At the turn of the 20th century and past the end of WWI, Paris was the bright and shining light of culture for the world. Everything happened in Paris – new music, new art, new dances, new everything. Cafés were

The French composer Louis Vierne (1870-1937) had a life of great potential that was thwarted by circumstances. He was born nearly blind and his musical abilities were developed at the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute for the Young

The country gentleman as composer sounds like the stuff of romance novels, but for Right Honourable Sir Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, later 14th Baron Berners in the peerage of England, and a baronet, that was his life. On the surface a

Bulgaria’s history of occupation by the Thracians, the Slavs, and the Proto-Bulgarians has given them a music background unlike any other in Europe. One of the relics of these old civilizations is the music where an asymmetry and unfamiliar rhythmic

From its very beginning, Erich Korngold’s light symphonic suite Baby Serenade shows us the chaos and celebration that a new baby can bring. Written in 1928, it was a very definite musical response to the birth of either young Ernest

Not quite an opera, the intermezzo Il segreto di Susanna, The Secret of Susanna, presents what appears to be a classic case of the jealous husband and the invisible lover… or does it? In the hands of the Italian composer

The elegant French composer Florent Schmitt (1870-1958) has been called “one of the most fascinating of France’s lesser-known classical composers.” Entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 19, he studied with Gabriel Fauré and Jules Massenet, where his fellow

In 1920, Henry Prunières, editor of the journal Revue Musicale, commissioned 10 of the leading composers of the day to contribute to a work in memory of Claude Debussy, who had died 2 years earlier. The works were a mixed