Classical Music

Great Masters and Pups

March 23, 2011

I’d worked late, finishing up a podcast for the Dallas Wind Symphony and polishing up material for Cliburn Conversations, the pre-concert talk for pianist Stephen Hough’s Van Cliburn Concerts Series piano recital the following night. With a head filled with lofty thoughts about the glories of music history, especially Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and the piano sonatas [...]

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Classical Music for Boys

January 27, 2011

How do you teach classical music to boys? I was fortunate enough to spend New Year’s Eve at a concert – complete with cascading balloons in the grand finale.  Listening that night, I thought about all the things awaiting discovery by my children, details of the story of the world and the place of music [...]

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Roll Over Beethoven

December 16, 2010

Thursday, December 16 marks two birthdays.  First, my brother’s, which doesn’t mean a whole lot to anyone but me.  But I always thought it was unfair he got to share his birthday with another mega-personality born that day: Ludwig van Beethoven.  Especially because my brother didn’t particularly care for Beethoven’s music. Well, roll over, brother, [...]

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Music and Mud

January 25, 2010

Most of North America froze over the 2009 holiday season.  Here in North Central Texas, we had a rare Christmas blizzard, with all of the attendant joys and challenges.  But the real story started when the temperature warmed up. Mud, mud, and more mud.  Snow that had drifted and swirled in wind-driven filigree vanished, leaving [...]

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Chamber Music with Michael Shih

January 13, 2010

Enjoy this new interview with Michael Shih, Concertmaster of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and passionate advocate for Chamber Music!

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O Holy Night

December 24, 2009

Once upon a time . . . actually, when I started my job as Music History Professor at Southern Methodist University in 1985, I had to face facts:  even with my fancy new Ph.D. in musicology, my musical education was filled with holes. There wasn’t a thriving concert life in my hometown of Roanoke, Virginia.  [...]

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Listening for the Familiar and Unfamiliar

December 21, 2009

We live in a visual world.  We constantly analyze what we see on a sophisticated level, but most of us are not nearly as skilled in listening.  That’s why many of us prefer music in styles that are already familiar.  Opening our ears and mind up to new kinds of music seems harder. No surprise [...]

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Happy Birthday Beethoven

December 16, 2009

What is the most famous four-note melody in the world?  One where three of the four pitches repeat the same note? Now that’s a toss-up:  either the opening of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, a.k.a. “Fate Knocking at the Door” (dah-dah-dah dum) or . . . ready?. . . “Happy Birthday!” (dah-dah-de-dah). But today, December 16th, you [...]

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Comparing the Classical and Romantic

December 8, 2009

This chart is included in the workbook for Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Arts, History, and Culture. Watch for more reference guides like this one in the near future. Eighteenth Century Enlightenment Nineteenth Century Romanticism Music is an expression of balance and reason. Music expresses the three “E’s”: emotion, enthusiasm, ecstasy. [...]

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Classical Tweets

December 2, 2009

Do you Tweet?  Recently I’ve been exploring Twitter.  And while the 140-character-limit is frustrating, and the anonymity and pace are daunting, I’m intrigued by what one can observe. What are people tweeting about Classical Music, for example.  And not just the words “classical music,” but also Klassische Musik, musica classica, musique classique, Klassieke muziek, etc.—it’s [...]

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