On today’s date in 1876, America was celebrating its Centennial, and the place to be was in Philadelphia, where a Centennial Exhibition was in progress. This was the first World’s Fair to be held in the United States. It drew 9 million visitors–this at a time when the entire population of the U.S. was 46 million.

The Exhibition had opened in May with a concert attended by President and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant. After “Hail to the Chief,” the orchestra premiered a specially commissioned “Centennial March” by the famous German composer Richard Wagner. Wagner was paid $5000 for the commission, an astronomically high fee in those days. Wagner did not bother to attend the Philadelphia premiere, and privately told friends back: “Between you and me, the best thing about the march was the $5000 they paid me.”

The following month, the French composer Jacques Offenbach arrived to conduct his music at a specially constructed open-air pavilion. “They asked my permission to call it ‘Offenbach Gardens,’” the composer later wrote. “How could I refuse?” The concertmaster of Offenbach’s orchestra, by the way, was a 21-year old violinist from Washington, D.C. by the name of John Philip Sousa.

Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883) — American Centennial March (Philip Jones Ensemble; Elgar Howarth, cond.) London 414 149

The piano became the dominant keyboard instrument in Mozart’s lifetime in the late 18th century. Before that, the harpsichord had ruled. But for more than a hundred years after Mozart’s day, the harpsichord seemed as dead as the dodo, and even the great harpsichord works of Bach and other early 18th century masters were always played on the piano — that is, until Wanda Landowska came on the scene.

This indomitable woman was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1879, and single-handedly brought the harpsichord back to life. It was on today’s date in 1927 that she inaugurated a historic series of harpsichord concerts at her summer home near Paris — and, two years later, in 1929, Landowska premiered the Concert Champêtre, by Francis Poulenc, a brand new harpsichord concerto written specially for her.

Very much in the spirit of Landowska, the contemporary composer and performer Barbara Harbach is in the vanguard of today’s advocates for the harpsichord.

A passionate advocate for new music, she has recorded several compact discs of 20th Century Harpsichord Music for the Gasparo label, featuring works by American composers from Samuel Adler to Ellen Taafe Zwillich.

J. S. Bach (1685-1750): Little Prelude; Wanda Landowska, harpsichord; Pearl 9489

Barbara Harbach (b. 1946): Cante Flamenco, from Tres Danzas para Clavecin; Barbara Harbach, harpsichord; Gasparo 290

On this date in 1723, churchgoers in Leipzig were offered some festive music along with the gospel readings and sermon. The vocal and instrumental music was pulled together from various sources, some old, some newly-composed, and crafted into a fresh, unified work, the church cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben — which in English would be “heart and voice and thought and action.” The idea was that text and music would complement and comment on that day’s scripture readings and sermon.

Now this sort of thing was not all that uncommon back then for the hard-working composer Johann Sebastian Bach. On average Bach would prepare and present around 50 church cantatas a year, and his cantata No. 147, presented on July 2, 1723, concluded with a catchy melody that would be revived to great effect 200 years later.

In 1926, the concluding choral section of Bach’s cantata, Jesus Bleibet Meine Freude in the original German, was arranged by the British pianist Dame Myra Hess and given an English title, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. It became a popular piano recital selection, and, over time, a very popular piece to play at weddings — even though Bach’s original cantata text had nothing at all to do with tying the knot.

J.S. Bach (1627-1750): Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring; Celia Nicklin, oboe; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; Neville Marriner, conductor; Warner 975562

One way composers help make ends meet is to accept commissions for occasional pieces — works written for some special occasion, a private or public celebration or anniversary of some event, large or small. Sometimes these works go on to have a life of their own apart from the special occasion that prompted their creation, so that subsequent audiences might not even be aware of the original event at all.

In 1959, English composer Benjamin Britten accepted a commission from Swiss conductor Paul Sacher for a cantata to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the University of Basel in Switzerland. The texts selected for the cantata were all in Latin, the old academic language of universities 500 years ago, and included excerpts from the founding charter of the institution as well as medieval odes in praise of the university written by its students and faculty.

Britten’s score, which premiered at the University of Basel on today’s date in 1960, was quite literally, an academic exercise — and it’s amusing to note that apparently he wrote out the text for the work in the pages of one of his old school exercise books.

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): Cantata Academica (Carmen Basiliense); Jennifere Vyvyan, soprano; Helen Watts, mezzo-soprano; Peter Pears, tenor; Owen Brannigan, bass; London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra; George Malcolm, conductor; Decca 4251532

Under the old Julian calendar in use in Czarist Russia, on today’s date in 1861, Romantic composer Anton Arensky was born in Novgorod. If you prefer, you can also celebrate Arensky’s birthday on July 12 — the same date under the modern Gregorian calendar, but Arensky was such a Romantic that the Old Style date seems, well, more appropriate somehow.

