It’s factually correct because Chopin did write the Prelude No. 15 in Majorca where it rained for weeks.

But there’s something more that needs to be said.

It replaces something vast and deep with something we think we already understand.

Call it the “Raindrop” Prelude and you hear rain.

Listen without the label, and you might hear something that has nothing to do with weather at all.

Let’s spend a little time with this cherished piano piece and see what we can find.

The Story Behind the Nickname

In 1839 when Frederic Chopin wrote this piece, he was already known as one of Europe’s most renowned pianists and composers.

After having suffered from a years-long lung ailment (possibly tuberculosis) his doctor suggested that he get out of the cold Parisian winter and travel to a warmer climate. His romantic partner Aurore Dupin (known by her penname George Sand) and her children joined him as they traveled to the Spanish island of Majorca. They took up residence in the ancient mountain town of Valldemossa, in an abandoned monastery, and expected a warmer, restorative winter.

(Interesting side note: I did some further research to discover why the Carthusian monks were expelled from their monastery. They had been expelled in 1835 due to government suppression of religious orders under Prime Minister Mendizábal, and the monastery was subsequently leased out to private individuals.)

As fate would have it, they experienced continuous heavy rains for weeks. Aurore wrote of living “in the middle of the clouds” for fifty days without seeing the sun, with rain leaking through the monastery walls.

It doesn’t seem farfetched to presume Chopin was affected by this stormy weather. One day Aurore returned from being out during a rain storm only to find Chopin in a feverish and pale state. He said he had a dream about drowning in a lake, and he translated that dream into music. She also wrote about the continuous sound of water dripping somewhere in the monastery from the roof.

This is the lore that inspired the “Raindrop” nickname, which was not given by Chopin himself, but by the German pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow. Still, as you will hear, there is a persistent motif in his piece that is perfectly reminiscent of the sound of continuous raindrops rhythmically dripping down.

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Listening Guide

Full Proper Title: Frederic Chopin - Prélude in D-flat major, Op. 28, No. 15
Nationality: Polish
Year composed: 1838–1839
Historical musical period: Romantic
Common name: Raindrop Prelude (a nickname Chopin himself never used; it was popularized later by pianist Hans von Bülow)
Structure: Ternary (A-B-A) form – a serene opening section, a dramatic contrasting middle, and a return to the opening material that feels transformed
Key: Begins and ends in sweet D-flat major, with the stormy middle section shifting to the darker, parallel key of C-sharp minor

Section A:

Observations and things to listen for:

• A-Flat Major gives this section a very bright and peaceful sound.

• Chopin marked this section Sostenuto, which means smooth and flowing, and con espressione e semplice, which means “with expression in a simple manner.”

• The repeated note is the unifying motif that ties the piece together. It’s amazing how Chopin builds the whole piece upon these 2 notes: A-Flat (in the Major key) and G-Sharp (in the Minor key). They are actually the same note - remember enharmonics from my previous article What Does ‘E-Flat Major’ Mean in Classical Music?

• This repeated note is played softly in the background and the beautiful lyrical melody in the right hand is the main attraction. The counter-voice harmony is lovely.

• There’s a slight modulation into a minor key after the 1^st statement and repeat. It’s like a pensive “cloud” that comes and goes - but perhaps it’s foreshadowing?

• If you listen carefully, the ornamentation at the end of the first phrase goes up, the 2^nd goes down, and last one at the end of the piece goes both ways. Chopin was checking to make sure you are paying attention.😉

• Even though Section A is quite peaceful, it ends with an open question mark.

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Section B:

• This section contains the strongest emotions and the climax of the piece.

• The mood is ominous. There is power and drama in C# Minor. Lugubrious is the word.

• The Left hand repeated note is now more prominent, and is transferred to the right hand, building to octaves instead of a single note.

• The notes under the repeated note sound like distant thunder, dark energy, but it has momentum moving forward until it gets to its peak.

• If you understand musical intervals, you will hear a lot of Horn 5ths in this section.

• The climax is very interesting because you have an E Major chord and a G-Sharp Minor chord going back and forth every 2 beats, as if light and dark are battling it out. For now, darkness appears to win.

• After the climax when the music gets piano again, there are some really nice suspensions and chords - they are less strict more fluid as Chopin does something different and beautiful here.

Section A (Recapitulation):

• In the end, the light wins and pulls us back into the resolved home key of D-Flat Major.

• Peacefulness, warmth, resolution.

• Listen for a sweet, descending solo melody toward the end. It is shocking, in a sense, because for a brief moment, the repeated note motif stops to allow full appreciation of these 8 simple, yet beautiful notes.

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Deeper Listening

I feel strongly about showing respect for this piece and Chopin by spending more time with it, perhaps with multiple, active listenings when you are alone or with headphones, to let the music speak for itself - to you personally.

Let me explain.

Chopin’s Prelude in D-flat major is often introduced with a nickname and a storm. But what has kept it alive isn’t the rain, it’s the way it mirrors a familiar emotional passage: calm interrupted, safety shaken, hope regained.

The repeated note motif, despite the lore, does not have to ONLY mean raindrops - especially since Chopin did not give the nickname himself, and did not create any follow-up writings indicating a program or a theme.

For example, here is a particularly poignant interpretation of Section B in Akira Kurosawa’s cinematic masterpiece “Dreams,” in which an artist’s spirit goes out in search of Vincent van Gogh amongst his works.

If your imagination needs a little help to discover what this piece means to you, or the symbolism of the repeated motif, here are some thoughts:

• A heartbeat - calm and steady at first, racing and strained in the stormy middle, then settling again as if the body survives and recovers.

• A ticking clock - the passage of time that is steady through ups and downs, good times and bad.

• A distant church bell - comforting and meditative at first, tolling ominously in the minor-key descent, then returning as a sound of reassurance and spiritual calm.

• A thought that won’t go away - a persistent memory that is in the back of your mind, through peace and storm, or the mind circling around something it cannot release. Perhaps a loved one.

• A prayer or litany - serene repetition like devotion or contemplation at first, desperate and pleading in the middle, then calm again like faith restored after doubt.

• The unavoidable voice of fate - neutral and steady in the opening, terrifyingly indifferent in the turmoil, then unchanged but newly comforting at the end, as if fate has allowed survival.

• An anchor in chaos - someone or something that keeps you going, that you can always turn to no matter the situation.

• A candle flicker — warm and steady at first, threatened by gusts and darkness in the middle, then still burning at the end, small but triumphant.

• A suppressed fear — held at bay during the peaceful opening, erupting in the dark middle section, finally subsiding.

• Divine presence — something beyond human will, unchanging amid mortal struggle.

Or perhaps, it is just beautiful, meditative music, for music’s sake.

Only Chopin knows the answer.

Thank you for taking time out of your busy life to spend with classical music. I appreciate my readers very much.

If this piece has moved you in a special way, perhaps you might consider joining me to help more people become familiar with the beauty of classical music. We have such an incredible heritage, and I am passionate about reminding people of this, and helping them to understand and enjoy classical music.

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I can’t decide which interpretation to post, so here are a few.

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Then the regal sound of William Walton’s Crown Imperial rolls in - courageous, confident, and somehow bigger than the moment.

By the time the full orchestra surges forward, carrying that long, singing melody, something shifts inside you. The gray morning feels a little brighter.

You sit up straighter. You smile without meaning to.

That is the quiet miracle of this music.

Walton composed Crown Imperial in 1937 for the coronation of George VI, and it still carries the weight and sparkle of royal pageantry. But within months of its premiere, recordings and broadcasts took it far beyond Westminster Abbey. Factory workers heard it on the wireless during tea breaks. School orchestras played simplified versions at graduation ceremonies. Families gathered around the gramophone on rainy Sundays and let the music fill the room like sunlight.

It never lost its grandeur; it simply opened its arms wider.

In the listening guide that follows, we’ll walk through the piece together so you can hear exactly how Walton builds that sense of shared courage and celebration, and why it still feels like an invitation meant just for you and me, right now.

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Background

William Walton composed Crown Imperial in early 1937 for the coronation of King Edward VIII, but history took a different turn. When Edward abdicated, the march was repurposed for his brother George VI’s coronation on May 12, 1937 in Westminster Abbey. Walton, then in his mid-thirties and already known for bold, modern works like Belshazzar’s Feast, wrote the piece in less than two weeks after the BBC commissioned it. In terms of “filling shoes left behind,” it was also considered an attempt to fill the gap left by Edward Elgar’s death three years earlier. The title comes from a line in William Dunbar’s early 16th-century poem “In Honour of the City of London”:

Gemme of all joy, jasper of jocunditie,
Most myghty carbuncle of vertue and valour;
Strong Troy in vigour and in strenuytie;
Of royall cities rose and geraflour;
Empress of townes, exalt in honour;
In beawtie beryng the crone imperiall; (In beauty bearing the crown imperial)
Swete paradise precelling in pleasure;
London, thou art the flour of Cities all.

Walton also drew inspiration from a speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V that lists the symbols of kingship, including the “crown imperial.”

I am a king that find thee, and I know
’Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farcèd title running ’fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world,

The first public performance happened right on cue during the coronation service, played by a “Coronation Orchestra” under Sir Adrian Boult as Queen Mary processed into the Abbey. But the music had already begun its life outside palace walls. Walton recorded it with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on April 16 (before the event), and a broadcast followed on May 9.

Within months, recordings and radio airings carried it into homes across Britain. Factory workers heard it during breaks, school groups played simplified versions, and families gathered around gramophones. It was performed again at Queen Elizabeth II’s 1953 coronation (in a revised, shorter form Walton approved in 1963), and later as the recessional at Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s 2011 wedding.

What makes the piece special is that its pageantry feels grand, yet welcoming. Walton modeled its spirit on Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches, but he gave it his own fresh vitality. It never stays locked in royal formality. Instead, the music invites everyone in. Whether you’re listening in a concert hall, on a car stereo, or at home with your AirPods, it offers that same surge of uplift and shared celebration.

Upon listening, all of us feel an undercurrent of courage that energizes and inspires.

Reminder: This is a reader-supported publication. If you are a free subscriber and would like to support my mission to make classical music more accessible, please consider a paid subscription - it would be a huge blessing to me. You will get:

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When a poem becomes music, or a piece of music calls a poem into being, something rare happens: words we could only see on the page suddenly come alive in the air, carried on breath, bow, and string.

In this shared space, a daffodil is never just a flower, and spring is never just a season; they are symbols of rebirth and renewal, sung and spoken, handed down as a living heritage from one generation of poets and composers to the next.

Today I would like to share a few examples of the beautiful marriage of poetry and classical music to enhance our celebration of spring.

As we will read, the joys of spring are fleeting…lets take a moment to enjoy the beauty.

1. “Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now” by A. E. Housman (1896)

→ A Shropshire Lad (Rhapsody for Orchestra) — George Butterworth (1912)

The Poem:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

— A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, No. II (1896)

The Music:

“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now” is probably Housman’s best-known poem, and one of the most anthologized of English lyrics. Its opening line has become a part of the language, “inextricably lodged in the public mind and vocabulary.” In a 1995 poll it was chosen as one of the British people’s 100 favorite poems. It has been set to music over 60 times.

Of all those settings, none led to a more remarkable musical flowering than that of George Butterworth. Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad is a song cycle for baritone and piano composed in 1911 by George Butterworth (1885–1916), consisting of settings of six poems from Housman’s collection, and opening with “Loveliest of Trees.”

But the poem’s musical life did not stop there. Butterworth’s 1912 orchestral rhapsody, also titled A Shropshire Lad, directly quotes two songs from his vocal cycle - “Loveliest of Trees” and “With Rue My Heart Is Laden.”

This rhapsody, a fully instrumental work for full orchestra, is widely considered one of the finest short orchestral pieces in the English repertoire, and its thematic heart is drawn directly from Housman’s cherry tree poem. The wistful falling phrase that opens the song becomes, in the orchestra, something both more expansive and more elusive: a landscape, a season, a sense of English countryside seen, as Housman always saw it, from a great and aching distance.

Housman’s poems represented an idealized “land of lost content,” an imaginary rural escape shot through with irony and loss. There are many voices too, even ghostly ones, the sense of old country airs remembered. Butterworth heard all of this in the poetry, and translated it with perfect fidelity into music.

The story of composer and poem carries an unbearable poignancy. George Butterworth’s life was cut short at the Battle of the Somme. He was thirty years old - exactly the age at which Housman’s young speaker pauses beneath the cherry blossom and counts his remaining springs. Butterworth had perhaps forty or fifty of them ahead of him. He used ten.

Here is a recording conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, who knew Butterworth personally and championed his music throughout his conducting career.

N.B. - I recommend that you have the words to the poem in front of you to read as you listen to the music.

2. “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth (1807)

→ “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” — Eric Thiman (published 1929)

On a personal note - this is one of my favorite poems. Daffodils are such a beautiful herald of spring. I was blessed to come upon a Christmas tree in a historic home this past holiday, decorated with daffodils based upon this poem.

The Poem:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

The Music:

On April 15, 1802, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came across a sea of daffodils around Glencoyne Bay in the Lake District. This event was the inspiration behind the composition of Wordsworth’s lyric poem. It is one of the most beloved poems in the English language and its imagery, golden daffodils fluttering beside a lake, has inspired numerous musical settings.

One of the most enduring classical settings is Eric H. Thiman’s composition for voice and piano, first published in 1929 and subsequently arranged for unison chorus with piano accompaniment, capturing the poem’s lyrical flow through gentle melodies and simple harmonies. Eric Harding Thiman (1900–1975) was a prolific English composer known especially for his accessible vocal music. His setting of Wordsworth’s poem is warm, lyrical and ideally suited to the poem’s serene mood — the piano part gently evoking the movement of water and breeze, while the voice traces the poet’s wonder at the sight of those golden daffodils.

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3. “April: Snowdrop” (Подснежник) — The Seasons, Op. 37a by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1876)

→The epigraph poem by Apollon Maykov

The Poem:

The blue, pure snowdrop-flower,
And near it the last snowdrops.
The last tears over past griefs,
And first dreams of another happiness.

— Apollon Maykov

The Music:

The Seasons, Op. 37a, is a suite of twelve short character pieces for solo piano by Tchaikovsky, each piece characteristic of a different month of the year in Russia. Tchaikovsky composed The Seasons at the request of the editor N. M. Bernard, who commissioned him to write twelve short piano pieces portraying subjects and activities typical of the twelve months of the year. These were published, one per month throughout 1876, in the St. Petersburg music magazine Nouvellist.

Tchaikovsky played with the end of the snow season in St. Petersburg, calling the April piece “Snowdrop” - a little blue flower that begins to appear as a sign of springtime even while the last snow still lies on the ground. The piece is marked Allegretto, with a peppy dance set in 6/8 time. The right hand takes the lead with the melody and an off-beat left-hand accompaniment adds a bounce. The music is joyful and hopeful in character.

What makes this combination unique within this article is it emerged in reverse order: first came the music, then came the poem.

In the surviving manuscript scores, none of the pieces except the first two have epigraphs in Tchaikovsky’s own hand. The epigraphs were chosen and written out by the publisher, Nikolay Bernard. This means Tchaikovsky composed the music first, titled simply “Snowdrop: April,” and it was the publisher who then selected the Apollon Maykov verse as an epigraph to accompany the printed score. The poem was chosen to illuminate the music.

Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov (1821–1897) was one of the leading Russian lyric poets of the 19th century, celebrated above all for his nature poetry and his feeling for the Russian landscape through the seasons. These four delicate lines, evoking the snowdrop at the cusp of winter and spring, are characteristic of his best work: precise, tender, with a bittersweet awareness of endings and beginnings existing side by side.

4. “To Daffodils” by Robert Herrick (1648)

→ Five Flower Songs, Op. 47, No. 1: “To Daffodils” by Benjamin Britten (1950)

The Poem:

Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain’d his noon.
Stay, stay
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong;
And, having pray’d together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer’s rain,
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
Ne’er to be found again.

The Music:

Benjamin Britten’s Five Flower Songs, Op. 47, is a set of five part songs for SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) chorus, composed in 1950. Britten wrote them to commemorate the 25th wedding anniversary of Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst of Dartington Hall, explaining: “They were written about flowers because they are both amateur botanists.”

“To Daffodils” is the first of the five songs and sets Herrick’s poem in a direct, energetic manner. The tempo marking is Allegro impetuoso, and Britten focuses on the speedy demise of the flower, which is a metaphor for the passing of life. “To Daffodils” begins as a pair of duets: the sopranos and basses are echoed in close succession by the inner voices. The songs follow in the line of pastoral English part-songs, the staple diet of the Edwardians Elgar, Parry and Stanford. Still, Britten’s writing is entirely original.

The poem itself, written by Robert Herrick (1591–1674), uses the brief life of the daffodil as a gentle meditation on human mortality - an exquisite match for Britten’s urgent, bittersweet setting.

N.B. - This piece is a challenging listen. If necessary, give it a few tries. And like above, put the words to the poem in front of you to read while you listen to the music.

Friendly Reminder: This is a reader-supported publication. This article is free but if you would like to support my mission to make classical music more accessible, please consider a paid subscription - it would be a huge blessing to me. You will get:

• New, full length articles with detailed listening guides every week - the equivalent of a high quality university “Music Appreciation” course

• A specially curated publication “A Classical Music Sampler for Curious Minds, Part I” to help you begin your journey with classical music

• The knowledge that you are helping the mission to cure cultural amnesia and preserve our beautiful Western heritage of classical music

The beauty of classical music is important. Help me reach more people.

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4. Frühlingsstimmen (”Voices of Spring”), Op. 410 - Johann Strauss II (1882-83)

→ Text by Richard Genée

The Poem — German text with English translation ( I hope you enjoy this because it took me a LONG time to type it this way 😉):

Die Lerche in blaue Höh entschwebt,
The lark rises into the blue,
der Tauwind weht so lau;
the mellow wind mildly blowing;
sein wonniger milder Hauch belebt
his lovely mild breath revives
und küßt das Feld, die Au.
and kisses the field, the meadow.
Der Frühling in holder Pracht erwacht,
Spring in all its splendour rises,
ah alle Pein zu End mag sein,
ah all hardship is over,
alles Leid, entflohn ist es weit!
sorrow becomes milder,
Schmerz wird milder, frohe Bilder,
good expectations,
Glaub an Glück kehrt zuruck;
the belief in happiness returns;
Sonnenschein, ah dringt nun ein,
sunshine, you warm us,
ah, alles lacht, ach, ach, erwacht!
ah, all is laughing, oh, oh awakes!

Da strömt auch der Liederquell,
A fountain of songs is rising,
der zu lang schon schien zu schweigen;
who has been silent for too long;
klingen hört dort wieder rein und hell
from the brush sounds clear and light
süße Stimmen aus den Zweigen!
the sweet voice again!
Ah leis’ läßt die Nachtigall
Ah, gently the nightingale lets
schon die ersten Töne horen,
stream the first notes,
um die Kön’gin nicht zu stören,
so as not to disturb the queen;
schweigt, ihr Sänger all!
hush, all you other singers!
Voller schon klingt bald ihr süßer Ton.
More powerful soon chimes her sweet voice.
Ach ja bald, ah, ah ja bald!
Oh, soon, oh, oh soon!
Ah, ah, ah, ah!
Ah........

O Sang der Nachtigall, holder Klang, ah ja!
Oh, song of the nightingale, sweet sound, ah yes!
Liebe durchglüht, ah, ah, ah,
Glowing with love, ah, ah, ah,
tönet das Lied, ah und der Laut,
sounds the song, ah and the sound,
süß und traut, scheint auch Klagen zu tragen,
sweet and cozy, seems to carry a plaintive note,
ah ah wiegt das Herz in süße Traumerein,
ah, ah rocks the heart to sweet dreams,
ah, ah, ah, ah, leise ein!
ah, ah, ah, ah, most gently!
Sehnsucht und Lust
Longing and desire
ah ah ah wohnt in der Brust,
ah, ah, ah lives in my breast,
ah, wenn ihr Sang lockt so bang,
ah, if the song anxiously calls for me,
funkelnd ferne wie Sterne,
from afar the stars twinkle,
ah ah zauberschimmernd wie des Mondes Strahl,
ah, ah in shimmering magic like the moons beam,
ah ah ah ah wallt durchs Tal!
ah, ah, ah, ah wavers through the valley!
Kaum will entschwinden die Nacht,
As haltingly vanishes the night,
Lerchensang frisch erwacht,
the lark starts to sing,
ah, Licht kommt sie kunden,
ah, the light she promises,
Schatten entschwinden! ah!
shadows recede! Ah!

Ah des Frühlings Stimmen klingen traut,
Ah springs voices sound like home,
ah ja, ah ja ah o süßer Laut,
Ah yes, ah yes oh sweet sound,
ah ah ah ah ach ja!
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah yes.

