No other invention had a greater impact on how music found its way from the composer to the public than the printing of music. After Ottaviano Petrucci published the first edition of the famous Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A in Venice

In the spring of 1778, the 22-year old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart returned to the city of Paris. This time he was chaperoned by his mother—who would tragically fall ill and die—with father Leopold staying put in Salzburg to appease their

Every year, around the time of the start of the BBC Proms, that wonderful 2-month long festival of music, the thorny issue of when to applaud rears its head. In fact, the debate over the appropriateness of applause is ongoing,

Nothing came easy for Anton Bruckner, and habitually plagued by debilitating periods of low self-esteem, he was an easy target for music critics, journalists and composers alike. A particularly vicious critic accused him of “composing like a drunkard.” Given such

The appeal of Serge Diaghilev’s productions for the Ballets Russes is based on the novelty of Russian dance, and on its penchant for exotic subjects, many of them folkloric in nature. Igor Stravinsky scored a Parisian triumph for Diaghilev‘s troupe

This coming July sees one of the UK’s most stylish ‘small is beautiful’ annual festivals celebrating a ‘significant’ year – the 2018 Petworth Festival is the 40th such event. Founded jointly by Lord Egremont and Robert Walker, the well-known composer

With Robert Schumann teetering on the verge of yet another breakdown, his wife Clara sincerely welcomed her husband’s cello concerto. She confided in her diary, “I have played Robert’s violoncello concerto through again, thus giving myself a truly musical and

The Seven Deadly Sins was the final collaboration between two of the most revolutionary artists of Weimar Germany, Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht. Premiered on 7 June 1933 in the Théatre des Champs-Elysées, Weill watched the declining German political and