One of the most eagerly encoded images in a number of different cultures and contexts is the angel sitting on a cloud and playing the harp. What could be more comforting upon leaving this earthly realm than being greeted by

Violins, guitars, mandolins, music sheets and references to classical composers are very much part of Braque’s oeuvre, particularly during his analytic and synthetic cubist period, which essentially started in the early part of the 20th century and lasted well into

Last month’s article focused on the impact of the Great War on musicians, artists and writers in France –today I will focus on its impact in Germany and Austria.

2013 saw the celebrations of Verdi’s and Wagner’s bicentennials, the centennial of Benjamin Britten’s birth and of Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’. 2014 marks a more somber centennial — of the outbreak of the Great War following the assassination of Archduke

A recent concert by the distinguished Emerson String Quartet (Eugene Drucker, violin; Philip Setzer, violin; Lawrence Dutton, viola; Paul Watkins, cello) at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. paired Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 15 in E-flat minor, Op. 144

Mitrofan Petrovich Belaieff (1839-1904) was a music publisher in Imperial Russia but made his money in the wood industry. Despite inheriting his father’s business and being successful in it for some 30 years, his heart was really with music. He

In Germany, in the early years of the 20th century, with rapid industrialization and growing urban populations, we see a return to, and a longing for, the simpler past of rural life, in opposition to the fast-paced life of the

In my last article, ‘Visions of Arcadia in Music, Art and Literature I’, I focused on the Arcadian theme in the classical period. Today I will concentrate on its continuation in the 19th century — with the music of Jacques