Master of the Queen’s Music To commemorate the musical achievements of Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss (1891-1975) a noted musicologist suggested, “Of the smaller stars that shone in the ample firmament of twentieth-century English music, the light that coruscated with

An Uncompromising Vision Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina, born on 24 October 1931 in Tschistopol, a small town on the Volga in the Tartar Republic of the USSR, has never been in doubt about her personal and musical identity and convictions. “I

Chopin of Spain When Enrique Granados (1867–1916) drowned in the English Channel trying to save his wife 100 years ago, the musical world lost an extraordinary poet of the piano. “His hands stroke the keys with a delicacy, with a

Pining for Rome 85 years ago, on 18 April 1936, Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) died from an inflammation of the inner layer of the heart in Rome. Respighi lived and worked during tumultuous political times, and his historicist interest in Italian

Music is the gate between the earthly and eternal world In 2016 we celebrate the 150th birthday of Ferruccio Dante Michelangiolo Benvenuto Busoni (1866-1924), one of the most talented and controversial piano virtuosos active during the second half of the

Celebrating the 125th Anniversary of his Birth Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) “There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major” Sergei Prokofiev’s death on March 5, 1953, only hours before the passing of Josef Stalin, went almost

Compulsion to Compose Early twentieth-century modernists in music eagerly explored various ways of breaking with the Romantic tradition. For Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959), born in a church tower above the Czech-Moravian Highlands, the initial point of departure was grounded in the

An American Original Growing patriotic and nationalistic fervor had virtually inundated all aspects of European society by the middle of the nineteenth century. These political stirrings of national identify and pride not only found their way into all forms of