“Music carries me immediately and directly into the mental condition in which the man was who composed it. My soul merges with his and together with him I pass from one condition into another, but why this happens I don’t

Hector Berlioz published his famous handbook on the art of orchestration, his Traîté d’instrumentation, in January 1844. It remains, even today, a landmark in the history of the symphony orchestra. It is a concise and brilliant historical document that details

Why would a talented leading British composer include a document called a Failure CV on her website, alongside details of her extensive oeuvre and the many plaudits for her work?

Antonín Dvořák celebrated his election to the Bohemian Academy of Science, Literature and Arts by composing a symphony. He worked on his 8th Symphony for almost 3 months at his summer resort in Bohemia, and he conducted the premiere in

Not invented by, but rather named for Domenico Alberti, who used this device extensively in his own keyboard sonatas, the Alberti Bass is a moving figure in the bass or left hand of keyboard music, derived from a three-note chord.

Alma Mahler severely took her husband Gustav to task for composing a series of orchestral songs on texts dealing with the death of children. Merely two weeks after the birth of their second child, Alma found it incomprehensible and feared

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire ― Gustav Mahler A sense of reverence seems to haunt every corner of Classical Music. The artform is considered the very pinnacle of man’s artistic, intellectual and spiritual

On 26 January 1911, Richard Strauss’ new creation Der Rosenkavalier exploded onto the world stage in the packed Semper Opera in Dresden. It caused nothing short of a sensation! One of the most anticipated musical and cultural events in the