Sometimes my choice of music for this blog is sometimes based on the date or event (especially for important days, like Saturnalia), sometimes based on what is playing in my head, and sometimes based on a completely random train of thought. Today, it’s the third – a random train of thought.

Since this particular thought-train is perhaps a bit dark, I should explain. 9/11 has been on my mind (and all over the news), and I couldn’t help but ponder the events of that day. Acts of terrorism, mass death, airplanes, suicide attacks … and then, without intending it, I remembered a piano piece titled “Suicide in an Airplane”, by Leo Ornstein. Tasteless, yes, but that’s how the brain works sometimes. So that’s why today’s piece is by Ornstein – but a different piece, titled “Solitude”, which I hadn’t known before today.

Ornstein skyrocketed to fame in the 1910’s with his futurist piano works. Futurism was meant to bring about a sort of industrial revolution in music – shunning the old musical ways or traditional instruments and singable melodies, and looking to machines and factories for inspiration. Hence, “Suicide in an Airplane” sounds like a plane motor (propeller – this was 1918, after all) in takeoff. However, after this 15-minutes of fame, he returned to a conservative musical style, composing all the way into his 90s. “Solitude” is a lovely piece and a return to the impressionistic style found in Debussy‘s earlier piano works.

Yesterday, parents over the world celebrated the start of the school year (while teachers mourned). How about another school-themed overture?

The School for Scandal is an 18th century English play, which foreshadows BBC costume comedies and all their predictable characters. There isn’t exactly a school in the play; however, Samuel Barber wrote an overture for it while he was still a student – he was a mere 21 years old. Not bad for a college project! It has since remained one of his most-popular and most-performed works.

There’s a handful of pieces that would be good for Labor Day: there’s the musicians’ walkout of Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony; there’s the joy of the workers in the Anvil Chorus; and of course there’s the Fanfare for the Common Man to cheer on the proletariat.

But I want something that really captures the down-and-dirty manual laborers of the early 20th century. The Plow that Broke the Plains was a 1936 short movie, sponsored by the US government, which linked the dust bowl to uncontrolled farming. While not specifically about the labor movement, the film does demonstrate how greed in high places can displace and destroy the workers in the low places. The score, by Virgil Thomson, incorporates hymns, American folk tunes, and cowboy melodies.