Alessandro Marcello (1673-1747) lived a rather charmed life! As the son of a senator and a member of Venetian nobility he presided—together with his more famous brother Benedetto—on the city high council. He studied law at the Collegio di S.

In looking over Jules Verne’s masterpiece of the science-fiction submarine novel, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, we came upon a passage that we didn’t remember. The Scientist, Professor Aronnax, is being shown around the Nautilus by Captain Nemo and after

Darius Milhaud grew up in a Latin-Mediterranean cultural milieu that particularly valued Italian music. When a young man wrote to him about Wagner’s theories that all art “springs from suffering, unhappiness, and frustration,” he replied. “I am glad you decided

Italy, the veritable land of music and delicious food! Can you tell the difference between great Italian dishes and Italian composers? Cambini Although we might easily imagine Cambini to be a lightly sautéed seafood dish from the Tuscany region, it

In our series of unsung concertos, here comes a composition that is actually sung but the words are not articulated! As we all know, the human voice has long been considered the quintessential musical instrument. Capable of producing an intricate

As a new mother, I am always looking for things with which to entertain my ten-month-old. Because I’m a musician, the first thing I would turn to is music. Not impressed with the Mozart for Babies CDs, and bored of

“The flute cannot deny its own nature, its home is in Arcadia and it prefers pastoral moods. Hence, the composer has to obey its gentle nature, unless he wants to be branded a barbarian.” That’s how Carl Nielsen, one of

One of the great joys of music from the Classical period is what other composers did with it. It was very common, even up through the 19th century, to take a theme from one composer’s work and do variation sets