80 years ago, on 13 January 1941, the Irish author, novelist and poet James Joyce died in Zürich, Switzerland. One of the most influential and innovative writers of the 20th century, “his innovative language, use of dialogue, characteristic modernist forms,

Aries is one of the oldest constellations of the zodiac. It has been described by a number of ancient cultures, including astronomers in Babylonian, Egypt, Persia, and China. In Greek mythology, it is associated with the golden ram and particularly

Britten’s Spring Symphony, completed in 1949, is a unique song-symphony. Not with just one movement set to words, as in Beethoven’s Ninth, but with English texts throughout. Most of the sources are from the 16th and 17th century, but a

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