When we think about the great composers, it’s easy to picture them in a kind of vacuum of genius. However, the great composers were human, just like the rest of us, and they lived and worked surrounded by other people.

The word “Canon” actually means rule, or law, and it is one of the most important elements in counterpoint. Clearly, it is musically very powerful when a previously heard melody reappears in another voice as a canon. Both voices maintain

Béla Bartók famously exclaimed, “competitions are for horses, not artists!” Well, times have certainly changed, but the intrinsic value of artistic competitions is still hotly debated. After all, there are plenty of competition winners that nobody knows about, and plenty

One of the most discussed composers of our times; Philip Glass. When he first started performing and recording his music in the 1960s in New York, much of the conservative classical world initially rejected him. Luckily, sixty years later, it

In 1916, Swedish composer Hugo Alfvén was commissioned by the Royal Swedish Opera for a ballet that he completed in 1922. He considered it one of his finest works, but after its first season in production, opening on 7 February

Initially, an entire population loved her, yet in the end, that love turned to hatred, and she lost her head in the French Revolution. Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) embodied everything that was rotten with royalty, and she certainly got some very

In 2014, American conductor, pianist, and composer Leonard Slatkin wrote Endgames, a work that would focus on the End Instruments, the instruments that sit at the ends of their respective sections in the orchestra, the highs and lows of the

The invention of the Gutenberg press set in motion a musical and societal revolution. For one, the demand for music as entertainment and as a social activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class. From this