There are certain pieces of music in the standard orchestral repertoire that have, for any number of reasons, become “iconic.” Instantly recognizable by virtually anyone in the Western world, these works gained enormous popularity, in many cases centuries after their composers were gone. Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D, composed around 1680, had disappeared from history until it was resurrected in a 1968 recording and grew to become the “must-have music” at countless weddings. Ravel’s 1928 Bolero was an instant hit (a fact that mystified the composer), but was elevated to pop culture icon when it was utilized in the 1979 romantic comedy 10. Samuel Barber’s wrenching Adagio for Strings has become permanently associated with mourning, having been broadcast over radio at the announcement of Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, following the funeral of President Kennedy, and at Last Night of the Proms in 2001 to honor the victims of the September 11 attacks. Add to this list of musical icons a quirky tone poem based on a 1797 ballad by the great German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Paul Dukas’ extraordinarily well-crafted, colorful, and permanently “Mickey Mouse-associated” The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Dukas was an exceedingly private man whose life was devoid of controversy. He made his living as a music critic, later teaching at the Paris Conservatory. As a composer, he was an extraordinary perfectionist. This resulted in a tiny compositional output; besides The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, he published only one symphony, an overture, two works for piano, one opera, one ballet, and a few additional smaller works for instruments and voice throughout his life. A notorious critic of his own music, Dukas also destroyed the manuscripts of several early works as well as the score of a second symphony and a violin sonata shortly before his death.

Premiered in May 1897, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was immediately well-received. Its popularity skyrocketed, however, after the conductor Leopold Stokowski, in conjunction with Walt Disney, utilized it as the centerpiece of the 1940 film Fantasia. Even if you have never heard of Paul Dukas, you have likely watched as Mickey Mouse, the sorcerer’s apprentice, gets himself into a real bind after casting a spell on a broom in hopes of having the broom take over the arduous chore of hauling water. By now, we all know the outcome, as the broom (and then many brooms after Mickey chops the first broom into pieces) performs the task too well, flooding the sorcerer’s home while Mickey desperately tries to stop the mayhem. Eventually the sorcerer returns and puts an end to the bedlam, leaving an exhausted Mickey chastened and immensely relieved.

Opening with a single pizzicato from the strings, there is an immediate fog of mystery as quiet woodwinds intone the main theme. Searing trumpets break the mood as the apprentice casts his spell. Bassoons take over as the broom sputters to life and begins the work the apprentice assigns. All is going well for a bit, as the other woodwinds and brass join in the comic march, but the fun is short-lived, and the music grows increasingly agitated as the overachieving broom begins flooding the sorcerer’s workshop. The brass blare as the apprentice tries in vain to reverse the spell he cast. Finally, in desperation, the apprentice grabs an ax and chops the broom into pieces. Everything stops for a moment, but the bassoons, aided now by the contrabassoon, slowly recover and resume the march, this time with added forces! Manic woodwinds, swirling strings, and malevolent brass churn away as bedlam ensues. At the apex of the mania, the sorcerer reappears, and the brass scream out the incantation music from the opening. The broom and the bassoons have been silenced, and the mysterious music returns as the apprentice sheepishly slinks away.

Because Dukas and Disney both followed the text of Goethe’s ballad so closely, we can view Fantasia not as an unwelcome adaptation of Dukas’ music, but rather as an enhancement to it. Dukas’ brilliant imagination and compositional skill had already done the work of bringing Goethe’s story to life; Disney’s added visual element simply ensured that the music of this quiet perfectionist has now been heard by millions around the world and remains among Western culture’s most beloved “icons.”

The music of the “common folk” has long been a source of inspiration for composers. As far back as the 1700s, Baroque composers like J. S. Bach composed music based on the rhythms of German folk dances. Chopin and Liszt continued that tradition into the 19th century, composing mazurkas, polonaises, and rhapsodies based on the rhythms and spirit of Polish and Hungarian folk music. Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky evoked the sounds of Slavic folk music in their compositions, while Bartók traveled extensively throughout Eastern Europe, researching and recording folk tunes, then using them as inspiration for his own compositions. Antonín Dvořák, whose Slavonic Dances were among his earliest and most successful publications, famously advised American composers to look to the music of the “new world” for inspiration. His “New World” Symphony, composed in 1893 during his stint as the director of a newly established National Conservatory of Music in New York, was heavily influenced by both Native American and African American folk music.

