In classical music, the Romantic Era lasted from around 1810 to around 1910. That century gave us some of the most famous symphonies in the repertoire. Nineteenth-century composers like Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Dvořák, Schubert, Mahler, Rachmaninoff, and others elevated the symphony
Latest article
Spotlight
-
Death Penalty for Smoking! April 3rd, 2014 By now, even the dimmest bulbs on the planet know that smoking is bad for your health. And we also know that exposure to passive smoking, also identified as “second-hand smoke” or “environmental tobacco smoke” causes disease, disability, and death. -
In touch with Joseph Hallman April 2nd, 2014 Hailed as “the city’s most innovative music experience” by the Financial Times, the Intimacy of Creativity, founded by Chinese-American composer Bright Sheng, begins its fourth cycle this April, to bring together internationally acclaimed performers and composers for creative dialogue and -
Spies and Music March 31st, 2014 With all the news these days of computer spies, we’d thought we’d look at the historical problem of musical spies. We don’t mean stealing composers’ musical ideas, but the ways in which, over the centuries, music and composers have entered -
The Supernatural in Music
III. Dies Irae: The Dance of Death March 30th, 2014The ‘Dies Irae’ (Day of Wrath) was a poem written to be used in the Requiem Mass of the Roman Catholic Church and comes from a Latin hymn dating from the thirteenth century. As you say the Latin aloud, you -
I Want to Be in America March 29th, 2014 One of the most interesting songs about the United States comes in the voice of embattled immigrants, the Puerto Ricans who inhabit Leonard Bernstein’s 1957 musical West Side Story. The song ‘America,’ in the original Broadway production, contrasts an idealized -
In touch with Melody Eötvös March 28th, 2014 Hailed as “the city’s most innovative music experience” by the Financial Times, the Intimacy of Creativity, founded by Chinese-American composer Bright Sheng, begins its fourth cycle this April, to bring together internationally acclaimed performers and composers for creative dialogue and -
What If You Had 12 Trumpets?
Leoš Janáček Sinfonietta March 27th, 2014What if you had not 2 or 3 trumpets, the normal complement for an orchestra, but 12 trumpets? Well, then you’d write the Sinfonietta. The Sinfonietta, completed in 1926, was the last orchestral work by Czech composer Leoš Janáček. Now -
Sinking into the Pasture
Concertgebouw Amsterdam March 26th, 2014The Royal Concertgebouw concert hall in Amsterdam is one of the finest performing venues in the world. At the time of construction, which started in 1883 in a pasture outside the city limits, the science of acoustics was not yet