This piece, which debuted at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and the minimalist outpouring that it sparked, were a reaction to the rigid strictures of serialism and the stranglehold of the academic composers of the time.

This publication in Pravda of the article titled "Chaos Instead of Music" signaled Stalin’s displeasure with Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and led to the composer’s “redemption” in his Symphony No. 5.

Before Ives, American concert music was almost entirely based on European models. After him, through Copland, Cage, and beyond, American “classical” music found its own voice. Hear why tonight at 10 pm.

Sibelius in his time was seen as a nationalist along the lines of Grieg, but we now hear his music as radical and astonishingly prescient.

Stravinsky’s completely original instrumentation and rhythms, and his use of dissonance, have made this work one of the most important of the 20th century. Hear how it happened, tonight at 10 pm.