For students at the Paris Conservatoire, winning the Prix de Rome meant following a tradition that had been established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. The prize meant receiving a stipend that would cover 3 to

In 1905, the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909) published the first book of his piano suite Iberia, subtitled 12 Nouvelles impressions en quatre cahiers (12 New Impressions in Four Books). He dedicated the work to the widow of the composer

Situated just north-west of Vienna, the Wienerwald, the eastern foothills of the Alps were an enticing area for Vienna’s composers – we have many images of composers such as Beethoven and Schubert walking through the Vienna Woods and we have

When we hear the toccatas of Bach, we’re hearing the written representation of something at which he was a master – free improvisation at the keyboard. When we have a paired piece, such as a toccata and fugue, we have

Franz Schubert’s young life was spent at the imperial-royal municipal seminary as a choir boy, and thought he’d been sent to prison – the day was a cycle of obligatory mass attendance, hours of daily prayer, weekly confession, all in

The advent of the home piano changed music immeasurably. Now it was possible to have music available when you wanted it and something that you’d heard at a concert could be yours at home. It wasn’t until the advent of

In 1909, in the papers of the Academic Concert of the University of Jena, the music director found complete parts for a Symphony in C. Written on the 2nd violin part was ‘par Louis van Beethoven’ and, on the cello

César Franck (1822-1890) came to Paris in 1835 where he studied privately. When he became a teacher in Paris at the Conservatoire, he taught the students who would go on to define French music at the turn of the century: