Dwindling economic resources and the unprecedented sufferings inflicted by the “Great War” forced composers to search for new avenues of artistic and musical expression. Taking refuge in Switzerland, the young Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet introduced Stravinsky to the author Charles-Ferdinand

On 26 September 1957, the Winter Garden Theatre—one of the Broadway theatres located between 50th and 51st Streets in midtown Manhattan—opened with a musical inspired by William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. With a libretto by Arthur Laurents, lyrics by Stephen

By all accounts, March of 1837 was a great month for Felix Mendelssohn! His oratorio St. Paul received enormously successful performances in Leipzig and Boston, and on the 28th of the month he married Cécile Jeanrenaud in the French Reformed

While putting the finishing touches on the menacing finale of his Sixth Symphony in the summer of 1904, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) also drafted two central “Nachtmusiken” (Music of the Night) that would eventually become the second and fourth movements of

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) has been described as “the single most significant creative figure in 20th century Brazilian art music.” His quest to develop musical compositions using indigenous Brazilian elements fueled a number of ethno-musicological excursions into the northeastern states of

For all his dislike of Italian music, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) kept returning to Italian subjects. We only need to think of Romeo and Juliette, Harold in Italy, and the opera loosely adapted from the memoirs of the 16th century Florentine

Ferdinand Lukas Schubert (1794-1859)—older brother of Franz Schubert—was a schoolteacher, organist, and composer. He had some compositional talent, but frequently asked for his brother’s help in his daily work. On occasion, he appropriated his brother’s compositions and passed them off

The majority of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756-1791) serious operas were composed for occasions connected to the Austrian ruling house of Habsburg. At the tender age of fourteen, Mozart composed Mitridate, re di Ponto for Milan, a city governed by the