Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert’s Music of Paradise Lost

In terms of his achievement there is only one other composer to whom Franz Schubert can be compared: Mozart. Perhaps not as precocious as Mozart, Schubert was nonetheless already an accomplished composer as a teenager. In his brief...

From the Sacred to the Profane: More Music for My Desert Island

In truth, much of my favourite music is not sacred but profane, insofar as it is not overtly religious or in the least liturgical; and yet these profane favourites are certainly sublime, reflecting the goodness, truth and beauty of Creation, the harmony of the cosmos and the...

Litany for the Feast of All Souls

Editor's Note: Franz Schubert wrote "Litanei auf das Fest Aller Seelen" in 1816 after a text by Johann Georg Jacobi, which is reproduced below in English translation. Three recordings of this exquisite piece—arranged for...

Ten Scary Classical Music Pieces for Halloween

Great music pierces the soul...and can sometimes terrify it. Over the centuries, composers, like nearly all artists of every variety, have been fascinated by the subject of death and by...

The Ten Most Beautiful Classical Symphonies

"Imagination creates reality." —Richard Wagner Though beauty is an absolute reality, we human beings see through a glass darkly, and the space between objective beauty and our own personal taste can be fuzzy. Any list that...