The sea was Richard Wagner’s inspiration for his 1843 opera Der fliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman). In July to August 1839, Wagner travelled from Riga to London, crossing the Baltic Sea and the North Sea on what proved to be

Polish composer Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin (1810-1849), better known under the French version of his name, Frédéric Chopin left Poland at age 20, just as the November 1830 Uprising was about to start, and started a new life in Paris. Although

Count Ferdinand Troyer (1780-1851) occupied a position of power as chief steward to Archduke Rudolf of Austria and also as an amateur clarinettist. His performance of the clarinet obliggato in ‘Parto, parto’ from Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito with the

What started as a tour of Spain for six months in 1882, turned into a research trip on the folk music and dances of Spain. Chabrier’s tour took in most of the principal cities of Spain, starting in San Sebastián,

In his tours of Europe, Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) found inspiration in Scotland for his Symphony No. 3 and The Hebrides Overture and in Italy for his Symphony No. 4, The Italian. His tour of Italy left him time to do

In 1878, while in Switzerland, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) wrote the first part of his op. 42 cycle for violin and piano, Souvenir d’un lieu cher (Memory of a dear place). The three movements, Méditation, Scherzo, and Mélodie were published

Should we consider Mozart to be the most positive of composers? In all of his dozens of symphonies, they were all in a major key, with two exceptions and those were both in the same minor key. Mozart’s Symphony No.

We tend to think of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos as a unified collection, but, in fact, they’re rather a strange grouping of works that only have the idea of ‘concerto’ as their unifying feature. Bach prepared the six concertos during 1720,