The string section has always been the heart of the orchestra. From creating intimate chamber-like textures to cathedral-scale climaxes, composers have relied on stringed instruments for centuries to communicate grief, devotion, joy, radiance, and transcendence. Today, we’re looking at some

Claude Debussy was one of a handful of composers who changed music forever over the course of his career. Where earlier composers built music around inherited forms with traditional developments and resolutions, Debussy was more interested in exploring atmosphere, colour,

Credit: NPR Classical on Facebook

The final movement of a symphony is the moment when everything that has come before it is contextualised and gains new meaning. Like a TV show, the finale of a symphony can make or break the entire work. Across two

Gustav Mahler was a composer obsessed with expressing various shades of sadness in his music. As a child, he experienced the death of a number of siblings. As an adult, his own child died; his wife was unfaithful; and he

Born in 1833 into the long shadow of Beethoven, then regularly caught in the ideological crossfire between musical conservatives and progressives, Johannes Brahms spent his career proving that tradition had a major role to play in shaping the future of

If you love the music of Hans Zimmer, you already love classical music. You just might not know it yet. Zimmer’s cinematic scores for blockbusters like Gladiator, Interstellar, Inception, Dune, Sherlock Holmes, and others may feel modern, but their musical