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
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Counter-Revolutionary Activism
From the Stages of Europe to the Soviet Gulag August 12th, 2023Published in 1962 with the approval of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn tells the story of a typical day in the life -
P-P-P-Polyrhythms August 11th, 2023 We’re used to the two basic rhythms: duple and triple. Duple or two is because we have two feet – left-right, one-two, and off we march. Triple is for dancing, like a waltz. The fun comes when they get combined -
Composing vs. Improvising August 10th, 2023 A musician has essentially two ways to create new music; either by composing or by improvising; both of these techniques follow very different processes — creating quite different results too —, equally powerful, and defining creative areas that each musician -
On This Day
9 August: Ferenc Fricsay Was Born August 9th, 2023The prodigiously gifted Hungarian conductor Ferenc Fricsay tragically died at the age of 48. A student of Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Ernst von Dohnányi, and Leó Weiner, Fricsay was “one of the few artists in classical music that were seemingly -
Camille Marie Pleyel: The Great Pianist Berlioz Almost Murdered August 9th, 2023 She was among the greatest pianists of the nineteenth century…and yet if music lovers know her name at all, it’s because she made a terrifying cameo in Berlioz’s memoirs. Today we’re looking at the life of great pianist Camille Marie -
John Adams’ Chamber Symphony August 8th, 2023 American composer John Adams (b. 1947) made his name in minimalism. He brought the contemporary into contemporary opera by using recent historical events (Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, Doctor Atomic) for his subject matter. His work in smaller -
Jacqueline du Pré: Why Are These Her Five Most Popular Performances? August 7th, 2023 Cellist Jacqueline du Pré was a musical meteor. She was born in Oxford, England, in 1945, asked for a cello at the age of four, and made her Wigmore Hall debut at the age of sixteen. When she was twenty, -
Unfaithful Servants in Operas August 6th, 2023 In the ‘normal’ lives depicted in opera, our main characters are surrounded by servants – someone to bring the tea or the coffee, or drinks at the party, or whatever little things need to be handled in the background. In