— Richard Genée (1823–1895)

The Music:

Frühlingsstimmen, Op. 410 (”Spring’s Voices,” or commonly “Voices of Spring”) is an orchestral waltz, with optional solo soprano voice, written in 1882 by Johann Strauss II.

The story of its creation is a particularly vivid one. The work originated as a concert aria for a charity benefit in Vienna, with text by librettist Richard Genée, who had previously collaborated with Strauss on the operetta Die Fledermaus. It was composed as a virtuoso waltz-song for the coloratura soprano Bianca Bianchi - stage name of Bertha Schwarz - who sang it at the Theater an der Wien on 1 March 1883. Strauss was at first unfamiliar with vocal writing, and used Genée not just as a lyricist but for the detailed working out of his melodic ideas. The surviving manuscript is a fascinatingly collaborative document: the composer wrote the vocal line in pencil and the orchestral accompaniment in blue crayon, while Genée wrote the entire text into the score in red ink and even completed the final sixteen bars himself.

When Bianca Bianchi sang the first performance, the audience loved it so much that they demanded an encore. The composer wasted no time in arranging a purely orchestral version, which the Strauss Orchestra premiered only seventeen days later. Its first reception in Vienna had been unexpectedly cool, but outside Austria the waltz was received with immediate enthusiasm. Among its supporters was Franz Liszt, who greatly admired Strauss’s melodic invention and orchestral finesse.

What makes this piece a perfect fit for an article on the marriage of poetry and music is the precise way Genée’s imagery is reflected in the score. The second waltz section invokes the joys of spring with the flute imitating birdsong and a pastoral scene. The plaintive and dramatic third section suggests spring showers, whereas the fourth section breaks out from the pensive mood with another cheerful melody. The poem’s arc, from the first lark ascending at dawn, through the nightingale’s tentative early notes, to the full-throated cry of spring voices filling the valley, is traced with perfect fidelity in the music’s own journey through its waltz sections.

Richard Genée (1823–1895) was one of the most celebrated theatrical collaborators in 19th century Vienna; a conductor, composer and librettist whose partnership with Strauss produced some of the era’s most beloved works. In Frühlingsstimmen his poetry moves with the natural ease and buoyancy of the music itself: images of larks, warm breezes, blossoming meadows, and above all the nightingale, whose gradually swelling song, asked for in hushed reverence by all the other birds, becomes a metaphor for the arrival of spring itself.

N.B. - Frühlingsstimmen is a particularly interesting case in the context of this article because it began as music with poetry built into it from the very start - Strauss and Genée working side by side, almost measure by measure, to create a single unified work. It then shed its text entirely to become one of the most beloved purely orchestral waltzes in the repertoire. It is, in the most literal sense, a piece in which music and poetry are inseparable at birth, and then the purely instrumental version carries the memory of Genée’s spring imagery within every phrase.

You may think I’m daft, but I would like to provide you with 3 recordings of this piece.

The first is provided purely because it has the English translation of the German text right on the screen so that you can enjoy it and follow along. However, I’m not necessarily fond of her voice. (My apologies.)

The second is provided purely because Kathleen Battle’s voice is pure and angelic (in my humble opinion). I am not a huge fan of the female operatic voice. However, Battle is one lovely exception. Also, von Karajan is one of my favorite conductors.

The third is provided because this piece has also become quite a crowd pleaser without the soprano voice, and Andre Rieu is my favorite Strauss conductor.

1. With English translation:

2. Angelic voice with von Karajan:

3. No voice - purely instrumental magic:

5. Trittico Botticelliano: I. “La Primavera” by Ottorino Respighi (1927)

→ The painting “Primavera” by Sandro Botticelli

→ Poems by Lucretius, Ovid, and Poliziano

A chain of inspiration across twenty-five centuries

This entry is unique in the context of this article, and all the more wonderful for it. Respighi’s La Primavera did not spring from a single poem. It is the final link in an extraordinary chain of artistic inspiration stretching from ancient Rome to Renaissance Florence to early twentieth-century Bologna: from verse, to canvas, to orchestra.

The Poets

The oldest root of the painting, and therefore of the music, lies in Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura (c.55 BC), whose opening invocation of Venus as the creative force of spring could serve as a poetic sketch of Botticelli’s canvas:

“Spring comes, and Venus, and Venus’ harbinger
Winged Cupid runs in front, in Zephyr’s steps,
And mother Flora strews the path before them
With choicest scents and colours everywhere.”

Ovid’s Fasti added the myth of the wood nymph, Chloris. In it, she recounts how her naked charms attracted the first wind of Spring, Zephyr. As she was seized, flowers sprang from her mouth and she became transformed into Flora, goddess of flowers. Ovid's work tells us that until then the earth had been of but one color.

But the most direct literary voice was Angelo Poliziano, the greatest vernacular poet of Quattrocento Florence and a member of the Medici court. In his Stanze per la Giostra (1475–78), Poliziano described the Garden of Venus in terms so precise that art historians believe he helped devise the painting’s composition:

“Where all lasciviously behind Flora
Zephyr flies and strews the green meadow with blossoms.”

In his verses we find almost every figure in Botticelli’s painting: Venus, Cupid, the Three Graces, Zephyr, and Flora herself.

The Painting

Botticelli drew all of these threads together in his work, La Primavera (c.1480) as a large tempera panel nearly ten feet wide, depicting nine mythological figures in a flower-carpeted orange grove. Over 138 individual plant species have been identified in the painting, each carrying its own symbolic weight. It is a Neoplatonic vision of spring as the embodiment of love, beauty, and divine renewal…the world perpetually reawakening.

The Music

It was on a visit to the Uffizi in 1927 that Respighi found his inspiration. Wisely, he abandoned the large orchestra of his celebrated tone poems in favor of a delicate chamber ensemble: flute, oboe, harp, celesta, strings and small percussion. This was a better match to the luminous, jewel-like quality of Botticelli’s paint. The music unfolds as a pastorale as spring breezes murmur in the strings, birdsong flickers in the flute, and an archaic-sounding dance melody suggests the eternal circling of the Three Graces. In the final bars the music seems to dissolve back into the orange grove, its flowers and figures becoming pure sound, then silence.

Poliziano put it into words. Botticelli put it into paint. Respighi put it into music. Spring itself is eternal and unchanging, and it is only the medium through which artists express it that changes.

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read about classical music and poetry. I hope this article will enhance your spring season.

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Here’s how he does it, and what to listen for.

The Story of Carmen

In order to understand the content and foreshadowing in Bizet’s Overture, you have to know the story behind the opera.

Carmen is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naive soldier who is seduced by the wiles of the fiery gypsy Carmen. The opera follows José in his pursuit of Carmen’s attention, though despite his efforts and desperation, Don José’s quest for love doesn’t end quite how he’d hoped.

Here is a very brief synopsis of the storyline in each act.

Act I: Outside a cigarette factory in Seville, the seductive Carmen throws a flower to the soldier Don José. When she’s arrested for threatening someone with a knife, Carmen seduces José, who lets her escape. José is then arrested for dereliction of duty.

Act II: Two months later at an inn, the flamboyant bullfighter Escamillo arrives and introduces himself with the famous “Toreador Song.” He is instantly drawn to Carmen. When José is released from prison, he abandons both his military career and his sweetheart Micaëla to join Carmen and her smuggler friends.

Act III: Carmen has grown tired of José and her heart wanders. The women read their fortunes which foretell love and riches for Carmen’s friends, but death for Carmen. José’s mother is dying, so he reluctantly leaves but vows to return.

Act IV: At a bullfight in Seville, Carmen arrives arm in arm with Escamillo. Outside the arena, José begs Carmen to return to him but she tells him their relationship is over and throws down the ring he gave her. As the noise of the crowd roars, José stabs Carmen and kills her in an act of heart-broken rage.

History of the Overture (also referred to as the Prelude)

Italian and German operatic overtures developed along two distinct but increasingly influential paths. In the Italian tradition, especially in the works of Gioachino Rossini, the overture (or sinfonia) was designed primarily to energize the audience and establish a general atmosphere rather than to engage deeply with the drama. These overtures often followed a predictable pattern: a lively opening, a lyrical middle, and a brilliant, accelerating conclusion. They frequently reused musical material that had little or no direct connection to the specific opera.

By contrast, the German tradition moved steadily toward dramatic and psychological integration. With composers such as Carl Maria von Weber and later Richard Wagner, the overture or prelude became an essential part of the storytelling. Themes were tied to characters, ideas, or emotional states, and the music often foreshadowed the opera’s central conflicts. Wagner, in particular, expanded the prelude into a continuous, symphonic work, using leitmotifs that evolve and intertwine, drawing the listener directly into the opera’s inner world before any action unfolds on stage.

Leitmotif - is a short, recurring musical idea, typically a melody, rhythmic figure, harmonic progression, or even a simple chord, that represents a specific character, object, place, emotion, or concept in a dramatic work.

Within the French tradition, however, a different approach persisted: the so-called potpourri overture, a form built from a sequence of memorable themes drawn from the opera itself, arranged for immediate appeal and clarity rather than long-range development.

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(Well, perhaps in our day and age, we should say we dropped a quarter - pennies are now out of circulation.)

Even though it’s only a penny, we get annoyed looking for it.

This charming, yet technically difficult piece by Beethoven perfectly embodies that laughable frustration.

No joke!

Beethoven wrote this virtuosic and humorous piece in his 20’s, but it was not published until after his death.

He gave it the original title, which was “Rondo alla ingharese quasi un capriccio.”

For those of you who don’t speak Italian, let’s break it down:

• Rondo - A musical form where a main theme alternates with contrasting sections, such as A-B-A-C-A

• all Ingharese - “In the Hungarian style,” referring to musical characteristics inspired by Hungarian or Gypsy music, such as dotted rhythms or exotic scales

• quasi - “Almost” or “as if”

• un capriccio - “A caprice” or “a whim,” suggesting a playful, free-spirited, or virtuosic piece

So, the full title translates to "Rondo in the Hungarian style, almost a caprice."

Composed around 1795 (early Beethoven, age 25), it was left unpublished and incomplete by the composer. Anton Diabelli published it posthumously in 1828 (hence the high opus number), polishing it into its rondo shape while hiding the unfinished parts.

Don’t you agree that the original title needed some work? The popular title “Rage Over a Lost Penny, Vented in a Caprice” was added by Beethoven’s friend Anton Schindler, because it perfectly captures the rondo’s episodic, capricious “venting.”

That’s when “Rage Over a Lost Penny” was born.

