There’s a freedom to the music of Bela Bartok, a willingness to cut loose from the moorings of Brahms, Mozart, and even Beethoven, to let...

Perhaps it was the success of “Carmen.” Overnight, Spanish music was all the rage of Europe, particularly in Paris. Everyone was...

Every composer finds himself doing hack work once in a while; it’s called paying the bills. Tchaikovsky was loathe to write “Dance of...

When Frank Sinatra wanted to listen to music---sit down and really listen--he listened to string quartets. This was a side of Sinatra...

Is Classical Music being written today? Yes. Sort of. What is being composed today--and for most of the 20th Century--are less...

He was a world-renowned composer living in London, whose career was on the ropes, and who could no longer find work. As a result, he had...

Orchestral music was in a state of transition when Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) took up his pen and began composing symphonies, the likes of...

Johann Sebastien Bach was fooling around on the great organ in the Leipzig Cathedral when he composed the most hair-raising sounds ever...

Thomas Jefferson played violin and was familiar with the music of Vivaldi, Handel and Mozart, but it’s unlikely he ever heard of Johann...

George Frederick Handel was German--and a contemporary of Johann Sebastion Bach--who lived most of his adult life in London. Unlike...

Of all the great composers, none had a bigger ego than Richard Wagner (pronounced Ree-card Vawg-ner). Wagner (1813-1883) was famously...

At the age of eight he was playing piano and composing music that your high-school music teacher could only dream of doing. It was only a...

“Roll over Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news,” sang Chuck Berry in one of Rock’s classics. It seems Pyotr (that's Peter to you)...

Robert Schumann achieved fame in the mid-nineteenth century--after Beethoven, and before Brahms and Wagner were recognized as musical...

Not all composers possess gigantic egos. Franz Schubert is a case in point. Shy, quiet, bespectacled, known but to a small cadre of...

Orchestral music had moved from the parlors of the nobility and into the public forums by the time Johannes Brahms made his mark in the...

If you were in Vienna in, say, 1780, and looking for the world-famous composer Wolfgang Mozart, chances are you’d find him at the local...

It was the ultimate gig. A 30-piece orchestra at your beck and call. The run of the palace, and servants to meet your every whim. ...

He’s the one who alienates half the dinner guests at your party, gets roaring drunk, makes a pass at your wife, breaks your $1,000 vase,...

Ludvig von Beethoven was a revolutionary. This was never more evident than in 1806, when his Third Symphony premiered in Vienna. What it...