French composer Édouard Lalo (1823–1892) began his studies at the Lille Conservatory before moving to Paris for private lessons in violin, conducting, and composition. Immediate success did not follow, but he earned a living as a violinist and teacher. His

In his role as the leading keyboard virtuoso of his day, J.S. Bach (1685–1750) published 4 books of keyboard music under the title of Clavier-Übung, following the precedent set by his predecessor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Johann Kuhnau had

One of the oldest stories in opera is that of Orpheus and Eurydice. In the original story, Orpheus, the musical son of Apollo, loses his beloved wife Eurydice to a snake bite. Outraged at the loss of his bride, he

Depending on your sources, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) has his final symphony, The Great, D. 944, variously numbered as Symphony No. 7 or Symphony No. 8 or Symphony No. 9 or Symphony No. 10. We now know, through style and paper

In 1802, Beethoven (1770–1827) returned to Vienna from his stay in Heiligenstadt, where he’d been sent on doctor’s orders so he could learn to deal with both his increasing tinnitus and encroaching deafness. This is where he decided that suicide

Anton Webern (1883–1945) fulfilled the roles of a composer, a conductor, and a musicologist. As a student of Arnold Schoenberg, he took his teacher’s twelve-tone technique to a radical end. His musical studies ranged from the medieval period, studying the

The viola d’amore was not your average viola – instead of the regular 6 strings, it had an additional 6 strings that were not bowed, but which vibrated when the main strings were played. These sympathetic strings, as they were

Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881), a member of the Russian group known as The Mighty Handful or The Five, was part of a circle that came together from 1856 to 1870 to create classical music in a distinctively Russian style. Instead of