Blogs

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Celebrating Twenty Years of Music Making
Weymouth Lunchtime Chamber Concerts
The bustling English seaside town of Weymouth, which enjoyed its heyday in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries after King George III visited the town to partake in the health-giving properties of “sea dipping”, is not the most obvious location
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Notes From a Cello-Playing Mom
Practicing and Performing Still Has to Be Done
My two-year old wasn’t feeling well. “Mommy don’t go,” he whined. I had already donned my long black satin dress. Looking nervously at my watch I realized that it was very near concert time. I bent over to pick him
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Felix Mendelssohn and Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria (1819-1901) and Prince Albert (1819-1861) were accomplished pianists and singers, and Felix Mendelssohn was their musical hero. The composer first met the Prince on 14 June 1842, hand delivering a letter from Albert’s cousin, Frederick William IV of
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Ten Piano Works by Female Composers From Baroque to Present
The music of women composers has long been overshadowed by their male counterparts. In an effort to shine a light, and cast away the shadows, this article features ten works for piano, each written by a female composer. Élisabeth Jacquet
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Franz Liszt: Dante Symphony
Premiered on 7 November 1857
Enjoying the shores of Lake Como with Marie d’Agoult in 1837, Franz Liszt (1811-1886) immersed himself in a close reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The idea of composing a symphony to Dante’s Divine Comedy, one that would combine music, poetry
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Going It Alone: The Autonomous Musician
autonomy: the ability to make your own decisions without being controlled by anyone else – Cambridge Dictionary definition As musicians, we may seek external endorsement and extrinsic motivation through examinations and assessments, the accrual of qualifications such as diplomas, and
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Chamber Music by Women Composers IV
Farrenc, Beach, Tate, N. Boulanger, and Liu
Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) was one of the first successful female composers in 19th century France. That opinion is not only based on 21st century assessments, but also on views expressed by her contemporaries. Robert Schumann wrote for example, “her works
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Vienna Does the Shimmy
Bittner, Krenek, Grosz and Martinů
Ah, Vienna! The city of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and the waltzing Lanner and Strauss families. Even today, Vienna likes to promote itself as the eternally waltzing city. While that may be the case to some extent, in the period between
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