Specific cities have inspired a huge amount of classical music over the years. Today, we’re looking at a selection of classical works explicitly connected to major cities, examining how each composer responded to each place. Some pieces reflect civic pride
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How, When, and What to Eat: Food for Musicians November 10th, 2022 Travelling, touring, teaching, playing, singing: whatever it looks like for you, life as a musician can take its toll on our bodies. Musicians and others working in the performing industries face some tough challenges when it comes to eating healthily. -
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10 November: François Couperin Was Born November 10th, 2022Historians frequently regarded François Couperin as “a composer of elegant trifles written for a sophisticated, yet frivolous, audience.” Charles Burney, for example, described Couperin’s music as “so crowded and deformed by beats, trills, and shakes, that no plain note was -
Meredith Monk November 9th, 2022 “That inner voice has both gentleness and clarity” A correspondent for the Washington Post wrote, “When the time comes, perhaps a hundred years from now, to tally up achievements in the performing arts during the last third of the 20th -
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9 November: Thomas Quasthoff Was Born November 9th, 2022Thomas Quasthoff was born on 9 November 1959 in Hildesheim, Germany, under horribly tragic circumstances. His mother had been prescribed the barbiturate Contergan or thalidomide, to ease her morning sickness. At that time she did not know that there was -
Beauty in the Heart: The Chansonnier Cordiforme November 8th, 2022 The Chansonnier Cordiforme or Chansonnier de Jean de Montchenu (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France , Ms. Rothschild 2973) is a beautiful music manuscript created for Jean de Montchenu, who was appointed Archbishop of Agen in 1477. The title of the -
Pianists and Their Composers: Chopin November 7th, 2022 The music of Frédéric Chopin is perennially popular – it has never lost its universal appeal and Chopin remains one of the greatest composers for the piano. Virtuosic, imaginative, and emotionally profound, Chopin’s music offers pianists a wealth of expressivity, -
On This Day
7 November: Hélène Grimaud Was Born November 7th, 2022Music lovers know Hélène Grimaud as a deeply passionate and committed performance and recording artist. Her basic biography is well known. Born on 7 November 1969 in Aix-en-Provence, she discovered the piano at the age of seven. As she explained -
Tracing the Influences: Schubert to García Lorca to Crumb November 6th, 2022 George Crumb: Madrigals, Book II and Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death Franz Schubert’s hair-raising setting of Goethe’s poem about a father with an ailing child in his arms, racing towards help but being thwarted by the illusions of the