10 Great Violin Concertos You Must Hear

By |2024-03-12T18:26:48-05:00March 12th, 2024|Categories: Antonin Dvorak, Audio/Video, Camille Saint-Saëns, Felix Mendelssohn, Jean Sibelius, Johannes Brahms, Music, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Robert Schumann, Timeless Essays|

The fun thing about really getting to know the violin concerto repertoire is that there are always more treasures to discover. The violin concerto repertoire is so rich and satisfying, I’m embarrassed to admit that, prior to becoming an adult beginner on the violin in 2005, I was only familiar with a few of them. This, [...]

Glory to Dido! The Operas of Hector Berlioz

By |2024-03-08T06:30:43-06:00March 7th, 2024|Categories: Audio/Video, Hector Berlioz, Hector Berlioz Sesquicentennial Series, Music, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

"They are finally going to play my music." —Hector Berlioz, on his deathbed Though Hector Berlioz's operas are still little known today—even to the opera-going public, who are much more likely to find the dramas of Verdi, Puccini, Bellini, and Mozart on the program—the increasing recognition of their many glories is slowly making them less [...]

Tomaso Albinoni: The Quiet Master of Italian Baroque Music

By |2024-02-22T20:12:37-06:00February 22nd, 2024|Categories: Audio/Video, Michael De Sapio, Music, Senior Contributors|

Elegance, stability, and order—as well as a sense of pure, elemental joy—are the qualities I hear in Tomaso Albinoni’s music. It is music of Venice through and through, where in the meltingly beautiful slow movements you can all but see the morning light playing on the water of the lagoon, or feel the quiet awe [...]

10 Hopelessly Romantic Classical Tunes for Valentine’s Day

By |2024-02-14T05:01:55-06:00February 13th, 2024|Categories: Audio/Video, Love, Music|

So here I am, offering you this Valentine’s Day gift, and if you scoff at the notion of celebrating the day, for “Hallmark invented it and that’s that,” consider giving these songs a listen anyway. They are delicious, uplifting, sensuous. And they won’t give you a hangover. Valentine’s Day is a funny sort of holiday. Some [...]

Doctor Winchester, Mozart, & the Devil

By |2024-02-07T20:42:08-06:00February 7th, 2024|Categories: Audio/Video, Culture, Music, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Television, Timeless Essays|

M*A*S*H's Dr. Winchester and the Chinese prisoners in the American camp find a common language in a single piece of music, written a century-and-a-half before: Mozart's Clarinet Quintet. The final episode of the hit TV series, M*A*S*H aired on February 28, 1983, garnering an astounding 125 million viewers, the most in television history at the [...]

Dieterich Buxtehude, Music, & the Experience of Life

By |2024-02-06T17:27:48-06:00February 5th, 2024|Categories: Audio/Video, Michael De Sapio, Music, Senior Contributors|

Dieterich Buxtehude might seem at first glance an interesting minor figure, the “man who influenced Bach.” But consider: If he was a decisive inspiration to Bach, that means that Buxtehude can lay claim to being the immediate progenitor of the mainstream classical music tradition we all enjoy. Prelude Our experience of classical music has become [...]

The Magnificent, Overlooked Operas of Tchaikovsky

By |2024-02-04T07:30:37-06:00January 24th, 2024|Categories: Audio/Video, Beauty, Music, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky|

Tchaikovsky’s operas are remarkable for their passion, characters, and their pure, elevated humanity His music has the quality of touching something deep in one’s heart, revealing profound aspects of the human experience in a lofty and beautiful way that transcends time and barriers. Russian operas are not quite as well known as the operas of [...]

“The Gloucestershire Wassail”: A Carol for Epiphany Eve

By |2024-01-04T19:54:53-06:00January 4th, 2024|Categories: Audio/Video, Christmas, Epiphany, Music, Timeless Essays|

"The Gloucestershire Wassail" is a traditional English carol associated with the eve of Epiphany, when revelers drank wassail punch, a hot-mulled sherry- or brandy-based cider, sweetened with sugar and seasoned with other spices, and including yeast, apples, and toast. According to British Food History, "wassailing predates the Battle of Hastings and is thought to have [...]

“Good King Wenceslas”

By |2023-12-25T20:01:18-06:00December 25th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Christmas, Music, Timeless Essays|

"Good King Wenceslas" is a Christmas carol that tells a story of a Bohemian king going on a journey and braving harsh winter weather to give alms to a poor peasant on the Feast of Stephen (December 26, the Second Day of Christmas). During the journey, his page is about to give up the struggle [...]

Finding Faith in the Manger: Berlioz’s “Infancy of Christ”

By |2023-12-24T23:23:09-06:00December 24th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Christmas, Hector Berlioz, Hector Berlioz Sesquicentennial Series, Music, Timeless Essays|

Hector Berlioz was a professed atheist, but could anything as tender and touching as "L’Enfance du Christ" have been written by a man who did not believe? And what of Berlioz’s closing line to the work: “Oh my soul, what remains for you to do but shatter your pride before so great a mystery?" The [...]

The Pure, True Beauty of “O Holy Night”

By |2024-02-13T05:45:56-06:00December 23rd, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Christmas, Music|

“O Holy Night” is a carol with a purity, beauty and a timeless message I dearly love. What I’ve always thought of as a humble yet glorious, affecting Christmas carol, turns out to have a vaguely spicy story behind it. Confession: I stopped writing this essay on “O Holy Night,” soured by something I couldn’t [...]

Beethoven & the Greatest Concert of All Time

By |2023-12-21T17:30:54-06:00December 21st, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Beethoven 250, Ludwig van Beethoven, Music, Timeless Essays|

On December 22, 1808, Ludwig van Beethoven—by then an established composer and a renowned piano virtuoso—conducted a concert of his own works, featuring himself also as pianist, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. The program included the premiers of Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth symphonies, his Fourth Piano Concerto, and a concluding piece for [...]

Leroy Anderson: Musical Genius in Miniature

By |2023-12-19T09:05:24-06:00December 18th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Christmas, Michael De Sapio, Music, Senior Contributors|

What would the Christmas season be without Sleigh Ride, the beloved orchestral chestnut by Leroy Anderson? It’s one of those festive selections endlessly piped into our ears on radio, television, and in every public marketplace, to the point of becoming a sort of seasonal wallpaper—something taken for granted. But if Sleigh Ride is a tune [...]

“O Sapientia”: An Advent Antiphon

By |2023-12-17T20:25:08-06:00December 16th, 2023|Categories: Advent, Audio/Video, Christianity, Malcolm Guite, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

The poem I have chosen for December 17th in my Advent Anthology from Canterbury Press Waiting on the Word is my own sonnet “O Sapientia,” the first in a sequence of seven sonnets on the seven great ‘O’ antiphons which I shall be reading to you each day between now and the 23rd of December. You [...]

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