The Ten Most Beautiful Symphonies

By |2023-10-27T17:53:44-05:00October 27th, 2023|Categories: Antonin Dvorak, Audio/Video, Culture, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Gustav Mahler, Jean Sibelius, Ludwig van Beethoven, Music, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

In addition to melody, great and beautiful classical symphonies must display a mastery of structure and orchestration, a command of tone color and harmony, and an expertise in developing musical ideas. Here are the ten most beautiful symphonies ever composed. “Imagination creates reality.” —Richard Wagner Though beauty is an absolute reality, we human beings see [...]

Immortal Beloved: Musical Love Letters From the Great Composers

By |2023-02-13T20:23:11-06:00February 13th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Gustav Mahler, Hector Berlioz, Love, Ludwig van Beethoven, Music, Richard Wagner, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|

Love has inspired countless composers, some of whom have written pieces dedicated to, or directly inspired by, their own beloveds. Here are ten of the best musical love letters ever composed. 1.  Wagner: Siegfried Idyll Though his reputation rests on his big, long, and loud mythological operas, Richard Wagner was also capable of composing on a [...]

Heaven’s Delights: Gustav Mahler’s Fourth Symphony

By |2023-07-06T19:43:44-05:00November 15th, 2022|Categories: Audio/Video, Gustav Mahler, Michael De Sapio, Music, Senior Contributors|

Gustav Mahler's Fourth Symphony is his most sheerly delightful and accessible creation. It is written on a human scale and brings us on a clear and cogent musical and emotional journey. What’s more, this relatively traditional work still shows many of the ways in which Mahler was one of the most original and inventive composers [...]

Gustav Mahler & the Curse of the Ninth Symphony

By |2022-07-06T16:15:35-05:00July 6th, 2022|Categories: Audio/Video, Culture, Gustav Mahler, History, Music, Timeless Essays|

Back in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, a superstition developed in the classical music world that prophesied the Ninth would be a composer’s last symphony. Arnold Schoenberg summed it up in an eloquent fashion, stating that “he who wants to go beyond it must pass away. It seems as if something might be imparted to us [...]

Who Is Gustav Mahler?

By |2023-07-06T19:52:48-05:00July 6th, 2020|Categories: Audio/Video, Gustav Mahler, Music|

"Who Is Gustav Mahler?" is one of Leonard Bernstein's famous "Young People's Concerts" with the New York Philharmonic. This musical lecture was broadcast on July 7, 1960, the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth. It is noteworthy that Mahler's music had not yet achieved the great popularity that it has today, and that as a [...]

Songs & Dances of Death: 10 Classical Works for the End of Time

By |2023-01-20T17:38:06-06:00March 12th, 2020|Categories: Audio/Video, Camille Saint-Saëns, Gustav Mahler, Jean Sibelius, Music, Richard Strauss, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|

From Modest Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death to Oliver Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, here are ten great classical pieces about death and the end of this world. They may or may not provide you comfort. 1. Songs and Dances of Death, by Modest Mussorgsky A song cycle for voice (usually bass [...]

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