Claude Debussy’s friend Paul Dukas candidly wrote “the strongest influence to which Debussy submitted was that of the littérateurs, not that of the musician.” And while most of us have no problems describing Debussy as an “Impressionist,” a term originating

When we think of an ‘idyll’ we think of a peaceful and happy time. In music this doesn’t all have to be set in the happy land of major, we need that darker minor side to set the major into

The Scottish operatic soprano Mary Garden, who sung the part of “Mélisande” in the original production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, was to later write about the composer, “I honestly don’t know if Debussy ever loved anybody really.

Here is what Robert Schumann had to say about Carl Czerny’s Fantasies Brillantes on Original Themes Op. 434, “A greater bankruptcy of imagination than that demonstrated in Mr. Czerny’s newest creation could hardly exist. One should force the esteemed composer

If there are two words that you cannot imagine in a row, it’s ‘coloratura’ and ‘concerto,’ but Russian composer Reinhold Glière wrote such a piece: his 1942 Concerto for Coloratura Soprano and Orchestra in F Minor, Op. 82. This work

Clara Schumann wrote in her diary, “A woman is not expected to have any desire to compose.” However, she clearly had the desire, and more importantly, the ability to do so. For a variety of reasons she decided to stop

Princess Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso certainly had a flair for the dramatic! Married at the age of 16 she was considered the richest heiress in Italy, and after separating from her husband she set up her Paris salon. And on 31

We associate Dublin, and, perhaps, all of Ireland with folk music. Yet, it has a distinguished set of classical composers beginning early in the modern era. Composers such as John Field, Charles Villiers Stanford, and Hamilton Harty started in Dublin