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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On This Day
11 June: Richard Strauss Was Born June 11th, 2022Richard Georg Strauss was born on 11 June 1864 as the first of two children of Franz Strauss and Josephine Pschorr. Franz was the principle horn player at the Court Opera in Munich, and a professor at the Royal Music -
Music in the Mountains
The Gstaad Menuhin Festival and Academy June 10th, 2022“The hills are alive with the sound of music” is a verse taken from a well-known Rodgers and Hammerstein’s song in the 1965 Hollywood movie “The Sound of Music”. At the opening scene, Julie Andrews made her first appearance twirling -
Musicians and Artists:
Peter Maxwell Davies and Paul Klee June 10th, 2022Peter Maxwell Davies: 5 Klee Pictures After his graduation from Manchester, British composer Peter Maxwell Davies’ first position was with the Cirencester Grammar School. In his three years there, he wrote a number of works for their orchestra, the first -
Sad Summer Nights
Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été June 9th, 2022Picking unpublished poems from the manuscripts of his neighbor romantic poet and writer Théophile Gautier, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) created his song group (not a cycle) Les nuits d’été (The Nights of Summer). Completed in 1841, the songs, written for mezzo -
On This Day
9 June: Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 Was Premiered June 9th, 2022On 9 June 1902, Gustav Mahler treated the audience in Krefeld to the premiere of his complete 3rd Symphony. The second movement alone had first sounded on 9 November 1896, and the second, third and sixth movements on 9 March -
E. T. A. Hoffmann June 8th, 2022 “Music is the most romantic of all the arts for its sole subject is the infinite” Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822), better known by his pen name E. T. A. Hoffmann, was possibly the most original and influential fiction writer -
On This Day
June 8: Robert Schumann Was Born June 8th, 2022The leading exponent of musical Romanticism, Robert Schumann was born in Zwickau, Saxony, on 8 June 1810. He was the fifth and last child of August Schumann and Johanna Christiana Schumann (née Schnabel). August Schumann was a book dealer, and -
The Book of Beasts
Schafer’s A Medieval Bestiary June 7th, 2022In 1954, British author T.H. White, known for his children’s Arthurian novels such as The Sword in the Stone, translated a medieval bestiary. His interest in the medieval started in the late 1920s, when he discovered Thomas Malory’s 15th-century chronicle