“Time is a funny thing,” as one of the more philosophically-inclined Viennese characters so wisely observed in Richard Strauss’ opera Der Rosenkavalier.

Der Rosenkavalier had its premiere in 1911, and coincidentally, on today’s date that year, Viennese composer Anton von Webern completed one of the shortest orchestral works ever written — the fourth of his Five Pieces for Orchestra, which lasts about 20 seconds time. It’s so short, it takes longer to describe the music than to actually hear it!

Webern was attempting to render down the extravagant style of late-Romantic composers like Strauss and Mahler into its quintessence — a haiku-like concentration of gesture and color, the musical equivalent of a Japanese painting of just a few deft brush strokes across a blank canvas, with more implied than actually shown.

In the same spirit, but at the opposite end of the time spectrum, is the work of American composer Morton Feldman, who holds the record for composing some of the longest pieces ever written. Feldman was friends with, and inspired by, painters of the so-called New York School, including Mark Rothko and Philip Guston. A 1984 work by Feldman is titled For Philip Guston, and, in complete performance, it’s a piece that runs about four hours.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Der Rosenkavalier: Suite; New York Philharmonic; Lorin Maazel, conductor; DG 7890

Anton Webern (1883-1945): No. 4, from Five Pieces for Orchestra; Ensemble InterContemporain; Pierre Boulez, conductor; DG 437786

Morton Feldman (1926-1987): For Philip Guston; The California EAR Unit; Bridge 9078

To some it seemed an act of sheer madness for a string quartet to announce in the 1970s that it would not perform the classic repertory of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but devote itself instead to music written after 1900, especially newly-composed works. But the Kronos Quartet has proved the skeptics wrong. Founded in Seattle in 1973, and reformed in San Francisco five years later, the Kronos Quartet has established itself as a major player on the international music scene, premiering hundreds of new works by living composers.

On today’s date in 1984, the Kronos Quartet was at the Kukmo Music Festival in Finland, where they gave the premiere performance of Pieces of Mosaic, the String Quartet No. 5 by Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen. This quartet is a string of 16 short fragments, and, as the composer explained, reflected a pessimistic view of world affairs, circa 1984, the ominously Orwellian year of its composition. “It seems somehow crazy that a composer should create extended symphonic forms for the world we live in. This quartet is the kind of work the world deserves: one which is smashed into fragments,” Sallinen said.

Sallinen is one of the best-known Finnish composers since Sibelius, and in addition to chamber works like his Quartet No. 5, he has written symphonic works and a number of successful operas.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): String Quartet No. 17 (Quartetto Italiano); Philips 422 512

Aulis Sallinen (b. 1935): String Quartet No. 5 (Pieces of Mosaic); Sibelius Quartet; Ondine 831

On today’s date in 1717, King George and his entourage took a barge trip on the river Thames, traveling from Whitehall to Chelsea, accompanied by about 50 musicians, also on barges. A contemporary newspaper account reported that they performed “the finest Symphonies, composed express for this occasion by Mr. Handel, which his Majesty liked so well that he caused it to be played three times in going and returning.”

Another report refers to “trumpets, horns, oboes, bassoons, flutes, recorders, violins and basses” being employed. In our time, Handel’s Water Music — as the three suites have come to be known — is one of the best-known and best-loved works of the entire Baroque Age.

In 1985, three hundred years after the birth of Handel, American composer Libby Larsen composed a Symphony she titled Water Music, written as a tribute to Handel and as an expression of her own enthusiasm for sailing.

Larsen is one of today’s busiest American composers, and in the year 2000 the American Academy of Arts and Letters presented her with its Award in Music, honoring her lifetime achievements as a composer. When asked how she finds time to balance her busy life as a composer, she answered, “I can’t not do it — having a life and a life in music is as natural and necessary to me as breathing.”

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759): Water Music; Royal Philharmonic; Yehudi Menuhin, conductor; MCA 6186

Libby Larsen (b. 1950): Symphony (Water Music); Minnesota Orchestra; Sir Neville Marriner, conductor; Nonesuch 79147

Following the death of a loved one, American poet Barbara Crooker wrote, “How can we go on/knowing the end of the story?”

American composer Dale Trumbore attempted to answer that question with her haunting choral work, How to Go On, given its premiere performance on today’s date in 2016 in Anaheim, California by the Choral Arts Initiative.

Rather than setting the traditional Latin text of the Requiem Mass like Verdi, or passages from the Bible like Brahms, Trumbore crafted a kind of “secular requiem,” choosing texts by Crooker and two other contemporary American poets addressing fundamental questions of life, love, and loss.

“I have moments of utter panic about my own mortality, and I know many other people do as well, although we may not openly discuss or address our fears about death,” she confessed. “Taken together, the seven poems of How to Go On recognize these fears while also cultivating a feeling of everything ultimately being at peace. Hopefully the music adds to that visceral feeling of reassurance.“

Trumbore, a New Jersey native, studied with the great choral composer Morten Lauridsen at the University of Southern California and her own vocal works are noted for what The New York Times described as her “soaring melodies and beguiling harmonies.”

