In the summer of 1939, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) left England for America to avoid the omnipresent threat of war. He had had a successful career in the US, touring as concert pianist, but now he was ill and tired. The

The great musicological explorer Dr. Charles Burney writes glowingly in his General History of Music of 1789; “An admirable young composer of Vienna, whose works were first made known in England by the neat and accurate execution of Mademoiselle Paradis

We know the animals and figures of the Zodiac, but how did composers take these on? Mystic composer John Tavener used the birth of his second daughter as inspiration for his work for solo piano, Zodiac (1997). The overtones of

Evolution has given human beings four types of teeth, each with a specific function. Incisors cut the food, canines tear the food and molar and premolars crush the food. Given that kind of evolutionary structure, it seems rather reasonable to

Brazil and its main city, Rio de Janeiro, came to life for many people in the film that showed the many facets of the city: Black Orpheus (Orpheu Negro) and its retelling of the Orpheus myth through the medium of

Robert Schumann spent the last two-and-a-half years of his life in a private psychiatric hospital in Endenich. His medical records were discovered in 1991, and first published in 2006. They contain daily entries documenting treatment—including shielding from stimuli, physical procedures,

The city of Rome is a city of ancient forums and modern traffic, fabulous fountains and busy markets, solemn churches and resonant spaces. It’s a walking city and all of history seems to have happened here.

The American soprano Kathleen Battle read the words of the poet Toni Morrison and commissioned Morrison and the composer André Previn for a song cycle. Seeing the names of those three people in one sentence tells you from the beginning