of all that we were missing when we focused our attention entirely on one excerpt.

Tomaso Albinoni

Here we have one of the strangest cases of a one-hit wonder. Pedants and lawyers are fond of pointing out that the famous Adagio in G minor was not really composed by Albinoni, but by Remo Giazotto, and then with only a very slight and tenuous basis on anything actually written by Albinoni, and that therefore that famous piece is technically still under copyright. But not to worry, there are plenty of actual compositions by Albinoni which are indeed in the public domain.

There are a few Symphonies, some Violin Sonatas, ballet music and even a Concerto in E minor that was once attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach (see BWV Anh. 23). The son of a wealthy merchant, Albinoni did not publish much music in his lifetime, but what he did publish sold well and far, reaching Bach in Germany. The Oboe Concertos are now an important part of a solo oboist's repertoire.

Early on, Albinoni also tried his hand at church music, but the two or three works he wrote met with little if any success. On the vocal side, perhaps Albinoni was ill-equipped for church music but eminently suited for opera, and in fact in his days he was well-known for the many operas he wrote, with a production that rivals that of Rossini, and his wife was a soprano who sang in some of his operas. The Opus 7 Concertos for Strings are short and charming, much like Vivaldi's.

Some say he wrote more than fifty operas, others put the number closer to eighty. Most of these were forgotten after his death, with the exception of _I veri Amici_ , remembered in the history books on account of having been performed in Munich in 1722 to celebrate a royal marriage. A small handful of his operas have been recorded in their entirety, but these are very hard to find on account of the Giazotto Adagio in G minor and Albinoni's own instrumental music dominating his share of the bins.

Luigi Boccherini

If there is a piece of music that Hollywood loves to use as a shorthand for pompous elegance, it would have to be the Minuet from Boccherini's String Quintet in E major, Opus 11, No. 5. That's right: not only is it one movement out of a longer work, it is one movement out of a larger work that is a part of a set of six! The Quintet in E major starts out with a heartfelt slow movement, followed by a lively and tuneful Allegro. Then the famous Minuet. Unfortunately the only complete recording I could find, by the Steiner Quartet, sounds like it was remastered in the same room as a leaking oxygen tank.

My favorite piece by Boccherini is to this day his String Quintet in C major, inspired by night music on the streets of Madrid. Boccherini wrote several String Quintets, and although this detail may be of interest only to people who play in string quartets, it may be worthwhile to mention that some of Boccherini's String Quintets call for a second viola, some for a second cello.

Boccherini also wrote for larger ensembles, including ballet music and Symphonies for orchestra. Anyone expecting Sturm und Drang from his Symphony No. 24 in D minor will be sorely disappointed. Let's not overlook his Concertos, most of which are for cello (even after ignoring the famous one by Grützmacher that is quite often today identified with Boccherini as the sole author), but there are quite a few for violin, flute, harpsichord.

On the vocal side, Boccherini wrote a couple of operas ( _La Clementina_ and _Ines de Castro_ ), a Christmas cantata, a Mass, some motets and even a few concert arias.

Jeremiah Clarke

The famous "Trumpet Voluntary" is the seventh of eight pieces in a Suite in D major for trumpet and strings by Jeremiah Clarke. The composer's original title was "The Prince of Denmark's March." But the whole Suite is filled with memorable melodies, and lasting about ten minutes, give or take one, there is no excuse not to put the whole Suite into a 20-minute block with some other music.

With some of these one-hit wonders, it is rather difficult to find recordings of anything besides the one thing they are famous for. In Clarke's case, I was able to find a "Trumpet Aire or Symphony of Flatt Trumpits" from _The Island Princess_. Upon hearing it, I wondered why this isn't Clarke's one hit rather than the Trumpet Voluntary.

Clarke wrote a lot of songs and church music, but none of it appears to have been recorded. In fact, the vast majority of Clarke's music is for the church: services, anthems, hymns, psalms, etc. Thanks to the Charivari Agréable and director Kah-Ming Ng, Clarke's "Blest be those sweet Regions" stands a good chance to become better known, appearing on their _Oxford Psalms_ album on the Signum Classics label.

Léo Delibes

I am not sure Delibes should be in this category. It's true that the Flower Duet from _Lakme_ gets played a lot, but as soon as I heard the Prelude to _Coppelia_ , I realized that this is music I've heard before. Not as often as the Flower Duet, but often. What I had initially failed to realize, as I am not all that big on ballet, is that Delibes is a major force in the ballet repertoire, and an inspiration to Tchaikovsky to work in that genre. Thus, _Sylvia_ and _Coppelia_ by Delibes are as important in ballet as _Swan Lake_ and _The Nutcracker_ by Tchaikovsky.

Delibes strove to establish himself in ballet and opera (these are related endeavors, for indeed, at one point a short ballet was considered an essential part of an opera). From his quite decent catalogue of opera, it is productive to pick out one or two titles that pique our interest. Some selection from _Les Musiciens de l'Orchestre_ would be an excellent counterweight to Britten's _Young Person's guide to the Orchestra_ , if only a recording could be found (if there is, it is probably buried among Flower Duet recordings). Or an excerpt from _Le Don Juan Suisse_ as a counterweight to Strauß's _Don Juan_ —again, if a recording could be found; looking on IMSLP dashes any optimism with their note that the score of this particular opera is in fact lost.

The success of _Lakme_ came close to the end of a respectably long life. In his final years, Delibes finished _Kassya_ in outline, but died before starting work on the orchestration. That task fell to fellow one-hit wonder Jules Massenet. As far as I can tell, the complete opera has not been recorded, but at least the Trepak has been recorded on the Naxos label, on a compilation titled _The Best of French Ballet: Delibes_ that also includes excerpts from _Sylvia_ , _Coppelia_ and _La Source_.

Let's also try to look at the Flower Duet within its larger context in _Lakme_. I was very surprised to see how early it occurs in the opera. In most recordings of the complete opera, it is about three tracks after the Act I Prelude, "Viens, Mallika... Dome epais le jasmin." The duet is between the title character and her servant Mallika.

George Enescu

It sure would be nice to have one of your orchestral pieces played when you are not even in your twenties yet. And for it to be a success, that would be awesome. But for it to be such a success that people don't want to play anything else of yours? That would be bad. Such was the case with George Enescu and his Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 in A major.

The natural first question here should be: Is there another Romanian Rhapsody, since the famous one is labeled No. 1? Yes, there is, No. 2 in D major, a very slow, lyrical work, an excellent counterweight to the flashy No. 1, and it even alludes to it near the end. Nevertheless, as _New Grove_ warns, we should not take the Romanian Rhapsodies as representative of Enescu's oeuvre, or even of his youthful oeuvre.

The early Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major wouldn't cause any snob to declare that any sort of paradigm shift occurred for the Symphony as a genre, and instead they will point out all the ways in which it fits with French Symphonies of the period. But it is a thoroughly pleasant work, and any of its three movements would be a worthy substitute for the Romanian Rhapsody No. 1.

Despite Enescu's annoyance at the popularity of the Rhapsody, Enescu continued to compose works inspired by his Romanian heritage. The Suite No. 3 in D major, "Villageoise," for example, draws on Enescu's childhood memories of a typical Romanian village.

Karl Goldmark

What else did Karl Goldmark write besides the _Rustic Wedding Symphony_? Lots of things, actually. For starters, another Symphony, No. 2 (the _Rustic Wedding_ is occasionally labeled No. 1, but the _New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians_ mentions a Symphony in C major prior to both of these), a Violin Concerto, an orchestral scherzo (Opus 45).

Goldmark wrote seven operas, of which the first, _The Queen of Sheba_ , written before the _Rustic Wedding_ but published after, secured his lifetime fame. Goldmark's operas were mostly forgotten after his death, but _Queen of Sheba_ has been recorded in its 4-act entirety, and the overtures of some of his other operas have also been recorded. His operas have been characterized as being between Meyerbeer and Wagner, and more successful when dealing with fairy-tale plots.

In exploring Goldmark's oeuvre, we should not expect stylistic uniformity: he was almost a chameleon, _New Grove_ would have us believe. Some of his compositions, like the Violin Concerto, show more the influence of Schumann and Spohr than Wagner, while the Piano Quintet No. 2 in C-sharp minor has impressionist touches.

Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov

If, prior to writing this book, I had been a contestant on _Jeopardy!_ and the answer was "This composer's most frequently played pieces are the _Caucasian Sketches_ ," I might not have asked "Who is Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov?" Or maybe another contestant would have buzzed in quicker. My frustration would be worse if it was an Audio Daily Double and they played "Procession of the Sardar" (the final movement of Suite No. 1, Opus 10, of the _Caucasian Sketches_ ).

