Just like the rest of the world composers may or may not get along with each other; and they may or may not like each other’s music. In fact, insults sometimes fly. “He’d be better off shoveling snow,” said Richard

It is a rather thankless task to write about Benjamin Britten in the context of a column entitled “In Love.” His long-time relationship with the tenor Peter Pears, which is clearly a love story, is not the issue and I

Edith Rhoda Britten, née Hockley was an ambitious woman. When she discovered that her son Benjamin had outstanding musical talents, she not only provided him with his first piano lessons and instructions in rudimentary musicianship, she also was convinced that

In February 1852, Giuseppe Verdi and his companion Giuseppina Strepponi attended a performance of Alexander Dumas fils’ play La Dame aux camellias (The Lady of the Camellias) in Paris. Verdi had probably read the novel, originally published in 1849, at

Gustav Mahler: Symphony 1, “Feierlich and gemessen” When Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) took up his conducting appointment in the city of Olmütz, located in the Moravian region of the Czech lands, everybody thought he was a rather odd duck. According to

When Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) died at the incredibly young age of thirty-eight, he simply had not yet made arrangements for literally hundreds of unpublished musical manuscripts and artworks, alongside thousands of personal letters to and from the composer. During his

During a 1928 lecture for choral conductors in Berlin, Paul Hindemith addressed the widening gap between contemporary composers — and here he particularly emphasized Arnold Schoenberg — and the general musical public. “The tenuous connection in music today between producers

Paul Hindemith: Die Serenaden, Op. 35 “Duett for Viola and Violoncello” At the beginning of 1940, Gertrude was still stuck in Switzerland and desperately looking for a way to join her husband, who had secured lectureships at the University of