One of the essential things about music is how it’s so hard to pin down, so hard to fix in time, and so hard to be definitive about. In looking at cadenzas, those virtuosic flourishes that appear in concertos, we

It’s odd, when we think about it, that when we think of music for cowboy movies, we think of movies made in Spain by an Italian director with an Italian avant-garde trumpet player as composer. Ennio Morricone’s film music written

Many composers Used special ways of organising Sounds that, when played on Instruments, spell out Cryptic messages!

The strong public nationalism in America is often a puzzle to visitors – the national flags hanging on people’s houses, the T-shirts that declare one’s love for country, etc. are highly unusual elsewhere. At most, you might have things in

One of the most exciting moments in a concerto is when the orchestra, poised on an incomplete cadence, ceases to play and lets the soloist loose. The soloist gathers together all the melodic strings into one exciting moment of improvisation

John Cage, the legendary composer of experimental sounds and silences was utterly fascinated by mushrooms. Apparently, Cage’s fungi obsession originated during the Depression. “In California, I had no money. I was living in Carmel and around my shack grew mushrooms,

You know the drill. As soon as the piano recital proper has finished, audience members—spontaneously or paid to do so—will furiously applaud in order to entice the artist to play additional pieces. Encores originated spontaneously but over time became so

Béla Bartók and Stefi Geyer She had deep blue eyes and blonde hair that she wore in two small buns on either side of her head. Extraordinarily talented, Stefi Geyer started her musical training at age three and gave her