Other ethnically titled pieces by Ippolitov-Ivanov include the _Armenian Rhapsody_ , Opus 48; the _Turkish March_ , Opus 55; and the _Turkish Fragments_ , Opus 62. He also wrote a Symphony in E minor and the _Spring Overture_. An interesting piece to program in the same 20-minute block as Franz Schubert would be _An Episode from the Life of Schubert_ , Opus 61.

Aram Khachaturian

The famous Sabre Dance comes out of the ballet _Gayane_. At least two Suites have been made from _Gayane_ , but it is the Sabre Dance that is heard almost exclusively. And even when other pieces of his are recorded, the producers feel a compulsive need to bundle the first Suite, which begins predictably enough with the famous Sabre Dance.

Such is the case, for example, with the Symphony No. 2 in E minor, the "Symphony with a Bell." If you like Shostakovich and other Soviet symphonists, you'll like Khachaturian's Symphonies. He has also written a Violin Concerto and a Cello Concerto.

Ruggiero Leoncavallo

Mascagni's _Cavalleria Rusticana_ is to Leoncavallo's _I Pagliacci_ the other half of opera's most famous double bill. However, unlike _Cavalleria_ with its Intermezzo, _Pagliacci_ doesn't have a number that people love taking out of context in the concert hall, but nevertheless the famous aria should trigger some recognition for someone hearing the complete opera from beginning to end for the first time. There are purely instrumental numbers in _Pagliacci_ that stations preferring instrumental can use, like the ballet at the start of Act II.

In Hollywood it often happens that two movies on very similar topics are made and released at about the same time. This sort of thing has also happened in the world of opera. For example, Puccini and Leoncavallo both tackled _La Bohème_ , and if it had not been for this coincidence and its consequence of Puccini's _Bohème_ becoming much more famous, Leoncavallo might have escaped one-hit wonder status.

Henry Litolff

Such is the plight of a one-hit wonder that his one famous piece, even if it comes out of a larger piece, can so thoroughly obscure everything else he wrote, including the context for his one hit. The Scherzo from Litolff's Concerto Symphonique No. 4 in D minor has been recorded many times by many pianists and included on many a CD as filler. I never sought to have any of Litolff's music in my CD collection, it just happened that that Scherzo is filler in one of Clifford Curzon's recordings of Brahms's First Piano Concerto.

It took some digging, but I've found a recording of the complete Concerto Symphonique No. 4: eleven copies, used for $11.99 from Amazon, three new for $79.00 — no thanks. The title suggests there are three other such concertos by Litolff, presumably written prior to the quarter-famous Fourth. Indeed I was surprised to find a complete recording of the Concerto Symphonique No. 3 in E-flat major, Opus 45. Some say these Concertos Symphoniques are more like Symphonies with piano, but No. 3 reminded me more of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, at least in the beginning, when the piano comes in just as surly.

Pietro Mascagni

Leoncavallo's _I Pagliacci_ is to Mascagni's _Cavalleria Rusticana_ the other half of opera's most famous double bill. In fact it was the success of _Cavalleria Rusticana_ that prompted Leoncavallo to try his hand at a short opera (also dealing with marital infidelity and murder), and in the process became another one-hit wonder.

The Intermezzo from _Cavalleria Rusticana_ being for orchestra alone, is thus quite easily taken out of context in the concert hall. Those who take it as an attack on Mascagni's honor that he is a one-hit wonder will point to the success that _L'Amico Fritz_ had in Europe, but this success nevertheless does not quite compare to the success of _Cavalleria Rusticana_.

Like some other one-hit wonders, it is quite difficult to find recordings of Mascagni compositions besides his one-hit, and it often takes knowledge of a specific title to find a catalog number to match to a specific recording that might be buried among recordings of _Cavalleria_ excerpts or complete recordings. There are the two interrelated compositions _Rapsodia Satanica_ and _Visione Lirica_ , as well as some solo piano pieces, most of which, as far as I can tell, have only been recorded by David Vine. If your station is in California, consider playing excerpts from _Un Pensiero a San Franciso_.

Jules Massenet

The famous Meditation from _Thaïs_ comes at the beginning of Act II, Scene 2. As so often happens with one-hit wonders whose one hit comes from the opera stage, the context of the hit is forgotten. In the case of the Meditation, it represents the thoughts of the title character after being visited by the monk Athanaël but before she decides to convert to Christianity.

Massenet's music for _Le Cid_ is quite lively and tuneful, one of those little-known works in the well-known line of music by Frenchmen about Spain, and if you don't care for the opera singing, instrumental excerpts have been recorded (such as on the _Spanish Festival_ album from Naxos). Also check out the _Ouverture de Phedre_.

Jean-Joseph Mouret

The famous Rondeau that was used as the theme for _Masterpiece Theatre_ , starts off the _Sinfonies de Fanfares_ , which continues with an Air and concludes with a Fanfare. It almost seems as if the only Mouret piece that has ever been recorded is the _Sinfonies de Fanfares_.

Carl Orff

Oh yeah, "O Fortuna" is but one excerpt out of _Carmina Burana_ , a work lasting about an hour, with many other excerpts suitable for radio play. There is a version for choir and chamber orchestra; this is a nice way to add variety to playing _Carmina Burana_.

Orff also wrote an opera titled _Die Kluge_. It exhibits a primitive rhythmic drive just as that which is found in _Carmina Burana_.

One must also acknowledge Orff's influence on music education. He wrote much music specifically meant for children to sing in classrooms, but these are also very suitable for concert performance and recording by professional musicians, and by extension for radio play. I recommend his pieces for children's choirs.

Johannes Pachelbel

Most musicians who do wedding gigs are by now just plain tired of Pachelbel's Canon in D major. And those who say they love that piece, I'm not sure if they're being sincere or facetious. The wedding application has of course caused certain distortions in the interpretation of the piece.

We saw in the case of _Lakme_ by Léo Delibes how one little piece out of an extensive work is taken out of context, and then completely eclipses in popularity the larger work it came out of. In the case of the Pachelbel Canon, we have somewhat of a unique situation in that the piece comes out of a work that is _only a little bit_ longer than the popular piece, the Canon and Gigue in D major.

Pachelbel was in his day primarily known as an organist, and you of course know about the tradition of organists and counterpoint. Both the Canon and the Gigue are contrapuntal pieces. But with the sentimental interpretations that have been heaped on the piece, the tempo has been slowed down to such an extent that it becomes difficult to appreciate the contrapuntal characteristics of the piece. And the Gigue just doesn't fit into the maudlin conception of the Canon, so it is simply ignored. Just playing the Gigue together with the Canon spices up a play of an otherwise thoroughly worn out piece.

The London Baroque recording on Harmonia Mundi offers a refreshing change of pace, with fast tempos that are more likely what Pachelbel himself intended. The Canon and Gigue are used to conclude a program of 'Parties' (what would more commonly be called 'Suites') which are as satisfying as they are obscure.

I mentioned earlier that Pachelbel was an organist. Wolfgang Rubsam has recorded a selection of Pachelbel's toccatas, preludes, chaconnes and fugues for Naxos. Pachelbel also wrote chorale harmonizations like Bach. Dieter Glos, for example, has recorded "Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ" and "Es geht daher des Tages Schein," along with a couple of toccatas.

And almost any contemporary of Bach would be expected to write choral music for church use. Pachelbel's music for vespers, which forms an extensive part of the listing of his works in the _New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians_ , has not been entirely neglected on compact disc, thanks to the King's Singers and the Charivari Agréable on the Signum Classics label: their Pachelbel vespers album includes four settings of the Ingressus, two Magnificats and two Sonatas "à 5."

Amilcare Ponchielli

Like Massenet, Ponchielli also wrote an opera containing the piece for which he is most famous. The Dance of the Hours, famously featured in Walt Disney's _Fantasia_ , comes out of the opera _La Gioconda_. So, before we get to what else did Ponchielli write besides _La Gioconda_ , let's talk about _La Gioconda_. It's an opera that has been performed in its entirety, like _Pagliacci_ and _Aida_ , and with stellar singers like Maria Callas, whose performance at la Scala in Milan with Antonio Votto conducting has been recorded for the EMI label.

The opera starts out with a Prelude rather than an Overture; lasting about five minutes, it is suitable for commercial radio play. Its lugubrious mood might be a surprise for someone expecting to find in it the jollity of the Dance of the Hours, but the Verdi-esque lyricism makes up for that. Besides, the very first scene of Act I does point ahead to the jollity of the Dance of the Hours. That famous piece occurs at the end of Act III, Scene 6, with the chorus singing "Prodigo! Incanto!"

Ponchielli's Trumpet Concerto bears the distinction of being one for trumpet and band rather than trumpet and orchestra. While various concerti have been arranged for the solo instrument and band, not many have been originally written for solo and band. Ponchielli's, as a matter of fact, has been recorded.

Emil von Reznicek

I've only watched four or five episodes of _Sergeant Preston of the Yukon_. I remember that almost every time Dave Wagner played the _Donna Diana_ Overture on the old WQRS, he would mention _Sergeant Preston_. So what else did Reznicek write besides that famous overture?

