Haydn the Jokester
Many people know Franz Joseph Haydn as “Papa Haydn”, a well-deserved nick-name in view of his reputation as the father of the symphony. But you may not know that he…
Composer E-L
The Sound of Silence
No, not the Simon & Garfunkel hit from 1964! How do “rests” or silences placed by composers in music have a profound effect on listeners? Feel the emotional impact of…
To Him I Bow The Knee
When asked who was the greatest composer who had lived before him, the musical titan Ludwig van Beethoven responded without hesitation: “Handel! To him I bow the knee.” In this episode of Inside…
Visiting the NBCS
In 2014, I wrote a blog post The Choir Boys about my visits to the Newark Boys Chorus School, a remarkable 51-year-old institution that absolutely transforms the lives of its…
How Many Times Can He Repeat That Phrase?
The movement Mercury, The Winged Messenger from Gustav Holst’s The Planets provides host George Marriner Maull with the opportunity to demonstrate how re-harmonizing and re-orchestrating the same phrase multiple times can be used to…
Hallelujah Part 1
We know that the chorus, Hallelujah, from Handel’s Messiah, stirs us from the soles of our feet to the top of our head. Host George Marriner Maull sheds light on…
These programs were amazing, truly life-changing. The first few almost overwhelmed me – there was so much that I couldn’t take it all in. When I listened to the last one and was able to follow through to the end, I realized how much I had learned! As I mentioned, I’ve always loved listening to music – my parents (with no musical background) played classical music constantly in the house and bought me records along the lines of “A child’s introduction to classic music” and “listen to the violins” (records that I still have and passed down to my children when they were younger). I continued their tradition of playing “guess the composer” while playing classical music at dinnertime with my children and now they are doing the same with their children.