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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The Widows of Bach, Mozart, and Mendelssohn: What Happened to Them? June 3rd, 2023 Music lovers have always been fascinated by a good composer’s death story. Beethoven supposedly raised his arm in defiance of a thunderstorm while on his deathbed. An entire mythology arose surrounding Mozart’s final illness (“was he poisoned?”). Bach’s Art of -
New Music for the 20th Century June 2nd, 2023 John Cage was given a book of the I Ching (Book of Changes), a classic Chinese text that uses a hexagram symbol, to create order out of seemingly random occurrences. One of the first works that he used the I -
The Rules of Writing: Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Greeting Cards June 1st, 2023 The Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895–1968) developed a private system of musical cryptography and used it to create a cycle of compositions. His Greeting Cards, op. 170, cycle began in 1963 and ended with the composer’s death. His system of -
Lorena Paz Nieto June 1st, 2023 ‘So Much to Discover’ UK-based Spanish soprano Lorena Paz Nieto is equally at home in the worlds of opera and song. As well as already landing leading roles in operas by Donizetti, Mozart, Handel, and Britten, Lorena is a previous -
On This Day
1 June: Mikhail Glinka Was Born June 1st, 2023We are very fortunate, indeed, that Mikhail Glinka, born on 1 June 1804, left us a detailed account of his life and works in his Memoirs. Began in June 1854, Glinka was not recording his life story, because he strongly -
From Dawn to Dusk in a Child’s Life in Music and Pictures May 31st, 2023 Life for Tchaikovsky in the late 1870s was fraught: his short-lived marriage was disintegrating, his suicide attempt was unsuccessful, and his doctor looked at his nearly mad patient and ordered him off to the countryside for a complete rest. Financial -
On This Day
30 May: Smetana’s The Bartered Bride Was Premiered May 30th, 2023Political stirrings of national identity and pride ignited a great awakening across Europe in 1848. Urging an end to Habsburg absolutist rule, the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) openly participated in this revolution. Barely escaping arrest, and unable to establish -
Musicians and Artists:
John Zorn and Antonin Artaud May 30th, 2023John Zorn’s Musical Work La Machine de l’être Inspired by Antonin Artaud French actor and writer Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) tried to move early 20th-century theatre away from its reliance on text and towards more primal expressions of sound, movement, and