Igor Stravinsky had a vast appetite for literature. That appetite basically reflected his constant desire for learning, exploring, and for making new discoveries. Forced into exile by World War I, Stravinsky initially found inspiration in Russian folklore. A collection of

Igor Stravinsky first met Katherine Gavrylivna Nosenko in 1890. He was quietly drawn to “Katya,” who was by all accounts a soft-spoken and intelligent girl. They shared a number of interests, and found common ground in music, as Katya was

Charles Gounod took the first prelude of Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier and started noodling around on it, and his piano teacher, Pierre Zimmerman, with whom he was studying at the Paris Conservatoire, took note of it. J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier,

Born 150 years ago in Paris, Marcel Proust was a sickly child and he suffered from poor health for most of his short life. Yet his almost inexhaustible complexity as a novelist, critic and essayist has reverberated through virtually every

The deadliest creature in Greek mythology was a monstrous serpentine giant called “Typhon.” That vile creature challenged the god Zeus for supremacy of the cosmos, but was eventually defeated and buried underneath Mount Etna. During that cataclysmic battle, Typhon was

During the war years of 1915 and 1916, Delius looked to older poets for a cheering series. His collection of Old English Lyrics took the poetry of William Shakespeare, and his contemporaries, Ben Jonson, Thomas Nashe, and Robert Herrick, as

Perhaps when we consider the Chinese zodiac and why the Year of the Rat (2020) and the Year of the Ox (2021) are in that order perhaps we can also see a greater symbolism. According to ancient Chinese myths, the

A good many people around the world are probably overjoyed that the Year of the Rat is quickly coming to an end. 2020 was a difficult year all around, but luckily we can look forward to the Year of the