Italian music is so synonymous with opera that most music lovers would be hard put to think of any Italian orchestral or chamber music from the last two centuries. The only exception may be the music of Ottorino Respighi, especially his highly colorful tone poems, Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome. A group of … Read more
A year ago this column was dedicated to a survey of the great Stabat Maters composed over a period of 400 years. For my own Lenten edification, I most often return to two 20th century Stabat Maters, very different in character but equally affecting—those by Francis Poulenc and Arvo Part. Here I offer a number … Read more
The reputation of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) has waxed and waned over the course of this century. In the early part, he was thought by many to be the second most powerful symphonist next to Beethoven, and was certainly the most often performed contemporary composer of that time. In his famous book of 1934, … Read more
While walking through the woods with Beethoven one day in 1817, English composer Cipriani Potter popped the big question: Who did Beethoven, apart from himself, consider the greatest living composer? At first Beethoven seemed startled by the question, then answered, “Cherubini.” This was not the first time Beethoven had expressed himself about Cherubini’s stature. A … Read more
The following are short reviews of new CDs featuring the music of composers covered in this column in the recent past. This is not meant as a best of the year list, but as a way for readers to follow up on composers whose music they have particularly enjoyed and wish to explore further. I … Read more
What can one say of Ludwig van Beethoven, about whom everything seems to have already been said? How about, “Beethoven lives!”? This fall, I saw that announcement inscribed on baseball hats and T-shirts to promote the National Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven concert series. Later the same day, I received further evidence of his existence at Sunday … Read more
This year is the bicentennial of Franz Schubert’s birth in 1797. In terms of his achievement there is only one other composer to whom he can be compared: Mozart. Perhaps not as precocious as Mozart, Schubert was nonetheless already an accomplished composer as a teenager. In his brief thirty-one years, he created a life’s work … Read more
In his recently published diary, Polish poet and novelist Czeslaw Milosz bemoaned “the hideous music of the second half of the nineteenth century,” and wondered why composers ever abandoned “that heavenly sculpting in sound as in Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and not only in them; lesser composers, too, partook of that beautiful style.” I have often … Read more
David Diamond (b. 1915) is the last of several generations of great American symphonists who flourished mid-century. This list—beginning with Roy Harris, Howard Hanson, Aaron Copeland, and Walter Piston—continues with William Schuman and Diamond himself. Of them all, Diamond has created the most substantial body of symphonies, which now number eleven, in addition to ballets, … Read more
It took a half-century after the death of Czech composer Leos Janacek (1854-1928) for his music to emerge before a worldwide audience. Much of the credit for its current esteem goes to the advocacy of Sir Charles Mackerras, the British conductor who studied in Czechoslovakia and returned bearing treasures. His superb London opera and orchestral … Read more
An exclusive interview with Robert R. Reilly In June 1995, the eyes of the world turned toward China when a naturalized American was arrested, detained, then tried and convicted for crimes against the Communist state. As the world prepared for the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing, suddenly, one man was able to put a face … Read more
Henryk Gorecki in Poland, Arvo Part in Estonia, Peteris Vasks in Latvia, Rodion Shchedrin in Russia (at least in his extraordinary work, The Sealed Angel) and Giya Kancheli in Ukraine—all are composers musically meeting the spiritual needs of their countries for mourning over, and recovering from, having been on the ideological rack of the twentieth … Read more
The Principality of Liechtenstein is hardly larger than the postage stamps it issues. It is a two-ski-run country tucked into the eastern Alps between Switzerland and the Tyrol. I once had the pleasure of  visiting Liechtenstein in an official capacity in the midst of the Cold War. I was there to explain U.S. foreign policy … Read more
The highest purpose of art is to make the transcendent perceptible. Long after the artistic detritus of the twentieth-century has been swept away, people still will be listening to the music of English composer Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986), and wondering why we were complaining about the spiritual aridity of our times. By then, it will have … Read more
Four years ago this month, as I was paging my way through the morning paper, I happened to glance at the obituaries. The paper almost fell from my hands when I saw the name of my friend, composer Stephen Albert, dead at fifty-one, cut down in an auto accident. Steve and I had just had … Read more
The poet Wallace Stevens once wrote that “The major poetic idea in the world is and always has been the idea of God.” One might modify that insight and say that, since the first Christmas, the major poetic idea has been the Incarnation. Either way, one would think that this situation would have created an … Read more
In 1785, seven-year-old Johann Nepomuk Hummel went with his father to the Schikaneder Theater in Vienna, where his father was the conductor of the orchestra. There Mozart had occasion to hear young Johann play one of Mozart’s new piano concertos from memory. So impressed was Mozart, who had some personal experience with wunderkinder, that he … Read more
The distinguished English critic and specialist in Scandinavian music, Robert Layton calls Franz Berwald “the most commanding composer Sweden has thus far produced, and the leading Scandinavian symphonist before Sibelius.” This is the bicentennial of his birth in 1796, but few know his name. When Franz Liszt met the sixty-one-year old Franz Berwald in 1857, … Read more
Suppose you were Bach, and no one noticed? Welcome to the early eighteenth-century world of Jan Dismas Zelenka, a Catholic composer at the court of Dresden, who lived in relative obscurity from 1679 until his death in 1745. Buried on Christmas Eve in the Old Catholic Cemetery in Dresden, he suffered the same fate as … Read more
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died 205 years ago. In 1991, the bicentennial of his death was the occasion for massive Mozart festivals and grand recording projects, as well as reappraisals of his genius and meaning. Five years later, the reappraisals continue. Unfortunately, they tell us more about ourselves than they do about Mozart. Here is an … Read more