Let's start with _Donna Diana_ : has the whole opera been recorded? Apparently only once, by the Kiel Philharmonic conducted by Ulrich Windfuhr, with It's an opera in three acts, with a libretto in German. As far as I can tell from the track listing on Amazon.com, there aren't many purely instrumental numbers: the overture, of course, referred to as the Act I Prelude; a fanfare; the Act II Prelude; a ballet; a Zwischenspiel (interlude); and an introduction to Act III, Scene 4.

Titles of other stage works by Reznicek include _Die Jungfrau von Orleans_ , _Till Eulenspiegel_ , _Ritter Blaubart_ and _Der Gondoliere des Dogen_. But given the scarcity of complete _Donna Diana_ recordings, I can't hold out much hope for these lesser known titles having been recorded even once.

Reznicek wrote five Symphonies, all of which have been recorded. In the two that I have listened to, Reznicek seems to mistake ponderousness for profundity. Especially dull is the Symphony No. 1 in D minor, which should however not discourage you from exploring other First Symphonies in that key.

The String Quartets are worth a chance, though puzzlingly, only No. 1 in C-sharp minor seems to have been recorded. I hope this is one of those things I will need to update in this book later on.

Some of Reznicek's music may be hopelessly lost. The Nazis confiscated a lot of Reznicek's manuscripts after it became clear Reznicek would have no part in Nazi propaganda. Only very few manuscripts were returned to the composer's daughter after World War II, and he had died by then.

Emile Waldteufel

Every weekday at 5:30 p.m., WCPE has the "5:30 Waltz." On at least one occasion, that waltz has been the Skater's Waltz by Emil Waldteufel, or _Les Patineurs_ , to use the original title, which gets played by WCPE and other stations at quite a few times other than 5:30 p.m. The _Estudiantina_ almost gets Waldteufel out of one-hit wonder status. But the waltz that brought Waldteufel fame was _Manolo_ , thanks to a soiree attended by the Prince of Wales.

Waldteufel wrote more than three hundred waltzes and other dances, a significant fraction of which have been recorded, if nowhere else, on Marco Polo's comprehensive 11-volume _The Best of Emile Waldteufel_ series. Once in a while, Waldteufel indulged in quoting other composers: as a suggestion for a 20-minute block, consider Chabrier's _España_ followed by Waldteufel's waltz of the same title.

Apparently, Waldteufel tried his hand at operetta, but this was so unsuccessful it only merits a brief mention in the _New Grove_. The opus numbers for Waldteufel's works are pretty much useless, indicating neither order of composition nor order of publication; once Waldteufel became bankable, the German publisher Litolff retroactively started numbering Waldteufel's waltzes rather arbitrarily, starting with _Myosotis_ as Opus 101.

Little-Known Masters

Whereas with the one-hit wonders I have attempted to give a wider view of their output, with the selected little-known masters in this chapter I will instead focus on at most two or three of their works in the hopes of catapulting them to one-hit wonders. With any luck, in ten years I'll be revising this book so that those listed in the one-hit wonders chapter have been replaced by these little-known masters.

Yasushi Akutagawa

The brother of an actor, composer Yasushi Akutagawa did quite a few film and television soundtracks, and won the Japanese equivalent of the Oscars for his scores for _Hakkodasan_ and _Village of Eight Gravestones_. The soundtrack album for the latter film is available as an import on Amazon.com.

In the concert hall, if Akutagawa is known at all, it is most likely for his _Music for Symphony Orchestra_ , which at one time got a lot of concert play in America. The piece starts out at a somewhat slow tempo, but gives the impression of a great energy being held in reserve. About halfway through, the energy bursts forth in a more extroverted vein. If you are more familiar with Russian composers, it will be perfectly understandable if this music reminds you of Prokofiev or Khachaturiam, particularly the latter's "Sabre Dance" from _Gayane_ , though it is certainly of a more cheerful cast. And while Akutagawa certainly knew the Russian composers and emulated them, his music still has an undeniable individuality.

Franz Asplmayr

It seems almost unfair to include Asplmayr in this book, since, to my knowledge, none of Asplmayr's music has been recorded, ever. But it shouldn't be long before that situation is turned around. The score and parts of his Symphony in C major, for example, are available from IMSLP. I have even gone so far as trying to organize a "virtual orchestra" to play this piece. In a virtual orchestra, the musicians record their parts individually. This does away with the problems of musicians' conflicting schedules, but on the downside, it also eliminates the ensemble atmosphere. As of this writing, I only have the first oboe and a first violin part recorded.

It wasn't until long after Asplmayr's time that the 'Finale problem' became a serious issue for composers to tackle. The weight of the Symphony shifted from the first movement to the Finale, and the monumental Finales of 19th and 20th Century Symphonies do not always make for a satisfying conclusion to the symphonic experience.

In his concise Symphony in C major, an unrecognized masterpiece, Asplmayr deals with the Finale problem in a satisfying and convincing way. The first movement has a slow introduction, almost in the pompous manner of a French overture. But soon doubt creeps in and the music veers off to C minor. The faster music is energetic and boisterous. The slow movement has some genuine sadness, relieved by a middle section with a melody that sounds almost like it could be a Christmas carol. The Finale of this Symphony on paper looks a typical Finale of the period: a lightweight movement to round off the whole thing expeditiously. But even a passing acquaintance with the music will reveal that this Finale not only addresses the conflicts of the preceding movements, but successfully moves beyond them in a charming Irish jig.

Franz Ignaz Beck

At first publishers felt the need to link Beck's name with that of his teacher Johann Stamitz, but soon Beck was enough of a draw on his own. His Symphonies were published in his lifetime, but most of his music seems to have faded to obscurity in the 19th Century. In particular check out the Symphony in G minor from the Opus 3 set.

Jan Blockx

In searching for music off the beaten track, it is inevitable that one will come across composers who were famous at one time but are mostly forgotten today. It could be that they wrote one piece that was nothing more than a passing fad, a flash in the pan. But if that composer appears in an anthology of music compiled by a respected editor, it stands to reason that at least a few people thought that composer's music had lasting value.

Salomon Jadassohn, a composer in his own right (more on his music later in this chapter), is today better known for his various books on compositional technique. He also compiled an anthology, _Famous Composers and Their Works_ , which included a piece by Jan Blockx. A century ago, Blockx was famous for his Chanson de Pêcheur. Today, what fame he can claim comes from the charming and vigorous Flemish Dances.

Blockx is also credited with introducing the Flemish dialect of Dutch into the opera house, where French had dominated dominated. According to Marie-Thérèse Buyssens, it was Blockx's 1896 opera _Herbergprinses_ which ought to be "regarded as the beginning of Flemish opera." But as far as I can tell, this has never been recorded. Excerpts from his ballet _Milenka_ are available with a little digging. In the unrecorded column there's a Symphony in D major from 1885.

Sylvie Bodorová

The oratorio _Juda Maccabeus_ contains so much dissonance that on paper it would seem to border and perhaps even cross the line into unpleasantness, but to actually hear it is a gripping experience, like a finely crafted film score. Understandably you might not want to devote an hour and quarter of radio play to it, but the Battle, Hanukkah and Hallelujah, adding up to 16 minutes, might be a fine introduction to she who might be the world's best living woman composer. After that selection and a commercial break, I think I would follow with the organ solo and Intrada from Leoš Janáček's Glagolitic Mass.

Bodorová's Symphony No. 1, "Con le campane," was premiered in 2011, recorded that same year and released on CD the following year. At first it might sound like run-of-the-mill avant-garde, but stick with it; that should become very easy by some point in the middle of the opening Palpito. The second movement Breakdance has great crossover appeal without sounding like a potboiler sellout. That Breakdance is one of the most nerve-racking musical compositions I have ever heard, but it is exciting in a good way, provided of course that you don't try to use it as background music for some delicate task. I think that either by the titular third movement with bells or the finale you will be sold on this piece.

Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray

Here's another one of those composers famous at one time but today obscure whom I discovered thanks to Jadassohn's anthology. In the case of Bourgault-Ducoudray, his overly long and complicated name could not have helped anyone's memory.

Like Bartok in the 20th Century, Bourgault-Ducoudray was an avid student of folk music, and he introduced his French compatriots to music from Russia and places even farther away. Jadassohn's anthology includes an excerpt from Bourgault-Ducoudray's _L'Enterrement d'Ophelia_ , but the only thing of his I could find in the Naxos Music Library was his Cambodian Rhapsody, an exciting composition which contains actual Cambodian melodies.

Elisabetta Brusa

Of her compositions that I have heard, I only really like _Florestan_. Maybe because the dark mood of the concept turns Brusa away from her usual monotonousness of one mood: constant wonder at everything. However, the feverish Mahlerianness of the Schumann-inspired composition can become a little tiresome.

