Are you dipping your toe into the classical music waters, not sure if you’re up for the full swim, but willing to wade around a bit? Hop in—the temperature is just right! Here are 10 tips for you. I love when people contact me to express their interest in classical music. And 2018 is already turning [...]
"The Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple" is one of the movements of Baroque composer Heinrich Barber's famous "Mystery Sonatas" (also called the "Rosary Sonatas"), a set of fifteen short sonatas for violin and continuo. According to the program notes for a performance of these works: The Mystery Sonatas survive in only a single manuscript [...]
You are not too old to start. It is not too hard. If you harbor any interest in learning how to play the violin, or if you’re merely curious to see a violin up close, examine how it works, what’s stopping you? Here are five easy steps to take. I know, it sounds like a [...]
Ottorino Respighi composed his Trittico Botticelliano (Three Botticelli Pictures) in 1927. Each of the three movements of the work is based on a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli. The middle movement, "L'Adorazione dei Magi," depicts Botticelli’s famous nativity scene, which interestingly uses a backdrop of the ruins of Ancient Rome, and which includes [...]
"The Seven Joys of Mary" (sometimes called simply "Joys Seven") is a traditional carol based on events in the life of the Mother of God. Though it was not originally connected to the Christmas season, it has become so with time. It should be noted that the joys described in the song differ from the [...]
The body language of the band is one of a frozen watchfulness. Each band member has the look and stance of one who has witnessed something truly awful, and yet is powerless to do anything about it. Before their eyes, what the Rolling Stones were witnessing was the ending of a life… It was to [...]
Over the years, the Czech Christmas Mass, "Hej, mistře" (Hail, master!), by Jakub Jan Ryba has become an inherent part of Czech tradition. This is mainly owing to the simplicity, the emotional impact and pure comprehensiveness of Ryba's music. Ryba wrote his Christmas Mass "Hail, master!" in 1796. Its programmatic sequence basically follows the plot used in the folk [...]
Last year I was asked by the Precentor of Wells Cathedral if I would write an extra 8th Antiphon sonnet to go with the special 8th O antiphon, O Virgo Virginum, which was used in English churches and Cathedrals in the middle ages, as distinct from the usual seven on the continent. He explained that the Cathedral was [...]
American composer William Henry Fry wrote the highly enjoyable Santa Claus: Christmas Symphony in 1853, deeming it "the longest instrumental composition ever written on a single subject, with unbroken continuity." This claim, which is probably true, is quite surprising, as is the fact that the legend of Santa Claus was already ingrained in American culture [...]
English musician Steven Wilson’s "Hand. Cannot. Erase" is extraordinary by the standards of any genre. His subject matter is the uniqueness of each human person, and he focuses on the life of one lost soul. An Incarnational Whole One of the greatest things in this whirligig of a world—however fraught with a string of perilous [...]
Here are four recently-published books and four new classical music albums that I have greatly enjoyed this past year… Books I’ve read several excellent biographies (and one great autobiography) this past year. Foremost among the former is Jan Swafford’s magisterial Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, which could easily be termed the definitive biography of perhaps the greatest [...]
Richard Strauss' "Dreaming by the Fireside" ("Träumerei am Kamin") is one of the four orchestral interludes that the composer wrote for his 1924 opera, Intermezzo. Strauss himself wrote the libretto for this two-act drama, basing it on incidents in his marriage to his wife Pauline. The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of [...]
"Beata Viscera Marie Virginis" ("Blessed Flesh of the Virgin Mary") is a piece intended for the Communion section of a Mass honoring the Blessed Mother of God. This setting is a monophonic (one-voice) "conductus," a musical form that gained in popularity during the lifetime of the medieval church composer Perotin, and which was intended to be sung [...]
In the second act of Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera, “Hänsel and Gretel,” there is a treasure that will live forever in the hearts of countless listeners: Fourteen angels take the stage and gather round and protect the children, a prayer come to life. Hansel and Gretel waited deep in the forest for their father. When noon came, each ate [...]