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Today is the birthday of Giovanni Bottesini. Bottesini was born in Crema, Italy, in 1821, and during his lifetime he was the most celebrated double bass…

Some great composers have been pioneers and musical radicals, and some have been fundamentally conservative. Max Bruch was a conservative to his bones,…

We often turn to music for comfort, but have you ever wondered just how music does comfort us? How it works? The first thing music does is banish silence.…

Divertimento, in Italian, means “entertainment,” or “diversion.” Although composers in the latter part of the eighteenth century used the term as a title…

At every moment, an orchestra has a particular sound that is determined by the instruments and combination of instruments that are playing and by the…

The reed instruments in the orchestra are found among the woodwinds. In part 1 of this 2 part series, Miles Hoffman defines which instruments in the…

We’re talking about acoustics this week. Acoustics is the science of sound, but the word has another meaning, as well. When we ask about the acoustics of…

Atonality and dissonance are often linked in listeners’ minds, but they’re not the same thing. Dissonance, from the Latin words for “sounding” and “apart,” is the simultaneous sounding of two or more notes to produce a clashing, or unpleasant effect. Its opposite is consonance, a pleasing sound, a “sounding together.”

Percussion players can vary the sounds of their instruments by using different kinds of drumsticks, or drumsticks with different kinds of heads. Timpani…

Syncopation disturbs the regular flow of rhythm and it shifts the emphasis in music from strong beats to weak beats, or to in-between beats. I’d like to…