The piece showcases Beethoven’s skill as a performer and his knack for blending humor with technical brilliance.

The structure of this piece is A-B-A-C-A-Variations-Coda.

The main melody, Theme A, opens the piece and keeps returning, like a refrain.

It alternates with contrasting themes, ‘B’ and ‘C.’

Toward the end of the piece, Beethoven has some fun with Theme A by changing and embellishing it, which I call “Variations.”

The coda is a closing section that extends the final Theme A refrain, adding a flourish to conclude the piece.

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Listening Guide

Theme A:

The first statement of Theme A, the refrain that keeps coming back. It’s a fun, cheerful theme, as if you’re going about your day in a great mood.

Theme B:

A contrasting section, shifting to minor or related keys, with running scales and arpeggios which create tension.

Scale: all the notes in a key played in order going up or down, like a C scale: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C.

Arpeggio: a chord broken up and played with each note independently. For example a C chord is the 3 notes CEG played together at the same time. When arpeggiated, it’s played C-E-G, one note at a time.

This must represent the coin falling on the floor and rolling under the couch, exactly where you can’t get to it easily.😒

Theme A:

A slightly varied return of the main theme in G major.

I like how Beethoven adds a few little ornaments to the main melody, just to spice it up a bit.

Theme C:

Some development going on here, as there is a dramatic key change to B♭, rapid figurations, pauses, and “frustrated” outbursts that feel like the piece is searching for the lost penny.

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Theme A:

The triumphant return of the main theme with added flair. At one point the melody shifts down to the left hand.

There are brief modulations (moving out of the home key), runs, arpeggios (chords broken up), and general merry making. Tension, release, and tension again when you don’t expect it.

Then a big scale up and down the piano to sum things up.

Theme A, Variation 1:

Even though Theme A continues until the end of the piece, Beethoven is having so much fun here that, to me, it sounds like a variation.

For a few moments, it sounds sweet and a gently romantic, with a big scale in the middle like before.

Theme A, Variation 2:

Okay now he’s just showing off.

There is a striking section here where Beethoven writes a sequence of chromatically ascending diminished 7th chords, played forte with accents, creating a mounting sense of chaotic frustration before finally resolving back to G major for the brilliant close.

“Chromatically ascending” means the chords are not jumping around - they climb upward one tiny half-step at a time (the smallest distance between notes on a piano, like moving from a white key to the black key next to it).

This is a great way to build tension little by little.

“Diminished 7th chords” (for example A-C-Eb-G) are super tense and unstable, like a tightly coiled spring or a cartoon character who’s about to explode. It sounds dark, edgy, and practically begs to move somewhere else to release that tension.

Coda (Finale):

The closing section (not just a short tag) reworks and intensifies the main motif, piling on energy with faster runs, big chords, and a brilliant finish.

At one point I can hear Mozart in the more gentle, softer segment. How quaint!

Beethoven keeps bringing us to the edge of resolution, then snaps it away - he’s playing with us.

Finally, we do get two strong, satisfying home chords at the end.

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Join me as I compare and contrast the wonderful Vivaldi’s “Spring” with Max Richter’s “Recomposed” version of Spring.

Listen, then leave a comment. Did you hear anything that I didn’t discuss? Do you like one version more than the other? What are your thoughts on minimalism in music?

See you in the comments!

The first concerto, commonly called Spring, was written as a vivid musical portrait. Birds call to one another, a brook flows gently, thunder interrupts the calm, and dancers celebrate the new season. Antonio Vivaldi did not hide these ideas in abstraction. He wrote them plainly in the score and even attached a sonnet that explains what each musical moment represents.

Modern listeners might treat this piece as background music. That habit hides something remarkable. Spring is one of the earliest and most successful examples of music that tells a detailed story without words.

This is called ‘program music.’

Setting the Scene

Venice in 1720 was a gorgeous city in decline. The republic that once controlled Mediterranean trade routes had lost its commercial dominance to Atlantic powers like England and Holland. But what Venice surrendered in political might, it reclaimed in pleasure. The city became Europe's playground, famous for its Carnevale, its courtesans, its opera houses, and its gambling dens. Masked revelry lasted months. Tourists flooded in from across the continent. The Venetian Republic maintained strict social hierarchies, yet the masks allowed temporary freedom, a brief collapse of class distinctions.

Fortunately, music filled the city.

Il Prete Rosso - The Red Priest

Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice in 1678. He trained as a violinist and was ordained as a priest, though history remembers him primarily as a composer. He was so extraordinarily brilliant as a violinist that visitors to his hometown were actively encouraged to seek him out as a local wonder. A travel guide from 1713 even singled out “Gian-Battista Vivaldi and his priest-son [Antonio]” as among the finest violin players one could hear. His striking flame-colored hair earned him the memorable nickname the “red priest,” prete rosso, among Venetians.

It seems that bold red hair and a passionate spirit ran in the Vivaldi bloodline, as Antonio was far from the only family member to carry the rosso label. That same fiery quality animated his music, winning the hearts of his fellow Italians and drawing admiration from the greatest foreign composers of the era. Among them was Johann Sebastian Bach, who studied and arranged Vivaldi’s compositions to deepen his own artistry.

Even by the standards of an exceptionally productive musical era, Vivaldi stood out for the sheer volume and impact of his output. He left behind more than four hundred concertos, 221 written for violin alone, along with roughly forty operas. Most of these pieces were created for Venice, which was then the beating heart of operatic life in Europe.

Vivaldi’s compositions and violin performances were in great demand all over Europe. However, for nearly 40 yeats of his life he was the music director of the Ospedale della Pietà, a charitable institution that educated orphaned girls and trained them as highly skilled musicians. A famous French traveler, the President Charles de Brosses, described a concert at this conservatory:

They are reared at the expense of the State and trained only to excel in music. And indeed they sing like angels and play the violin, the flute, the organ, the oboe, the violoncello, the bassoon; in short, there is no instrument big enough to scare them.

Wealthy Venetians and foreign dignitaries attended these concerts not out of charity but because the music was genuinely extraordinary. Antonio Vivaldi worked directly inside this thriving musical culture, writing concertos for the Pietà’s renowned ensemble while also participating in Venice’s wider theatrical and artistic life.

For these young lady performers, Vivaldi produced a vast number of violin concertos. His music explored what the instrument could express: brilliance, beauty, and nature.

Below is a painting of the type of concert that these young women performed. It was quite a special occasion. You can see them with their instruments up on the left in 3 rows.

Around 1720 he wrote a group of four concertos that later became famous as The Four Seasons. Each concerto portrays a season of the year. Vivaldi published them in 1725 as part of a larger collection titled Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione, which roughly means “The Contest Between Harmony and Invention.” The title hints at his goal. Traditional musical structure meets imaginative storytelling.

Spring opens the cycle because it represents renewal. Winter has ended. Nature awakens. The concerto follows a short sonnet, probably written by Vivaldi himself, which describes birds singing, breezes moving the flowers, a sudden storm, and a pastoral dance.

The Contest Between Harmony and Invention

The title Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione expresses a tension that has a close parallel in a broader Western principle: liberty that exists within a framework of law.

In the musical language of Antonio Vivaldi, “harmony” represents the inherited order of the art. Baroque composers worked within well understood principles of tonal harmony, voice leading, and form. The concerto structure itself imposed discipline. Sections returned in predictable ways, harmonic progressions followed recognizable patterns, and the relationship between soloist and orchestra was governed by convention. These rules were not arbitrary restrictions. They provided the structure that made the music intelligible to performers and listeners.

“Invention,” by contrast, represents the composer’s freedom. Within that established framework, Vivaldi could devise new melodies, surprising rhythms, unusual instrumental effects, and vivid musical images. In The Four Seasons he used that freedom to imitate birds, storms, barking dogs, and dancing peasants. None of these ideas abandons the underlying order of the concerto. Instead they unfold inside it.

The relationship resembles the Western political and philosophical idea that freedom is most stable when it operates within a recognized system of law. A society that has only rigid law and no liberty becomes sterile. A society that abandons structure entirely falls into disorder. The Western tradition has often treated these two forces as partners rather than opposites.

Vivaldi’s title reflects a similar artistic philosophy. Musical structure provides stability and coherence. Creative imagination brings life, color, and individuality. The interest lies in the interaction between the two. The music succeeds because invention is disciplined by harmony, while harmony is animated by invention.

Spring is an excellent example of the principle of ‘liberty with law’ at work. When you listen to this piece, you are listening to precepts of our Western heritage in music.

I love that.

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Listening Guide

Antonio Vivaldi – Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, No. 1, RV 269 “La primavera” (Spring) from The Four Seasons

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Musicians often attribute part of that difference to something called the ‘key.’

When you see the words ‘F Major’ or ‘A minor’ in the title of a piece, it is referencing what key the piece is played in. However, the key is more than a technical label at the beginning of a score. For centuries composers believed it carried emotional meaning.

In this article I will explain exactly what a key is, and how understanding it will help you enjoy classical music on a deeper level.

Personal Note: For this introductory discussion, I will be keeping things simple. To people who have some knowledge of music theory that might mean ‘incomplete.’ More details will come at the appropriate time.

What is a Key?

The key tells you which set of specific notes you use to create your piece of music.

It is indicated as a key signature at the beginning of a piece, and looks like this (E-Flat Major):

Analogy: Just as a painter selects a palette of paint colors before beginning (earth tones for a landscape, vivid primaries for a modern piece), a composer chooses a key that provides a specific set of notes. The palette doesn't mean the artist uses only those exact colors (or notes), but it establishes the fundamental range they'll work within.

Another analogy: Choosing a key is like an architect deciding which building materials he will use: brick, wood, stone, marble, concrete, etc. Each material has inherent properties (weight, texture, how it weathers) that shape what you can build and how it will feel. The key provides the structural materials; the composition is what you construct.

Let me use a piano keyboard to show you a few examples of keys, and which notes they use. (Okay so I’m showing you keys on keys☺️)

C Major is based on the notes of a C Major scale (notated in blue):

E-Flat Major is based on the notes of an E-Flat Major scale.

The word ‘Flat’ (written with a lower case ‘b’ such as Eb) indicates the black note to the left, or ‘down’ from an E.

The word ‘Sharp’ (written with a number/hashtag ‘#’ such as F#) indicates the black note to the right, or ‘up’ from a note.

Remember: “Sharps shape up, flats fall down.”

I hope this doesn’t blow your mind, but E-Flat (Eb) and D-Sharp (D#) are the same note.🤯 These are called enharmonics - the same note spelled differently. Similar to a guy named Jonathon who is also called John, Johnny, or JJ - same guy with different names.

