March, 2021

59 Posts
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Music That Brings up Sad Memories
Music can guide our emotions and sometimes we really want to wallow in sadness. Evoking sad memories can be a cathartic experience that leaves us feeling better at the end. We surveyed our writers to find out their music for
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A Russian Introspection: Mysakovsky’s Thirteenth Symphony
Russian composer Nikolay Yakovlevich Myaskovsky’s works always had an introspective and fatalistic quality and carried the 19th-century Russian qualities of symphonic music to a new level. After Stalin’s rise to power in 1928 and the institution of Socialist Realism became
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James Joyce (1882-1941)
“Mistakes Are the Portals of Discovery”
80 years ago, on 13 January 1941, the Irish author, novelist and poet James Joyce died in Zürich, Switzerland. One of the most influential and innovative writers of the 20th century, “his innovative language, use of dialogue, characteristic modernist forms,
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“There Are Many Works I Love That Do Not Love Me Back!”
This quote from an interview I did with pianist Antoine Préat perfectly expresses my relationship with many composers and their music. When I returned to playing the piano seriously in my later 30s, after a break of some 20 years,
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Composers of the Zodiac
Tropic of Aries
Aries is one of the oldest constellations of the zodiac. It has been described by a number of ancient cultures, including astronomers in Babylonian, Egypt, Persia, and China. In Greek mythology, it is associated with the golden ram and particularly
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A 10-Piece Classical Music Challenge: Can You Guess the Piece and the Composer?
Are you an avid classical music buff? Ready to test your knowledge of note reading in treble and bass clef and also your listening abilities? PART IMatch the musical excerpts with the written music A: Goes with the musical excerpt
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Where Does Music Come From?
Does music come from some place other than through a musician or a composer? When I first started making music, much of it flowed through me by what I had learnt from other composers. Now, that is still part of
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From Winter to Spring: Britten’s Spring Symphony
Britten’s Spring Symphony, completed in 1949, is a unique song-symphony. Not with just one movement set to words, as in Beethoven’s Ninth, but with English texts throughout. Most of the sources are from the 16th and 17th century, but a
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