Vincent D’Indy’s “Summer’s Day in the Mountains”
Had I to choose a musical summer idyll, my choice would be Jour d’été à la montagne (Summer’s Day in the Mountains), a tone poem by the…
The Transcendent Beauty of Icons
We live in an era in which words are routinely diluted of their meaning. One feels the need, especially around Christmas, to go back to the root…
Music in the Life of Thomas Jefferson
One of our greatest founding statesmen, Thomas Jefferson was just as remarkable for the breadth of his interests outside of politics. This American “Renaissance man” (and he…
The Glorious Music of Heinrich Biber
Fifty years ago, most music lovers had not heard of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704), let alone heard any of his works. Now he has claimed his…
Sir Arthur Bliss’ “A Colour Symphony”
Many are the emotional states, natural phenomena, and physical gestures that music is capable of evoking for listeners. The link between the musical and the visual has…
The Music of American Composer Charles Martin Loeffler
There will not be another like him; no one in America has approached him for individuality of style, perfection of craftsmanship, beauty of utterance, loftiness and subtlety…
Camille Saint-Saëns: An Underrated Master
Composers’ reputations come and go, often with little justice. Surely one of the most chronically underrated composers in the canon is Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921). This Frenchman was…
The Sacred Music of Igor Stravinsky
“Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church in all its decoration; it is the church’s greatest…
The Moral Conservatism of Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was certainly the greatest composer of the twentieth century, yet most listeners never go beyond his “Russian” period as represented by the meteoric early…
Stravinsky’s Other Rite of Spring: “Perséphone”
One of my favorite musical works about spring is by Igor Stravinsky, but it’s not the one you would expect—the wild and primal Rite of Spring. Rather…
Revitalizing Beethoven’s Music: The Legacy of Nikolaus Harnoncourt
“Beauty is on the edge of catastrophe.” —Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016) When Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt passed away in March, 2016, at the age of 86, he…
“Christ on the Mount of Olives”: Beethoven’s Passion Oratorio
In 1802 Ludwig van Beethoven was gradually going deaf—a condition which would become complete about ten years later. While taking a rest in the countryside, he wrote…
The Mystique of Late Beethoven
“The music is not pretty or even attractive. It merely is sublime.” —Harold C. Schonberg From reading musical commentary, one can easily get the impression that…
Beethoven’s Apollonian Beauty
Musical aesthetics in the 19th and 20th centuries was heavily preoccupied with the twin concepts of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Apollonian stands for Apollo, the…
Why Is Beethoven So Popular?
Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven: These three composers are commonly judged the greatest in Western classical music. Few people would argue with this…