17 Jan 2022, Article

Structure and Symbolism in Bach's B Minor Mass (Part 3)

11 Jan 2022, Article

Structure and Symbolism in Bach's B Minor Mass (Part I)

17 Nov 2021, Article

"Silent Night": a melodic analysis

10 Sep 2021, Article

A motet by Dominique Phinot (ca. 1510-1556)

Dominique Phinot is not a particularly familiar name to music-lovers—even those with a taste for Renaissance polyphony—and not a great deal is known about his short life, but his output entitles him to a prominent place among the Franco-Flemish masters. No less a composer than Palestrina was known to have made a careful study of Phinot’s works, and it has been observed that certain elements in his music anticipate the Venetian polychoral style by several decades. Indeed, although most of the motet ...

10 Sep 2021, Article

Mahler 8th: Help for the Rehearsal Pianist

Mahler 8th:  Help for the Rehearsal Pianist Any pianist who undertakes to accompany rehearsals for Mahler's 8th Symphony has a doubly difficult task: playing a reduction of one of the most complex orchestral scores in all of classical music, while at the same time helping a choir grapple with some of the most challenging parts in the choral repertoire. Since it has fallen to me to accompany rehearsals for this extraordinary work on four different occasions, I feel uniquely qualified to offer some ...

22 Jun 2021, Article

Skraps: Learning "Sparks" Backwards

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15 Jun 2021, Article

Making "Sparks" Fly: Edits to Moszkowski's "Étincelles"

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06 Jun 2021, Article

Chopin: the Late Works

Chopin’s musical output, never prolific, slowed to a trickle in the last six   or seven years of his life. Various reasons have been put forward for this: Chopin was focussing his energies on teaching and visiting aristocratic salons; he had lost his best copyist; the death of his father in 1844 was a blow; and his health was gradually declining due to tuberculosis. But the decrease in quantity also coincided with a stylistic change and an increase in quality. Counterpoint began to play a larger ...

14 Mar 2021, Article

Couperin's "Mysterious Barricades"

                                                                    Couperin's "Mysterious Barricades" François Couperin frequently supplied his harpsichord pieces with fanciful and descriptive titles, such as  La Voluptueuse , La Prude, Les idées heureuses,  and  Les langueurs tendres. In the preface to his ...

05 Feb 2021, Article

Rits, ralls, and other rubbish

Google "rit vs rall" or some similar shorthand, and you’ll be instantly presented with a plethora of lengthy, and often heated, online debates about the difference between the musical terms ritardando and rallentando— not to mention the subtle shades of meaning to be found in their exotic siblings ritenuto, allargando, slargando, calando , and the like . (Should you encounter the word zurückhalten in one of these forums, you’ll know you’ve stumbled on a particularly thorough discussion of the topic—and ...