Alfredo Casella

Much of Casella's music is profound and gripping, but also slow and deliberate. Your DJs might want to test the water with the rondo finale of Symphony No. 3, since, although having definite elegiac moments, also has enough faster action in it that it might interest your Audience in hearing more Casella.

The only criticism I have about the finale of the Symphony No. 3 is that close to the end it relaxes into some very nice, elegiac writing, but Casella still felt the need to tack some loud music on at the end. I can almost imagine a DJ being thrown off by this and start identifying the piece and the performers a few seconds before the actual end, at the point where the piece really feels like it should end.

Three decades separated Casella's first two Symphonies and his Third. Casella himself admitted that his Symphony No. 1 in B minor was strongly influenced by Brahms, Enescu and 19th century Russian composers (Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, ot name just a few). In the opening cello melody (which recurs at the very end), John Waterhouse hears an echo of _Boris Godunov_ by Modest Mussorgsky. David Gallagher does point out the surprising lack of French influence in Casella's music, given that he was living in Paris at the time.

After writing his Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Casella put out an ad offering both his Symphonies for sale; he pitched them as being of high craftsmanship and low originality. But the Second makes the First look like a paragon of originality: much of the Second sounds like it could have been written by Mahler, and at least one passage sounds like it was copied verbatim from Mahler's own Symphony No. 2 in C minor. But before we get too carried away making fun of Casella for copying Mahler, we should take note of how well Casella maintains momentum in the middle movements of his Symphonies, whereas Mahler pretty much rambles in the middle movements of each of his Symphonies starting with his Second.

Christian Cannabich

The son of a Mannheim flutist and composer, and the father of a Mannheim violinist and composer, Christian Cannabich was one of the most influential composers of the Mannheim school, but fell into obscurity in the 19th Century as a result of the mythologizing of a few of his contemporaries, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Today, the four Symphonies of his published in the late 20th Century by Garland in their excellent series seem to be his best known, they are all in major keys. Not in that set is my personal favorite of the ones that have been recorded, No. 50 in D minor, which, as far as I can tell, has only been recorded by Naxos as part of a stalled effort to record all the Cannabich Symphonies. But you really can't go wrong here even if you pick them at random.

Carlos Chávez

If there is a stereotypical Mexican composer, that would have to be Carlos Chavez. I am only recommending his Symphony No. 2, for its infectious rhythms and authentic instruments of the Yaqui Indians. The rest of his Symphonies sound much like what American composition students who use notation software write, except of course that Chavez did not have access to such for much if not none of his career (he died in 1978, just a few years before the development of music notation software that could be used by a serious composer).

David Diamond

If your station plays orchestra broadcast concerts, it's possible that David Diamond's Symphony No. 1 has been heard on your station. But this powerful, energetic, melodious work needs to be heard during peak listening hours. It will instantly grab your listeners' attention, I promise you. The whole Symphony lasts about 20 minutes, give or take, but as it is structured in three movements, can be excerpted easily enough.

Gerald Finzi

Once in a blue moon, an American classical station plays the Five Bagatelles for Clarinet and Piano by Gerald Finzi. These pieces have also been arranged for clarinet and strings. Of these, the fifth, a charming Fughetta, ought to have catapulted Finzi to one-hit wonder status. Whether of the original or the arrangement, recordings typically also include the Clarinet Concerto in C minor.

Arthur Foote

Classical music radio stations in America are neglecting not only today's American composers, but also many important American composers of the past. One of those is Arthur Foote, whose second piece from the Four Characteristic Pieces after the _Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_ , Opus 48, could possibly make Foote a one-hit wonder. The four pieces can run at least 15 minutes total but no more than 20, so most interpretations leave room for some commercials in the 20-minute block.

Of course Foote wrote other music that is equally worthy of our attention, such as his own take on _Francesca da Rimini_ which makes for a cool contrast to Tchaikovsky's feverish hystrionics, and is also more concise and to the point (compare barely 15 minutes in a recent Naxos recording of Foote's to 24 minutes, give or take a few, for Tchaikovsky's.

Christoph Graupner

The Symphony for 2 Horns, Timpani and Strings by Christoph Graupner has been recorded and included in the _Virtuoso Timpani Concertos_ album on Naxos. But I have been trying to do for Symphony No. 75 in D major what _Masterpiece Theatre_ did for the Mouret Rondeau, by including two clips from it at the beginning and end of every "Spotlight on Student Orgs" video that comes from the College of Engineering at Wayne State University. Just Google "wayne state university tau beta pi polishing the bent."

Besides his music with timpani, Graupner's Bassoon Concerto in G major has been recorded, together with other concertos for the instrument by J. C. Bach, Hargrave, Hertel and Vivaldi. As a matter of fact, it was thanks to WCPE that I found out about this particular piece.

Alexandre Guilmant

If you like Widor a lot, you might like Guilmant even more. Guilmant was a brilliant concert organist who succeeded Widor as organ professor at the Paris Conservatoire. Besides music for solo organ, Guilmant also wrote very appealing music for orchestra with organ, like the Symphony No. 1 (identified in some recordings as "Organ Symphony No. 1"), some masses and motets and coronation music

Guilmant was also a tireless promoter of some forgotten composers like Titelouze, Grigny, Clérambault and perhaps Couperin, as well as of his contemporaries.

Kunihiko Hashimoto

Written to commemorate the 26th centennial of the founding of Japan, Hashimoto's Symphony No. 1 in D major is appropriately celebratory and comtemplative, successfully merging an European approach to musical structure and authentic Japanese melodies (including a melody from Okinawa) in a completely natural way, without any self-consciousness.

A side note about the spelling of his name: looking at his name in Japanese hiragana, the correct transliteration is Kunihiko rather than Qunihico, but the latter spelling appears often enough to be worth mentioning.

Vagn Holmboe

The Symphony No. 8 by Vagn Holmboe is the perfect expression of our modern lives. An intense, almost constant struggle, with the calmer episodes being only brief interludes before the next conflict or hardship. The slightest success comes at such a high cost it might not even be worth it. A much more cheerful work by Holmboe is the Symphony No. 3, written during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.

One thing that your DJs need to know about Holmboe is that he outdid Nielsen in searching out obscure Italian words to use for tempo markings. Whereas Nielsen used "orgoglioso," Holmboe used "piovoso," "incostante," "fluente," "austero" and others you don't normally see next to "allegro" or "andante." I mention this because your DJs should not sound on the air like it's their first time trying to pronounce words such as these.

Vasily Kalinnikov

Once in a blue moon, an American radio station plays part of Kalinnikov's Symphony No. 1 in G minor. I am not complaining at all about this, for his next Symphony, No. 2 in A major, doesn't make quite as strong an impression as No. 1. At times he will remind you of Tchaikovsky or Dvořák, but his melancholy lyricism is entirely his own.

The opening Allegro is impressive for its beautiful balance of melancholy and action, the Andante is one of the most beautiful I have ever heard. The Scherzo appears somewhat less original than the rest of the Symphony, but its infectious energy is quite winning nevertheless. Like Tchaikovsky's Fifth, the finale of Kalinnikov's First starts by recalling the opening theme, but not immediately transformed to the major key. The conclusion is not so much victorious as it is cheerful, with just a tiny touch of bittersweetness.

If radio stations succeed in making Kalinnikov's First Symphony more popular, it will be appropriate to delve into what else Kalinnikov wrote. There's the _Tsar Boris_ Overture and other orchestral excerpts, a few tone poems, and various other pieces that may or may not yet have been recorded.

Couple of bibliographic details to be aware of: you may occasionally find his name transliterated as Basile Kalinnikoff, Basily Kalinnikow, etc. Vasily had a younger brother, Viktor, who was also a composer. Though Viktor also wrote orchestral music (a concert overture, for example), it's mostly his choral music that has been recorded.

Johan Wenzel Kalliwoda

The Rondo Finale of Kalliwoda's Symphony No. 5 in B minor is perfect for classical radio play. Lasting a little over 8 minutes, the Rondo's A-theme motoric impulse is genuinely memorable for better reasons than the fact that it gets repeated being the A theme. I am aware of two different recordings of No. 5 which both pair it with No. 6 in G minor, the Finale of which is also very suitable for radio play. Both of these are instantly memorable without any undue bombast.

Gunild Keetman

In researching what else Carl Orff wrote besides _Carmina Burana_ , I came across Gunild Keetman. Like Orff, Keetman has also written music meant for children to play at school. These are very nice, melodious pieces with an appeal for listening as much as playing. I particularly recommend the pieces for tin whistle and percussion.

Tikhon Khrennikov

Who would believe that a young United States Marine stationed in Okinawa, Japan, would learn about the music of a Soviet-era Russian bureaucrat after purchasing a CD of his music from the meager classical selection of an Army and Air Force Exchange Service store? And yet that is precisely how I learned of Khrennikov. Conducted by Svetlanov, the disc includes Khrennikov's belligerent Symphony No. 2 in C minor and the pleasant, almost lightweight Violin Concerto in D major.

