Will cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts force orchestras out of business, or require them to do without a full contingent of musicians?… Be it the misuse of funds, waste, or deleterious governing philosophy, the National Endowment for the Arts has proven to be a recidivistic cultural butcher. The NEA’s process for cultivating [...]
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his divertimento for string quartet and two horns, K. 522, in 1787, the same year that his opera Don Giovanni premiered. Mozart titled the four-movement piece, "Ein musikalischer Spaß," which is usually translated as "A Musical Joke," though a more accurate translation would be "Some Musical Fun." It has long been thought that [...]
Strange as it may seem, there are profound analogies between composer Richard Wagner’s creative vision and our evolving thinking around brands… Few characters in modern history are as controversial and divisive as German composer Richard Wagner. Many of his political writings and personal views are rightly considered an indelible and embarrassing stain, forcing virtually all critics [...]
Some two years before he died, having just recovered from a serious intestinal illness, Ludwig van Beethoven composed a long movement for string quartet, which he called “Holy Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode” (“Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart”). He used the piece as [...]
That a priest allowed a Catholic burial and high requiem Mass for Beethoven would seem to indicate that he thought Beethoven died a believer. But did he indeed? Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart form the great trinity of Western classical composers. Of the three, it is Beethoven whose religious beliefs [...]
Johann Sebastian Bach completed what came to be known as the Mass in B minor in 1749, near the end of the his life, though he had worked on various sections of it for twenty-five years. Why the Lutheran Bach wrote what his son Carl Philipp Emanuel later catalogued as "the Great Catholic Mass" (it uses the Latin [...]
J.S. Bach was among the few who recognized the genius of Jan Dismas Zelenka, a Czech composer who passed into total oblivion after his death. But in listening to Zelenka’s wondrous music, one can only deem the reason for his neglect a mystery. Suppose you were Bach, and no one noticed? Welcome to the early [...]
Oh you men who think that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. My bad hearing means that there can be no relaxation with my fellow men, no refined conversations, no mutual exchange of ideas. I must live almost alone like one who has been banished. Overcome with depression due [...]
Music assures us that we are not alone: that there is something out there in the world that knows our hearts and may even teach us to know them better. Thanks to music, we experience what it means to be connected to the whole of all things. “Music, too, is nature.” —Victor Zuckerkandl, Sound and [...]
"When I listen to his music, it is as if I am doing a good deed. It is difficult to convey what exactly his beneficial influence on me consists of, but it is undoubtedly beneficial, and the longer I live, the closer I get to know him, the more I love him." Unlike most composers [...]
Recorded in Denmark between 1889 and 1897 on a wax cylinder is what is almost certainly the oldest existing Mozart recording in the world. Peter Schram In a climate-controlled section in the basement of Statsbiblioteket, you can find a couple of old solid wooden boxes. These boxes used to contain some of the [...]
Emerson, Lake & Palmer viewed their vocation as creating things of beauty. Such a motivation is a rare gift; to have it shared by three such brilliant musicians was a once in a generation gift for us all. The show has ended. In 2016 we lost two-thirds of the most important musical group of the [...]
The American neoclassical composers wrote music of sanity and logic and civility, music that is modern yet built on tradition. Their music is timeless and universal. Listening to it, one is transported to a bygone era in American culture, and indeed in the culture of the West… The tyranny of fashion weighs heavily on the [...]
On my desert island, I would need to give myself Prospero-like powers, so that the music could be played and sung as mystically as the music of the spheres by an ensemble and choir of invisible nymphs... How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit and let the sounds of music [...]