When Alan Gilbert asked John Corigliano to write a large-scale commemoration of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the composer realized he didn’t want the piece to depict the actual event. He had a novel solution.

As the intense emergency of the 9/11 attacks subsided, David Garland turned to the music of 18th Century German composer Johann Sebastian Bach. Moved by Bach's deep emotion, the beauty of Bach's musical logic, and the profound way Bach's music is able to express the truths and ideals of humanity, Garland created "Bach: Solace and Inspiration," to inaugurate WNYC's return to music programming on September 23, 2001. For this tenth anniversary of 9/11, Garland has assembled highlights from the original program.

There’s a doubleness to listening to Jacqueline du Pre play Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto. The music is powerful, beginning with vivid chords from the cello, which continues with a mournful, downward melody that is greeted by the winds. Jackie, as everyone called her, said she loved the piece because she “felt it had such a wide range of expression, it went from terrible pathos to ridiculous fun and amusement.”  

As part of The Requiem Project, we searched the WNYC Archives for voices that offer perspective on loss, grief and remembrance. The goal was for these voices to augment the music stream — text that would expand upon the themes in the music, and vice versa. We found accounts from volunteers who rushed to the World Trade Center site to help in the relief efforts, interviews with artists who struggled to capture the enormity of the event, and much more.

The fifth segment of Q2's 10-hour Requiem Project mix features suggestions from listeners, a composition from Ingram Marshall, stories from a musician, a scientist, a policeman and a relative of a 9/11 victim, and many other pieces that reflect on the timeless and universal themes of loss and consolation.

The fourth segment of Q2's 10-hour Requiem Project mix features suggestions from listeners, compositions from composers including Meredith Monk and Arvo Part, stories from writers and volunteers, and many other pieces that reflect on timeless and universal themes of loss and consolation.

The third segment of Q2's 10-hour Requiem Project mix features suggestions from listeners, compositions explored by producers and WQXR host Annie Bergen, stories from volunteers and artists, and many other pieces that reflect on timeless and universal themes of loss and consolation.

The second segment of Q2's 10-hour Requiem Project mix features suggestions from listeners, compositions from contributing composers including Gavin Bryars and Toby Twining, stories from artists and relatives of 9/11 victims, and many other pieces that reflect on timeless and universal themes of loss and consolation.

The first two hours of Q2's 10-hour Requiem Project mix features suggestions from listeners, compositions from contributing composers Meredith Monk and Ingram Marshall, a work whose U.S. choral premiere took place in The Greene Space at WQXR, stories from writers and religious leaders, and many other pieces that reflect on timeless and universal themes of loss and consolation. 

There are only a few, fleeting moments when one feels instantly thrust in to history. How does a seasoned artist react to such ephemera? In the video below, New York composer David Del Tredici shares Gotham Glory: Missing Towers, his musical mirage of the two ghosts of 9/11 that loom over Ground Zero.

In the process of archiving and digitizing analog tape loops from work I had done in 1982, I discovered some wonderful, sweeping pastoral pieces I had forgotten about. Beautiful, lush, cinematic, truly American pastoral landscapes swept before my ears and eyes. During the transfer process, as each of the loops played round and round on the tape deck, I soon realized the tape loops were disintegrating.

Composer John Adams, looking back at On the Transmigration of Souls, his 2002 piece remembering Sept. 11, expresses satisfaction with the work's success, but also concerns about the public's "orgy of self pity."

On September 11, 1992, my father wrote a letter to his friends and family, entered the waters of the Massachusetts Bay off Revere Beach and never emerged. Because no body was found, I was not told of this until shortly before September 11, 1999. The time delay both harshened and dulled the news, removing the immediacy while nevertheless leaving a void one can only gain from the loss of a parent. I was entering high school that year, which added to the internal chaos surrounding this, and was still making sense of the news two years later when the planes hit the towers. 

There is a wide selection of cultural events being planned around the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Here's a list of concerts around New York City.

Eighteen years ago, with whole chunks of my address book gutted by AIDS, I attended the first Broadway production of Angels in America. I emerged from the Walter Kerr Theater, the closing scene still lingering in my mind, to face a bitterly cold February night and a sky brilliant with stars. For a moment, like Kushner’s lost housewife, I imagined every friend I had lost as a separate constellation, mapped for me, forever, in a private welkin.

In the days immediately after 9/11, our regular programming on WNYC 93.9 FM was suspended and we were doing wall-to-wall news coverage from NPR’s New York studio in midtown. I had been on the scene that Tuesday morning and was badly shaken by the events; and staying at home with nothing to do was definitely not helping me. So when NPR called to ask if I’d cover a live performance of the Requiem by Gabriel Fauré, and gather some sound from people at the church, I was relieved and grateful.

When Robert Ridgell (organist at Trinity Wall Street Church in New York) asked me for a new work to be commissioned by Trinity Wall Street and for his wonderful Trinity Youth Chorus, I said "Yes." Then Robert told me that this new work would be part of the 9/11 Anniversary and he would appreciate having a requiem.

As we take all the generous musical suggestions you've provided and strive to channel them into a cohesive, fluid stream of music for the 9/11 weekend, we acknowledge a complicated, but inevitable, decision. We have an idea how to proceed; however, we want to hear your thoughts as to the most appropriate, respectful course of action.

As part of Q2's Requiem Project, we're collecting stories from the  New York Public Radio archives to augment the music stream — voices that expand upon the themes in the music, and vice versa.  We recently wondered: what if we blended the two?  We've put together a little audio experiment and we'd like you to evaluate the results.