Know Your Composer
One day in 1979, the chief music critic at the San Francisco Examiner, Michael Walsh, who had the desk next to mine, sidled over and handed me the album of a new musical, Sweeney Todd. ‘It’s actually an opera’, he whispered conspiratorially, ‘but don’t tell anyone’. When I
Know Your Composer
Greatness will invariably recognise greatness! And Franz Liszt’s efforts and commitment on behalf of forgotten masterpieces set a powerful trend in the 19th century. As such it is hardly surprising that Franz Schubert occupied a central place in Liszt’s transcriptions and paraphrases. Schubert published his first major piano
Know Your Composer
Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986), a virtuoso pianist, prolific composer and conductor of Polish origin was one of the few mainstream orchestral composers who wrote for the guitar. His association and admiration for the musical personality of Andres Segovia resulted in a long term fruitful collaboration and friendship with Segovia. It has
Know Your Composer
In my humble opinion, the richness and subtlety of Franz Schubert’s (1797-1828) melodic and harmonic language is unequaled in the world of classical music. For one reason or another, we are led to believe that Schubert’s music was not popular during his lifetime. Nothing could be further from
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Robert Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood (Kinderszenen), Op. 15 is one of those rare piano works that is both a staple of the standard teaching library and frequently performed by concert artists. Nearly 200 years after its publication, perennial favorites such as Of Foreign Lands and People (Von fremden Ländern
Know Your Composer
Police officals in Naples were presented with a rather gruesome scenario on 16 October 1590. The palace apartment near the Piazza San Domenico Maggiore was the scene of a horrific double murder. They found the body of Don Fabrizio Carafa, whom contemporaries described as a “model of beauty,” and one
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The life of Alessandro Stradella (1639-1682) was characterised by turbulence, adventure and amorous escapades. In fact, in 1677 an attempt was made to murder him for reasons unknown, although it was believed to be at the instigation of a Venetian senator with whose fiancée Stradella had eloped. That attempt on
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When I was a young man, just out of my initial degree in the US and suddenly accepted as student at the prestigious Paris Conservatory, I found myself confronted with the cultural enigma that was the French system of Solfeggio. As a player of a transposing instrument, I definitely did
Know Your Composer
Recently, I had a chat with a young colleague who suggested that the writing of biographies of great composers was a boring myth-making exercise practiced in a cultural galaxy far away and two centuries removed. She had a point about the myth making, of course, but I really couldn’t
Know Your Composer
Erik Satie was a French composer born in the late 1800s. And while, oftentimes, the first thing that comes to mind when we think of French Impressionistic composers is a creative yet prim-and-proper type, it is clear that Mr. Satie was anything but. Satie was dubbed “Mr. Precursor” by Debussy
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The ubiquitous portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach, painted by court portraitist Elias Haussmann, adorns book covers, music school classrooms, record sleeves, and perhaps visits the nightmares of students working feverishly to master his ferociously complex works. The 60 year-old Bach, bewigged, piercing of eye, holding in his surprisingly soft and
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A composition inspired by nature and aspiring to the impulse of liberation that a bird in flight represents, Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending is also a gentle love letter to the rolling English countryside. By Jehangir Batiwala Never underestimate nature. The truth of this statement normally becomes apparent