Eliza Emily Donnithorne (1821-1886) got engaged to George Cutherbertson, a clerk in a local shipping company in Sydney, Australia, or perhaps it was Stuart Donaldson, an aspiring politician in Sydney. Come the wedding day, the guests gather, the wedding breakfast

Channeling the sound and fury of nature through an orchestra gives everyone, from the composer to the conductor to the orchestra (primarily the string section) a thorough workout. Antonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons – Violin Concerto in G Minor, Op.

July is coming and for Americans and the French, it’s a time for fireworks. Le feu d’artifice! Times of joy for young and old. Colourful explosions in the air, designs and flourishes in ephemeral light, and the boom of excitement.

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was one of the last great pianist-composers in a long tradition stretching back to Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt and Brahms. He always maintained that “a composer’s music should express the country of his birth, his love affairs, his

They appear in the sky at the poles, flickering patterns of light that can cover the whole sky or sweep across like a curtain. The Auroras, named for the goddess of dawn, are one of the wonderful natural light displays

Collaborative Variations on Sumer is icumen in Written in the Wessex dialect of Middle English, the 13th century song Sumer is icumen in welcomes the warmest season with open arms. The cuckoo is called on to sing, the seeds are

Do you know the joke about the Hollywood screen goddess and the bad boy of music collaborating to invent a remote-controlled torpedo? Funny enough, it actually isn’t a joke but a delightful anecdote from the pages of music and science

The Italian mezzo-soprano Faustina Bordoni (1697-1781) started her career in opera in Venice in 1716. She created dozens of roles as she moved around Italy: Milan, Modena, Bologna, Naples before moving north and creating a sensation in Munich and Vienna.