John Gilhooly, Director of London’s prestigious Wigmore Hall, has announced a new series of lunchtime concerts at the Hall, starting on 1 June. This is, sadly, not a return to “normal” for classical music – far from it – but
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The first image we have of Beethoven after his death is his death mask. It was common to take a death mask of famous people, either to serve as a memory or as a basis for portraits. The method was
One of the things that we are often unaware of is how much our first hearing of a work can influence our thoughts on that work. I don’t think I really paid attention to the music around me unless I
Why are there so many words when it comes to music? And in so many languages, like Italian, German, French, and even English! Often, one has to decipher obscure words to read the score and the musical directions, which include
I have observed a bipolarity in my musical self that reflects through my two main musical activities; improvising and composing. Both completing each other — not through their similarities towards a creative goal but rather through their differences of qualities
A 2017 post by the radio station Classic FM, sited a conversation by Reddit user r3mus3, full of puns using the names of composers, which began due to a misspelled note from his father, “The Handel is broken.” I thought,
The story of how I came to create and record one of my most recent pieces — entitled Chapel of Silence — sprung to me as being a great illustration of how inspiration arises. Doug Thomas: Chapel of Silence I
We’re so familiar with the images of Beethoven in his mature years – the glower, the intense look, the solitary figure – but when we go back in time, we can see just how his contemporaries viewed him. The very