It was not unusual, therefore, that early-20th-century composer William L. Dawson turned to the folk music of Black Americans for inspiration for his first symphony. What was unusual was that Dawson himself was a Black American, composing in an era where the color of his skin would have disqualified him from consideration as a “serious composer” by all but the most progressive members of the art music community. Fortunately, famed conductor Leopold Stokowski was such a member, and it was through his advocacy that Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony was premiered by the New York Philharmonic in 1934. Dawson thereby became the third Black composer to have their music performed by a major American Orchestra in only a few short years, following William Grant Still, whose Afro-American Symphony was premiered by the Rochester Philharmonic in 1931, and Florence B. Price, whose Symphony in E Minor was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933.

Born in 1899 in Anniston, Alabama, Dawson was the first of seven children and showed an early aptitude for music and academics. He was educated at Booker T. Washington’s famed Tuskegee Institute, graduating in 1921. He went on to become the first Black student to receive a bachelor’s degree from the Horner Institute of Fine Arts in Kansas City, Missouri, and then earned a master’s degree in composition from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. He returned to the Tuskegee Institute in 1930 as a faculty member, where he served for 35 years. Under Dawson’s leadership, the Tuskegee Institute Choir quickly achieved national acclaim, and in 1932, the choir spent six weeks in New York City, performing in gala concerts marking the opening of Radio City Music Hall. It was there that Dawson met Stokowski, who expressed an interest in performing Dawson’s music. The symphony that he had begun during his time in Chicago in the 1920s was completed, and in 1934, Stokowski conducted four performances of the work, three at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music and one at Carnegie Hall, with one concert broadcast nationwide on the radio. At each performance, the reception was extraordinary, with audiences breaking protocol to applaud at the end of movements and giving a standing ovation at the conclusion of each performance. Black and white critics alike gave the work glowing reviews, and it seemed as if the symphony would quickly find a home among the standard orchestral repertoire. Unfortunately, that was not to happen. The excitement over the work faded, it lapsed into obscurity, and Dawson never composed another symphony, despite living to age 91. It is only in the 21st century that the work has been resurrected, finding new and equally enthusiastic audiences.

Giving each of its three movements a descriptive title, Dawson wrote that his symphony was “symbolic of the link uniting Africa and her rich heritage with her descendants in America.” In his own program note, he wrote, “The themes are taken from what are popularly known as Negro Spirituals. In this composition, the composer has employed three themes taken from typical melodies over which he has brooded since childhood, having learned them at his mother’s knee.” Interestingly, the spirituals he chose are not among today’s most well-known: “Oh, My Little Soul Gwine Shine Like a Star,” “O Le’Me Shine,” and “Hallelujah, Lord, I Been Down into the Sea.” Yet, they were clearly dear to Dawson’s heart and infuse the symphony with the musical DNA of 1930s Black America. They are not the whole story, however, as the extraordinary work is primarily original material that paints a vivid and often searing portrait of the African American experience.

The powerful first movement, The Bond of Africa, opens with a solemn horn solo. Despite utilizing syncopated rhythms commonly found in spirituals, there is a somewhat ominous tone to the introduction. Dawson wrote, “a link was taken out of a human chain when the first African was taken from the shores of his native land and sent to slavery.” The tragedy of this “missing link” is front and center in this searing music. The solo horn returns to introduce the main body of the movement, upbeat music that vacillates between agitation and jubilation with nods to the rhythms of ragtime. Chattering woodwinds trade tunes, punctuated by lively brass and percussion, until the brass section shuts down the party with the opening “missing link” music, as if to remind us of the tragedy of slavery. The solemn music and the upbeat music trade off as the movement continues, constantly interrupting each other and culminating in a ferocious, full-orchestra statement of the “missing link” theme. A final burst of full-orchestra energy brings the fierce movement to a stunning close.

