Music

The Moral Conservatism of Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky is endlessly touted as an arch-modernist, but The Soldier's Tale and The Rake's Progress show him to be something more important: a great twentieth-century moralist... Igor Stravinsky Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was certainly the greatest composer...

Site & Sound, Size & Scale: How to Build Humane Concert Halls

We spend so much time in these giant buildings—shopping malls, monstrous office complexes, big box stores. Classical music should bring people together in a more social, intimate way. We’re hoping to design the whole concert experience from the beginning to be smaller. It’s about shrinking the scale,...

“The American Flag”

"Our Heaven Born Banner," by William Bauly (1861), inspired by Joseph Rodman Drake's poem, "The American Flag" Editor's Note: Antonín Dvořák wrote the cantata "The American Flag" in 1892-3, during the Czech composer's tenure as director of...

Rimsky-Korsakov’s Magical “Scheherazade”

Warning: do not attempt to drive or operate heavy machinery while listening to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade for the first time. Said composition is known to have caused feelings of extreme uplift, a dreamlike state, mild disorientation and a disassociation with...

10 Great Violin Concertos You Must Hear

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...

“Ave Maria”

Editor's Note: Camille Saint-Saëns wrote the Ave Maria in A major in 1860. Known in his lifetime mainly as a composer of operas, and remembered by posterity largely for his orchestral works, yet Saint-Saëns also composed many sacred works. Once asked why he, an atheist, composed sacred music,...

The Art and Delight of Progressive Rock

Jerry Ewing’s greatest achievements in Wonderous Stories are to show conclusively that progressive rock never died and continues to thrive; and that it’s a vital and vibrant cultural expression, worthy of all due scholarly and cultural attention... Wonderous Stories: A Journey Through the...

Requiem for His Daughter: Franz Schmidt’s Lament

Franz Schmidt's lament makes grief beautiful. It elevates it to something irreproachable, like snow on a mountain peak that, when you’re stumbling around in it, stings and chills and makes you lose your footing, but from the distance, oh, the inexpressible beauty...

Chopin for Everyone

There’s something about Frédéric François Chopin that puts him and his music in a category of its own. Born in Poland, a child prodigy on the piano, Chopin trained in Warsaw, and left Poland at age twenty. By twenty-one, he was settled in Paris and quickly became Someone Worth...

Gustav Mahler and the Curse of the Ninth Symphony

Back in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, a superstition developed in the classical music world that prophesied the Ninth would be a composer’s last symphony. Arnold Schoenberg summed it up in an eloquent fashion, stating that “he who wants...

Max Bruch: The Romantic Composer You’ve Never Heard (Enough) Of

The problem with poor Max Bruch was that he was born too late. What he produced is art that seems to give off an invisible radiance, one you can feel on your flushed cheeks, deep within your heart as you listen. This is art that got overlooked...

Building Communities With Music

Classical music must find its place in love—love of home, of community, of neighbor, and of the culture that binds all these things together. In all but the most exceptional cases, our orchestras won’t survive if they don’t get this part right...

Elgar, Enigma, and Easter

Easter likely hadn’t been on Edward Elgar’s mind when he wrote his Enigma Variations, yet this wondrous, utterly memorable piece conjures up a rush of powerful spirituality, a sense of Easter Sunday grandeur. It is most decidedly “death has been conquered; arise and go forth” music...

The Exoticism & Euphoria of Debussy’s “Afternoon of a Faun”

Claude Debussy's "Afternoon of a Faun" delivers volumes of sensation. Languor, sensuality, euphoria, curiosity, an awareness of the exotic. You are flung back to your own childhood, your adolescence, all awash in new experiences, colors, sensations. For ten fleeting minutes, you let the music cradle you, transport...