Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) wrote very little for solo piano – a mere 6 pieces – but one of them was the delightful Holiday Diary, written in 1934, when he was 21, but creating a scene as for a child half

We think of musical notation as an object to be realized by a performer. As it sits on the page, there’s little there for someone who’s not musically educated to understand. You need the knowledge to read the notes. And

Gregorio Allegri (c. 1582-1652) was a composer and singer at the Vatican. He started his career in Rome as a chorister in the French national church, San Luigi dei Francesi. His skills as a composer in the cathedral of Fremo

The year 1802 was a year of despair for Beethoven. His hearing had been declining since 1796 and he had been consulting doctors everywhere. Finally, in mid-1801 he found Professor Johann Schmidt, who became his personal physician until his death

The American tragedy these days is gun violence and how it has become a part of the familiar scene. It seems like most films from the US have a gun in the imagery and the news is filled with today’s

In 1914, Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, having entered there ten years earlier at age 14 as the youngest-ever student to enter the Conservatoire. His teachers were the finest in Russia: Glazunov, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Lyadov. He

The fifteenth century poem ‘I syng of a mayden,’ also known ‘As Dew in Aprille,’ celebrates the Annunciation and coming birth of Christ. Although thought to be well-known in the 15th century, the poem comes to us now only in

Robert Schumann was a progressive critic and editor of the influential music periodical Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, which he had founded in 1834. He populated the pages of his journal with a cast of characters called the “Davidsbündler” (League of