This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” get ready for Memorial Day with two symphonies composed for the armed forces.

Morton Gould wrote his Symphony No. 4, his first large scale piece for symphonic band, in 1952, for the United States Military Academy at West Point. The score calls for a “marching machine,” but on the recording we’ll hear, now a classic on the Mercury label, the feet are those of the 120 musicians of the Eastman School Symphony Band. Frederick Fennell directs the Eastman Wind Ensemble.

Samuel Barber composed his Symphony No. 2 in 1943, while he was serving in the U.S. Army Air Force. 20 years later, he revised and published its slow movement as a separate piece, titled “Night Flight.” He then jettisoned – and actually tried to destroy – the rest of the symphony. The work was reconstituted only after the composer’s death, from rediscovered parts in a warehouse in the UK. We’ll hear a recording with Marin Alsop and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Reflect on the sacrifice of Americans at war, on “Orchestrated Maneuvers” – American military symphonies for Memorial Day – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Corporal Samuel Barber with the score of his Second Symphony