A group of classical musicians performing together is called an ensemble. Some ensembles consist entirely of instrumentalists, while others consist of singers. Of course, there are also ensembles where instrumentalists and singers perform together. A variety of ensembles appear in

The city of St. Petersburg was founded in 1703, and it quickly developed into “the most opulent, precocious, and enlightened metropolis in the Russian empire.” The Academy of Sciences was founded in 1717, and Mikhail Glinka produced the first nationalist

For a number of commentators, the pianist Samuil Feinberg (1890-1962) was considered a bridge, the most important link, “between the two distinct factions of the celebrated Russian school of pianism, which pitted Scriabin’s mystical, sexual, opiate music against Prokofiev’s dynamism

Vicious reviews have been known to severely damage careers and artistic prospects. In the case of George Bizet (1838-1875), it has been suggested that the horrendous initial reception of Carmen had somehow contributed to the composer’s death. The opera premiered

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