Arensky studied with Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov, and admired the music of Tchaikovsky. Arensky taught at the Moscow Conservatory and published two books: Manual of Harmony and A Handbook of Musical Forms. His own students included a number of famous Russian composers, including Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Glière.

Arensky wrote three operas, two symphonies, concertos, chamber works and suites for two pianos — but it’s his Piano Trio in D minor that gets performed and recorded more often than any of his other works.

A victim of tuberculosis, Arensky spent the last years of his life in a Finnish sanatorium. He died young — at just 44 — in 1906.

Anton Arensky (1861-1906): Piano Trio No. 1; Rembrandt Trio; Dorian 90146

The reign of the Roman emperor Nero, notorious for his horrific deeds, was chronicled by the historian Tacitus. His account of the rise of the courtesan Poppea from Nero’s mistress to his empress, provides the plot of one of the operas written by the 17th century Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi.

Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea was first performed in Venice at the Teatro Sanctae Giovanni e Paolo in the autumn of 1643.

The first performance of Monteverdi’s Poppea in modern times had to wait until 1913, when the French composer Vincent d’Indy presented his arrangement of Poppea in Paris. In America and Britain, Poppea was first staged in 1927, at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and at Oxford University in England. It wasn’t until today’s date in 1962 that a full professional staging of Poppea occurred at the Glyndebourne Festival in England, in a version prepared and conducted by Raymond Leppard.

Monteverdi did not prescribe specific vocal ranges for the characters, and since there was no standardized orchestra in the 17th century, it was customary back then to simply give a list of some suggested instruments and leave it to the performers to decide who played what and when. Therefore, any modern performance of a Monteverdi opera is always somebody’s “version” of the surviving notes, based on educated guesswork and the available performers.

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643): L’Incoronazione di Poppea; soloists; Vienna Concentus Music Vienna; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor; Teldec 42547

A decidedly un-politically correct opera had its premiere at London’s Covent Garden on today’s date in 1905: L’Oracolo or The Oracle by the Italian composer Franco Leoni. Here’s a witty one-sentence précis of the opera prepared by Nicolas Slonimsky for his chronology Music Since 1900:

“L’Oracolo, an opera in one long act, dealing with multiplex villainy in San Francisco’s Chinatown, wherein a wily opium-den keeper kidnaps the child of the uncle of a girl he covets, kills her young lover, and is in the end strangled by the latter’s father, with a local astrologer delivering remarkably accurate oracles; an Italianate score tinkling with tiny bells, booming with deep gongs, and bubbling with orientalistic pentatonicisms.”

Another wag described L’Oracolo as “Puccini-and-water,” suggesting that if Puccini were whisky, Leoni music was definitely a less potent brew.

But when a touring Italian opera company announced a performance of L’Oracolo in San Francisco in 1937, the city’s Asian residents protested, demanding they cut the most racially offensive scenes or, better yet, stage a different opera altogether. A compromise was reached, whereby the House manager preceded the performance with a speech assuring the capacity audience that the opera’s locale and action were pure fiction, and bore no resemblance to San Francisco’s Chinatown past or present.

Franco Leoni (1864-1937): L’Oracolo; Tito Gobbi, baritone; National Philharmonic; Richard Bonynge, conductor; London OSA-12107; LP

According to Emerson, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Well, we’re not sure if composer Arnold Schoenberg ever read Emerson, but we think the 20th-century Austrian composer must have shared this principle with the 19th-century American essayist. Just when many people had Schoenberg comfortably pigeon-holed as an atonal composer, he went and wrote a big tonal piece, resolutely set in the key of G minor.

In the 1940’s, Schoenberg’s publisher asked him to write a piece for high school or amateur wind band. The work Schoenberg finished during the summer of 1943 was entitled “Theme and Variations,” and was described by its composer — with his customary modesty — as “one of those compositions which one writes in order to enjoy one’s own virtuosity and… to give a certain group of music lovers something better to play.”

Schoenberg’s music proved a little too difficult for high school bands, however, so its first performance was given on today’s date in 1946 by the Goldman Band, America’s top wind ensemble of that day, at a Central Park concert in New York City conducted by Richard Franko Goldman, an enthusiastic supporter of new works for band.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951): Theme and Variations; Peabody Conservatory Wind Ensemble; Harlan D. Parker, conductor; Naxos 8.570403