Dale Trumbore (b. 1987): How to Go On; Choral Arts Initiative; Brandon Elliott, conductor; CAI 2017

In 1965, Leonard Bernstein took a sabbatical year from his duties as music director of the New York Philharmonic. In 1964, the busy Mr. Bernstein had just finished conducting Verdi’s opera Falstaff at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and in 1966, would make his debut at the Vienna State Opera, conducting the same work. But he reserved 1965 to concentrate on composing.

“In the course of that year, I had the luxury to do nothing but experiment,” Bernstein recalled. “And part of my experimentation was to try to write some pieces that, shall we say, were less old-fashioned. I wrote a lot of music, 12-tone music and avant-garde music of various kinds, and a lot of it was very good, but I threw it all away. What I came out with at the end of the year was a piece called Chichester Psalms, which is simple and tonal and as pure B-flat as any piece you can think of … because that was what I honestly wished to write.”

Bernstein conducted the premiere performance at Lincoln Center with the Camerata Singers and the New York Philharmonic on July 15th, 1965, and later in the month, traveled to Chichester Cathedral in England, which had commissioned the work in the first place, for the British premiere of his Chichester Psalms.

Giuseppe Verdi (1913-1901): Act III excerpt, from Falstaff; soloists; Vienna Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; CBS/Sony 42535

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): Chichester Psalms; Camerata Singers; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; CBS/Sony 47162

Decades after their deaths, Richard Strauss and Dmitri Shostakovich still remain politically controversial. Strauss worked in Nazi Germany under Hitler, and Shostakovich in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Was their art compromised by politics — and should that influence how we hear their music today?

In July of 1935, Strauss pleaded with Hitler for a personal meeting to explain his resignation as President of Germany’s office of musical affairs. He needn’t have bothered: the Gestapo had intercepted a letter Strauss had sent to Jewish writer Stefan Zweig, the Austrian librettist of Strauss’ latest opera. In that letter, Strauss mocked the Nazi’s obsession with race and urged Zweig to continue to work with him, even if they would have to meet in secret. Strauss was asked to resign, and, anxious to avoid further trouble for himself and his family, appealed directly to Hitler, who never responded.

Dmitri Shostakovich also ran afoul of his dictator when, in 1936, Stalin attended Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and hated it. The next day, Shostakovich was harshly condemned in the official press, and lived in terror for the rest of Stalin’s reign, redirecting his music according to party line and making obsequious political utterances whenever asked. Even so, many today claim to hear both terror and heroic — if coded — resistance in Shostakovich’s best scores.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Ein Heldenleben; Daniel Majeske, violin; Cleveland Orchestra; Daniel Barenboim, conductor; London 414 292

Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk excerpts; Scottish National Orchestra; Neeme Jarvi, conductor; Chandos 8587

On this day in 1900, the world first heard the Requiem of Gabriel Fauré in its full orchestral version at a concert at the Paris World Exhibition. Faure’s Requiem ranks today among his best-known and best-loved compositions, and omits all reference to the terrors of the Last Judgment which appear in the traditional liturgical text, concentrating instead on comforting the bereaved. The Requiem was originally written for chorus and a more intimate chamber ensemble, and was occasioned by Fauré’s sorrow at the death of his own father.

The American composer Christopher Rouse has written a number of works dealing with the passing of friends and colleagues — works half-seriously, half-jokingly referred to as Rouse’s Death Cycle. Rouse’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Trombone Concerto from 1991 is dedicated to the memory of Leonard Bernstein; his Symphony No. 2, from 1994, contains a tribute to the young composer Stephen Albert, who died in a car crash; and a section of his Flute Concerto from 1993 reflects the composer’s shock upon reading an account of the senseless tragedy of a two-year-old child, abducted from an English shopping mall and killed by two ten-year-olds.

Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed has noted that much of Rouse’s work is “music of leave-taking … but it is also a music of catharsis, survival and a celebration of being alive.”

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924): Requiem; The Cambridge Singers; John Rutter, conductor; Collegium 101

Christopher Rouse (1949-2019): Symphony No. 2 and Flute Concerto; Carol Wincenc, flute; Houston Symphony; Christoph Eschenbach, conductor; Telarc 80452

Today’s date marks two events in American musical history — one sad, one happy.

It was on today’s date in 1937 that George Gershwin died at 10:35 in the morning in a Hollywood hospital after an operation for a brain tumor. He was only 38. Gershwin was the idol of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley, and also admired by the “serious” composers of his day, such as Maurice Ravel and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Even Arnold Schoenberg, the fearsome leader of the 12-tone school — and Gershwin’s regular tennis partner in Los Angeles — said, in tribute, “there is no doubt that he was a great composer.”

A Gershwin memorial concert was held in the Hollywood Bowl later that year, featuring notables from both classical and popular music, including Otto Klemperer, Fred Astaire and Lily Pons.

The happier anniversary we note is the founding of the Hollywood Bowl on today’s date in 1922. This open-air auditorium was constructed in a natural canyon in the Los Angeles area, and hosted its first public concert with the fearsomely-bearded German conductor Alfred Hertz on the podium. An audience of 5,000 cheered music by Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, and Rossini. Works by those composers still show up on Hollywood Bowl programs today, often alongside selections from now-classic Hollywood film scores, often conducted by their composers — bearded or otherwise.

George Gershwin (1898-1937): An American in Paris; Hollywood Bowl Orchestra; John Mauceri, conductor; Philips 438 663

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): 1812 Overture; Berlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan, conductor; EMI Classics 65690