On today’s date in 1981, at a house concert in St. Paul, Minnesota, Courtship Songs, a chamber work by the American composer Stephen Paulus received its first performance. It was commissioned to celebrate the 15th wedding anniversary of Jack and Linda Hoeschler and scored for the instruments the couple and their two children played: flute, oboe, cello and piano. The commissioning bug caught on, and anniversary commissions became a family tradition.

Eventually the Hoeschlers and some of their friends started up a Commissioning Club. Modeled along the lines of an investment club, the purpose was to commission American composers including Paulus, Paul Schoenfield, Steve Heitzeg and Augusta Read Thomas, for premieres by ensembles like New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Washington D.C.’s 20th Century Consort, as well as the Minnesota Orchestra and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

In 1996, one Commissioning Club premiere reached an audience of millions when Paulus’s setting of Pilgrim Jesus, by English poet Kevin Crossley-Holland, was performed at King’s College, Cambridge as part of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, broadcast live on both the BBC’s World Service and public radio stations across America.

Not a bad return on their investment!

Stephen Paulus (1949-2014): Courtship Songs; Jane Garvin, flute; Merilee Klemp, oboe; Mina Fisher, cello; Jill Dawe, piano; Innova 539