Vaughan Williams
Robin Holloway lambasts some of our most beloved composers
Works by Strauss, Holst, Rossini, Schoenberg and Wagner are all targeted, while Hildegard of Bingen’s music is pronounced a ‘psychedelic bore’
Miniature rite of spring
Imagine a folk dance without music. Actually, you don’t have to: poke about on YouTube and you’ll find footage from…
Hail, César!
In the Rodgers and Hart musical On Your Toes, a Broadway hoofer is forced to work at a community college,…
Recorded delivery
For an orchestra to lose one anniversary concert may be regarded as unfortunate. To lose two? Welcome to 2020. The…
Method in the madness
First there were the home recitals: musicians playing solo Bach in front of their bookshelves, wonkily captured on iPhones. Next…
The sinister strains of English folk music
With public life increasingly a din of personalised ringtones and phone chatter, we crave silence. Acoustic ecologists speak of ‘ear…
The kids are all right
In a remote fishing village a lone figure confronts an unexplained death, standing tormented but unbroken against fate, the community…
A Horrible History of English Hymns
Given that for much of English history the country’s main musical tradition was that connected with the church, it is…
Hitler’s émigrés
German-speaking refugees dragged British culture into the 20th century. But that didn’t go down well in Stepney or Stevenage, says William Cook
Fossilised Figaro
Is there a more extraordinary, more heart-stilling moment in all opera than the finale of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro?…
The London ear
It’s easy to tag the city’s terrain by writer. But what, wonders Philip Clark, might a map of its music look like?
