Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov spent years as a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Many of his students became famous composers themselves: Anatol Liadov, Alexander Glazunov, and Igor Stravinsky. A lot of […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
The Hungarian Dances by Johannes Brahms were never really intended for dancing. But that doesn’t mean that people in Hungary don't dance! Richard Graber, the director of a Hungarian dance […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Guiseppe Verdi — „Joe Green,“ in Italian — was a great opera composer and Italian patriot. His music became part of the Italian fight for independence and unity.
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Brahms, Bach, and Beethoven are known as the „Three B’s“ of classical music. Brahms always knew that he wanted to be a composer — by the time he was six, […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Originally, a musical fantasy was a piece that instrumentalists made up as they went along. Eventually, fantasies evolved into pieces that composers built out of various melodies they liked — […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
The polonaise is a dance that was fashionable in the Polish court. Since Polish nobility used to like to speak French, the name „polonaise“ is French. Eventually, the polonaise caught […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
„Rhapsody“ is an ancient word that means „songs stitched together“. The Greeks used to write long poems in praise of their heroes, and then take bits and pieces of those […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Rondo is an Italian word that means round. A rondo is an instrumental form with a refrain that keeps coming back. Unlike the verses of a song, though, the music […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Ralph Vaughan Williams arrived on the scene just as a definite English classical music sound was being established. His three main teachers at the Royal Academy of Music were Arthur […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
As soon as Handel got his first job of court composer to a German prince, he headed for England. Through a bizarre twist of royal succession, that prince ended up […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
