Pizzicato is the Italian word for „plucked“ — it tells string players how to play their instruments at a given spot in the music. A lot of musical „traffic signals“ […]
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All across Europe in the 19th century, there was a wave of nationalism as people fought for political independence. Composers started wanting musical independence, too. When they started putting folk […]
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Telemann loved to write. He wrote more pieces of music than any other composer, and he also wrote not one, not two, but THREE autobiographies.
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Opera singer Denyce Graves talks with Naomi Lewin about what it’s like to be an international opera star.
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Johann Sebastian Bach was married two times, and had a grand total of 20 children! All of Bach’s ancestors were musicians, and his sons were expected to follow in his […]
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Italian composer Gioachino Rossini was born in 1792 and died in 1868, so you might think that he celebrated 76 birthdays. But Rossini was born in a leap year, on […]
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Music by composers with all kinds of hyphens to their African heritage: African-French, French-Cuban, African-English, and African-American.
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Frédéric Chopin was one of the greatest pianists of his day. Every single piece of music he wrote used the piano. The name Chopin doesn’t sound very Polish because Chopin's […]
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Charles Ives wrote the Country Band March about amateur musicians — people who make music for the love of it. In the Country Band March Ives combines a tune that […]
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Johann Strauss, Jr. was the son of a very successful violinist and orchestra leader. Eventually, Johann, Jr. was in competition with his father, conducting an orchestra of his own. When […]
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