The solo violin has long been acknowledged as the perfect instrument to express emotions like love, longing, heartbreak, rapture, and romance. The Romantic era lasted from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century and produced numerous works that
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Sounding Cosmology with Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) March 24th, 2018 The British physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking published his Brief History of Time in 1988. Overnight, it turned him into a best-selling author, and into an unmistakable figure in pop culture. The reason he decided to put his groundbreaking research -
Forgotten Cellists: Kermit Moore March 24th, 2018 Although African-Americans have excelled in jazz, gospel, R & B, hip-hop and other genres of music, the many influential artists, composers, and performers of classical music in the twentieth century are relatively unknown. They include the cellist Kermit Moore who -
Destination Cairo March 23rd, 2018 Cairo – the ancient and modern city. One side of the river are the modern buildings of today, and on the outskirts of town is the Giza plateau with the familiar pyramids and the sphinx. The city itself is a -
Debussy’s Wives: Rosalie Texier and Emma Bardac March 22nd, 2018 As far as women were concerned, Claude Debussy was a bastard! “There was a woman at each crossroad of Debussy’s life,” Marcel Dietschy writes. “Certainly women of all ages seemed fascinated by him, and they attached themselves to him like -
WWI Composers: Elgar, Schoenberg and Holst March 21st, 2018 The First World War was not merely a global military conflict; it also had far reaching implications for civilian life. It called upon women to become a fundamental part of the war effort, carrying out domestic labor, waged industrial labor, -
Busoni and the Clarinet March 20th, 2018 When we speak of musicians, we often credit their parent or a likely aunt as their first influence at their instrument. For the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924), we find his father, clarinettist Fernando Busoni (1834-1909), important to his development - Finding the Opera Inside
An Interview with Davinia Rodríguez March 20th, 2018Spanish soprano Davinia Rodríguez, from Gran Carania in the Canary Islands, is currently in Oman, singing Nedda in Pagliacci. It’s a rare production to have just the one opera, without its usual accompaniment of Cavalleria rusticana, but that means that - Mapping the Musical Genome
The Waltzing Strauss Family March 19th, 2018The extraordinary dynasty of dance music composers and musicians named Strauss originated in the Hungarian town of Buda. Around 1750, Grandfather Johann moved to Vienna, and his son Franz Borgias operated a small tavern in the suburb of Leopoldstadt. That
