Seven Ways to Procrastinate Less and Do More
Stop making excuses, procrastinators. Whether you overestimate your “natural talent”, complaining about “not having enough time” or being “too old to succeed anyway,” there is … Read more
Angelica Frey
Five Composers Whose Private Lives Were Better Than Fiction
It’s beach season and you might just be looking for your perfect beach read. Bloodshed, deceptions and steamy love stories make for great beachside companions … Read more
Watch These Five Disney Shorts about Classical Music
Classical music abounds in Walt Disney productions: Fantasia contains animated sequences and narrations inspired by the pieces of classical music playing in the background, whether … Read more
Emile Waldteufel was the French answer to Strauss
Much like his rival, he was born in a family of dance musicians, as his father Louis and his elder brother Leon were well-versed in … Read more
Ten Johann Strauss Pieces Every Strauss Lover Should Listen To
You just need to hear a violin tremolo in the key of A major accompanied by a horn (and maybe the staccato wind chords) to … Read more
7 Curious Facts You Should Know About Symphonies
When you hear the word ‘symphony’, you immediately think of something solemn and majestic such as Mozart’s Jupiter symphony, Beethoven’s Eroica (a current earworm of … Read more
Eleven Beautiful Pieces of Classical Music Inspired by Water
The water element abounds in classical music throughout the centuries: just consider Händel’s Water Music (whose title, however, just references the fact that his music … Read more
Here is What Great Philosophers Thought of Music
While philosophers and scholars of the pre-modern era kept studying music from a harmonic point of view and often delved deeper into the concept “musica … Read more
13 Symphonic Poems Every Classical Music Lover Should Listen To
In 1851, Richard Wagner made a bold statement regarding the art of symphony: he claimed that, after Beethoven’s substantial contribution to the genre, the symphonies … Read more
Seven Composers and Their Mental Illnesses
Whoever analyses the biographies of a determinate amount of classical composers will notice that half exhibited cases of various degrees of psychopathology: affective disorders–anxiety and … Read more
What would Tchaikovsky have been without Nadezhda von Meck?
By now, even the least musically educated person can discern the main theme of Swan Lake, the celesta-based dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and … Read more
Five Types of Classical music lovers you find online
The Internet 2.0 gave us a great opportunity: user-generated content can allow anyone’s voice to be heard (a blessing or a curse?) and, as a … Read more
Five Curious Facts about Music and Brain Damage
Music is the ultimate “brain” activity, as it involves the motor, visual, auditory, audiovisual, somatosensory, parietal and frontal areas in both hemispheres and the cerebellum. … Read more
Seven Reasons Why You Should Date a Classical Musician
The contemporary dating scene might, at times, resemble TS Eliot’s wasteland or, worse, a post-apocalyptic landscape punctuated by primeval beings who shy away from light. Apps like … Read more
Wine, Women and Music: Six interesting facts about the Waltz
Whether you agree with Graf, or simply enjoy twirling or, like Wagner, you have the deepest admiration for Johann Strauss II’s Wein, Weib und Gesang, … Read more