Details on the lives and careers of composers born before 1700 tend to be a bit skimpy, at best. For example, we know that the Italian Baroque composer Jacopo Peri was born on today’s date in 1561, but we’re not sure if that was in Rome or Florence.
As a point of reference, remember that William...Episode details...
Most of us—if we’re lucky—chug along more or less contentedly in an uneventful day-by-day routine... a little like the opening of this chamber work by the American composer John Howell Morrison.
But sometimes, in some lives, something happens that suddenly disrupts the uneventful, comfortable...Episode details...
The 1985 Salzburg Festival boasted a quite unusual premiere: a 17th century Venetian opera by the Italian Baroque composer Claudio Monteverdi entitled “Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria,” or “The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland,” as arranged and orchestrated by the contemporary German composer Hans...Episode details...
When asked to name some important musical works associated with World War II, music lovers are apt to think of the sonatas and symphonies Prokofiev and Shostakovich wrote during those years. But three symphonies by the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger form another very compelling war triptych....Episode details...
It might seem odd that during his long career, Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodály wrote only nine works for orchestra. When someone asked him about this, he replied: “I was busy with more important work: I had to educate a public.”
Kodály and his countryman Béla Bartók were pioneers in the...Episode details...
In the 1930s, the American composer Ferde Grofe was on a roll. During the previous decade, as staff arranger for the Paul Whiteman orchestra, Grofe had orchestrated all the music that popular ensemble had premiered, including George Gershwin’s 1924 jazz classic “Rhapsody in Blue”. By the late...Episode details...
Most young American composers who came of age in the 1960s found themselves faced with a question: should they adopt the intellectually fashionable post-serial, atonal style of composition developed by Arnold Schoenberg and his followers, or return to a more accessible and tonal musical language,...Episode details...
In 1960, the musical world was observing the centenary of the birth of composer Gustav Mahler. A British musicologist named Deryck Cooke hit upon the idea of preparing a performing edition of Mahler’s Symphony No. 10, a work left unfinished at the time of Mahler’s death in 1911. This was a...Episode details...
On today's date in 1845, the sleepy little German town of Bonn played host to some 5000 visitors. These ranged from curious natives and opportunistic pickpockets to famous composers, performers, and music lovers from many countries, including their royal highnesses, the British monarch Queen...Episode details...
