It’s not easy to be a composer, and many have had dramatic lives full of pain and struggle. But some composers have had worse times than others, especially in their vulnerable childhood years. Today we’re looking at five composers who

When audiences are transported by a concert, they imagine that a kind of magic happens onstage attributed to the conductor. Sometimes that is true. But many other attendees wonder: what does a conductor actually do? We’re in luck. Several conductors

With the dramatic title of Le violon de la mort (The Violin of Death), Austrian composer Grete von Zieritz (1899–2001) shows us in the subtitle, Dances macabres, that it’s part of the long line of music written for the dead.

One of the major difficulties of studying the Holocaust is understanding its sheer scale. The human brain isn’t built to process what the murder of millions of people really means. However, by zeroing in and looking at individual stories, we

In the first part of this article, we surveyed the rather sensational veneer of the story of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs – the surreal happenings, the seemingly chance developments, and the absurdity of a reticent Polish composer outselling

The piano music of Robert Schumann isn’t just challenging for the hands, it is a real workout for the mind and heart as well. Technical challenges aside, Schumann’s music is full of nuanced emotional expressions, often requiring the pianist to

For the past hundred years, classical music lovers have gotten to know the work of the great pianists through their recordings. Today we’re looking at the final recordings that six great pianists made. In some cases, these recordings were made

Hector Berlioz was a man of unbridled passion and relentless innovation. He possessed a rebellious spirit that defied convention, and his character was as dramatic and vivid as the music he created. His personality was dominated by an almost volcanic