For a good many of his contemporaries, Claude Debussy was considered unsociable and reserved. Some writers even describe him as having “little strength of character.” To be sure, he frequently distanced himself from most musicians and tended to mingle with

Over the course of 40 years, Leonard Bernstein crafted a series of short compositions to honor close friends, relatives, family members, and professional colleagues. He started writing his “Anniversaries” in the 1940s and composed the last group in 1988, two

Let’s continue to look at Ravel’s relationships with his fellow artists and musicians. In 1907 Ralph Vaughan Williams went to Paris to take lessons with Maurice Ravel. The student was three years older than the teacher, but Ravel’s sinuous, detailed,

George Crumb: Madrigals, Book II and Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death Franz Schubert’s hair-raising setting of Goethe’s poem about a father with an ailing child in his arms, racing towards help but being thwarted by the illusions of the

How private was Maurice Ravel’s private life? Well, to this day nobody has uncovered conclusive evidence that he ever had a sexual relationship. While his music is passionate and distinctive, Ravel’s personality remains mysterious. His friend and biographer Alexis Roland-Manuel

As we all know, Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was a man of numerous contradictions. And that is certainly true of his eating habits as well. According to his second wife Cosima, Richard Wagner was “in principle” a vegetarian, but “in practice

We hate them and we love them – they can make us jump up in fright just as much as we can admire their filigree webs. Composers have spiders in their music and we end up with a marvelous variety

Seen by his contemporaries as an ‘authentically French’ composer, Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) brought not only artistry but also humour to the orchestra. His 1924 work Escales (Ports of Call) was a product of his Rome residency as winner of the