Why, in the name of all that's decent and civil, would Tchaikovsky have remarked in his diary that Brahms was a "scoundrel" and "a giftless bastard"? What could summon such a fork-tongued comment about the great German composer? For one, Johannes Brahms was extremely voluble in his own blunt opin

Bombast, Classical, Dark, Moody, Pathos, Romantic music

Musicologists usually break up the great Ludwig van Beethoven's career into three periods: early, middle, and late. But to add a touch more flavor, you could call them the "I'm young and getting my feet wet" period, followed by the "Since I'm going deaf, I'm gonna get wacky and break some rules" peri

Dramatic, Manic, Moody, Pathos, Romantic music, Sublime

As both a conductor and a virtuoso pianist, Daniel Barenboim approaches each of his projects from a dual perspective: he sees a piece as both a physical, sonorous expression and as a structural whole. For Barenboim, integrating the two perspectives is essential to making good music. "The element of p

20th-century music, Eclectic, Elegant, Pathos, Sophisticated

Like the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Henryck Górecki 's music seems cerebral almost to the point of insularity. Stevens wrote: "Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves." Of course, no art exists in a vacuum, carrying as it does an inherent quality of communication. Yet, there are those artist

20th-century music, Contemplative, Dreamy, Ethereal, Melancholy, Mythic, Pathos, Religious