Although the source of the name is clear, the history of the dance itself is not. The Saltarello takes its name from the Italian verb saltare, meaning ‘to jump’, and it was the peculiar jumping step used in the saltarello

A scholar and former student writes, “To measure the potency of Nadia Boulanger’s influence is impossible. As a tree is rooted firmly to the earth, she was rooted in the history and grammar of Western music. She was gifted with

The incomparable Jessye Mae Norman was born on 15 September 1945 into the segregated American South. As she wrote in her memoirs, “I am the joy and pride of my maternal grandmother, looking out over a front yard overflowing with

It was the hot new instrument in town – eventually combining a seemingly traditional keyboard with the modern valve/tube technology developed in the first world war. Maurice Martenot (1898-1980) developed his ‘Ondes Musicales’ (musical waves) instrument in 1928, first as

Commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for the clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra, Fantasma/Cantos for clarinet and orchestra first sounded on 14 September 1991 in Cardiff. In this composition, Takemitsu imagined the orchestra as a

In his 1913 children’s book, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, L. Frank Baum added a bit of music criticism into his text. His characters disapprove of classical music, ragtime, and ‘popular’ music, and, in fact, you sense a slight disapproval

An eminent scholar writes, “Clara Schumann was the creative partner of three men: Friedrich Wieck, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. Her father was her sole teacher, much maligned for the role he later played in the romance between his daughter

In 1944, Leonard Bernstein wrote music for the musical On the Town. It tells the story of three sailors on shore leave for their 24 hours of adventures and romance in New York City. The song “New York, New York,”