This post is the second of two in which we’re looking at Schubert’s great song cycle, Winterreise (Winter Journey). This was composed in...

People who know me well will know that, as a rule, I am rather dismissive of attempts to draw parallels between the external...

The article which follows is based on a radio script which marked the 400th Keys To Music program. I decided to celebrate with fireworks...

Music is usually cast by composers in some sort of form or structure, and one of the simplest and most commonly used structures is...

In this post we conclude our five-part series on music for the Mass. In previous instalments we’ve looked at composers’ settings of the...

Let's start right away with music designed to put you into another realm entirely. [listen] The music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, composed...

In the last two posts we have looked at the way in which composers have set the first two sections of the ordinary of the Mass to music....

This post continues our journey through the texts of the Ordinary of the Mass, and how these have been set to music by composers over the...

Whatever one's personal opinions regarding religion, it can't be denied that the Christian church has given to western civilisation some...

In many ways, Robert Schumann (1810-56) is an enigma. He doesn't quite fit the template for a Romantic composer like Chopin or Liszt do,...

When I was ten my parents bought me an LP record. It was a popular coupling of works: Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Britten's Young...

There's something about Schubert which terrifies me. I've been trying to put my finger on it and I think it has to do with words. I spend...

Today’s offering is one which explores some less-trodden byways of the classical repertoire. If we think of major works which are...

Today’s post takes a fairly wild ride through an enormous range of music to look at one particular aspect of the composer’s craft. I want...

Terminology is the bug-bear of much of classical music. Part of this is to do with so much of the music we love originating in countries...

As you might have gathered, I find Vivaldi endlessly fascinating. Two earlier posts in this blog focus on the famous “red priest”; one is...

There are some pieces of music which are so popular that we can all too easily forget the reasons for their popularity, or the reasons...

The clarinet is an instrument which is so universally known these days, it’s hard to imagine a time without it. Yet in western art music,...

Today I'm going to share with you some music from the Christian tradition which is mostly calm and meditative. It was written to...

Part One In 2011, feeling a bit jaded with the music I knew well, decided to go on a journey of discovery, with a view to sharing what I...