Blog
Articles on the hidden connections in music history: teachers and students, schools, and unexpected lines of succession.
From Luzzaschi to Frescobaldi
On 2 June 1624, Джироламо Фрескобальди dedicated his Capricci fatti sopra diversi soggetti to Alfonso d’Este.
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Many Voices, One Piano
The familiar portrait is irresistible: an exiled composer alone at the piano, transforming private sorrow into nocturnes, mazurkas, and ballades of almost...
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A Classroom Across 115 Years
From 1852 to 1854, Николай Заремба studied music theory with Адольф Маркс in Berlin. More than a century later, in 1967, Филипп Хиршхорн, trained by a...
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Nathan Perelman’s Long Lesson
A boy sits at a piano while a country comes apart around him. Outside, revolution and civil war are redrawing borders, breaking institutions, and...
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Nikolayev’s School, Decoded
Most celebrated teachers leave behind a recognizable style. Their students share a particular tone, a way of shaping phrases, perhaps even the same...
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Powdered Wigs, Leather Jackets
In the popular imagination, the history of music is often compartmentalized into rigid genres, separated by high walls of time and style.
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Whispered Secrets of the Studio
The history of Western classical music is often taught as a series of distinct, geological strata: the orderly gardens of the Classical era, the...
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The Myth of the Lone Virtuoso
There’s a familiar myth about great pianists: that they appear like comets—solitary, blazing, unrepeatable.
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Touch, Timing, Taste
A great pianist can make a single note feel inevitable—so right it seems as if the composer placed it there by hand.
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Bellini’s Mathematical Prison
In 1819, a handsome, melancholy eighteen-year-old named Vincenzo Bellini stepped off a boat in Naples.
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Wagner’s Ring Without Wagner
In the vast, chaotic constellation of music history, we are often taught to navigate by the brightest stars.
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Voice as a Weapon
In the glittering, candlelit world of 18th-century Europe, music was not merely an art form; it was a bloodsport.
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The Venetian Blueprint
The Invisible Relay: How a Deathbed Gift in Venice Sparked the Messiah
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The Notebook That Made Bach
The Moonlight Manuscript: Unlocking the Secret Musical DNA of J.S. Bach The image is one of the most enduring myths in music history: a young, orphan...
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