Leopold Kozeluch

Another one of the many composers that Mozart carefully studied is Leopold Kozeluch. Kozeluch's one Symphony in a minor key (G minor) clearly points the way ahead to Mozart's own only two Symphonies in a minor key. Sturm und Drang need not always be in a minor key, with the wonderful Symphony in C major being both festive and intensely dramatic.

I've grown to like Kozeluch's Symphony in C major so much that I included it as #10 in my eBook 104 Great Symphonies You Haven't Heard Yet. Kozeluch also wrote a much less driving but very pleasant Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major that has been recorded at least once.

It should be noted that it was common in Mozart's time for several men in a family to have the exact same name. In the case of this particular Mozart contemporary, christened Jan Antonín and born on June 26, 1747, this was even more of a problem because one of his older cousins by the same name, born in 1738, also became famous as a composer, generally referred to as Johann Antonin by the Viennese. Thus the younger Jan Antonín started calling himself "Leopold," at some point prior to 1780.

There are also some variations on the spelling of his last name: to ensure maximum compatibility with all eBook reader devices, the caron (looks like an upside down chevron, preferably called by a Czech word that means "hook") over the Z has been deliberately left out. Some other ways of spelling his name that you might see include "Kozeluh" and "Kotzeluch."

Joseph Martin Kraus

The Swedish Mozart was Joseph Martin Kraus, and though he wrote fewer Symphonies than Mozart, more of them are in a few different minor keys, as opposed to Mozart's two in G minor. More than a century before Mahler, Kraus wrote a Symphony in C-sharp minor, though later reworked it in the more 'manageable' key of C minor.

The award-winning set of Kraus Symphonies recorded by Petter Sundkvist and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra on the Naxos label, got off to a rousing start on Volume 1 with the _Olympie_ Overture and the Symphony in E-flat major, VB 144, a work that from the very first hearing impressed me with its simultaneous vitality and elegance.

Rued Langgaard

I mentioned to Benjamin Gunnar Cohrs how much I like Holmboe's Eighth Symphony, which prompted him to suggest Langgaard's music. I think I had heard one piece of his long ago but it did not make much of an impression on me. _A Guide to the Symphony_ , edited by Robert Layton, doesn't really encourage one to further exploration. So far only Langgaard's Fifth Symphony has made an impression on me. He revised the piece, both versions are very fascinating.

But don't let the mention of Holmboe make you think that Langgaard's music is unrelentingly combative and objective; quite the contrary, Langgaard is like a much more optimistic version of Carl Nielsen. What other composer would, without the least trace of self-consciousness, subtitle a Symphony "Belief in Wonders" (that would be No. 13).

Charles Martin Loeffler

There are literally thousands of composers I could list in this chapter. Whether or not they are listed in the _New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians_ is one criterion I can use to narrow down which composers I do list. But if that was the only criterion, I would not include Charles Martin Loeffler, who may have to wait for the 2013 _New Grove_.

But the fact that Prof. Laura Roelofs at Wayne State University has on more than one occasion programmed Michigan premieres of Loeffler in her faculty recitals, and spent a considerable portion of her most recent sabbatical poring over nearly illegible Loeffler manuscripts at the Library of Congress, clearly indicates to me that Loeffler is a composer worth taking seriously. Consider also that Loeffler is almost a little too obscure even for academia, and thus a definite risk for a young professor under pressure to publish or perish; I can think of a dozen topics that would be much safer for a university musicologist to study.

Not much music by this German-born, French-identified American composer has been recorded. As far as I can tell, the only orchestral piece of his that has been recorded (by no less than Leopold Stokowski) is the _Pagan Poem_. Mostly it is his chamber music that has been recorded, with the most 'popular' piece so far being _Music for Four Stringed Instruments_ , which is the piece that introduced Prof. Roelofs to Loeffler and compelled her to seek out more of his music.

One tendency among Loeffler recordings, if it can be called such given how few there are, is to program him with other American composers. This is not bad at all, especially when it leads to the discovery of less well known pieces by more famous American composers, like Charles Ives and George Gershwin. Prof. Roelofs has plans for studio recordings of Loeffler pieces she has discovered, but I'm not privy as to whether those will be all-Loeffler discs or be constituted of a more varied program.

Alexander Lokshin

During the Stalinist era, Shostakovich wrote music designed to please the regime, while keeping some of his other music in a desk drawer; this music surfaced only after Stalin's death. Other composers, some of them admired by Shostakovich, like Alexander Lokshin, refused to compromise in any way, and thus most of their music remains quite unknown. Lokshin does appear in the _New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians_ , and the entry there does give some idea of the suppression his music faced. Without 'public' music to keep him in the public ear during the Stalin regime, Lokshin had a steep hill to climb for public recognition in the Cold War years.

Lokshin favored the choral Symphony, and his most recorded Symphony seems to be No. 5, which has a baritone singing selected sonnets by Shakespeare. If your radio station prefers the instrumental side of classical, I would like to recommend the Prelude and Theme with Variations. Elena Kuschnerova plays this piece on the same Olympia label disc that has the premiere recording of the Fifth Symphony, but from the OClassica digital-only label you can get Denis Burstein also playing Rachmaninoff's Piano Sonata No. 1 (or if your station's library already has the Rachmaninoff, you can get just the Lokshin Variations).

According to Lokshin's son, the three most representative compositions by Lokshin are: the Symphony No. 1 (Requiem), Symphony No. 3 with verses by Kipling, and Three Scenes from Goethe's _Faust_. The _Faust_ Scenes and Symphony No. 3 may take some special ordering to obtain, but a recording of the First Symphony seems to be out of print as far as I can tell. But I think this is quite enough music to start exploring the music of this great composer whose music has only very narrowly escaped oblivion.

Albéric Magnard

Calling him "the French Bruckner" is probably not the best way to market Magnard in America. And in any case, as Wikipedia so pedantically points out, Magnard and Bruckner were very different men. The son of the affluent Frenchman would have hardly cared what the newspaper critics said of his music, much less allow music students to cut and re-orchestrate his music, as the son of the Austrian schoolteacher did.

All four of Magnard's Symphonies have been recorded, as well as some other orchestral music and a Quintet.

John Matthews

I wish I had thought of writing a Vuvuzela Concerto. What I mean is an actual concerto in which a vuvuzelist valiantly tries to be a soloist accompanied by an orchestra, and not just a long, held out B-flat. Alas, John Matthews beat me to the punch. Because the Matthews Concerto is so good, there is little reason for me now to write my own.

But the Vuvuzela Concerto by John Matthews has not been recorded yet. The score and parts are available free of charge from IMSLP (where musicians go for free sheet music), so it's only a matter of time before it's recorded. Matthews must be a very altruistic person, since he makes his original music available for free on the Web. With my own compositions I only release audio excerpts to the general public.

The world premiere recording could happen anywhere in the world, and that would be a major coup for the local classical radio station if they were smart enough to be involved with that project. I personally tried to make that "anywhere" be Detroit with funding from Kickstarter, but I failed because I did not understand that Kickstarter is really only suitable for projects for which you have already obtained 95% or more of your funding from other sources.

In any case, the Matthews Concerto, despite being in many ways a bona fide Concerto, has certain limitations due to the choice of solo instrument, limitations which the composer cleverly plays for humorous effect. For example, when the time comes for the soloist's first movement cadenza, the vuvuzelist stays silent. The orchestra repeats the lead-up to the cadenza twice, and only then does the first trumpeter step forward to supply what the soloist can not.

Though in fairness to the vuvuzela, that instrument that annoyed so many people at the 2010 World Cup, it is actually capable of playing notes other than its fundamental pitch. I was a little disappointed when the vuvuzela I purchased online turned out to be collapsible, but, as videos by "jeufederer" on YouTube showed me, the collapsibility, combined with embouchure changes in the hands of a skilled trumpeter actually enable the vuvuzela to play more notes. Even with my own feeble attempts at the instrument I have discovered that overblowing can produce higher notes.

Simon Mayr

Also known as Giovanni Simone Mayr, the German schoolteacher and composer first came to my attention thanks to a Naxos recording of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Missa Solemnis paired with Mayr's Te Deum. Mayr was a contemporary of Mozart but outlived him by a few decades. Mayr's Te Deum might be the most exciting and dramatic Te Deum prior to Bruckner's.

For classical stations preferring instrumental music, this composer of opera seria and choral church music might not seem so appealing, but don't forget that a lot of operas start out with overtures. In Mayr's case, these may be labeled either "sinfonia" or "overture," depending on distinctions I don't really care to get into here.

