Music

An absolute earful

7 October 2023 9:00 am

Singing sands, the dawn chorus and the crackle of the Northern Lights are among the many natural wonders explored in Caspar Henderson’s paean to the act of listening

Travels in Italy with the teenage Mozart

30 September 2023 9:00 am

Jane Glover follows the rapturous Wolfgang around Venice, Bologna, Florence and Naples on three journeys that would change the young composer’s life

Should vintage comedy be judged by today’s standards?

22 July 2023 9:00 am

A successful joke relies on rhythm, tempo, cadence, pause – so why does David Stubbs find comedy and music so antithetical, wonders Joel Morris

The changing face of the BBC Proms

15 July 2023 9:00 am

The changing face of the BBC Proms

Haunted by Old Russia: Rachmaninoff’s lonely final years

27 May 2023 9:00 am

Exiled from Russia and often denigrated in America, Rachmaninoff lived in a fug of unbearable, impenetrable sadness, says Paul Kildea

My verdict on Eurovision

20 May 2023 9:00 am

I had the sudden suspicion, at about ten o’clock on Saturday night, that I was the only straight male in…

Evil geniuses

20 May 2023 9:00 am

Does knowledge of the wrongs committed by Caravaggio, Picasso, Roman Polanski and other ‘monsters’ condition our response to their art, wonders Claire Dederer

Sam Smith and the embarrassing terribleness of LGBTQIA+ culture

30 January 2023 9:46 pm

Pop music – and specifically pop music stardom – has an incredible power to transform people into things they are…

Artistic achievements that changed the world

22 October 2022 9:00 am

‘Astonish me!’ was the celebrated demand that the impresario Sergei Diaghilev made of Jean Cocteau when he was devising Erik…

Recollections of a Queen’s piper

17 September 2022 9:00 am

Memories of a Queen’s piper

Harpo Marx – genius, idiot savant or lovable overgrown child?

20 August 2022 9:00 am

It’s hard (if not impossible) to imagine a world worth living in that doesn’t include the Marx Brothers; and equally…

‘Jerusalem’ is a rousing anthem – but who knows what the words mean?

9 July 2022 9:00 am

‘Jerusalem’ may be our unofficial national anthem, but don’t ask anyone who sings it to tell you what it means, says Philip Hensher

Jarvis Cocker measures out his life in attic junk

18 June 2022 9:00 am

If you were hoping for an autobiography this isn’t it. Jarvis Cocker calls it ‘an inventory’ and insists: ‘This is…

Letters: Who’s responsible for Putin’s rise if not Russians?

4 June 2022 9:00 am

Russian misrule Sir: Your editorial (‘Sanction Schroder’, 21 May) laments that western sanctions may be harming ordinary Russians, given that…

I’m a tourist in my own town

4 June 2022 9:00 am

‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,’ groans a weary Al Pacino in The Godfather…

How I fell in love with the blues

28 May 2022 9:00 am

I was never into the blues that much. I listened to a bit of Roy Buchanan and Rory Gallagher but…

What we learnt from Eurovision

21 May 2022 9:00 am

Twice during the Eurovision Song Contest our television lost the signal and the set went blank – once, mercifully, during…

Ed Sheeran is right about British courts

7 April 2022 9:20 pm

As they say in the music business, where there’s a hit, there’s a writ. It is something that no one…

Bono's 'poem' was an insult to the craft of verse

21 March 2022 6:00 pm

‘Poet’, said Robert Frost, ‘is a praise-word’. So it is. That explains in part the unabashed delight with which Colm…

Enthralling and unusual – even if you don't care about Kanye: Netflix's Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy reviewed

5 March 2022 9:00 am

The most disappointing pop performance I’ve ever seen – and in the course of my 15-odd years as a music…

When does ‘middle age’ end and ‘old age’ begin?

19 February 2022 9:00 am

I was a bit irritated by all the millennials saying the Superbowl half-time show made them feel old. The 15-minute…

Playing until her fingers bled: the dedication of the pianist Maria Yudina

19 February 2022 9:00 am

The 20th century was an amazing time for Russian pianists, and the worse things got, politically and militarily, the more…

The moment I fell in love with music

18 December 2021 9:00 am

I’ve lived in Chelsea for the past 35 years. Since 2002, I’ve photographed everything I find interesting here — churches,…

What musicians like me learned from the pandemic

18 December 2021 9:00 am

My mother died earlier this year aged 85. She left me her old pianola. These were popular in the 1920s…

Did the music industry enable R. Kelly?

29 September 2021 8:30 pm

As Harvey Weinstein was to film, so Robert ‘R.’ Kelly has been to the music industry. An energetic and profligate…