Essays on Orchestra

Puccini’s “Un Bel Di” vs. Adele’s “One and Only” “Un Bel Di” of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is perhaps the most well-known aria of all time. In this particular piece Butterfly, the main character of the play, is painting a picture of her lover’s return. What Butterfly fails to realize is that her husband is no…

Artists do not create in a vacuum. They reflect their times or at the very least are affected by the lives they lead which are also influenced by the public sphere. The term for this reflection is “Zeitgeist.” It literally means “spirit of the times.” John Philip Sousa and his works can be classified under…

Johannes Brahms was born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg Germany, the son of Johann Jakob and Christina Nissen Brahms. Brahms fathers an innkeeper and an impoverished horn and double bass player, a musician of moderate ability at best; his mother was a skilled seamstress. Brahms’ parents married in 1830, his father was 24 and his…

On Saturday, October 18th I had the pleasure to attend “We Like to Move It,” an orchestral concert conducted by Timothy Perry and played by the Binghamton University Symphony Orchestra. As I arrived at the Osterhout Concert Theater at the Anderson Center, I bought my ticket and entered through the giant doors to the theater….

Franz Josef Haydn wrote quite a few concerti for piano, which have neverreally enjoyed the popularity of such pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Whilesome accuse Haydn’s piano concerti of being too ‘light’ or having ‘no meaning’,I find those to be inaccurate surface impressions. I have found a great deal ofenjoyment from these pieces of Haydn,…