Music Education
For music and nature, birds are the natural – they sing! Or, rather, we hear their communication as singing. A friend in Hong Kong trains birds to sing, playing them beautiful songs from model birds to learn. The ones with good voices he keeps and the ones who aren’t trainable
Music Education
Bugs and music – hmm, not as common as birds, but then when you start to think about it, they start to creep up on you. Probably the first piece of bug music you might have learned was Frank Loesser’s Inchworm, brought to the silver screen in the movie Hans
Music Education
Why touring is important, and why the mere thought of it drives management mad. By Zane Dalal Orchestras, as we know them today, started out as small ensembles, joined to some illustrious house or under the patronage of a court. The more important the court, the bigger and better the
Music Education
If we put the last century’s notions of “old” and “new” in a broader historic perspective, it becomes clear how short-sighted these notions were and how wrong it was to give them an aura of absoluteness, since these notions are, by their very nature, relative and flexible, and dependent
Music Education
Singers, how much do you love auditions? I know you’re all troopers, experts at the art of wowing someone in two arias or less. It’s really all about making your way through the huge list of Things You Can’t Control. Often, one of those things is the
Music Education
Singers, how closely do you pay attention to the key signature of the arias you sing? You know how to read music, of course – but that’s not why I ask. Turns out, there can be a fascinating dramatic significance to the key in which an aria is written. The
Music Education
A brief history of the master’s most spectacular work: Symphony No 9. By Manohar Parnerkar Beethoven’s most celebrated work, Symphony No 9 in D minor, Opus 125, also known as Beethoven’s Ninth, or simply as the Ninth, was revolutionary. In terms of sheer power, scale, complexity and
Music Education
Sometimes one hears the critique that classical music is no longer compatible with modernity. What “modernity” is supposed to mean always remains in darkness, as if the very word “modernity” were so obvious in its meaning that any further explanation would be superfluous. If “modern” means “of this time, of
Music Education
Animals in music occur in everything from children’s pieces to great serious works. Their rhythm in the world is something that a composer can take up and develop and also their aspect: fierce or calming. In his ballet The Firebird, Stravinsky gave us the magnificent mythical bird of The
Music Education
In the last century, very often the concept of “progress” was projected upon the arts as a measurement of quality: “good art” was “progressive art.” If an artist did not commit some “groundbreaking” artistic deed, his work was considered worthless. While progress in science is a fundamental notion, in the
Music Education
Some folks have an inner pulse that rivals most metronomes. Others have to work for rhythmic perfection. Singers, we know you all get bad reputations among classical music circles for not being able to count, and frankly, sometimes you earn the stereotype. Singers who work regularly have excellent rhythm, and
Music Education
English speakers, this one’s for you. You might have already discovered that singing in your native language can be trickier than expected, sometimes even more than singing in a language you don’t speak well. When you’re in the rehearsal room getting note after note about your unintelligible