Mozart’s Violet

Mozart's Violet

I recently came across a little Mozartian gem called Das Veilchen (“The Violet”), K. 476. It’s a song for voice and piano he wrote in 1785 set to the words of a poem by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The poem was written in the early 1770s as a metaphor for a young man’s broken heart, and […]

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Music is a Serious Business

Sometimes the term “classical music” elicits groans. Thoughts of long, boring concerts full of long, boring music tend to scare listeners away from the seemingly outdated instrumental medium. And then there’s the daunting (yet maybe stereotypical?) image of the concert hall: the formal orchestra and an auditorium full of the cultured and well-dressed who attend so they can listen to serious and […]

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