The life of William Boyce (1711-1779) spanned the flowering of the baroque era through early classicism. Boyce was active in official London music circles, becoming Composer to the Chapel Royal in 1736 and Master of the King’s Musick in 1755. He composed a number of...
The Russian contemporary of Honegger, Sergei Prokofiev grew up in the atmosphere of late Russian Romanticism that he abandoned as soon as his compositional style gained strength and individuality. His works already had very early on a motor, sometimes anti-emotional...
Pastorale d'Eté (Summer Pastoral), written in 1920 during a vacation in the Swiss Alps and subtitled "Poème Symphonique," was inspired by a quotation from Arthur Rimbaud: J'ai embrassé l'aube d'été ("I've embraced the dawn of the summer"). Honegger expresses his...
This is one of the best-known and most programmatic symphonies in classical music. Composed in 1808, it reflects Beethoven’s deep feeling for nature, no doubt due in some measure to his numerous walks in the countryside around Vienna. Each of the five movements is...
Barber set this masterpiece to a poem by American author James Agee (1909-1955). Knoxville was first performed in 1948 by soprano Eleanor Steber with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Serge Koussevitsky. It evokes a summer evening in the backyard of...
Many of Vaughan Williams’ compositions incorporate elements of folk music. This short suite was originally composed for a military band and is entirely based on English folk tunes – “Seventeen Come Sunday,” “My Bonny Boy,” and a set of folk songs from Somerset. The...
Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) is best known for his masterful comic operas. He was a prolific composer who, at one point, composed 16 operas in 6 years - and then retired when he was 37 years old! Rossini wrote this overture for one of his best-known operas, The...
When Charles II mounted the throne in 1660, one of his first acts was to lift the ban on theatrical performances, imposed by the Puritans during the Commonwealth years after the Civil War of 1642. Very soon, the ‘masque’ entertainment, involving music, spectacle,...
One of Sibelius' best-known works, this little waltz comes from the incidental music written in 1903 for Arvid Järnefelt's play "Kuolema." Sibelius was a great miniaturist, and in this brief work he creates a world of deep melancholy and sadness, as well as drama.
Nulla porttitor pretium blandit. Suspendisse id nulla et erat feugiat vehicula. Nam ac sapien maximus sem auctor sollicitudin sit amet a enim. Nulla facilisi. Donec et commodo tellus.
