Kenneth Fuchs: Cloud Slant American artist Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) started appearing in American art galleries in the 1950s and continued her career for the next 60 years. Her field was abstract expressionism and her developments over her career changed modern

While Johannes Brahms had rightfully hoped of gaining the conductorship of the Hamburg Philharmonic, the post was given to the baritone Julius Stockhausen instead. Dejected and disappointed, Brahms made his first visit to Vienna in the autumn of 1862, staying

Published in 1962 with the approval of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells the story of a typical day in the life

Jake Heggie: Statuesque American composer Jake Heggie (b. 1961) started the piano when he was seven and composing when he was 12. A commission from the San Francisco Opera led to the start of his successful opera career when he

Greg A. Steinke: EXPRESSIONS on the Paintings of Edvard Munch Edvard Munch (1863–1944) was an artist for over six decades. His final output consists of nearly 2,000 paintings, hundreds of graphics, and thousands of drawings. He was also a writer

Henri Dutilleux: Timbres, espace, mouvement (ou, La nuit étoilée) In the late 1880s, the sky at night was a point of inspiration for Vincent Van Gogh. In September 1888, he depicted a café at night in the middle of the

B.R. Pearson’s Dance at Bougival Inspired by Renoir In his 1883 painting, Dance at Bougival, French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) created a near–life-size portrait of two dancers in the milieu of an open-air café. His painting has captured the couple

Melcher Melchers: La Kermesse Inspired by Peter Paul Rubens In his frolicking picture La Kermesse, Peter Paul Rubens gives us a village festival that takes over the entire foreground of the painting. Though at one time to be a picture