Towards the end of his long performance career, Franz Liszt finally managed to visit the Ottoman Empire in 1847. Liszt had wanted to visit Istanbul as early as 1838, and wrote to a friend, “… [I have a] desire and

Trying to establish himself in Vienna, Wolfgang Amadeus was incredibly busy as he writes to his sister. “You must not suppose, from my not answering you, that you and your letters are troublesome. I shall always, dearest sister, with the

Louis Marchand (1669-1732) had an extremely colorful and unpredictable personality. While he was lavishly praised for his prodigious keyboard talents and skills, his reputation was not founded on musical abilities alone. In one famous, and documented instance, soon after his

Franz Schubert composed his set of six German Dances in October 1824 for his piano student Countess Caroline Esterházy. Everybody knew that Schubert was deeply in love with his 18-year old student, and a number of compositions were the direct

With the zodiac of the Pig taking center stage in the Chinese calendar in 2019, I decided to go on the hunt for “pig music” in the Western musical context. We all know about the Carnival of the Animals, Peter

Maybe they’re your secret reading. Maybe they’re your guide to life in general or your source of the perfect wry joke. As much as they inspire you, they’ve inspired composers as well. On Broadway, we’ve had musicals such as Li’l

Increasingly rushed for time, Wolfgang Amadeus writes to his father on 5 February 1783, “I have received your last letter, and hope you have also gotten mine. With regard to the symphonies, especially the last, pray let me have them

Nobody composed variations like Austrian composer Franz Schubert! An undisputed master of the genre, his variations on his own melodies became a fascinating combination of formal innovation and musical poetics. Peeling away layer upon layer of significance and meaning, Schubert