And D Minor is based on the notes of a D Minor scale:

What Do Major and Minor Mean?

Major and minor are the two fundamental flavors of Western music.

The key of a piece can be either major or minor. (No, I’m not going into atonal right now😏)

The difference is structural: major scales have a larger interval between the first and third notes, while minor scales have a smaller one.

Interval: the distance between 2 notes, measured in steps and half-steps.

In the key of C Major, the first and third notes are C and E:

In the key of C Minor, the first and third notes are C and E-Flat:

Other intervals are smaller as well, but for now we will stick with the first and third notes just so you can see the difference.

But what matters is how this sounds: major tends toward brightness and resolution, minor toward darkness and complexity.

• Major: happy, open, bright, triumphant, and confident.

• Minor: sad, dark, introspective, solemn, and mysterious

These aren't rigid rules, though. Vivaldi's Winter from The Four Seasons is in F Minor and sounds fierce and biting. Mozart's Requiem in D Minor is solemn and profound. The minor key gives composers access to emotional territory that major simply cannot reach.

So what does it sound like?

Here’s a fun little video of a guy playing Jingle Bells in the typical major key, then he switches over to a minor key. It changes the whole mood of the piece. What does the minor key version sound like to you? Let me know in the comments.

Here is an example of major tonality by Handel, and minor tonality by Tchaikovsky:

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Tension and Resolution

One of the main forces that shapes classical music is the movement between tension and resolution.

The key determines which notes and chords/harmony generate the tension.

For example, in D Major, the ‘tonic’ or home note is D. All roads lead to D and the D chord, which gives us resolution. However, the “dominant” or fifth note of the scale, which is G, creates a lot of tension and pulls your ear strongly back to D, the tonic.

Tension occurs when the music creates a feeling that something is unfinished. Certain notes, harmonies, or rhythms sound unstable and seem to push the music forward. The listener senses that the phrase has not yet arrived at its destination.

Resolution is the moment when that instability settles. The music returns to a stable harmony or a “home” note, and the listener feels a sense of completion.

The process is similar to the structure of a sentence. If someone says, “When I opened the door…,” the mind expects the thought to continue. The sentence creates a kind of suspense. When the speaker finishes the sentence, that suspense disappears.

Music works the same way when it goes from:

• unfinished to finished

• unstable to stable

• dissonance to consonance

• wandering around to home

• OohHH?!😨 to Aahhh☺️

Here are some examples of tension and resolution in classical music:

The Most Popular Progression in Music

A ‘progression’ is a series of chords (multiple notes that form a harmony) played in a particular order, and the notes are based on the key.

This progression is all about establishing home, wandering out, creating tension, then resolving it by going home again.

The easiest way to explain this is in C Major, so picture the C Major notes once again.

The first note C is the “tonic,” or the basis of the home I chord/harmony.

The fourth note F is the “subdominant,” or the basis of the IV chord/harmony.

The fifth note G is the “dominant,” or the basis of the V chord/harmony.

I hope I didn’t lose you! 🤓

The most frequently used progression in music is the tonic, to subdominant, to dominant, to tonic.

I ➡️ IV ➡️V ➡️ I

C chord - F chord - G chord - C chord

In C Major, the C chord is the home chord where you feel most comfortable.

The F chord feels like you’re leaving home and wandering around, and wants to take you to the G chord. This creates tension.

The G chord pulls your ear strongly to the home chord, and creates a lot of tension until you go home.

Ahhh, back to the C chord. You’re home and all is well, all is resolved.

Here’s a guy on YouTube demonstrating this progression. Don’t worry too much about the notes, but listen carefully to how your ear wants the music to go from the IV chord to the V chord, then it wants to go back home at the V chord. When it does, it’s very satisfying.

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The Doctrine of Affections

In the Baroque era (1600-1750), musicians and theorists developed what they called the Doctrine of Affections: the idea that music could produce specific, predictable emotional responses through standard compositional devices. The concept drew from ancient Greek rhetoric, which taught that the right words, arranged in the right order, could move an audience from one emotion to another. Baroque composers believed music worked the same way.

The German theorist Johann Mattheson was among the most systematic in cataloging these effects. He documented how different musical elements expressed specific emotions: joy through large melodic intervals, sadness through small ones. But he went further. Mattheson and his contemporaries believed that each key possessed its own distinct emotional character, as specific and reliable as the difference between red and blue.

This was not metaphor or poetic fancy. These musicians heard actual sonic differences between keys, differences that shaped how they composed. When Bach chose E-flat major for a prelude, or when Vivaldi wrote a concerto in D minor, they were making deliberate emotional choices based on the inherent qualities they perceived in those keys.

Key Characteristics: Each Key’s Personality

Mattheson assigned specific emotional qualities to each key. D minor, he wrote, was devout and grand. G minor possessed uncommon grace. C major suited joyful music but had a somewhat rude character. Other theorists compiled similar catalogs, and while they sometimes disagreed on details, broad patterns emerged.

Here’s what Baroque musicians believed about the keys:

Major Keys:

• C major: Simple, innocent, pure, but could seem naive or unrefined

• D major: Sharp, brilliant, suited for military and celebratory music

• E major: Quarrelsome, noisy, harsh (used sparingly)

• E-Flat major: Pathetic (full of pathos), serious, plaintive

• F major: Gentle, calm, capable of expressing both passion and restraint

• G major: Persuasive, conversational, equally suited to serious or lighthearted moods

• A major: Bright, assertive, often associated with outdoor scenes and hunting

Minor Keys:

• C minor: Tender, plaintive, suitable for expressing grief

• D minor: Serious, devout, grand, sometimes melancholic

• E minor: Pensive, profound, deeply sad

• F minor: Obscure, plaintive, capable of great pathos

• G minor: Graceful, serious, beautiful in its melancholy

• A minor: Tender, mournful, but with dignity

Reading these descriptions today, they can seem arbitrary or fanciful. Why should D Major be warlike while F Major is gentle? The answer lies in how these keys actually sounded on Baroque instruments.

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Why Keys Actually Sounded Different Then

In Baroque tuning systems, not all keys were created equal. Unlike our modern system, intervals varied across the keyboard, giving each key unique tonal properties. Some keys had more consonant intervals, creating smooth, settled sounds. Others had intervals that were slightly out of tune by modern standards, creating tension and edge.

In meantone temperament, one of the common Baroque tuning systems, F-Sharp and G-Flat were actually different pitches. Keys with many sharps or flats ventured into more distant tonal territory, where the intervals became increasingly irregular. This gave those keys an inherent tension, a sonic quality that composers exploited for emotional effect.

The choice of key was not just symbolic. When a Baroque composer wrote in E-Flat major versus C Major, listeners heard genuinely different sounds. The intervals had different sizes, the chords had different levels of consonance, and the overall sonic texture varied from key to key.

What We Lost with Modern Tuning

Equal temperament, which became the standard tuning system in the 20th century, divides the octave into twelve perfectly equal semitones. This solved a significant practical problem: it allowed keyboards to play in any key with equal facility, and it made ensemble playing across different instruments far simpler.

But it came at a cost. Equal temperament erased the individual personalities that had made each key distinctive. In our modern tuning, C Major sounds essentially identical to D Major or A-Flat major, just higher or lower in pitch. The sonic differences that Baroque composers relied on simply no longer exist.

The remarkable thing is that equal temperament was not unknown to Baroque musicians. They were aware of it and actively chose not to use it. They preferred the varied landscape of their tuning systems, where each key offered something unique. To them, the standardization we consider progress would have seemed like a profound loss.

When we listen to Bach or Handel today on modern instruments with equal temperament, we hear the notes they wrote but not quite the sounds they intended. The emotional associations they built into their choice of keys have become invisible to us, preserved only in historical descriptions and in the rare performances on period instruments with historical tunings.

The Doctrine of Affections and its catalog of key characteristics might read like musical ‘astrology’ to modern ears. But for the composers who created the masterworks of the Baroque era, these were concrete realities, as tangible as the instruments they played.

How This Helps You, The Listener

A key signature may look like a small detail on the page, but for centuries it helped shape the emotional character of the music itself. To composers it was not merely a technical choice. It was the first step in deciding what the music would say.

Understanding the key of a piece gives a listener a simple way to follow the architecture of the music. In tonal classical music, the key establishes a central pitch that functions as a musical home. As the music unfolds, the harmony often travels away from that center and later returns. Even a basic awareness of the key helps the listener recognize when the music has wandered into unfamiliar territory and when it has finally come back to a place of stability.

Knowing the key can also sharpen one’s sense of expression. The difference between major and minor tonalities, and the historical associations attached to certain keys, often influence the emotional atmosphere of a piece. When a listener becomes aware of these choices, the composer’s decisions begin to feel less mysterious. The music starts to reveal its logic, and moments of tension, contrast, and resolution become easier to hear and appreciate.

Now that you have had a basic course in key tonality, let me know what you think in the comments. Is your favorite piece of classical music in a major key, or a minor key? See you there!

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And I would agree with that.

But that beauty hides something darker: the entire piece is built on music associated with death, damnation, and a violinist once rumored to have sold his soul to the devil.

Who Was Paganini?

Rachmaninoff wrote this piece of music based entirely on a melody written and performed by Niccolo Paganini, the Italian “rock star” of the violin in the early 1800s. As a talented boy, his father employed some unorthodox methods to nurture his talents, such as depriving Niccolo of food and water when he didn’t practice enough.

In 1809, after being a court musician, he began his career as a traveling virtuoso with the most astounding talent that anyone had ever seen. His technique was perfect, with a bow that “made sparks fly.” Rumors started to spread that he had sold his soul to the devil in return for his incredible, other-worldly talents. Paganini's gaunt, pale complexion; his brooding, nearly menacing demeanor; his bony, spindly fingers; and his signature black frock coat only fueled the demonic speculation, and he embraced it. Women actually fainted at his concerts, making the audience look like a battleground with “bodies sprawled everywhere.”

It was from this man that Rachmaninoff got his inspiration. Along with Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms, he based his rhapsody on Paganini’s 24 Caprices for Solo Violin, Op. 1 - specifically Caprice No. 24 in A minor. This Caprice was in the form of a *theme and variations.

Caprice - a lively, free-form composition that showcases technical skill and expressive freedom, often with a playful or whimsical character as well as improvisation.

Theme and Variations - a musical form where a main melodic theme is presented, then repeated multiple times with different musical treatments, variations, or embellishments while keeping the core melody recognizable.

