Image courtesy of www.bbc.co.uk Top 5 Ways You Can Be Like Franz Liszt, the Ultimate Stud Franz Liszt. Legendary virtuosic pianist. Fabulous composer, despite the current debate over whether his work was any good or not. And oh, how the women swooned. They threw their handkerchiefs at him in appreciation of his talent and physical [...]

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Bernard Herrmann: The Composer as Co-Author by Justin Stewart, The L Magazine We know and love him for his scores to many a Hitchcock film, but Bernard Herrmann was so much more than a composer. Opera’s Unsung Pit Heros by Colin Eatock, The Globe and Mail Wherein we get an inside peak at what it’s [...]

It is highly probable that you haven’t yet considered the similarities between Michael Jackson and Mozart. A few hundred years will do that. However, both were incredibly prolific, died far too young, and are discussed worldwide every day. But wait, there’s more. Top 10 Reasons Why Mozart is the Michael Jackson of 17th Century (or [...]

Finding America’s Composers by Rob Deemer, NY Times A fabulous accounting of how one musician’s career morphed from aspirations of being a band teacher to becoming a composer and radio curator — and who he met along the way. Brazil’s Orchestral Crisis by Norman Lebrecht, Slipped Disc Drama, classical style. Conductor who forced many musicians [...]

Last week my dear friend Holly shared a poem she came across in Writer’s Almanac. It’s simple beauty speaks for itself, and I wanted to share it with all of you. Bach and My Father by Paul Zimmer Six days a week my father sold shoes To support our family through depression and war, Nursed [...]

Pachelbel’s Canon. Where would weddings, high school graduations or any public celebration of passage be without it? You’ve heard it if you’ve ever played in an orchestra. Heck, you know PC if you’ve ever seen an orchestra. It’s formal name is “Canon in D major”, its composer a German named Johann Pachelbel. But if you [...]

Today we begin a new series here at Salon97 on the role of classical music in cinema. Our first case study: Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” in the famous helicopter assault from Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. In his 1979 review of Apocalypse Now, Roger Ebert called the scene above “simply the greatest movie battle [...]

My favorite part of all, however, is that four percent of those surveyed confused composer Luigi Boccherini with Bocconcini–the Italian water mozzarella balls. Wow. So here’s the deal. Bocconcini is that super tasty cheese that is so aptly paired with tomatoes and basil. Cool? Luigi Boccherini was a bad-ass late-baroque era Italian composer who wrote [...]

Yes! Today is the kickoff of Salon97′s American Composers Month. Our classical trivia text message today (sign up for free in the red box on the right-hand sidebar!) highlighted John Philip Sousa, so we thought it only appropriate to include a video of one of his marches. “The Washington Post” was written as a tribute [...]