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I won’t mention any names, but many years ago there was a great string quartet that was famous for its members not getting along. People joked that it was…

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in classical music, the final movements of instrumental pieces—the finales—were almost always in fast…

I hope you’ll join me today in celebrating the birthday of Felix Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg on February 3, 1809. By the time he was…

I heard two remarkably gifted young musicians play the other day. One was a nineteen-year-old pianist and one a sixteen-year-old violinist. And it was…

Galileo, whose full name was Galileo Galilei, was one of the great figures in the history of science. What may surprise you is that Galileo’s father,…

Today is October 27 – and it was on October 27, 1917, that the great violinist Jascha Heifetz made his American debut in Carnegie Hall. I say great – many…

The tools and techniques of conducting have changed a great deal over the centuries. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the people who led musical…

Every musician will tell you that there are some musicians who just seem to have better ears than others do. We’re really talking about the brain, rather…

In May of 1761, Benjamin Franklin was in Cambridge, England, and he heard a man play a performance on musical glasses. They were crystal wine glasses…

For convenience sake, the 19th century is usually known as the era of Romanticism in classical music. This is not necessarily wrong, but it certainly does…