“Variations on a Theme by Haydn,” theme originally composed by… not Haydn.
Tag: classical music
Francis Poulenc was a French dude who wrote loads of music, including the popular opera, Dialogues des Carmelites, and this marginally interesting piano sonata. Read on to learn more about my 100% factual opinions about Poulenc and piano music.
Articles and think pieces about how Anna Magdalena Bach may have written the Bach Cello Suites and other pieces are making the rounds again, but it seems that everyone is missing the point. Who cares if she DID write the pieces — the point is, she COULD have.
You might be bored of classical music (gasp!), but this piece is perfect for spooky Halloween adventures. You know, the kind where everyone dies at the end.
Convinced that Forgotify is trying to make me look like an opportunistic journalist, I regret to inform you that I actually performed this work less than three weeks ago.
Categories
Forgotify, the Last Frontier: Week 2
For week two of the Forgotify experiment, the random music gods gifted unto me Joseph Hadyn’s The Seasons. Yes, it’s classical music, but hey! Where are you going? Classical music isn’t scary. Come back!
Our friend Hildegard was a force to be reckoned with in the 12th century, when women were still regarded as equal to 2 oxen and a trunk full of tablecloths. She purchased and renovated properties on behalf of the church, composed music that is still in the common sacred repertoire 900 years later, was a […]
Usually when one hears the name Caccini, the first composer you think of is Giulio Caccini, author of a famous musical treaty and member of the esteemed Florentine Camerata, a group of scholars and philosophers that included the likes of Vincenzo Galilei, father of the excommunicated astronomer Galileo Galilei. In fact, Giulio’s daughter Francesca was […]
Categories
This Open Thread is Humming Along
I hope you’re all still having a relaxed advent time. I refuse to get stressed this year, just refuse, YOU HEAR ME?!
When I was looking through some of my inherited vinyl collection and I saw the title The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, I thought, “Well, now I have to know what something called that sounds like.”
We’re going highbrow today, bitches! And by “highbrow” I mean “early 20th century avant-garde classical music.” Let me take you back to the early 20th century, when the premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring actually caused riots in Paris, and an English composer named Gustav Holst wrote one of the most influential pieces of […]
Categories
The Unexpected Joy of Dmitri Shostakovich
This past weekend, I went to a performance of the local orchestra for the first time in I can’t even remember how long. There was a special going on for seriously discounted tickets if you attend three or more performances during the season, so we decided to branch out and see more of what our […]
JoAnn Falletta is the brilliant and talented Director of both the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. She recently began her first season as Principal Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra and is the first woman to ever lead that orchestra. Her career has been long and filled with accomplishments both on and off […]