Musical Sunrises
It happens every day — darkness scatters as the sun rises, and color returns to the world. Even though it is, literally, an everyday occurrence, it’s also a magical one, and one that has inspired...
View ArticleMusic from Ireland
It’s easy to find Irish folk music, especially around St. Patrick’s Day. But what about classical music?Ireland is a deeply musical place, but it doesn’t have much of a reputation for classical music....
View ArticleAre Angels Always So Nice?
Look in any greeting card store and you’ll see cute, chubby little angels smiling and gazing upwards beatifically. Listen to Bach and Handel to hear evocations of the glorious sound of angels singing....
View ArticleBeyond Words
The idea of using the voice as an instrument rather than as the carrier of a text is a relatively recent development, at least in Western classical music. In fact, if Debussy had been two weeks late...
View ArticleTombeau
There is an old tradition among classical music composers of writing memorial pieces for colleagues who have passed on; many of the pieces contain the French word “tombeau,” meaning “tomb” or...
View ArticleChaconnes and Passacaglias
In the Baroque era, the chaconne and its close relative the passacaglia became favorite musical forms, where a repeated bass line or harmonic progression would support an evolving set of melodic lines,...
View ArticleMostly Mozart, Sort Of…
Mozart was directly responsible for over 600 works, a number of which are certifiable masterpieces. What exactly that number is and who’s doing the certifying is a mystery for another day. For now,...
View ArticleMemories in Music
Memory can be a tricky thing. Some memories are pretty straightforward — Tchaikovsky went to Florence, Italy; had a good time; memorialized it in music. Others are more fraught: the German composer Max...
View ArticleOld Songs / New Works
Just because a song is somewhere around 200 years old doesn’t mean it’s past its sell-by date. Old songs have provided the musical inspiration, and even the musical materials, for a number of...
View ArticleWinter Variations
Game Of Thrones fans had to wait six seasons for the dreaded Winter to arrive. We just had to wait for December. With the temperatures well below average for this time of year and meteorologists making...
View ArticleThe Islands of Scotland
This week on The Furthermore, the islands of Scotland — the Hebrides, the Orkneys, the Shetlands — have been a subject of fascination for composers since a 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn visited the...
View ArticleChristmas Time Is Here
Christmas music doesn’t have to be the same old songs, sung only at this one time of the year. Some Christmas music sounds great any time, and some music that wasn’t meant for Christmas has been sucked...
View ArticleMusic With Jewish Roots
Just in time for Chanukah, we listen to music with Jewish roots — even if not all of the composers were themselves Jewish. Prokofiev (not Jewish) wrote his Overture on Hebrew Themes for a Jewish...
View ArticleChamber Music From Brahms to Rachel Grimes
This time on The Furthermore, some chamber music by Brahms and Debussy leads us to more contemporary chamber works by Somei Satoh, Dmitri Evgrafov, and Poppy Ackroyd (her idea of chamber music includes...
View ArticleThe Best of 2017
This time on The Furthermore, we look back at some memorable musical events in 2017 – some of them recordings, some of them live performances. Among them is a work from this year’s Grawemeyer Award...
View ArticleThe Uses and Abuses of Dance
This week on The Furthermore, let’s dance. Composers have been using (and sometimes abusing) various forms of dance for many centuries, and today’s lot are no exception. Eastern European folk dances,...
View ArticleSetting the Latin Mass to Music
Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms are just a few of the great composers who’ve set the Latin Mass to music. But while the Mass is a specifically Christian tradition, it has become in recent years a form...
View ArticleThrough the Looking Glass
Benjamin Franklin – yes, that Benjamin Franklin – invented a musical instrument that worked well enough to attract the attention of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. That instrument was the glass harmonica, or...
View ArticleRediscovering The Psalms
There are 150 psalms in the Bible, and most if not all of them were originally intended to be sung. No surprise then that composers of virtually every stripe have set these poems/hymns/prayers to...
View ArticleThe New York Guitar Festival
The classical guitar repertoire is its own (relatively little) world, but there are a few pieces that have attained wider popularity. Among guitar concertos, Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez,...
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