Opening with ominous harp and percussion, the second movement, Hope in the Night, features plodding strings underpinning a plaintive solo for the English horn. Dawson wrote that he intended to depict the “atmosphere of the humdrum life of a people whose bodies were baked by the sun and lashed with the whip for two hundred and fifty years; whose lives were proscribed before they were born,” adding that “the English horn sings a melody that describes the characteristics, hopes, and longings of a Folk held in darkness.” The heartbreaking melody builds to a searing climax, before, as in the first movement, a contrasting, carefree section begins. Dawson wrote, “The children, unmindful of the heavy cadences of despair, sing and play; but even in their world of innocence, there is a little wail, a brief note of sorrow.” If this is the “hope” in the movement’s title, the respite is short-lived, as the remainder of the powerful movement is devoted to the enormous weight of “the night,” with closing moments that are positively shattering.

The final movement, O Le’Me Shine, Shine Like a Morning Star!, offers a rebirth of sorts. Introduced by solo oboe, bassoon, and clarinet, the music quickly grows agitated, as if we are being propelled upward from the darkness of the previous movement toward a lighter place. Snippets of melody are tossed back and forth in a complex rhythmic texture that is constantly gaining momentum. Dawson revised this movement substantially after a trip to West Africa in 1952, and the intricate rhythms of African percussion inspired the highly virtuosic writing. The restless movement careens relentlessly forward, culminating in a thunderous finale.

Today, as this powerful work is finally garnering the attention it deserves, we can acknowledge not only Dawson’s extraordinary gifts as a composer but also the unique impact of his Black American experience on the music. Prior to its premiere in 1932, Dawson was interviewed about the work, noting, “I’ve not tried to imitate Beethoven or Brahms, Franck, or Ravel—but to be just myself, a Negro. To me, the finest compliment that could be paid my symphony when it has its premiere is that it unmistakably is not the work of a white man. I want the audience to say: ‘Only a Negro could have written that.’”

Indeed—and 21st-century audiences are grateful for the opportunity to hear it at last.

Long before Aaron Copland penned his ballet music to Appalachian Spring and Rodeo, well-known works that critics lauded as having established a uniquely “American” sound in music, there was another American composer growing up in rural Connecticut—listening to the village bands playing in the town square and singing hymns and Civil War-era songs around the campfire. The son of a Union Army bandmaster, Charles Ives was born in 1874, two years before Brahms finished his first symphony. His earliest exposure to music came via his bandmaster father, a full-time musician who played, taught, conducted, and organized virtually every musical endeavor in the town of Danbury. Ives’ father was an unorthodox innovator who was known to mount various musical “experiments,” such as stationing bands at opposite ends of the town square and having them play different pieces in different keys as they marched toward and past each other—just to see how it sounded. He also embraced amateur musicians. Ives remembered he and his father hearing an old stonemason singing hymns off-key, and his father advising him to "Look into his face and hear the music of the ages. Don't pay too much attention to the sounds—for if you do, you may miss the music.” It was an open-minded approach that embraced the idea that anyone and everyone could make music, and that music played on a poorly tuned country fiddle in the town square was just as legitimate as music played on a Stradivarius in a gilded concert hall. Ives grew up believing that music was for everyone and that no sounds were “off limits,” and during his almost 80 years, alongside a steady output of more traditional songs, he produced some of the most unique, unexpected, experimental, forward-thinking, fearless, and thoroughly “American” music the world had ever seen.

Beginning music lessons with his father at the age of five, Ives would eventually turn his attention to the organ as his primary instrument, becoming the youngest salaried church organist in Connecticut at age 14. It was also around this time that he began composing—marches, church songs, fiddle tunes—the type of music he had grown up with. At age 17, he composed a larger-scale work for organ, the innovative Variations on “America”, which he penned for a Fourth of July celebration by his employer, the Methodist church in Brewster, New York. Ives performed the variations in local churches while still a teen and continued tinkering with them throughout adulthood. Variations on “America,” which Ives later described as "but a boy's work, partly serious and partly in fun,” is a witty, somewhat irreverent set of variations on the popular tune “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” which was at the time considered the de facto national anthem of the United States. It is a precocious work, showing that even at the age of 17, Ives was already experimenting with polytonality (composing music in two different keys simultaneously). Although incredibly proud of his son’s work, his father apparently once forbade Ives to perform some of the polytonal variations in church, saying, “They upset the elderly ladies and make the little boys laugh and get noisy!” Variations on “America” was not published until 1948, after the organist E. Power Biggs discovered and recorded it. In 1962, the composer William Schuman transcribed the work for orchestra, and the orchestral version was premiered by the New York Philharmonic in 1964.

