Contemporary Music
During a four-month concert tour of America in 1928, composer MAURICE RAVEL delivered a then-controversial lecture urging American…
Frédéric Chopin: ‘Sublimity Through Sweet Sounds’
From his turn-of-the-20th-century travels, ELBERT HUBBARD chronicles a visit to the home of composer Frédéric Chopin and uncovers…
Elbert Hubbard’s Mozart
ELBERT HUBBARD--writer, publisher,artist and philosopher--was about as interesting a character as the famous people he wrote about. His…
Beethoven’s Day
Composer RICHARD WAGNER was always quick to dash off polemics on various subjects. He first wrote about BEETHOVEN…
Caruso on The Art of Singing
ENRICO CARUSO holds forth on the ART OF SINGING in an excerpt from a 1909 collection of h…
The Women Composers
In 'The Women Composers,' from his book Contemporary American Composers, published in 1900, RUPERT HUGHES, M.A. makes the…
The Paris of Berlioz and Liszt
Writing in 1837, acclaimed German poet HEINRICH HEINE filed a report on 'the two most remarkable phenomena in…
Chopin a National Poet
FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN a National Poet? FRANZ LISZT thought so, and explained why in an 1852 essay that begat…
The Fisk Jubilee Singers: Working On a Building
In 1871 the JUBILEE SINGERS of Nashville toured the northern states in hopes of raising funds to build…
Prokofiev, Conflicted: Great Composer or Great Compromiser?
SERGEI PROKOFIEV was a great composer, but was he also a great compromiser when it came to bowing…