A Minute with Miles
How did the piano get its name? Why can’t you “reach” a crescendo? Who invented opera—and why—and how do you pronounce “Handel”? These and countless other classical music questions are answered on South Carolina Public Radio’s A Minute with Miles. Hosted by longtime NPR commentator Miles Hoffman, the segments inform and entertain as they provide illuminating 60-second flights through the world of classical music.
You can enjoy an archive of these segments below.
Latest Episodes
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I’ve spoken about this before, but the subject seems to come up a lot, so why not go over it again: in America, 99.9 per cent of the people who play the flute for a living call themselves flutists, not flautists. That’s not a scientific number, but I think it’s pretty accurate.
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The riches that music has to offer, whether in times of great sorrow or great joy, are both incalculable and irreplaceable.
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I play concerts for a living, so you wouldn’t think I’d need reminding of the dramatic difference between listening to a recording and hearing a live performance. But it was as an audience member, recently, not as a performer, that I had my reminder – and it was a pretty spectacular one, because I was lucky enough to attend a concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
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There are many great creative artists, including great composers, who have been mediocre human beings, not to mention any number who have been downright reprehensible human beings, or human beings whose private views we would find reprehensible if only we knew what they were.
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Have you ever wondered why, when we’re feeling sad, or lonely, or downright miserable, we usually prefer to listen to music that somehow reflects our mood, rather than music that might jar us out of it?
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For those of us who don’t play a brass instrument, watching brass players play always seems a bit like watching a magic show. We hear the French hornists, trumpeters, trombonists, and tuba players playing plenty of different notes, but the number of times they move their fingers—or in the case of trombonists their slides—doesn’t nearly add up to the number of notes.
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Why have Verdi's operas stood the test of time, while those of his contemporaries have not?
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If you’ve seen the movie Amadeus, or the play it was based on, you may have gotten the impression that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was some sort of giggling idiot who just happened to be really good at writing music. Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.
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Louis Spohr isn’t one of those composers who fell into complete obscurity. But for better or for worse the majority of his works remain unknown to modern audiences.
