Arcangelo Corelli was a giant of the Baroque era of Western music and, though it might be easy to forget today, one of the most historically important and popular composers who ever lived. His "Christmas Concerto" has endured as his most popular work and one of the great classical pieces for the Christmas season. [...]
Although he wrote a Requiem Mass, Te Deum, and other spiritual compositions, the French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz has regularly received brickbats from Catholic listeners. In The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), the Dutch-American organist and choirmaster Joseph Otten decried the Berlioz Requiem as a “sacred work, but it does not express any deep personal faith from Berlioz himself... [...]
There is really no “unknown” Mozart these days. For the 225th anniversary of his death in 2016, the Universal record company released the newest of several (!) complete editions of every note Mozart wrote. So, everything we have written by the “miracle which God let be born in Salzburg” is readily available to twenty-first century [...]
St. Cecilia Mass is the common name of a solemn mass in G major by Charles Gounod, composed in 1855 and scored for three soloists, mixed choir, orchestra and organ. The official name is Messe solennelle en l’honneur de Sainte-Cécile, in homage of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music. The work was assigned CG 56 in the [...]
This past September, scholars at the Leipzig municipal library announced that they had discovered a previously unknown string trio (for two violins and cello) by the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The unearthed manuscript was not in the composer's hand but was deemed to be a copy made a decade or so after it was penned. [...]
It’s October, and the urge for theatrical, spooky music always arises for me right about this time. Cue a visit to the essay I wrote years back, “Ten Spooky Classical Faves for Halloween.” Each year, it seems, I have a different relationship with the music and its composers. This year, I’m taking a particular interest [...]
Rouget de Lisle sings la Marseillaise for the first time, painted by Isidore Pils Perhaps the greatest of national anthems is France's "La Marseillaise," composed in 1792 by French officer Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, and arranged by Hector Berlioz for voices and orchestra in 1830. But in addition to the official anthems [...]
As I peruse conservative cultural commentary, I am troubled by a lack of awareness and appreciation for 20th-century art music. The music of a composer like Franco Margola has much to teach us about how modernity can connect with tradition and the values of civilization. Italy, like all countries in Western civilization, has had its [...]
When I was eight years old I had an experience that set a trajectory for my whole life. I was lying in bed, I had the radio on—this was the 1970s—and Bruce Springsteen comes on with his 70s anthem “Born to Run.” Something broke open in my soul. Something grabbed a hold of me and [...]
There is something immoderate about Sibelius’ Violin Concerto—something vulnerable and unspeakably beautiful, right there along something dark and brooding. The piece illustrates that not only do darkness and beauty coexist, they enhance each other. It’s complex, gripping, devilishly complicated, and sounds like no other concerto in the violin repertoire. Listening to Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ violin concerto, [...]
Ask someone who’s seen the 1940 animated film, Fantasia, which piece they best remember, and the majority will respond with, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice or “the one with Mickey Mouse.” (Runners up might include Bach’s Toccata and Fugue, Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers,” or Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, but that’s an essay for another time.) Now ask [...]
The American musical—more technically known as light musical theater—has been one of the most beloved aspects of American culture. Many of the characters, scenes, and situations from the musical shows created during the genre’s golden age (roughly, the mid-20th century) are fixed in our consciousness, thanks to stage productions, movie versions of the shows, and [...]
Two composers, two works, separated by four centuries, and the way Ralph Vaughan Williams managed to blend the two sensibilities is amazing. And here I am, listening today, and it takes me on a journey, not just to 1910 when the "Fantasia" was composed, but back to the time of Tudor England when Thomas Tallis [...]
While everyday life feels rootless, cultural and artistic accomplishment stands as a steady anchor and source of pride and joy and discovery. Music, the most popular and beloved of the arts, connects us to something higher than us, perhaps a way of life and set of feelings that flourished before we were born. Music can [...]