A work for amplified Volkswagen, played with flashlights. An opera for eleven dogs. A piano piece in which the performer crawls inside the lid and lets the piano play him.

Move over, Till Eulenspiegel. Today is the birthday of Robert Moran.

Moran, who’s made his home in Philadelphia for over 30 years, is contemporary music’s merry prankster.

Following studies in Vienna with Hans Erich Apostel, with whom he “learned to count to twelve” (as in twelve-tone music), Moran attended Mills College, where his teachers were Darius Milhaud and Luciano Berio. His classmates at Mills included Steve Reich, Phil Lesh, and Tom Constanten. Lesh and Constanten went on to play for The Grateful Dead. I wonder what ever happened to Reich?

While there, Moran became involved with the whole San Francisco scene. He gained notoriety in the late 1960s and early ‘70s through a series of performance pieces incorporating entire cities, including San Francisco, Bethlehem, PA, and Graz, Austria. These involved tens of thousands of performers.

His many stage works include “Desert of Roses” (after Beauty and the Beast), written for Houston Grand Opera, and “Alice” (after “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”), composed for the Scottish Ballet. Maurice Sendak introduced him to the Grimm fairy tale “The Juniper Tree,” which became an operatic collaboration with Philip Glass.

For the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Moran was commissioned to write a work for the youth chorus of Trinity Wall Street, the so-called “Ground Zero” church in Lower Manhattan. “Trinity Requiem,” scored for children’s chorus, four cellos, harp and organ, offers a similar brand of solace to that conjured in the 19th century masterwork by Gabriel Fauré.

With Moran, you never know what you’re going to get. In his more puckish moments, he might write for harpsichord and electric frying pan. But then there are times when his natural gift for lyricism will melt your heart. Whether he’s writing for Houston Grand Opera, 39 autos, giant puppets, or electric popcorn popper, his music is always vital and worth getting to know.

Join me today, between 4 and 7 p.m. EST, for music by Robert Moran, among our birthday celebrants, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

An aria from “Desert of Roses:”

Selections from “Trinity Requiem:”

“Obrigado” for Iowa Percussion:

Bob introducing his “Lunchbag Opera” for the BBC in 1971: