The love story between Robert and Clara Schumann is often regarded as one of the most romantic in classical music history. Happily for historians, many of their love letters survive. They document their inner thoughts and emotions, as well as
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Liszt and the Ave Maria December 9th, 2015 Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was one of the few composers to take on the Ave Maria multiple times. His own religious interests would have guided him to the Ave Maria text, and when he made it his own, he carries us -
I Have a Little List: Was Don Giovanni the Great Lover? December 8th, 2015 In the opera Don Giovanni, there’s a particularly cruel scene where the Donna Elvira, meeting Don Giovanni’s servant Leporello, has to hear how she is just one of a large number of women that the Don has seduced. In the -
Sleigh Bells: Early collision warning system December 7th, 2015 Lush forests and forbidding mountains covered in deep snow, together with sweet smells of roasting chestnuts and mulled wines inescapably conjure up images of Christmas time. The only thing missing in this idyllic Victorian winter scene is the rhythmic ringing -
Music and Art: O’Keeffe December 6th, 2015 The American West was a unique inspiration for a number of artists, but it is in the work of the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe that a new eye was cast on the broad horizons. Her three watercolors from 1917, Light -
“If music be the food of love, play on.”
Shakespeare and Music II: Midsummer Night’s Dream December 6th, 2015The comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of Shakespeare’s most popular works, which has spurred composers’ imaginations, is next in our ten-part series of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare was a young man when he wrote this fanciful tale—two couples that become -
Transcending Tunes of Light and Shade
Handel: Messiah December 5th, 2015During the opening measures of the famous chorus, members of the audience glanced around anxiously, checking to see who would be first to rise to their feet. Then someone in the balcony stood, and someone else, and suddenly the whole -
Ukrainian Christmas Eve December 4th, 2015 Nikolai Gogol, a dramatist, novelist and short story writer of Ukrainian ethnicity, is considered a seminal figure of Russian literary realism. His fundamental romantic sensibility is marvelously infused with strains of Surrealism and the grotesque. In fact, Gogol established a -
Haydn: The Creation December 3rd, 2015 “The story of the creation,” Joseph Haydn wrote in 1801 “has always been considered the sublimest and most awe-inspiring image for mankind. To accompany this great work with appropriate music could certainly have no other result than to heighten these