From Prodigy to Pioneer
In his remarkable memoir The World of Yesterday, Austrian writer Stefan Zweig described Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century as a place of unbounded optimism…
The Power of Song in Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion”
“For the singer, words acquire a very special plenitude and depth of meaning. Something that remains silent in words merely spoken begins to flow, to vibrate; the…
Father of the Nocturne: On the Music of John Field
Say the word “nocturne” to anyone remotely familiar with classical music and they’ll probably answer with one word: “Chopin.” This is an understandable response, given that Chopin’s…
Arvo Pärt at 90
Few contemporary composers are as well-established in the classical music repertoire as Arvo Part. Like Stravinsky, who also achieved international fame during his lifetime, Part’s music is…
Scott Wheeler and Birds of America
Much of the classical music being composed today is characterized by what I call the Three U’s: Unintelligible, Unstructured, and Un-singable. Alternatively bland and erratic, such music…
A Composer’s Education
One of the themes that quickly emerges, when examining the lives of the world’s greatest artists, is the necessity of a rigorous training period. No matter how…
An Interview with David Conte
Thomas J. Philbrick: The first piece of yours I came across was the second string quartet. In your comments on that quartet, you said that string quartet…
The Overlooked Music of Sir William Walton
Certain composers define entire eras. Debussy and Ravel, for instance, are the very essence of French impressionist music. And no corner of the Baroque is free of…
Listening to the Capucon Brothers
A quick Google search shows that the odds of being a musical prodigy are somewhere between 1 in 100,000 and 1 in 1,000,000. In other words, low…
“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 Power of Song in Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion”
“For the singer, words acquire a very special plenitude and depth of meaning. Something that remains silent in words merely spoken begins to flow, to vibrate; the…
Hearing David Conte
One wonders if Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern appreciated what they were unleashing on the world when they decided to scrap tonality and embrace the twelve-tone scale…
Mozart and the Meaning of Christmas
Mozart is one of the greatest composers and musical geniuses who ever lived. This is not controversial. What is, however, is Mozart’s Catholicism. Not that Mozart wasn’t…
Michael Torke’s Violin Concerto
European composers are famous for turning folk music into concert-hall music. Dvorak, for instance, based his ninth symphony and Slavonic Dance cycle on Czech folk songs. Tchaikovsky’s…
Singing Christmas With Rankin/Bass
Growing up, the 25 Days of Christmas on ABC Family was an essential part of the Christmas holiday. Among my favorite films that were often shown were…