A few months ago my wife and I went to hear a lecture given by Prof. Carol J. Oja about her upcoming book, Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War. Because the lecture was sponsored by the New York Philharmonic, I expected one more evening of...

Let me start today’s post with a quick disclaimer about my relationship with Classical Archives. I have subscribed to Classical Archives for about three years. I really like Classical Archives. I have written about it before on this blog. Also, I have been writing...

I took a lot of liberties with music history when I was writing my new novel Distant Voices. All of the characters are fictional, but I created many of them by combining information about the lives of musical figures who actually lived.Just for fun, I have created a...

I was having a conversation last week with a small group of people who are quite knowledgeable about classical music. For some reason, they started to talk about “gypsies,” which of course is another name for Roma people. The people I was talking with talked about the...

GUSTAV MAHLERYesterday started out pretty well. I decided to write a post about music that is good to listen to on Mother’s Day. I was happy to think about that topic and I started to make a list of musical selections.Then while I was making my list, I suddenly...

Most of us think we know what avant-garde music is. It’s music that is ahead of its time, right? Music that sounds like music will sound in the decades or centuries that follow it.The problem is, that definition is wrong. You see, most avant-garde music doesn’t sound...