They all seem to start the same way – a public location – a mall, a public square, an airport, a few people wandering through with purpose, and then it all snaps into focus. The music starts, or the bass

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

Before the harpsichord was introduced into China in 1601 by Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), during the Ming Dynasty, no Chinese had heard Western music. We could say that Matteo Ricci and his successors drew royal attention merely by using these Western

A shiny black Schimmel grand piano is stretched across the corner of a classroom normally reserved for French lessons. A small group of people sit in a semi-circle around the piano, some with musical scores opened on their laps, others

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

I was looking at a listing on Buzzfeed, that news-site famous for its viral lists, on ’25 Cheat Sheets for Taking Care of Yourself Like an…Adult’ and noticed a recurring theme:

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

There is considerable debate across the entire scholarly and social spectrum as to what composer was most influential in the field of Western Classical music. It may, or may not surprise you to learn that Glenn Gould considered Arnold Schoenberg