Maria Szymanowska was an artist ahead of her time. Although her name is unfamiliar to many of us, she was one of the first professional piano virtuosos and a respected composer in 19th-century Europe. Her career foreshadowed that of fellow

The Sorrows of Mary became the theme for the Stabat Mater, or, to give it its full name, Stabat Mater Dolorosa, or The Sorrowful Mother Stood. The sorrowful mother, Mary, standing at the foot of the cross upon which her

Although the madrigal in Italy was an occasion for setting some of the most notable poets of the age, when the madrigal got to England after 1558, it quickly succumbed to the most bawdy of texts. Composers were quick to

In our earlier series on C major and minor and G major and minor, we listed Ernst Pauer’s suggestions from 1876 of pieces that fit the particular affect he assigned for a key. For the rest of the major and

The “Great Depression” was the immediate result of the sudden devastating collapse of the US stock market on 29 October 1929. Known as “Black Tuesday,” it plunged the world into a severe economic downturn in the 1930’s. Construction virtually halted

I’ve been playing and listening to Schubert’s Opus 90 Impromptus since I was about 14, when my mother fell in love with Alfred Brendel playing the fourth of the set, in A flat, and insisted that I learn it. So,