What does nothing sound like in music? Silence would be a good starting point, but then it wouldn’t be music. Amazingly, Haydn’s oratorio The Creation “opens with nothing short of a musical impossibility, the sound of infinite nothingness.” A contemporary

It is not clear when Giaochino Rossini and Olympe Pélissier first met, but by 1832 they were undoubtedly in a relationship. He had departed for Paris in 1830 and had left his wife Isabella Colbran unceremoniously behind. She was an

The Most Famous Competition for French Arts Students There can be no doubt that the most famous competition for French arts students, offering winners a funded period of study in Rome, was the “Grand Prix de Rome”. Established in 1663

We often forget the connections between composers. When you start to look at who knew who, particularly in the 20th century, connections are not only local but also international. The Australian composer Percy Grainger (1882-1961) knew the piano works of

Introducing new and unknown pieces of music to a wider public audience is always a special occasion. Ludwig van Beethoven scheduled such a concert full of premieres at the Theater an der Wien on 22 December 1808. Of course, Beethoven

They probably first met in Bologna around 1815, and the union between Giaochino Rossini and Isabella Colbran was to become one of the most successful artistic alliances in the history of music. Rossini was a rising star when he was

After his self-imposed exile from Spain with the defeat of the Republican government, cellist Pablo Casals started his concerts with a traditional Catalan Christmas song, El Cant dels Ocells (The Song of the Birds). The lyrics describe the joy of

Going against the grain of French musical life in the mid-19th century, Camille Saint-Saëns’ main love was instrumental music. Extraordinarily active in the field of chamber music, not only as a composer but also as a performer, he might rightfully