Category Archives: Music

How Schubert listened to the brook’s lullaby

Franz Schubert’s lieder do not sound like poems set to music.  They sound like actualizations of musical settings.  It is as if the composer cast in notation the inner musicality of these pieces which, to his mind, were already written … Continue reading

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Piano paraphrase

What is a piano paraphrase?  Part of its seductive fluidity is that it is not a transcription (faithful rewriting), an arrangement, a piano reduction, a fantasy, a souvenir, or reminiscences yet it may contain elements of all of them. Furthermore, … Continue reading

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Participatory listening

I call “participatory” the creative listening where we are invited to contribute actively to our musical experience as opposed to sit back and absorb it.  In participatory listening we are expected to play an energetic role in the creation of … Continue reading

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What is canonical about classical music?

In a recent column entitled “Questioning the Canon,” Simon Woods, President and CEO, League of American Orchestras, argued that, in their effort for “greater inclusion,” orchestras should abandon the notion of a “classical music canon” and embrace the idea of … Continue reading

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The friend of Schubert’s winter traveler

Sometimes I think that my blog could have a single topic — the circulation and uses of this musical landmark which resonates across Western culture:  Since Dr. Pantelis Polychronidis, my “other self,” is a collaborative pianist, the question of the … Continue reading

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Rethinking operatic drama

Today’s pre-eminent opera duo, (German) Jonas Kaufmann and (Greek-German) Anja Harteros, have been inspiring us to rethink operatic drama. DON CARLO: last duet AIDA: “La Fatal Pietra” OTELLO: “Già nella notte densa” LA FORZA DEL DESTINO: act I, 3rd scene IL … Continue reading

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Artists on the operatic stage

Since it aspires to incorporate all the arts, traditionally opera has not presented musicians and painters on the stage, a device that would require adding to the work yet another artistic layer.  Hence their rare appearances.  However, it seems that, … Continue reading

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Why we no longer engage with popular music

During the second half of the twentieth century popular music functioned as a major public domain which gathered young people in a cultural field of intensity – a realm of collective excitement and passionate engagement.  Music as social life offered … Continue reading

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Τurning points in the career of classical composers

Three recent releases made me think of turning points in the career of classical composers.   Mozart Momentum 1785 (2021) includes the Piano Concertos Nos. 20-22, the Piano Quartet No. 1, the piano Fantasia in C minor, and the Masonic … Continue reading

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The pleasures of cataloguing in the list songs of Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim

The obituaries for Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021) amounted to a late tribute to the Broadway integrated musical, a theater genre and cultural industry that lasted for thirty years, from Oklahoma! (1943) to Company (1970) and Follies (1971).  There are many elements … Continue reading

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