We’ve been looking at how the decisive battle of Waterloo in June 1815 was the inspiration for many composers. Beethoven’s program work Weillington’s Victory is probably the one work that still remains in the repertoire, albeit more as an embarrassment

Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was one of the most influential figures in the history of classical music. Composer, performer, educator, and ethnomusicologist, Bartók’s powerfully shaped the way subsequent generations approached and listened to music. Born near the Hungarian city of Nagyszentmiklós,

The death of the bass-baritone John Shirley-Quirk in April 2014 and the story in Times obituary about the problems caused by his name got us to think of other mistaken performers and composers. The New York Times obit gave us

By Alexandra Preucil Assistant Concertmaster Cleveland Orchestra For as long as I can remember, family gatherings have been synonymous with music making. Sometimes this took place in fancy concert halls, but more often than not, my family would simply come

One of the essential things about music is how it’s so hard to pin down, so hard to fix in time, and so hard to be definitive about. In looking at cadenzas, those virtuosic flourishes that appear in concertos, we

If we think of the flutes as the air above the woodwind section and the oboes as the kind of nasal-sounding brain, then the heart of the section has to be the clarinet. Unlike the oboe, which is a double-reed