Many composers have written music that is inspired by a place, such as a country, city or culture. Just think of Dvorak's New World Symphony which portrays the wonders of America from the perspective of a Hungarian composer living in New York City. I also think of Rimsky-Korsakov's Spanish Capriccio,... Continue reading

When you go to a concert having seen the press photo of a string quartet in formal attire do you expect to hear Mozart and Brahms? When you go to a show where there's a saxophone, piano, upright bass and drums on stage do you expect to hear Coltrain and... Continue reading

Is there anyone you know who does not have a piano or keyboard in their home? It has to be the most commonly found instrument in the American home besides the guitar. It's been a fixture in our homes, schools, churches and our culture for well over a century. If... Continue reading

I fist saw the famous painting The Persistence of Memory (1931) by Salvadore Dali at the MOMA in New York when I was in college. I must have been around 19 or 20 at the time. The tour guide was talking about the painting but I don't remember what he... Continue reading

I remember when I first saw Disney's film Fantasia (1940). I was so disappointed that there was no story, no characters, no evil emperor, lovely princess or daring hero and no funny little creatures clowning around. Actually, there were a lot of these things in Fantasia, it's just that they... Continue reading

We've all whistled or hummed a simple melody, like a nursery rhyme or a tune we heard on the radio. Maybe we've even made up our own melody. How does a composer take a simple melody like that and create a piece for an entire symphony orchestra? This question is... Continue reading

The words "Chamber Music Concert" usually evoke images of a string quartet or a grand piano, violin or clarinet, or even a small jazz group. One doesn't often think of Chinese music or instruments. But Melody of China, San Francisco's fascinating Chinese music group, is taking the definition of chamber... Continue reading

Music students today have an unprecedented set of tools available to them for the purposes of learning and experiencing music. At the heart of this new set of tools, of course, lies the internet. But is there a downside to this wealth of information? Anyone can go online and instantly... Continue reading

In 1877 Thomas Edison invented a new device that could record sound. He called it the ‘phonograph’ and listed several possible uses for the contraption including: recording someone’s last dying words, replacing the job of a stenographer, recording a professor’s lectures for students and, of course, listening to music. The... Continue reading

Do different types of music change the way we perceive time? When you listen to a piece of music, does time seem to pass quickly or slowly? With such a slippery issue as time perception, there are a lot of factors to consider. Tempo, rhythm and instrumentation are just a... Continue reading

What sparked my interest in comparing a Chopin mazurka with a Joplin rag? One of my students was working on a mazurka and I had been heavy into the Joplin rags at the time, practicing several of them religiously. I was struck by Chopin's simple but engaging structure (given that... Continue reading

I wanted to explore similarities between Chopin's mazurkas and Joplin rags. In my previous post, we took a look at Chopin's Mazurka in F-sharp minor. Listen: 13 Scott Joplin - Weeping Willow Claudio Colombo performing, 2010 Claudio Colombo Image from Ragtime Classics, 2003, Alfred Publishing Company, Inc. In Scott Joplin's... Continue reading

I was checking out some of Chopin's mazurkas (his short piano pieces inspired by Polish dance) and found they reminded me of Jopin's rags. I started thinking about how I might go about comparing them. Listen: 5-01 Mazurka No. 1 in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 6, No. 1 Vladimir Ashkenazy performing,... Continue reading

There seems to me a striking similarity between Chopin's mazurkas and Scott Joplin rags. The similarity centers around two aspects, left-hand accompaniment rhythm and harmony. I'll elaborate on this in my next entry. In the meantime, here's my music website: www.emtones.com Continue reading