Music lovers have always been fascinated by a good composer’s death story. Beethoven supposedly raised his arm in defiance of a thunderstorm while on his deathbed. An entire mythology arose surrounding Mozart’s final illness (“was he poisoned?”). Bach’s Art of

John Cage was given a book of the I Ching (Book of Changes), a classic Chinese text that uses a hexagram symbol, to create order out of seemingly random occurrences. One of the first works that he used the I

We are very fortunate, indeed, that Mikhail Glinka, born on 1 June 1804, left us a detailed account of his life and works in his Memoirs. Began in June 1854, Glinka was not recording his life story, because he strongly

Life for Tchaikovsky in the late 1870s was fraught: his short-lived marriage was disintegrating, his suicide attempt was unsuccessful, and his doctor looked at his nearly mad patient and ordered him off to the countryside for a complete rest. Financial

Political stirrings of national identity and pride ignited a great awakening across Europe in 1848. Urging an end to Habsburg absolutist rule, the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) openly participated in this revolution. Barely escaping arrest, and unable to establish

Isaac Albéniz was born on 29 May 1860 in Camprodón, a small town in the province of Girona, Spain. The town lays picturesquely nestled in the Pyrenees, at the confluence of the rivers Ter and Ritort. Located just a couple

Modest Mussorgsky’s walk about a picture show, Pictures at an Exhibition, started life as a piano suite in 10 parts with a recurring Promenade part as the viewer moved from picture to picture. Written in 1874, it is based on

Niccolò Paganini had never been a picture of perfect health. His physical appearance—tall and thin with long arms, legs, fingers, and toes, and exceptional flexibility of his joints—recently gave rise to suggestions that he suffered from “Marfan Syndrome.” Although no