Music: The Man Who Invented Music

The NBC Symphony musicians had seen their tall, usually self-confident program producer, Don Gillis, looking like a colicky cat before—the last time, the day Arturo Toscanini first rehearsed Gillis' new Symphony 5^ (TIME, Sept. 29, 1947).

Last week, musicians who saw the same expression on Producer Gillis' face again had no trouble guessing whose score they would find on their rehearsal racks.

U.S. Steel, which sponsors the NBC Summer Symphony series, had decided it would also sponsor an original work, and had asked Gillis, 37, and vivacious NBC Scripter Claris Ross, 26, to write one. In a month, they had cooked up a...