Fauré Requiem

I'm always tickled by composer trivia questions, like which standard canon works begin in a major key and end in a minor key? I'll give you one, but please comment others below: Mendelssohn's 4th Symphony. Well, how about this one: how many of Beethoven's 16 string quartets end i ...  Show more

Brahms spent much of his adult life battling with his ambition to write the next great symphony and his terror at the shadow of Beethoven standing behind him. Brahms tortured himself for 14 years with his first symphony, and only published it when he was 49 years old. But when th ...  Show more

Synopsis The hills surrounding the Austrian town of Salzburg, according to Rogers and Hammerstein, are “alive with the sound of music.” Well, the same could have been said for the vast interior and multiple choir lofts of Salzburg Cathedral on today’s date in 1682 when a lavish c ...  Show more

Synopsis It might seem odd that during his long career, Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály wrote only nine works for orchestra. When someone asked him about this, he replied, “I was busy with more important work: I had to educate a public.” Kodály and his countryman Béla Bartók wer ...  Show more

Synopsis “Snuff” is a finely pulverized tobacco that can be, well, “snuffed” through the nose. In the 19th century, taking snuff was a common practice, and on today’s date in 1837, the most notorious example of snuff-taking in music history occurred — or didn’t, depending on who ...  Show more

Synopsis For later Romantic composers like Richard Wagner, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was “the apotheosis of the dance,” and certainly sitting still during the Symphony’s dizzying finale is not always easy. But for those in the audience at its premiere in 1813, as part of a benef ...  Show more