The work opens with a jolly introduction that incorporates snippets of the famous tune. Not long into it, Ives takes a few surprising “left turns” harmonically, as if to give us a hint of what is to come. The introduction is followed by a solemn presentation of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” in the brass, accompanied by pizzicato strings. We are then treated to five wildly disparate variations on the tune. Like circus acts following one after the other, we are treated to frenzied woodwinds, barbershop quartet-style writing, a variation that veers far astray into polytonality before morphing into a quirky waltz, Spanish castanets, cornet acrobatics, and a rousing conclusion. The writing is flamboyant, grandiose, charming, and above all, incredibly creative and skillful. The short work ends before we’ve had time to fully digest what we’re hearing and inevitably leaves the audience wanting more.

Ives would go on to compose over 700 works, including six symphonies, smaller orchestral works, chamber music, keyboard music, and choral music, all while enjoying a highly successful career in the insurance business. (Ives & Myrick would become the largest insurance agency in the country, generating enormous profits.) Despite his enviable business success, however, Ives’ music remained virtually unknown. In the late 1920s, composers Henry Cowell and Aaron Copland began to promote Ives’ music, but live performances were rare. Finally, in 1947, Ives was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Third Symphony, a work that he had finished in 1910, and in 1951, Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic gave the world premiere of Ives’ First Symphony, a work he had begun in 1898. Broader recognition had just begun when Ives died in 1954.

In many ways, the music world is still getting to know Charles Ives, whose wildly creative approach to composing was decades ahead of its time. Undeterred by years of toiling in obscurity and having his music rejected as incomprehensible, Ives had soldiered on, showing what Aaron Copland called “the courage of a lion.” He is perhaps best summed up in the words of composer Arnold Schoenberg, whose music was known worldwide. After Schoenberg’s death in 1951, his widow found a note in his desk where Schoenberg had written, “There is a great Man living in this Country—a composer. He has solved the problem of how to preserve one's self-esteem and to learn. He responds to negligence by contempt. He is not forced to accept praise or blame. His name is Ives.”

“Nothing is certain except death and taxes,” said Benjamin Franklin. But while taxation has rarely, if ever, been the inspiration for great music, fear of, fascination with, and gratitude for avoiding death have all served to spark creativity in composers over the centuries. Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, Grieg, Mussorgsky, Richard Strauss—the list of composers writing funeral marches or other works associated with death is long and contains many of the most celebrated names in the history of Western music. Gustav Mahler’s preoccupation with death likely stems from his childhood, as he was the second of 14 children, only six of whom survived into adulthood. But it was his own near-death experience, after suffering an intestinal hemorrhage on February 24, 1901, that profoundly changed him, giving the composer new perspective on his own mortality. Two surgeries and an extended convalescence gave Mahler plenty of time to contemplate his own brush with death, and he confided to a friend, “While I was hovering on the border between life and death, I wondered whether it would not be better to have done with it at once, since everyone must come to that in the end. Besides, the prospect of dying did not frighten me in the least … and to return to life seemed almost a nuisance.” It was during his convalescence, as he recuperated in the Austrian town of Maiernigg, that the 41-year-old Mahler began work on his monumental Symphony No. 5.

Constructed in three parts, comprising a total of five movements, the Fifth Symphony is the first of Mahler’s symphonies to have no vocal connection. His First Symphony had been peppered with melodies from his Songs of a Wayfarer, and the Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies all incorporated voices. In the Fifth Symphony, the power is purely instrumental, with no underlying text or story providing context. There is no shortage of drama, however, as Part One opens ominously with a Trauermarsch (Funeral March). No genteel introduction invites the listener in, but rather a solo trumpet intones a foreboding, menacing fanfare. The brass and percussion sections join, and the heaving music is terrifying. A sorrowful lament in the strings follows, interrupted repeatedly by the sinister fanfare. A central section features an anguished full-orchestral wail, as yet another aspect of grief is made manifest before the fanfare returns to shut everything down. There is a final recurrence of the nostalgic lament, but the eerie fanfare has the final word, as muted trumpets and a lone flute leave us in devastating silence.

