Great Composers in Word and Music

Claude Debussy is regarded by many as the quintessential French composer, with musicthat invited both warm applause and frosty criticism in his day. While our ears no longerhear him as controversial, his works heralded the dawn of an artistic period...

Johann Sebastian Bach today has a reputation as the Godfather of Western European music, as a fountainhead of classical music theory and the creator of some of the greatest works the world has ever produced. Better known as a keyboard virtuoso, Bach...

Tchaikovsky declared that Mozart was 'full of divine beauty', and Schubert's wonder at the 'countless images of a brighter and better world' that Mozart was able to conjure up through his music knew no bounds. Many of us carry the image of Mozart as a...

The Great Gate of Kiev resounds to the tumultuous bell rings that end Pictures an an Exhibition, one of the most magnificent and virtuosic of all piano pieces. However, to some of his contemporaries, Modest Mussorgsky was ‘insane’ and ‘a perfect...

Famous today for his Trois Gymnopédies, ErikSatie was an eccentric and solitary figure whowas nevertheless viewed by some as a prophet ofFrench musical modernism, his strikingcreativity championed by Ravel and Debussy.From tragedy and trauma in his...