If you have a few minutes, here is an entertaining interpretation of Paganini performing his 24th Caprice for an adoring crowd:

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Rachmaninoff’s Story

Sergei Rachmaninoff was born on April 1, 1873 near Novgorod, into a family of minor nobility with a strong musical heritage. His early talent on the piano emerged by age four, and after financial hardships (the profligacy of his father) forced the sale of the family home , they relocated to St. Petersburg when he was nine, where he began formal studies at the conservatory. His maternal grandmother raised him after his parents separated, regularly taking him to Russian Orthodox Church services where he first encountered liturgical chants and church bells, sounds he would later weave throughout his compositions.

At twelve, he transferred to the Moscow Conservatory to study under the strict Nikolai Zverev, where he also studied composition with Sergei Taneyev and Anton Arensky. While at the conservatory, Rachmaninoff received advice and encouragement from Tchaikovsky, who recognized the young student’s exceptional talent and helped promote his career.

He graduated in 1892 with a gold medal for his opera Aleko, but his early success was shattered when the disastrous 1897 premiere of his First Symphony plunged him into a three-year depression. The composer Glazunov who conducted the piece was drunk, resulting in a terrible performance that gave critics a lot of ammunition.

That debacle plunged Rachmaninoff into a 3-year depression that left him unable to compose. He turned to hypnotherapy and supportive therapy with Dr. Nikolai Dahl, who worked with him daily for three months to restore his sleep, appetite, and creative drive. The result was his Piano Concerto No. 2, dedicated to Dahl, which premiered in 1901 to rapturous acclaim and marked his triumphant return.

About a third of Rachmaninoff’s catalogue makes use of the Dies Irae plainchant motif, making it an obsession that spanned his entire 50-year compositional career. The Dies Irae translates as “Day of Wrath” and is a medieval plainchant first incorporated into the Requiem mass in the mid-13th century. Rachmaninoff would have encountered this theme in works by Berlioz, Liszt, and other Romantic composers he admired and conducted. The theme appears throughout his major works, including his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. It carries an inherently somber, foreboding, and ominous mood that has made it a universal musical symbol of death, judgment, doom, and the supernatural.

When I was in college it was something we all joked around about, for example, playing it on marimba when our ‘favorite’ professor would enter the room. Yes, we were being spicy.

Here’s a brief video with examples of the Dies Irae theme, first from plainchant in the 1200s, then in a piece by Hector Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique, in 1830:

YouTube Video creds: Neumes and Tunes, and Samuel Felipe Antunes de Sá

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It is not a scale exercise. It is not a nursery tune. It has drama, shadow, and a whisper of romance.

Somewhere between the hesitant early run-throughs and the confident recital performance lies the reason this small work by Ludwig van Beethoven has endured.

“Fur Elise” was my own first serious piece of piano music, taught to me by my strict German piano teacher, Mevrouw Buurman. I was 10 years old and living in Rotterdam, Holland. This piece holds a special place in my heart, and I can still play it from memory, unlike any other piece I have learned. I recorded myself playing this piece on a cassette tape (showing my age), and sent it to my grandparents in New York state. My grandmother said she played it almost every day, and would picture me playing the piano far, far away across the sea. (I get a little choked up thinking about it.)

It is forever engraved in my mind and my heart.

“Für Elise” was not conceived as a grand public statement like the Symphony No. 5. It was a bagatelle, a small-scale piano work intended for private performance. In early nineteenth century Vienna, that meant domestic music making. A piano in the home. Friends gathered close. No orchestra, no stage, and no formal attire.

Over time, that setting expanded. The piece migrated into parlors across Europe and America. Later it became a staple of upright pianos in suburban houses, student recitals, and first lessons. For millions of people, “Für Elise” is not something encountered in a concert hall. It is something played by a child after dinner while the family listens from the sofa.

Unlike so many of Beethoven’s masterpieces, it embodies:

• Music experienced at arm’s length rather than from row P

• The intimacy of amateur performance

• A work that becomes woven into ordinary domestic life

• The democratization of Beethoven’s art

It also hints at a paradox. The same composer who wrote the monumental Piano Sonata No. 14 (“Moonlight”) and reshaped the symphonic tradition is most widely known, in everyday homes, through a three minute bagatelle in A minor.

This precious work has become one of the most recognizable pieces of music in Western history, not because of institutional prestige, but because of repeated, imperfect, heartfelt performances in living rooms.

Doesn’t that just warm your heart?

Let’s dive deeper into this gem to see if we can determine the secret of it’s success.

Ludwig van Beethoven – Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor, WoO 59 “Für Elise”

• Nationality: German

• Year composed: 1810

• Historical musical period: Classical period (late Classical, with early Romantic tendencies in its expressive lyricism)

• Common name: Für Elise (often spelled “Fur Elise” in English)

Musical Morsel: Charles Schulz made Für Elise Schroeder’s signature piece in the Peanuts comic strips, and that choice shaped how millions of Americans think about classical music. Before Schroeder, most kids had never heard of Beethoven. After decades of comic strips and TV specials, Für Elise became the sound of childhood piano lessons in our cultural imagination.

You might be thinking to yourself, what does WoO 59 mean?

To understand the answer, you first have to understand what an opus number is. The word “opus” is Latin for “work.” Therefore, an opus number is basically a catalog label that composers or their publishers put on a piece of music to keep track of it in the order it was published.

However, Beethoven assigned opus numbers only to his major published works during his lifetime. So a new cataloging number was developed.

WoO stands for “Werke ohne Opuszahl,” which is German for “works without opus number.” The Kinsky-Halm catalog from 1955 assigned sequential numbers to them, and Für Elise landed at number 59 in that system, so it’s labeled WoO 59.

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Here is a touching scene from the movie Immortal Beloved where Beethoven introduces his nephew to Fur Elise:

Listening Guide

Beethoven composed Für Elise on April 27, 1810, but the piece remained unpublished during his lifetime. The score was published in 1867, 40 years after Beethoven’s death, when German music scholar Ludwig Nohl discovered it among manuscripts. The original autograph has since been lost, leaving us with only Nohl’s transcription.

Form and Structure

The piece follows a five-part rondo form: A-B-A-C-A. This structure creates a satisfying symmetry, with the famous opening theme returning like an anchor between two contrasting episodes. The A section appears unchanged throughout, heard a total of 16 times in this short, three-minute piece. This repetition explains why those opening measures have become so deeply embedded in our cultural memory.

The piece moves in 3/8 time with the tempo marking "Poco moto," which means "a little motion." This marking appears nowhere else in Beethoven's works. He wanted something particular here: not rushed, not dragging, just a gentle forward flow like someone lost in thought at the keyboard.

Theme A, Beginning

The opening phrase alternates between the notes E and D-sharp, a minor second interval that sets the tone for the entire piece. It sounds like a gentle plea that resolves itself in the latter part of the phrase. There’s a sense of yearning and tonal uncertainty before settling into A minor.

The left hand plays arpeggios that create a flowing accompaniment which nearly merges with the melody. The mood is somewhat melancholy.

Theme B

The B section begins in F major, and suddenly everything brightens. The shift from A minor to F major feels like stepping from a dimly lit room into afternoon sunlight.

Beethoven keeps setting you up for what sounds like an ending, then pulls away at the last second. It creates a feeling of yearning, of reaching for something just out of grasp, before eventually guiding you back to A minor and that familiar opening melody.

The accompaniment changes here too. It shifts to an Alberti bass pattern, a steady broken-chord pattern that clearly separates melody from accompaniment.

There’s optimism, maybe even joy, though it’s temporary. You know the melancholy opening will return.

Theme A - 2nd Time

Beethoven returns us to the nostalgic melody of Theme A. It feels like home, but don’t get too comfortable, because change is coming.

Theme C

The C section is where Beethoven shows his true colors. This is the stormy Beethoven of the symphonies breaking through. The right hand plays a more sustained, chordal melody while the left hand repeats the same note in steady 16th notes (fast), creating tension and rising drama. That repeated note in the left hand feels like an urgent heartbeat or someone pounding on a door.

The new mood is rather agitated in the key of D minor. Fast triplet arpeggios rise with rhythmic punctuation in the left hand, building to the emotional climax of the entire piece. This is the moment where the gentle bagatelle reveals its hidden intensity.

After a curious pause, the ending of this segment features a chromatic descent over two octaves, dramatically playing all the white and black notes on the way down. And then, Beethoven once again hints at Theme A.

The Return Home to Theme A

After all that drama and turbulence in the C section, the opening melody returns one final time. But now it feels different. You’ve been through the bright optimism of the B section and the storming intensity of the C section, and when those familiar notes (E–D♯–E–D♯–E) come back, they carry the weight of everything that came before.

The piece closes with just octave A’s, no chord at all. Beethoven strips away everything except that single pitch, leaving the ending open and “unresolved.” He doesn’t give us major or minor, happiness or sadness. Just A, the note that names the key, alone and exposed. It simply stops, like a question left hanging in the air. Your ear can fill it in.

This ending matches the piece’s essential character: intimate, personal, unshowy, and ultimately mysterious. For all the complexity hidden in the middle sections, Für Elise begins and ends as a quiet conversation between the piano and whoever happens to be listening. And like many intimate conversations, it ends without declaring what it all meant.

The Gateway to Classical Music

Für Elise became the gateway to classical music because it made classical music feel attainable.

Most Beethoven requires years of study and sounds forbidding to beginners. But this piece offered something different: a melody anyone could hum after one hearing, paired with just enough technical challenge to feel like an accomplishment. Teachers embraced it, students loved it, and parents recognized it. The piece became a bridge between popular and classical, between amateur and professional, between childhood piano lessons and lifelong musical appreciation.

It gave millions of people their first taste of what it feels like to play real classical music, and many never forgot it.

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But here’s the uncomfortable truth most classical gatekeepers won’t admit: they were all just remixing Johann Sebastian Bach.

Without the structural genius, daring harmonies, and improvisational fire of Brandenburg Concerto No. 5’s first movement, none of Western music as we know it would exist.

Disagree? Good. Keep reading, because by the end you’ll either thank Bach for the soundtrack of your life or understand that our culture is suffering from musical amnesia.

Bach as the Undisputed Foundation of Western Music

First, let’s zoom out: Johann Sebastian Bach isn’t just influential, he’s often credited as the cornerstone of Western classical music’s evolution from the Baroque era onward. His work synthesized earlier traditions (like those of Vivaldi, Corelli, and Handel) into a sophisticated system of harmony, counterpoint, and form that became the blueprint for everything that followed.

