Musical Toys is a set of 14 short pieces by the Tatar composer Sofia Gubaidulina, which she herself described as ‘pictorial miniatures’ that she would have liked to play as a child. Though this set is subtitled ‘A Collection of

We often think of the symphonic form as being the province of the 19th century. Yet, the contributions by modern symphonists have permitted the orchestral form to develop and resonate with the new era. Adolphus Hailstork is professor of music

Who really knows what inspires the creative mind? It might be a painting of a moonlit lake, a craggy alpine peak, or the ferocious ocean pounding the rocky shores of a remote island. Of course, there is the ever-popular poem

The Russian dancer, actress and art patron Ida Lvovna Rubinstein was born into one of Russia’s richest families. Receiving the best musical, dancing and theatrical education money can buy Ida eventually ended up in Paris and immediately made headlines for

Johannes Brahms never formally went to university, and his engagement with higher education was rather peripheral. Around age 20, Joseph Joachim invited him to Göttingen, where the violinist was taking summer courses in philosophy and history. Brahms accepted the invite,

There are a handful of films featuring musicologists – those scholars of the history of music. Two recent ones have been Songcatcher (2000), where a musicologist finds ancient Scots-Irish ballads in Appalachia, and then there’s The Silent Touch (1992), where

An Exploration of Debussy’s Piano Music — Preludes After a two-year break, Debussy continued his work on the Préludes for piano, writing another 12 and again showing influences of all areas of popular and ancient culture and from artists, writers,

The regularized austerity of J.S. Bach’s music, in particular The Art of Fugue, has fascinated many composers. Bach’s work was left unfinished, with the final quadruple fugue (Contrapunctus XIV) started but not completed before Bach’s death. J.S. Bach: Die Kunst