Today a salute to a remarkable American composer and performer—the cornet virtuoso Herbert Lincoln Clarke.
Clarke was born in Wolburn, Massachusetts, on September 12, 1867, into a peripatetic musical family. He began to play his brother’s cornet and was soon earning fifty cents a night playing...Episode details...
In New York City on today’s date in 2008, The Juilliard School’s annual FOCUS! Festival showcased music from the opposite coast, including the world premiere performance of a new string quartet by Californian composer John Adams.
Some 14 years earlier, Adams had written a work for string quartet...Episode details...
Many good things come in threes—at least William Bolcom seems to think so.
On today’s date in 1971, in a converted garage next to a graveyard in Newburgh, New York, American composer and pianist William Bolcom put the finishes touches to this music, the second of three piano pieces he...Episode details...
“English Horn” is an odd name for an instrument—for starters, it’s not English, and, it’s not a brass instrument, like the French horn.
The English horn is, in fact, a double reed instrument, a lower-voiced cousin of the oboe. The “English” part of its name is probably a corruption of “angle,”...Episode details...
Today’s date marks an important anniversary in the history of the American symphony. On January 26, 1876, the Symphony No. 1 in c minor of John Knowles Paine was premiered in Boston. This was the first American symphony to be generally acknowledged by the musical community here and abroad as...Episode details...
Many a political work of art has had its origin in a smoke-filled room, but not all that many piano trios can claim such a venue for their inspiration. On today’s date in 1987, composer and pianist Paul Schoenfield joined a violinist and cellist from Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for the premiere...Episode details...
“We are NOT amused,” is the dour statement often attributed to the matronly Queen Victoria in her later years, although some historians dispute she ever really said it.
But as a young woman, in her diary Queen Victoria’s did write, “I was VERY MUCH amused indeed!” after seeing the Italian opera...Episode details...
On today’s date in 1894, during the New York Herald’s clothing fund drive, readers of that newspaper would have seen this announcement of a concert that evening at Madison Square Garden: “Hear Stephen Foster’s ‘Old Folks at Home’—rendered tonight for charity as it has never been before—In...Episode details...
One of the 20th century’s most important—and most lurid—operas had its American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on today’s date in 1907.
Richard Strauss’s “Salome” is a faithful setting of Oscar Wilde’s play about the decadent Biblical princess who, after her famous “dance of the seven...Episode details...
One of the most famous British composers from the Age of Shakespeare was the lutenist and songwriter John Dowland. His life is better documented than many of his contemporaries, but much about him remains puzzling. Dowland wrote that he was born in 1563, but doesn’t tell us where—some speculate...Episode details...
