Russian composer Igor Stravinsky had a big hit with his first ballet, The Firebird. Stravinksy kept on writing ballets, followed by operas, and orchestral and choral music.
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Georg Philipp Telemann composed during the Baroque period, which ran from about 1600 to 1750. Suzanne Bona, host of the National Public Radio program Sunday Baroque, talks with Naomi Lewin […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Usually, an overture is a piece of music played at the beginning of a play, opera or ballet in order to set the mood. But there are also other kinds […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Even though classical music is sometimes referred to as „serious music,“ a lot of times it just isn’t. Serious, that is — classical composers wrote some very funny music.
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
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
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
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
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