• Composers like Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and even modern figures in jazz and rock (e.g., The Beatles or progressive rock bands) have explicitly drawn from Bach’s techniques. For instance, Beethoven called Bach “the immortal god of harmony,” and his fugues directly echo Bach’s contrapuntal mastery.

• Experts widely agree: Conductor Georg Solti stated, “Bach is the foundation of all Western classical music.” Violinist Itzhak Perlman echoed this, saying Bach’s music is “perfect” and foundational. Music historians describe him as a “pivotal figure” who laid “foundational elements for modern music practices,” including the tempered scale and innovative keyboard techniques that enabled the Classical and Romantic eras. Without Bach’s codification of these elements, the harmonic complexity in symphonies, sonatas, and even pop chord progressions might look very different today. By the way, the tempered scale is the modern tuning system used in almost all Western music, where the octave is divided into 12 perfectly equal steps (called semitones or half steps), so every note is spaced the same distance apart in pitch, which lets pianos, guitars, and other fixed-pitch instruments play smoothly in any key without sounding badly out of tune. This makes music versatile and transposition easy, even though the intervals aren’t mathematically “perfect” like in older natural tunings.

In short, Bach didn’t “invent” Western music, but he perfected and standardized its core grammar: counterpoint (weaving multiple independent melodies), fugal structures (theme imitation and development), and daring harmonies (chromaticism). These are the elements that every major composer since has built upon or reacted against. Remove his influence, and you’d have a negative ripple effect, including weaker foundations for Haydn’s symphonies, Mozart’s concertos, or even Stravinsky’s neoclassicism.

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Why Specifically Brandenburg No. 5’s First Movement?

Narrowing my theory down to this movement is not arbitrary because it’s a showcase of Bach’s innovations that directly propelled Western music forward. This concerto (BWV 1050) was part of a set compiled around 1721, but its first movement exemplifies how Bach pushed boundaries in ways that became templates for later genres.

• Innovation in Instrumentation and Solo Role: Traditionally, the harpsichord was a background “continuo” instrument for filling in harmonies. In No. 5, Bach elevates it to a starring soloist with an extended, virtuosic cadenza (a solo improvisation-like section) that’s unprecedented in length and complexity. It contains over 60 bars of dazzling runs, arpeggios, and modulations. This was the first major work to treat the keyboard as a concerto soloist, shifting it from support to spotlight. Scholars note that it marked a “milestone in the history of Western classical music,” as keyboard instruments “had never been given such significant attention in concerts” before. This directly influenced the piano concertos of Mozart and Beethoven, where the keyboard takes center stage, and even modern jazz improvisation (think of how pianists like Bill Evans build on cadenza-like solos).

• Structural Genius and Fusion of Styles: The movement uses ritornello form (alternating full ensemble and solo sections, borrowed from Italian concertos like Vivaldi’s), but Bach infuses it with German counterpoint, French harpsichord flair, and English contrapuntal dialogue. He blurs lines between solo and ensemble with techniques like Fortspinnung (spinning out motifs through sequences and inversions), which create unpredictable, interwoven textures. This blend of regional elements contributed to the further development of the music industry, encouraging composers to experiment with orchestration and form. For example, it prefigures the thematic development in Beethoven’s symphonies or the polyphonic layers in Brahms’ works.

• Harmonic and Improvisational Fire: The cadenza explores bold modulations (key changes) and chromaticism that were edgy for 1721, laying groundwork for the harmonic expansions in Romantic music (e.g., Wagner’s chromaticism). It also embodies Bach’s improvisational spirit, influencing everything from classical cadenzas to rock guitar solos.

Scholars note that this movement’s “groundbreaking use of the harpsichord as a solo instrument” and its “new combinations” motivated later composers to “act outside the box,” fostering the transition from Baroque to Classical styles. Without it, the keyboard concerto genre might have evolved slower, and the emphasis on virtuoso soloists in orchestral works could have lagged.

Counterarguments and Why the Claim Still Holds

To be fair, critics might say this overstates one movement’s role because music history involves many figures (e.g., Monteverdi for opera, Haydn for symphonies). Reddit discussions point out Bach as the “ultimate standard for instrumental virtuosity” but not the sole founder. And the Brandenburgs themselves weren’t immediately influential; they gathered dust until the 19th-century Bach revival. But that’s the point: Retrospective analysis shows how No. 5 encapsulates Bach’s synthesis, which retroactively became foundational. As one historian puts it, Bach’s works helped define the very “idea of the musical work” as a fixed, timeless entity in Western culture, shifting music from occasion-based to autonomous art for its own sake.

Now Let’s Dive Into the Music

I’m in a goofy mood right now, so please bear with me.

The form of this music is a concerto grosso.

A concerto grosso is basically the Baroque-era version of a dysfunctional family reunion set to music.

You’ve got the concertino: a tiny, cocky little group of 2–4 soloists (usually just a couple of violins, maybe a cello or flute, acting like they’re the young, cool kids who showed up fashionably late). They’re flashy, virtuosic, and full of themselves, trading show-off riffs and showing everyone how technically gifted they are.

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This sampler will help you get started.

REQUEST: This publication was created specifi…

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”What to Listen For in Music” is a seminal work by American composer Aaron Copland, first published in 1939 and revised in 1957. Based on lectures Copland delivered at The New School in New York, the book aims to guide non-musicians and music enthusiasts toward a deeper appreciation of music, particularly classical music, by encouraging “active” listening rather than passive consumption.

Copland, known for compositions like Appalachian Spring and Fanfare for the Common Man, writes from a composer’s perspective, addressing whether listeners are truly hearing all the elements in a piece and responding sensitively to them. He emphasizes that while music can be enjoyed intuitively, true understanding comes from conscious engagement with its components.

Thankfully, this book covers music theory basics without overwhelming technical jargon, using examples from composers like Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Wagner. It also touches on opera, contemporary music (of Copland’s era), and film scores, but its core focus is on cultivating intelligent listening habits.

I would like to encourage you to read this book, which will be most helpful in helping you grow from a passive, surface-level listener, to an active, intelligent listener.

Copland argues that simply “hearing” music isn’t enough. Listeners should actively analyze and reflect to grasp a composer’s intent. He critiques passive listening (e.g., using music as background) and promotes repeated exposure to build familiarity. The book has influenced generations of music lovers, including myself, remaining a staple in music education for its accessible yet insightful approach.

Copland’s Framework for Active Listening

Copland introduces the concept of listening on “three planes” to explain varying levels of engagement:

• Sensuous plane: Pure enjoyment of sound for pleasure, without analysis (e.g., getting “lost” in the music). This is passive and instinctive.

• Expressive plane: Perceiving the emotional or narrative content, like mood or meaning.

• Sheerly musical plane: Focusing on technical structure, such as how notes and rhythms interact. This is where active listening thrives, requiring knowledge to appreciate the craftsmanship.

The listening guides that I have published for you belong in the sheerly musical plane, as they give you important information about the piece of music to aid and increase your enjoyment. For example, my video listening guide for the glistening winter piece “Troika” by Prokofiev can help you understand and enjoy this piece of classical music.

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He stresses that active listening primarily involves shifting to the sheerly musical plane, combined with elements of the others. To achieve this, Copland recommends building awareness through education and practice, rather than relying solely on emotion or sensation.

Items Copland Discusses for Active Listening to Classical Music

Based on the book’s content, Copland outlines several practical steps to transform passive hearing into active listening. These are not presented as a rigid checklist but as interconnected habits and areas of attention. Here’s a compiled list, drawn from his key discussions:

1. Listen repeatedly to the same piece: Repetition is essential to uncover layers. Copland insists nothing replaces actual listening—books and theory are supplements, but you must hear music multiple times to internalize its elements and notice subtleties.

2. Be conscious and aware: Approach music with focus and sensitivity. Ask yourself: “Am I hearing everything that’s going on? Am I truly sensitive to it?” Avoid distractions; treat listening as an intentional activity, not background noise.

3. Focus on the four essential elements of music:

   • Rhythm: Pay attention to the pulse, meter, and how it drives motion. Copland links it to physical energy.

   • Melody: Identify the main tune, its shape, and emotional arc. Note scales, keys, and how it evolves.

   • Harmony: Listen for chords, intervals, dissonance, and resolution. Understand how it adds depth to the music.

   • Tone color (timbre): Discern instrument sounds and combinations. Learn orchestral voices to appreciate orchestration.

4. Understand musical texture: Recognize types of texture like monophonic (single line), homophonic (melody with accompaniment), or polyphonic (multiple interwoven lines). This helps you follow complexity in pieces like fugues.

5. Grasp fundamental forms and structure: Track how a piece is organized, such as sectional form (ABA), variations, fugal (counterpoint), sonata form (exposition-development-recapitulation from my previous article), or free forms. Copland advises following the “architecture” to see how themes develop and resolve.

6. Learn about the orchestra and instruments: Familiarize yourself with sections (strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion) and their roles. This enhances appreciation of tone color and balance in classical works.

7. Integrate expressive and sensuous planes: While emphasizing the musical plane, don’t ignore emotion or pleasure. Instead, combine them for a holistic experience. Reflect on the composer’s intent and the piece’s mood.

8. Expose yourself to a variety of classical music: Start with familiar classics but explore contemporary (for Copland’s time) and diverse styles to broaden perspective and avoid preconceptions about “proper” music.

Copland’s overarching advice is that active listening requires effort but yields greater enjoyment. He encourages readers to apply these principles to specific examples he provides in the book, like Beethoven’s symphonies or Bach’s fugues. For classical music lovers like yourself, this approach can transform concerts or recordings into richer experiences.

He ends the book on a memorable note (pun intended):

"To listen intently, to listen consciously, to listen with one's whole intelligence is the least we can do."

That, in essence, is his entire thesis.

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Or is it just a clever orchestral trick?

His Life

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) was born on March 7, 1875, in the small village of Ciboure, France, to a Swiss inventor father and a Basque mother. His family moved to Paris shortly after his birth, where he showed early musical talent and enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire at age 14. Despite facing multiple rejections for the prestigious Prix de Rome award for orchestral composition, Ravel developed a distinctive style blending precision, color, and innovation in harmony. He composed a wide array of works, including orchestral pieces, ballets, operas, and piano music.

“I did my work slowly, drop by drop. I tore it out of me by pieces.”

Ravel was very disciplined while composing, working carefully and slowly as if polishing each work like a jewel. Composer Stravinsky called Ravel a “Swiss watchmaker.”

