‘Water games’ is one translation of Jeux d’eau by Maurice Ravel, others being Fountains and Playing Water. Each is equally apt: in this piece Ravel brilliantly evokes “the splashing of water and by the musical sounds of fountains, cascades and

Johann Strauss II was born into a famous and famously dysfunctional musical family just outside of Vienna in October 1825. As a boy, Johann pursued music against his father’s wishes. His father had begun a string quartet that grew into

Frédéric Chopin is one of the most popular composers in classical music history. We all know that his romantic piano works have captured the imaginations of listeners around the world. But have you ever wondered which of his pieces are

The concept of percussion is rather easy: find something, hit it. Eventually, the development of hitting things to make definite sounds led to the development of the timpani – a tunable drum used to supplement the bass section of an

The colourful Christian celebration of Easter is again around the corner. And for many people, the Easter egg best symbolises this festival of the resurrection of Jesus. During pre-Christianity, the egg was seen as a symbol of rebirth and life,

The bassoon, the bass of the woodwind instruments, is also the tenor and sometimes the alto and soprano of the woodwind instruments. Its range when extended by its larger neighbor, the contrabassoon, permits it to double and reinforce all parts

John Philip Sousa, the so-called “March King” was a phenomenon of the entertainment world. Around the turn of the 20th century, he was quite possibly the best-known name in music. Audiences on both sides of the Atlantic were dancing his

We’ll explore more of the brass by looking at the trombone. The name is a combination of two ideas: tromba from the Italian for trumpet and -one, which is the Italian suffix for something large, so a trombone is a