If you are planning to welcome 2015 in France, Belgium, Brazil, Portugal or the province of Quebec in Canada, chances are that you will be part of an extended dinner party called “réveillon.” Exceptionally luxurious, appetizers often include truffles, oysters,

Sometimes it is easy to hate Johann Sebastian Bach! Not because of his abrasive and authoritative personality and certainly not because of his glorious compositions, but for the way that our familiarity with his works gets in the way of

The year ends with a bang and a roar, and perhaps a clink of raised glasses, at New Year. Now that we’ve looked at the Classics for Christmas and more modern songs for Christmas what happens for other parts of

In the holiday season, there are distinctive holiday songs that seem to play incessantly in all the shopping malls. We hear them and they are expected to put us in a ‘holiday mood,’ but do we really listen to them?

When you think about time shifts in music, we think of Stravinsky, where in The Rite of Spring, there are sections where the time signature changes every measure. But what if there were a song, known to most people, where

Now that we’ve looked at the Classics for Christmas, let’s look at some of the new music for the holiday season. When we get to more modern music, the American songs written in the 1940s and 1950s capture our ear.

We all know the sad story of Friedrich Wieck taking Robert Schumann to court in order to prevent the “old alcoholic and womanizer” from marrying his daughter Clara. The heated court battle raged for almost a year, but once Schumann

Many famous public figures have written books. Presidents, starlets, sports stars and others who are not generally known for their literary talents have entertained us with publications detailing their personal lives. Of course, very few have actually written a single