Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue In the new series on dance music, Dance, Dance, Dance, we’ll be looking at dance and how it comes into classical music. You’re going to be surprised at some of the places where it has

Throughout most of the opera, there are certain tropes that repeat and repeat: the heroine will die of some wasting disease (La Bohéme, La Traviata, etc.), the hero will save the day (Die Zauberflöte), and so on. There are some

Over the last couple of days, I have conducted a little musical experiment. I noticed that 35 out of 106 Symphonies by Joseph Haydn carry a nickname of sorts. There is a “Bear,” a “Queen,” a “Philosopher,” a “Surprise,” a

The most valuable violins in the world sport colorful nicknames that disclose the providence of ownership or describe the sound quality or shape of the instrument. We just have to think of the “Molitor Stradivari,” the “Virgin Stradivari,” or the

A 2006 article in the British medical journal BMJ looked at 200 years of opera and how they treated doctors. This prompted us to take up the question ourselves. Doctors – good guys or bad guys? Well, it depends…. Characters

The court of King Frederick II (1712-1786) of Prussia was one of the most musically sparkling of its time. Led by its flute-playing king, the court began with a chamber orchestra with 17 members conducted by Johann Gottlieb Graun and

Finnish composer Selim Palmgren (1878-1951) was a prolific composer for the piano, writing some 300 small piano works, 5 piano concertos, choral works and one opera (another opera was never completed). Although in his 1948 biography, Minusta tuli muusikko (I

How many conductors does it take to change a lightbulb? Nobody knows. Nobody is watching. Gustav Holst: The Planets Op. 32 Mars, the Bringer of War (E. Ormandy) It’s an unprecedented time for symphony orchestras. There are numerous and prestigious