Category: Uncategorized

  • Program Music

    Faust and Gretchen talk together in a garden as Mephistopheles, the devil’s emissary, looks on. The origins of the Faust legend. Music inspired by the Faust legend. Here is Movement 1 of Liszt’s Faust Symphony, entitled “Faust.” Movement 2, “Gretchen.” Movement 3, “Mephistopheles.” The “program” for Schumann’s Carnaval. The entire piece performed by Boris Giltburg.

  • Can You Dance to It?

    A Polish folk dance, the polonaise. A Chopin version of a polonaise. The mazurka. A Chopin version of a mazurka. The waltz. A Chopin version of a waltz. Incidentally, the waltz was considered the “dirty dancing” of its day. The Archbishop of Dublin, William Walsh, warned Catholics to avoid it at all costs: Never engage…

  • Pictures of Liszt

    Franz Liszt was one of the most frequently painted and photographed people of the nineteenth century. Here are just a few images. Why do you suppose this was?  

  • The Waiting is the Hardest Part

    The legend of Dr. Faust — a scholar dissatisfied with his life, who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for renewed youth, strength, and vigor — is an ancient one. The first literary adaptations of the Faust legend began to appear in the sixteenth century, and every age since has reinterpreted the story…

  • Anatomy of An Obsession

    Portrait of Harriet Smithson by Éduard Dubufe, 1830. Are the circumstances surrounding the composition of Symphonie Fantastique a romantic love story? Or a stalker-ish nightmare? Berlioz saw the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson play Ophelia in Hamlet at the Odéon Theatre in Paris in 1830, and immediately fell in love with her. He wrote to her obsessively,…

  • Erlkönig

    Read through the score of “Erlkönig” here. IMSLP00888-Schubert_-_Erlkönig_Op1 Schubert’s great song, sung by the master, German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, with descriptive images. Without the images, however, and without the costumes, set, and stage directions of an opera, the Lieder singer has only his voice, his face, and a very minimal arsenal of physical gesture to portray…

  • What Does A Conductor Do?

    Not this kind of conductor. In music, a conductor’s position is similar to that of the director of a movie or play. The conductor applies his or her overarching conception of the way the music should sound to the piece being performed, based on his/her study and understanding of the score and the composer’s intentions.…

  • The First Four Notes

    This is arguably the most famous passage in western music. It has been likened to the sound of fate knocking at the door, though Carl Czerny, Beethoven’s pupil, maintained that Beethoven was inspired by the song of the yellowhammer, a bird he heard on one of his frequent long walks through the countryside near Vienna.…

  • Who Is Don Giovanni?

    A drug addict, mortally wounded in his Act I, scene I combat with Donna Anna’a father? A gay nightclub owner in the 1980s, chasing men as well as women? A corporate executive who sexually harasses his female employees? Or perhaps the alter ego of Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist? Is he even a man?  

  • Rage Arias

    In Handel’s 1724 opera Giulio Cesare, the role of Sesto (Sextus) is written for a soprano to sing en travesti, i.e. cross-dressed as a teenage boy. Sesto is the son of Pompey, one of Caesar’s rivals, who has been killed by Caesar’s Egyptian allies. In Act I, Sesto sings a version of a “rage” aria — a…