There’s something morbidly fascinating about last words: the idea that a life can somehow be summed up in a few words. The importance of those last words only grows when the men saying them are some of the most influential

It is the fall of 1871. A twenty-six-year-old Ukrainian woman sends a cable to Europe to pianist and composer Franz Liszt. She warns him that she is about to cross the ocean to kill him. Ten days later, she shows

In the world of classical music, John Marsh (1752-1828) is not really a household name, but he probably should be. He was one of the most prolific composers in 18th-century England, producing roughly 350 mostly instrumental works. Although very little

Since we recently featured the fifteen Shostakovich String Quartets and the seventeen Weinberg String Quartets, I thought it only fitting to reveal some remarkable cutting-edge tendencies in the brilliant Six String Quartets of Béla Bartók, one of the most important

The song Yankee Doodle started out as a way of making fun of one’s unsophisticated enemy. British military officers in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) had started to make fun of their colonial opponents as being ‘Yankee Doodle Dandies’, meaning

American composer Charles Ives (1874–1954) was one of the most original of America’s composers. For one thing, he had a very successful day job in the insurance business, and his early work in the business led to the basics behind

Nowadays, classical music audiences are usually pretty tame. The worst that happens at an average concert is that people glare at someone else for applauding at the wrong time. It wasn’t always this way, though. Today we’re looking at seven

In automotive circles an entire sub-culture has enthusiastically emerged around modified cars. It is called car tuning and most commonly involves attempts to improve the performing and handling characteristics of the vehicle. In fact, high-end tuning companies around the world