The anxiety does not relent as the second movement, marked Stürmisch bewegt, mit grösster Vehemenz (Stormy, played with great vehemence), opens in a full-orchestra frenzy. When the melee subsides, gentle woodwinds introduce a poignant cello melody. Like a touching reminiscence that is interrupted by a painful reminder of loss, anguish interrupts the nostalgia and then yields again to another extraordinarily sad theme, again introduced by the cellos. The vacillation between torment and nostalgia continues for the remainder of the movement, as joyous memories mix and bleed into anger and grief. The storm subsides momentarily as the brass offer a brief glimpse of heaven, before the movement dissolves into pieces and the anguish finally relents.

The sun finally comes out in the third movement Scherzo, which comprises the entirety of the Symphony’s Part II. The longest of the five movements, here the dread and angst of the previous music disappear, and Mahler offers a buoyant ländler dance. “Every note is full with life,” Mahler wrote to a friend, “and the whole thing whirls around in a dance. There is nothing romantic or mystical about it. It is simply the expression of unheard-of energy. It is a human being in the full light of day, in the zenith of life.” A genteel waltz section follows, before the ländler returns, this time with a slightly more demonic tone. Suddenly, a regal solo horn shuts down the party and introduces a more reflective middle section. The extraordinary, noble writing for the solo horn is a great departure from the high spirits of the opening, almost like a preacher reminding us that life can also be bittersweet. (The hornist is sometimes even asked to stand for this section, in recognition of the importance of their role.) Chastened, pizzicato strings and woodwinds quietly resume playing the ländler theme. The music slowly grows in complexity, and eventually the wild spinning returns. The solo horn makes one final appearance near the end before a raucous coda, where Mahler pulls out all the stops and the music rushes to an ecstatic conclusion.

Part III of the symphony begins with the fourth movement Adagietto, perhaps the most famous work Mahler ever composed. Scored for only strings and harp, the exquisitely delicate music has been performed at public memorial services, including Robert Kennedy’s 1968 funeral, where Leonard Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic. Its original intent, however, was as a love letter to Alma Schindler, whom Mahler had first met in November of 1901, and who would soon after become his wife. When he offered the score of the Adagietto to Alma, Mahler included a poem:

How I love you, oh my sun,
I cannot tell you with words.
Only my longing can I exclaim
And my love, and my bliss.

Marked sehr langsam (very slowly), the music could not be more different from what has come prior. Here, after the potent anxiety and spinning energy of the previous movements, we witness the innermost thoughts of a 41-year-old man who has fallen deeply in love. Ranging from impossibly tender and delicate moments to passages of sweeping passion, the movement reflects the bliss and euphoria of new love. It also had the desired effect on Alma, as the two were married the following spring.

It was the summer of 1902 by the time Mahler began composing the symphony’s final movement, and this time he and Alma had returned together to Mahler’s favored vacation spot in Maiernigg. Alma was expecting their first child, and Mahler’s mood could not have been more different than it had been the previous summer. The finale opens with a solo horn and woodwinds trading snippets of folk song before launching into the main theme of the movement, a joyful, pastoral tune that will return repeatedly. In between repetitions of the main theme, Mahler embarks on virtuosic sections where he can show off his compositional prowess, the first beginning with a bustling fugue in the strings. After a second repeat of the opening theme, we hear a reprise of the music from the Adagietto, this time in a completely different, more animated setting. There is a restless joy to the music—chirping woodwinds and heroic brass fanfares, all set over a dizzying whirlwind of notes in the strings. The Adagietto theme returns a second time, again in “disguise,” and the general barn dance continues. A sudden, abrupt pull back into a more contemplative section allows a momentary respite from the relentless energy, but the electricity gradually rebuilds, culminating in a restatement of the brass section’s “glimpse of heaven” music from the end of the second movement. This regal chorale, whose glory was only hinted at earlier, is now allowed to bloom fully as heaven is no longer just a dream. A madcap race to the finish brings the triumphant movement to a close – a raucous, celebratory finale from a composer who, having glimpsed death, had finally found his way back to the unbridled joy of living.