Suffice it to say that the following Mayr operas and oratorios have purely instrumental introductions: _Medea in Corinto_ , _The Sacrifice of Jephthah_ , _The Marriage of Tobias_ , _Jacob's Flight From Laban_ , plus others I haven't had the chance to check yet. Do watch out for some sinfonias or overtures that transition into the first vocal number rather than ending with a neat coda.

_Ginevra di Scozia_ also has a charming marches in Act I that is played twice, firstly to start Scene 6 and secondly to start Scene 8. _Demetrio, Re di Siria_ , has, in addition to a sinfonia, a separate introduction for Act I, and also an introduction for Act II, but contrary to expectation, both act introductions include singing, which is pleasant enough and would hopefully not prompt your listeners to change to the smooth jazz station.

Peter Mennin

Having his Third Symphony premiered by the New York Philharmonic at a rather young age, Peter Mennin became somewhat famous early on, but his music was later dismissed by critics rather off-handedly. Mennin is an excellent example of the American independents: composers who wrote music according to their own prerogatives without regard for how critics would gauge their originality or lack thereof, thus fitting in neither with the avant-garde nor the neo-Romantics.

The finales of his Symphonies tend to be rather tempestuous, and in fact the tempo marking of the finale of No. 5 is "Allegro tempestuoso." Symphony No. 9 follows two rather quiet slow movements with a brief, tempestuous finale that is very well suited for radio play.

Julián Orbón

I am very grateful to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) for introducing me to this composer. His Concerto Grosso for String Quartet and Orchestra is brilliant; I tuned in to it quite by chance and it grabbed me from the first few bars.

Paul Pabst

I have to admit that I have never liked Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. But that's of course not a good reason to ignore the music of Paul Pabst, which I did at first. A couple of orchestral pieces by Jadassohn appear on a CD that also includes Pabst's Piano Concerto in E-flat major.

Occasionally you may find Paul Pabst identified as Pavel Pabst, such as for example, Panagiotis Trachopoulos's recording of the Pabst Piano Concerto with Belarussian State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marius Stravinsky. Pabst moved to Russia and came to be appreciated by Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky, to the extent that Tchaikovsky entrusted Pabst with editing his piano music.

What little fame Pabst enjoys today comes from his paraphrases and arrangements of Tchaikovsky's music, particularly the _Eugene Onegin_ Paraphrase, Opus 81, which is available in at least four different recordings. But Pabst's own original music is worthy of more play, but of course there have to be recordings before there can be plays. As far as I can tell, only the Piano Concerto has been recorded, and that only once. It starts out vigorous and dramatic, is beautiful and lyrical in the middle, and ends with cheerful tunefulness.

John Knowles Paine

WQRS, Detroit's only all-classical station long ago, used the play the U. S. National Anthem every weekday at noon. As far as I can tell, WRCJ, the "classical by day, jazz by night" station that inherited some of the WQRS staff, has not kept up that tradition. I wonder if WQRS ever followed up the noontime play of "The Star-Spangled Banner" with the fugue on that tune by John Knowles Paine.

That brilliant composer was also the very first professor of music in the United States. Given this fact, it would be fair to guess that Paine did not learn his craft in America. The son of a music store owner, his talent was evident from early on, and he was taught by a business partner of his father's who had come from Germany. Before he turned 20, Paine went to study in Germany. When he came back to the States, he quickly gained prominence as an organist and went on to create the music curriculum at Harvard University.

In the run-up to the first complete performance of Paine's very long Mass in D major at Harvard in 2000, Ann P. Hall wrote in the _Harvard University Gazette_ a fascinating article about Paine's life, music and importance to Harvard (the school's concert hall is named after him). Hall also mentions that Paine had been inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame two years prior and that his opera _Azara_ was slated for production at the Met for the 1905-1906 season, but this was derailed and the opera has never been staged even though concert excerpts have been well-liked.

If your station is disinclined from vocal music, there is plenty of instrumental music by Paine to choose from, like the intense Symphony No. 1 in C minor or the pastoral Symphony No. 2 in A major, "In Spring," the Shakespeare-themed _As You Like It_ Overtures and the six-movement tone poem _The Tempest_ , a Duo Concertante and a piece about Abraham Lincoln, to name just a few.

Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson

According to the New York Public Library, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was named after the British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who in turn was named after the British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But Perkinson's music is quite different from Coleridge-Taylor's: the Yank is far more Baroque in his style. Perkinson is such a little known master that Oxford Music Online doesn't even have an entry about him (though ofcourse there is one about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor). Perkinson's best known piece, relatively speaking, seems to be the Sinfonietta No. 1 for strings; besides the Chicago Sinfonietta, it has also been recorded bythe Sphinx Orchestra (you can find a clip on YouTube).

Allan Petterson

There are some composers who are best in small doses, and Allan Petterson is one of them. The difficulty with him however is that his compositions tend to be long but hardly subdivided: the Fifth Symphony, for example, is over an hour yet just in one movement. Petterson is therefore best left for low listening hours. For peak listening hours, better to go with Gustav Mahler or Robert Simpson.

Tobias Picker

One of the most genuinely lyrical pieces I have ever heard is _Old & Lost Rivers_ by Tobias Picker. What shimmering variety with almost no chromatic embellishment whatsoever! There is a disc which, besides the orchestral and solo piano versions of that piece also includes Sir John Gielgud as narrator in _The Encantadas_ , a rendition of _Moby Dick_ author Herman Melville's poem about that part of the world; the source text draws from Picker more conventionally modern music.

Florence Price

Whereas William Grant Still and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson faced discrimination on account of being Black, Florence Price also faced discrimination on account of being a woman. The Women's Philharmonic has recorded her excellent Symphony No. 3 in C minor on an album with _The Oak_ and the Mississippi River Suite.

Wallingford Riegger

Although Riegger was one of the American dodecaphonists, he also wrote some very nice, tuneful music. If we were tasked with compiling Riegger's "greatest hits," the compilation must include the _Romanza_ , which is short and sweet. In _Dance Rhythms_ , Riegger is, like Martinu, uncannily prescient of modern rock and pop music. Riegger's Symphony No. 3 may be somewhat of a risk, depending on your listeners. Works like _Dichotomy_ and _A Study in Sonority_ should perhaps be relegated to low listening hours.

Vittorio Rieti

I initially approached this 20th Century Italian composer with hesitation, fearing he was some boring ultramodernist. But the almost-centenarian, in his long and prolific career wrote a lot of tuneful and sometimes even fun music. There's never any doubt in his Harpsichord Concerto (commissioned by harpsichord revivalist Sylvia Marlowe) that we are listening to a 20th Century composer, but we're not assaulted with unpleasant sonorities for their own sake.

The wittiest, most fun piece by Rieti is, to my knowledge (which is admittedly limited at this point), the Serenade for Violin and Chamber Orchestra of 1931. If you only accept one tip from this entire chapter, it should be this Rieti Serenade. Schedule the opening Allegro for peak listening hours, or better yet, the whole thing, which in a 20-minute block leaves room for commercials.

Edmund Rubbra

Who says there were no optimistic composers in the 20th Century? Actually, I may have said that. The bitterness of Shostakovich and the grim objectivity of Vagn Holmboe and Robert Simpson seem quite appropriate for a century that saw two World Wars and the very real possibility of destroying the entire world at the push of a button.

One quality that comes across through the vast majority of Rubbra's oeuvre is a profound sense of optimism, even when tempered with melancholy and awareness of reality. In particular, I recommend Symphonies No.s 2 and 6; in a way they are two sides of one coin, especially in the case of the Chandos release that puts them on the same disc.

Anton Rubinstein

Here is a composer who is much better than he gets credit for. The Second and Fourth Symphonies are pretty good. My favorite movement out of the Fourth Symphony is the Scherzo. If you described it to me on paper, I would have concluded that it is one of those boring, repetitive, long-winded Scherzos like we find in Mahler's late Symphonies. But when I actually listened to it, I found the music gripped me even though everything that happens in it is precisely the sort of thing that would bore me in other composers' music in different contexts.

And the Sixth Symphony is of much more obvious intensity (don't be fooled by all the "moderato" tempo markings), with a riveting first movement, a very lyrical slow movement and one of the most playful scherzos ever written; only the finale does not quite deliver, showing the symptoms of the 19th Century "finale problem."

Vadim Salmanov

It was in a record store in Okinawa that I found Yevgeny Mravinsky's 2-CD set of Salmanov's complete Symphonies, on the Melodiya label. I don't know if any of his music is available in America. Of the Symphonies, I really recommend No. 1 in D minor; it has a vitality and freshness that seems to have completely disappeared by the time of No. 3 and No. 4.

