French composer Maurice Ravel lived through both the first World War and the Spanish Flu. Beethoven took shelter in his brother’s cellar during the Napoleonic wars. Ruth Crawford Seeger, once a budding classical composer, found her way to folk music during the Great Depression. According to Rebecca Smithorn, a Cover Conductor and Lecturer with the National Philharmonic, these moments of world crisis not only influenced each composer's music at the time, but would go on to shape who they became. And in the case of Ruth Crawford Seeger, her choice to pursue folk music would also end up having a huge impact on her own stepson, Pete Seeger.

Like many organizations, the National Philharmonic has been forced to move the bulk of their programming online during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Smithorn’s new series, Composers In Crisis, aims to look at how exulted musicians over time have dealt with periods of tribulation and what we might learn in our own harrowing moment from those past experiences.