Today’s date in 1886 marks the premiere in Paris of The Carnival of the Animals, the most popular work of French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, who steadfastly refused to allow it to be published until after his death, fearing its frivolity might damage his reputation as a “serious” composer.

Saint-Saëns had a point. The work was first heard at a pre-Lenten house concert, and a few days later at Émile Lemoine’s exclusive members-only chamber music series, where it became an annual Shrove Tuesday Carnival tradition. Once the famous pianist Harold Bauer was one of the Shrove Tuesday performers, as he recalled in his autobiography:

“Everyone who participated had to wear makeup representing the animal whose music he was supposed to be playing. The flutist had a carboard head showing him as a nightingale. The cellist was a very flabby swan; the distinguished players of the string quartet were shown as donkeys of various breeds. Saint-Saëns and I were the two pianists — he made up to look like our host Lemoine, and I, furnished with a wig and beard, disguised as Saint-Saëns. [We two] pianists were provided with immense carboard hands and feet that were clipped off at the moment of performance, which was extremely hilarious.”

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921): Carnival of the Animals; David Owen Norris, piano; I Musici Montreal; Yuli Turovsky, conductor; Chandos 9246

Ask a serious music lover to name major figures in 20th century music and it’s likely the names Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Bartók will crop up. But in addition to those Austrian, Russian and Hungarian composers, a lively group of Italian modernists were also active throughout the 20th century — only their names and music are not so well known.

One of them was Goffredo Petrassi, born in 1904. Petrassi became one of the leading figures in a group of Italian composers that included Luigi Dallapiccola, Alfredo Casella and Gian Francesco Malipiero. This group tried to compensate for Italy’s almost total preoccupation with opera by concentrating more on instrumental pieces.

Petrassi’s own musical influences range from the Italian Renaissance music he sang as a young choirboy in Rome to the works of abstract painters like Jackson Pollock that he viewed when visiting America.

Petrassi’s largest body of work was his eight Concertos for Orchestra composed between 1933 and 1972, but in his final years he turned to chamber works, such as this Autumn Sestina completed in 1982, scored for six instruments. When asked where the “Autumn” in the title came from, the 78-year-old Petrassi responded, “Perhaps it’s got something to do with my age.”

Goffredo Petrassi (1904-2003): Sestina d’autunno; Compania; Andrea Molino, conductor; Stradivarius 33347

Claude Debussy probably never saw the reviews his symphonic suite La Mer (The Sea) received after its American premiere on today’s date in Boston in 1907 — and that was probably for the best.

Musicologist Nicholas Slonimsky, who collected notably bad reviews in his notably excellent Lexicon of Musical Invective, says the 1907 Boston audience was a tough crowd, composed of — as Slonimsky put it — “easily discomfited dowagers, quiet academically minded New England music lovers, and irascible music critics.”

The Boston newspaper reviews of the 1907 audience’s reaction to Debussy’s La Mer included some real zingers like: “Frenchmen are notoriously bad sailors, and we clung like a drowning man to a few fragments of the tonal wreck.”

An even more graphic critic said: “It is possible that Debussy did not intend to call it La Mer, but Le Mal de Mer, which would at once make the tone-picture as clear as day. It is a series of symphonic pictures of seasickness. The first movement is Headache. The second is Doubt, picturing moments of dread suspense … The third movement, with its explosions and rumblings, has now a self-evident purpose: The hero is endeavoring to throw up his boot heels!”

Claude Debussy (1862-1918): La Mer; Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal; Charles Dutoit, conductor; London/Decca 430240