Rodion Shchedrin

For a piece subtitled "Naughty Limericks," the Concerto No. 1 for Orchestra by Rodion Shchedrin is surprisingly poignant and beautiful. I first heard heard the piece in a band arrangement by Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Frank Pappajohn, played by the Air Force Band conducted by Coronel Lowell Graham. The piece has also been recorded by orchestra, but the poignancy still comes through in the band arrangement. The producers of the Bernstein Collection for the New York Philharmonic appropriately realized that Leonard Bernstein's 1967 recording (identified as "Mischievous Folk Ditties") is a wonderful choice for the 10-CD set's sampler disc.

Harold Shapero

The great American Symphony was written not by Ives or Piston or Bernstein or Copland, nor even Harris or Schuman or Thomson, but by a now forgotten music professor at Brandeis. In 1947, Shapero wrote the Symphony for Classical Orchestra, a thoroughly engaging, vividly tuneful, strikingly individual and strongly American work. This Symphony, in B-flat major, can easily be dismissed by critics for being too derivative of Beethoven and Stravinsky (it is beyond the scope of this book to discuss why that is an egregious oversimplification). But I imagine most of your listeners are not music critics and will be grateful to get to know this excellent music.

Robert Simpson

The champion of Bruckner, Nielsen and Sibelius in England was himself also a great composer, a fact that is almost casually mentioned in an "About the Author" blurb on the inside back jacket of one of his insightful books. Simpson's complete Symphonies and String Quartets have been recorded on the Hyperion label.

Of the Symphonies, I recommend No. 4 in E-flat major, which quotes Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 76 in E-flat major. Here's an excellent idea for a 20-minute block: the first movement of the Haydn followed by the Scherzo of the Simpson. Simpson's first two Symphonies might also be readily enjoyed by your station's listeners; the rest are better left for those who already appreciate his earlier works. Though the Finale of Symphony No. 8 has an unflagging energy much like the Finale of Symphony No. 2 and would thus make an excellent introduction to the composer for your listeners.

The String Quartets are not all that suitable for American radio. As for Concertos, the Piano Concerto, the Flute Concerto and the Cello Concerto are all worth playing, at least in excerpts.

Michael Torke

Perhaps in a later edition of this book we will find that Michael Torke is a one-hit wonder for his effervescent orchestral piece _Green_ , part of his "Color Music" series. But _Ecstatic Orange_ and _Bright Blue Music_ also stand a chance of becoming great hits and thus saving Torke from one-hit wonder status.

Marcel Tyberg

One of his great-great-grandparents was Jewish. That was more than enough for Nazi persecution, and thus Marcel Tyberg, a composer once championed by Rafael Kubelik, was destined for oblivion in the aftermath of World War II. Aware of his destiny, Tyberg entrusted his manuscripts to a friend for safekeeping.

And so the world mostly forgot about Tyberg until fairly recently. He doesn't even get an entry in the _New Grove_. What I'm writing here about him is based entirely on an article by Zachary Redler on the Orel Foundation website. Thanks to their efforts, and Tyberg's trusted friend, Naxos recently released a CD containing Tyberg's Symphony No. 3 in D minor and a Piano Trio.

Tyberg's output is quite varied, including two Masses and a Te Deum, as well as a couple of Piano Sonatas and some chamber music. But for the time being, the vast majority of it is still in manuscript and in serious need of professional copying; what copies were made and parts extracted for performances in his lifetime seem to have been lost as part of the damage of World War II. With patience, we will hear more of this excellent composer whose music almost died with him in a concentration camp.

Stanisław Skrowaczewski

Here is another conductor who was also a composer. The Passacaglia Immaginaria is the only work of his that has really stood out to me, but the Clarinet Concerto is also worthwhile (and far more suitable for radio play than the Passacaglia).

Karol Szymanowski

Edvard Grieg is not one of my favorite composers. But at least thanks to him, I learned about Karol Szymanowski. Since Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor is supposedly such an essential part of any classical collection, I went to the store looking for a CD. But my choice was not going to be determined by my estimation of the solo pianist, but by what other music is on the disc; I was not going to add another _Peer Gynt_ Suite rendition to my collection if I could help it. Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto, also in A minor, would not be so bad since that's another one of those supposedly essential masterpieces my collection was lacking. And then the Alfredo Perl recording of the Grieg together with Szymanowski's Symphony No. 4 caught my eye.

Subtitled "Symphonie Concertante," Szymanowski's Symphony No. 4, Opus 60, is a kind of Piano Concerto, filled with an intoxicating atmosphere both nocturnal and cheerful. I think I listened to Perl's Grieg twice or thrice. But the Szymanowski much more, and I run the risk of having to replace that disc due to wear.

These days, a likelier way you might be introduced to Szymanowski's music might be by way of of his Violin Concerto No. 1 which Nicola Benedetti recorded for Deutsche Grammophon not very long ago.

Francesco Veracini

"A new star in the already crowded Baroque firmament" is how conductor Reinhard Goebel once described Veracini. There is one piece of Veracini's that has been very inspiring to me, and that is the unison minuet that concludes the Overture No. 6 in G minor (sometimes erroneously listed as being in B-flat major). An entire minuet with no harmonies other than unisons and octaves—no thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, sevenths of any kind. Apparently Vivaldi has done something similar, and I have searched for that piece with no success.

And I have also written unison minuets of my own: first, I wrote one in D minor for an orchestra slightly larger than Veracini's, which I later reworked as a minuet for my String Quartet in A-flat major; later, when Dr. Bryan Ho, M. D., commissioned me to write a Symphony in A minor through eBay (thus becoming the first person in the world to ever commission a Symphony over the Internet) I wrote a unison minuet in C-sharp minor for the third movement of that work. The writing of an orchestral piece in unison is a far better composition exercise than having young composition students write a piece for solo unaccompanied instrument: who wants to listen to a 10-minute soliloquy for unaccompanied bass clarinet?

Getting back to Veracini: his six Overtures are multi-movement works that could just as easily have been titled Suites or Symphonies. Lasting on average 16 minutes each, one of these Overtures could fill much of a 20-minute block and still leave room for commercials, or a movement could be excerpted to fill 3 to 5 minutes. Depending on which recording of the Overtures you buy for your station, you might also get some other Veracini works such as his Concertos.

Carl Vine

I recommend the Oboe Concerto and the Suite from _The Tempest_. Of this Australian composer's six Symphonies, I recommend the Second, though the First might be worth playing if only for the DJs casually noting that it is a so-called "Micro-Symphony."

Abbe Georg Joseph Vogler

The most intense Symphony in D minor from the 18th Century is without a doubt the Symphony in D minor Vogler wrote for Paris in 1786. It is easy for critics to be dismissive of this Symphony, and to say that this or that of Vogler's three other Symphonies is a far better work. But confronted with an actual performance, or at least a recording like the excellent album from Matthias Bamert and the London Mozart Players, it is much easier to be swept up by the unstoppable dramatic energy of this work.

Vogler seems to be remembered today somewhat more for his choral music, which is a bit of a problem if your station favors instrumental music over choral music. It's a situation that is diametrically opposed to Vogler's time, evidenced for example that at one point Vogler was compelled to add choral parts to one of his instrumental compositions.

What fame, or infamy, Vogler had in his day seems to come mainly from his keyboard improvisations. Composers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dismissed him as a trickster or a charlatan. Vogler is a composer deserving of a chance today.

Robert Volkmann

You could actually assemble an all-Volkmann program if you wanted to. Start with either the Overture in C major or the Overture to _Richard III_ , follow with the Cello Concerto in A minor and end with the Symphony No. 1 in D minor. Volkmann was a good friend of Brahms and it's not entirely surprising if the former's music reminds you of the latter.

I'm not too crazy about Volkmann's chamber music, but then again, with Brahms, I only like two or three of his chamber pieces.

Robert Ward

Listen to just the first minute of his Symphony No. 2 in E minor to decide whether or not to add it to your station's repertoire. I am quite certain that you will decide, on that snippet alone, that yeah, it should be in your station's repertoire.

Grace Williams

If the stereotype is that women composers write hysterically emotional music, then Grace Williams does not fit the stereotype. Sure there are tinges of Mahler in her music, but Mahler comes across way more hysterical.

I'm only beginning to get to know her music. Inevitably at this point there will be comparisons to composers with whom I'm more familiar. Grace Williams studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams (presumably no relation) and it is natural for commentators to hear bits of Ralph in Grace's music. I've already mentioned Mahler, and liner note writer Malcolm Boyd also mentions Richard Strauß and of course Sir Edward Elgar. I hear Shostakovich, but I don't know how familiar Brits were with the Soviet in the 20th Century.

And I also hear Robert Simpson, a British composer about 15 years her junior, who, coincidentally wrote his Symphony No. 2 the same year she did (1956). I'm not saying the younger composer influenced the older one (though that's sometimes the case, e.g., Haydn and Mozart) but since I'm more familiar with Simpson at this point, I will of course hear Grace Williams that way. But I am also becoming aware of individual traits which will become more apparent as I familiarize myself with her music.

