It might well be that William Crotch (1775-1847) was the most precocious musical talent of all times. Son of a humble carpenter, young William showed great enjoyment of music, and before his 2nd birthday was able to play a number

By all accounts, March of 1837 was a great month for Felix Mendelssohn! His oratorio St. Paul received enormously successful performances in Leipzig and Boston, and on the 28th of the month he married Cécile Jeanrenaud in the French Reformed

This is the fifth book by acclaimed Scottish pianist Susan Tomes, and unlike her previous books whose primary focus is on the exigencies of life as a professional musician – from ensemble playing and touring, coughers in the audience to

Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado (1886) wasn’t the first sign of the West’s fascination with the exotic East. The Paris Exposition of 1867 brought Japanese art to the world in its first national pavilion and artists including Vincent van Gogh

While putting the finishing touches on the menacing finale of his Sixth Symphony in the summer of 1904, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) also drafted two central “Nachtmusiken” (Music of the Night) that would eventually become the second and fourth movements of

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known under his stage name “Molière,” is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language. He spent 13 years as an itinerant actor before he started to write his own plays. Combining elements

Animals in music occur in everything from children’s pieces to great serious works. Their rhythm in the world is something that a composer can take up and develop and also their aspect: fierce or calming.

Ernest Hemingway never met a drink he didn’t like! In fact, he had a rather tumultuous lifelong affair with alcohol. Given such expertise, we should probably pay close attention to what this great novelist and journalist had to say about