Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov became a navy officer in order to follow in his older brother’s footsteps. But his real talent lay in music. After leaving the navy, he became a teacher […]
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William Grant Still was a 20th century African-American composer. But hundreds of years before he lived, there were other black composers. ‚The Music of Freedom The songs that helped the […]
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Many countries around the world have national anthems and other patriotic songs that were written by classical composers. Haydn, Elgar and Verdi are just a few you’ll explore here.
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When he was growing up, Leonard Bernstein loved to put on operas and other musical shows with his friends. That interest in musical theater continued all through his life, and […]
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Giuseppe Verdi composed Aida for a new opera house in Cairo, Egypt that opened around the time as the opening of the Suez Canal. Aida is the story of an […]
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The Flight of the Bumblebee comes from an opera called The Tale of Tsar Saltan, which is based on a story by the famous Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. In the […]
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A concerto is a piece of music in which one or more solo instruments get to shine in front of an orchestra. A concerto can be written for any instrument. […]
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When Johann Sebastian Bach sent a set of six concertos to the Margrave of Brandenburg — a German official — the Margrave probably never even looked at the music. Bach […]
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Plenty of composers wrote more symphonies than Beethoven, but few did more to change the way the symphony sounded. Beethoven’s First Symphony reflects the fact that he learned from Mozart […]
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Though many societies either forbade or looked down on women who wanted to be composers, many persevered. This show highlights Francesca Caccini, Élizabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, Louise Farrenc, […]
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