Jan Wilhelm Wilms

If there is a missing link between Beethoven and Bruckner, it would have to be Jan Wilhelm Wilms. The Archiv CD from Concerto Köln conducted by Ehrhardt Werner of Wilms's Symphonies No. 6 in D minor and No. 7 in C minor is a great service to the composer and to Beethoven and Bruckner fans, who will find much to enjoy in both works.

That is not the only time the music of Wilms has been recorded. On the Challenge Classics label, for example, Anthony Halstead has recorded three Wilms Symphonies (including No. 6) and some Variations. The earlier Symphony in E-flat major, while competent (quite good if it was a student work), does not make half as strong an impression as his mature works. (I have for the most part in this book refrained from recommending one recording of a particular work over another, but in this case, I feel I have an obligation to tell you that the Werner is much better than the Halstead).

Friedrich Witt

I have already mentioned Witt in connection to the Jena Symphony in C major that was once attributed to Beethoven. A brilliant, vastly underrated work, it was dropped from the repertoire like a hot potato once it was discovered to not actually be by Beethoven. That fact doesn't change the quality of the music one bit: the energy of it is still electrifying, and that's what should matter, not whether or not the autograph score would get any bids at Sotheby's.

Patrick Gallois and the Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä have done Witt and the world a great service with their Naxos recording, which also includes Witt's Symphony in A major and Flute Concerto in G major, the latter with Gallois himself as the soloist.

Paul Wranitzky

Born Pavel Vranický in Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic), the name of this Czech expat who worked in Vienna is not as much of a headache to typographers as that of those more famous Czech composers. Even in this age of the electronic book you will perhaps forgive my preference for his Germanized name. Wranitzky was born the same year as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but outlived him by almost two decades.

Wranitzky's Symphony in C minor, published in his lifetime, is one of the strongest exponents of Sturm und Drang, being intensely dramatic except for the respite of the lyrical slow movement. The feel of the Minuet may remind some of the Minuet in Mozart's famous Symphony No. 40 in G minor, and indeed Robin Golding has remarked that "If Mozart had written a symphony in C minor, this could surely be it!"

Vladislav Zolotarev

Before you say that I'm including this guy just so I claim I cover classical music from A to Z, let me tell you that for a long time I have vacillated on including Zemlinsky in this book. But hearing just one recording of Vladislav Zolotarev's Rondo Cappriccioso played by an accordion orchestra was enough to convince me that this piece needs to be included in this book.

Local Composers

Unless your classical station rakes in enough money from advertisers not to need to take any pledge money from listeners, you have an obligation to help local composers and performers. Not because they pay you (they most likely can't), but nevertheless out of genuine self-interest. It is important to cater to your elderly listeners, but it is also important to engage with younger listeners so as to replenish the Audience. When your station plays music composed and/or performed by local artists, it shows that classical music is a living, local entity.

I am happy to say that WCPE is living up to its obligation to composers in North Carolina. I can't say the same for WRCJ in Detroit, Michigan. WRCJ is "classical by day, jazz by night." WRCJ helps out local jazz musicians, playing their latest albums and announcing their upcoming gigs. But to help local classical musicians, even if it's just to announce a concert, they would much rather punch themselves in the face. The idiotic morons who run WRCJ are an insult to the legacy of the old WQRS.

In the general vicinity of your radio station, there may be some brilliant amateur orchestras. On YouTube, you can hear a the Tallahassee Youth Orchestra giving a fiery rendition of Kalinnikov's Symphony No. 1 in G minor. It would be a great idea for a classical station in Florida to play that every now and then. Amateur orchestras tend to stick to well-known repertoire, but to play their recordings would create some very positive buzz for your radio station as well as provide a good excuse to play the worn-out hits that I have otherwise recommended your station avoid.

There are valid reasons to shy away from some local composers, but only the ones who write weird music that pushes the envelope so far it almost seems a stretch to even call it music. When harmony and rhythm are both nearly absent, playing such music on the air runs the risk of making your listeners think your station is suffering some kind of technical difficulty. Can you imagine the sorts of calls your station would get if one of your DJs played that famous John Cage piece that consists of almost five minutes of silence?

There almost certainly are some very good composers in your area, who write music that is actually pleasant to listen to, with melodies listeners will come away humming. Somewhere in the metro Detroit area, there is Lee Noble, whose Symphony No. 1 in C major waited in the bins at Dearborn Music for about half a decade before I purchased the CD. The Redford Civic Symphony Orchestra turns in a thoroughly competent performance, though some of the unison passages seem to be somewhat beyond their ability.

I would like to meet Lee Noble in person. However, I have had the privilege of talking in person to Keith Buckner and attending rehearsals of his music. He is one of those composers whose best composition, if you ask him, is whatever he's working on at the moment. Of necessity, public appreciation lags behind. The _Prentis Street Sonata_ , for trumpet and string quartet, is for now perhaps his most popular composition; what he's written afterwards will eventually get its due just as it happened with Beethoven's works after his Septet, Opus 20.

Keith Buckner has decades of experience in music, writing, playing and singing rock songs with the band Majesty in the 1980s. It is easy for snobs to look down on this latecomer to the classical scene because he obtained his master's degree in music composition only very recently, and not from U of M. But... what are the snobs writing that _you_ want to hear? In their idiotic quest for originality, the snobs are mostly rediscovering innovations already tried and rejected in the 20th century.

Anthony Lai's music has sold well on the iTunes store, but those selections are limited to his pop rock songs. _The Jester's Violin_ , a piece for string quartet with classical, folk and rock influences appears on the limited release _Tiger Stadium Postcard_ album, which has sold a few copies at Dearborn Music. In its original version, the cello part in the fourth movement was somewhat dull, but in revision he greatly livened it up with a meaty contrapuntal inversion of the violin's theme that cellists can really sink their teeth into.

The title track on the _Tiger Stadium Postcard_ album is a piece for flute, clarinet, violin and piano by Monica Caldare, who appears on the front cover. Anita Gomez from Cleveland actually wrote a piece of the same title for the same combination of instruments a few months before Caldare, but in the end Caldare was chosen over Gomez because she is a Detroiter, she observed the demolition of Tiger Stadium more closely, and her piece does not call for flute harmonics nor make use of copyrighted tunes like "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

We can almost count Paul Paray as a local composer in Detroit. The Assumption Grotto Orchestra, based out of a Detroit suburb, has recorded several works by Paray, and these are available at Dearborn Music (that store is a treasure trove of all kinds of wonderful fringe repertoire just waiting to be discovered).

I will briefly mention my own music. Only my music for string quartet has been played in public concerts. I am the very first composer ever commissioned to write a Symphony through eBay. Dr. Bryan Ho, M.D., commissioned me to write a Symphony in A minor. In his choice of key, I think he expected a much more Baroque feel to A minor than what I delivered. Also, I am the first composer ever commissioned to write a Concerto through eBay. Ray Barnes, a Canadian accountant, commissioned me to write a Horn Concerto in B-flat major evoking how Bruckner might have written a Concerto. Robert Simpson would have had very mixed feelings about such a project, but I hope that Ray Barnes likes the result once a performance can be pulled off.

So far I have not figured out how to make these public relations stunts translate into actual performances of my orchestral music. I had hoped to convince the great Oprah to commission me to write a Symphony in C major dedicated to one of her friends, but with so many voices clamoring for her attention, it can be quite difficult to cut through, and even that is no guarantee that the desired commission would result. Anyway, on ReverbNation.com you can hear clips of my chamber music.

There is a composer in Detroit, older guy who recently obtained his master's degree in music composition. One time he asked me why I write music in major and minor keys using traditional harmony. "It's been done hundreds of times," he said. Thousands or millions of times would be more accurate to say. Atonality, dodecaphony, octatonic scales, nonfunctional harmony, and several other innovations of the 20th Century have been done at least hundreds of times each. But guess what I'm already tired of?

That guy thinks he's on the cutting edge of music composition today. And if today was a day in 1985, he'd be absolutely right to think that. In some quarters, musical innovation has devolved into a game of one-upmanship, where it doesn't matter if the game results is anything normal people would actually want to hear. My so-called friend has written some music worth hearing. But in the game of innovation, he has fallen far behind without realizing it. The composers winning the game are the ones you want to avoid.

The local composers you do want to promote probably don't have any actual recordings of their orchestral music. But they might have recordings of their music for solo instruments or small ensembles. Those are worth inquiring about in order to seriously consider playing their music on your station. What other treasures might await discovery in the bins at Dearborn Music or similar stores across the country?

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About the author

Alonso Delarte is a composer and ukulelist who lives in Detroit, Michigan. His String Quartets have been performed in Detroit. He has also written orchestral music.

Connect with me online:

Twitter: <http://www.twitter.com/alonsodelarte>

ReverbNation: <http://www.reverbnation.com/alonsodelarte>

Smashwords: <http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/AlonsoDelarte>
