What sort of things go into making a piece of music? There are many ways to hear a composition. From a composer’s point of view, you could come up with a concept or idea about your piece. That could come

Date: 31 March 1913Venue: Great Hall of the Vienna Concert SocietyPurpose: Concert of Modern MusicOutcome: Riot, Fistfights and Lawsuits Arnold Schoenberg had put together a concert program that included works by Anton von Webern, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Alban Berg, Gustav

The metaphor of The Hero’s Journey, a pattern of narrative identified by the American scholar Joseph Campbell that appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual, and psychological development, can help understand the development and challenges of the musician’s life and

One of my favorite pieces to perform is Hungarian composer Béla Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances. It is full of infectious rhythms, melancholy melodies, and subtle effects. János Starker performs it in the cello rendition.

Antonin Dvořák composed his Sixth Symphony explicitly for the Vienna Philharmonic and its chief conductor Hans Richter in a matter of months. After a number of postponements, the work finally premiered with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra on March 25, 1881,

The piano has undergone all sorts of innovations and embellishments since its invention by Bartolomeo Cristofori in the early 1700s. The most significant advances in the piano’s design were in response to demands from pianists and composers for a sturdier

The premiere performance of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony on 23 March 1886 immediately brought forth strong opinions on both sides of the critical divide. Somewhat surprisingly, the fierce and feared critic César Cui liked the work, and favorably commented on the

Dedicated to Clara Schumann, Brahms’ Klavierstücke Op.118 were written in 1893 again at Bad Ischl during his summer sojourn and are probably his most well-known opus nowadays. Julius August Philipp Spitta, a German musicologist, wrote to Brahms after receiving the