Health issues, including a taxi accident in 1932 that exacerbated neurological problems, led to his death on December 28, 1937, following unsuccessful brain surgery. As an avowed atheist, Ravel received a simple civil ceremony with no religious elements or rites. It was a dignified but understated gathering reflective of Ravel’s reserved personality and his own understated approach to life.

The Significance of His Music

Ravel stands as a pivotal figure in classical music’s transition from romanticism to modernism, serving as a stylistic bridge in the French tradition. While contemporaries like Debussy pioneered impressionism with its hazy atmospheres, Ravel’s works emphasized clarity, neoclassical precision, and masterful orchestration.

His music influenced generations, from Stravinsky’s rhythmic innovations to film scores by John Williams (Jurassic Park). Ravel challenged the era’s avant-garde tendencies by reviving Baroque and neoclassical forms while incorporating global flavors, like Spanish rhythms and jazz syncopation. In a century of musical upheaval, Ravel’s musical signature was concise, elegant, and emotionally restrained. His writing remains a testament to the power of subtlety.

The Piece

Around 1928, Maurice Ravel had agreed to write a Spanish-flavored ballet score for his friend, the Russian dancer and actress Ida Rubinstein. The idea was to create an orchestral transcription of Albéniz’s piano suite Iberia. On his return, however, Ravel discovered that the orchestration rights had been granted to the Spanish conductor Enrique Arbós. When Arbós heard of this, he said he would happily waive his rights and allow Ravel to orchestrate the pieces. But Ravel decided to compose a completely new piece based on the bolero, a Spanish dance musical form.

The composition was a sensational success when it premiered at the Paris Opéra on November 22, 1928. The audience reaction was extraordinary. The premiere was acclaimed by a shouting, stamping, cheering audience, in the midst of which a woman was heard screaming “Au fou! Au fou!” — “The madman! The madman!” When Ravel was told of this, he reportedly replied: “That lady… she understood.”

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Let’s explore this music from the time of knights and ladies fair.

History of Estampie

Sometime in the 13th century, a French scribe carefully copied a piece of music into a collection that would eventually be known as the Manuscrit du Roi. That piece, La Quarte Estampie Royal (the Fourth Royal Dance), was already old when it was written down.

The du Roi manuscript is one of the most important surviving sources of medieval European music, particularly for secular songs. It was produced in France and is now preserved as manuscript Français 844 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in Paris.

Key features:

• It contains over 600 lyrical compositions (songs), mostly from the late 12th and early 13th centuries.

• The majority are trouvère songs in Old French (about 85%), with a smaller portion of troubadour pieces from Occitan (southern France), often adapted into French forms.

• It also includes some motets and other polyphonic elements.

• Notably for instrumental music, it preserves one of the earliest collections of purely instrumental dances: eight royal estampies (estampies royales) and several danses reales or similar dance tunes. These are anonymous, monophonic (single-line) pieces written in a simple square notation without text, making them among the oldest notated instrumental music from the Middle Ages. They’re often performed today on period instruments like lutes, gitterns, vielles, and percussion.

I really enjoy the ensembles that add percussion.

This manuscript is a key witness to the courtly music of the era, reflecting aristocratic patronage and the culture of amour courtois (courtly love), with contributions from notable poets like Thibaut de Champagne (Thibaut IV, Count of Champagne and King of Navarre).

Modern scholars and performers frequently reference it for both vocal trouvère/troubadour repertoire, and rare surviving instrumental dances.

Structure of Estampie

The royal estampies in the Chansonnier du Roi (BnF Français 844) are written in medieval square notation (a stylized form of neumes on a four- or five-line staff, using shapes like square puncta, virgae, and ligatures for note groups). This notation, added by a later hand around 1300, is monophonic (single melodic line) and textless, as these are purely instrumental pieces.

What the manuscript explicitly notates for each estampie is the core melodic structure:

• A series of puncta (musical sections or “points”/verses; typically 4–7 per piece, with La Quarte having 5).

• Each punctus consists of a main melodic phrase (the “A” material for that section) that is written out once, followed by its two different endings: the ouvert (”open”) ending (incomplete, often cadencing a step higher or creating tension) and the clos (”closed”) ending (more resolved, usually ending on the tonic note of the mode).

• The notation shows the sequence as: main material → ouvert ending, then the same main material repeated → clos ending (often abbreviated or implied in layout, but clear from the patterns).

• There are no bar lines, no explicit rhythmic durations beyond long or breve (short) distinctions in some later hands, and no dynamic markings or articulation, just pitch and basic grouping.

In schematic terms (for one punctus): Ax Ay, where x = ouvert, y = clos. Then the next punctus introduces new material (B x B y), and so on. The ouvert and clos endings are shared across all puncta in the piece (same shapes, though lengths can vary slightly), creating unity while the main material of each punctus changes.

In modern terms, you will notice that it sounds like a refrain, then a verse, then the refrain, next verse, etc. There is a ‘back and forth’ feel to it.

It’s also important to know this:

The manuscript gives the fixed melody and form (puncta + ouvert/clos contrasts), which is everything needed for the piece’s identity.

However, performers improvise the framing (prelude/postlude), decoration (ornaments), rhythmic nuance, and ensemble realization (which instruments are used) to bring it to life. For those of you who enjoy jazz, this is very much the same as jazz musicians when they use a lead sheet and add flair/improvisation. This blend of written precision and creative freedom is what makes these pieces feel so alive in recordings.

And one more thing. If you are listening closely you may notice the same note or notes played over and over on the bottom of the arrangement. That is called a drone.

What Is a Drone?

A drone is a sustained, single note or interval that is played continuously underneath the melody, never changing while the tune moves around above it. Think of it as a musical anchor, like the basso continuo in Pachelbel’s Canon in D from my previous article. The melody can go wherever it wants, building tension and releasing it, while the drone just sits there, unwavering. The result is a distinctive sound that feels both ancient and hypnotic. Bagpipes are probably the most familiar modern example of a built-in drone instrument, but the effect appears across cultures and centuries.

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Three Examples

I have curated 3 different performances of La Quarte Estampie Royal so that you can hear how different musical ensembles (or soloists) play the same melody, but improvise every other element of the music.

First up, a helpful video with modern manuscript music notes. This will introduce you to the melody so you are familiar with it. Try to listen for the ouvert and clos endings.

Cheat sheet:

0:13 - ouvert, 0:23 clos; 0:31 - ouvert, 0:41 clos, etc.

Next, my favorite rendition (lots of percussion). You will notice it begins with a slow prelude. This is not notated but is completely at the discretion of the performers. The musicians also decide which period instruments they use.

Even though the performers play same tune, it can sound unique each time it is rendered. Johannes de Grocheio in his Ars musice (c. 1300) stated that good performers began pieces this way, likely to set the mode/tonality, test tuning, establish atmosphere, or allow for subtle ornamentation and improvisation before launching into the structured puncta.

Finally, the same piece realized as a beautiful harp solo.

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The Setting for Estampie: The Great Hall

The estampie was not battle music or victory music. It belonged to the great hall, the large central room of a castle or palace where the lord hosted guests, held court, and threw feasts. The Great Hall was the heart of a medieval castle, a large high-ceilinged room where the lord held court, received visitors, and hosted celebrations. Long wooden tables were piled high with roasted meats, steaming stews, freshly baked bread, and sweet wine, while the sounds of minstrels, jesters, and troubadours filled the hall with laughter and song.

When Was It Played?

The estampie was specifically associated with formal courtly gatherings: royal banquets, noble feasts, and celebrations hosted by lords and kings. Kings and Queens usually sent invitations to noblemen to attend Royal Balls, where lavish banquets were held followed by music and medieval dancing. Young nobles and royalties greeted each other in the form of courtesy. They would dance slowly in a circle.

One key detail from a medieval literary source gives us an almost cinematic snapshot of how dancing actually began after a meal. In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s epic poem Parzival, dated to the beginning of the 13th century, Gawain is the host, the tables from the meal have been removed, and musicians have been recruited.

So, in a very real sense, it could be described as “after dinner” music.

Who Performed It?

Minstrels, instrumentalists, jesters, jongleurs, dancers, and trumpeters provided music, comedy, and spectacle between courses and during key moments. The estampie specifically was the domain of the vielle player. The vielle is considered the precursor of the modern viola, which is slightly larger than a violin. According to the medieval music theorist Johannes de Grocheio, the vielle was the supreme instrument of the period, and the stantipes (his term for the estampie), together with the cantus coronatus and ductia, were the principal forms played on vielles before the wealthy in their celebrations.

How Does the Estampie Fit Into Our Heritage of Western Classical Music?

It stands among the oldest preserved examples of secular instrumental music in written form.

This is a very important point. The overwhelming majority of medieval music that was written down was sacred, composed for the church, for Mass, or for monasteries. The estampie is one of the very few forms from the medieval period that was written down purely for secular human enjoyment. When you listen to La Quarte Estampie Royal, you are listening to people wanting to dance and have a good time in the 13th century, and that is extraordinarily rare as a documented musical artifact.

I would love to hear your reaction to this music in the comments.

What do you think of this dance music from the age of chivalry?

Which rendition did you enjoy the most?

Could you pick out the drone, the ouvert, and the clos endings?

I’ll see you in the comments.

If you enjoyed this glimpse into estampie, courtly medieval music from the time of the knights, please consider subscribing for more articles that will help you understand and enjoy classical music.

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Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D is a study in disciplined elegance: three voices in perpetual imitation above an unchanging, 8-note ground bass (basso continuo), each entry adding another layer of counterpoint.

What began as a modest chamber piece in the late 17th century has since become one of the most performed and borrowed works in the classical repertoire.

Its revival in the 20th century, and the way it has found its way into popular culture, raises an interesting question: why does this particular musical exercise in strict form continue to hold such wide appeal today?

Let’s dive in.

What is a canon?

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Classical music has a unique ability to shape that atmosphere without demanding attention. It creates space rather than filling it, and presence rather than distraction. That is why it can be such a beautiful companion for time spent with someone you love.

Here’s why classical music is uniquely suited for Valentine’s Day

It invites presence without demanding it. Classical music has no lyrics competing for your attention. It flows beneath your evening like a current that is present, beautiful, and unobtrusive. You can talk and laugh without the music talking over you.

It’s emotionally intelligent. Composers like Debussy, Satie, and Bach spent lifetimes perfecting how to move the human heart. The emotional architecture of a Nocturne or a Pavane is no accident. It was built to make you feel.

It signals that you care. Putting on classical music says something. It says: I thought about this evening. I wanted it to be special. That small, deliberate gesture doesn’t go unnoticed.

It ages beautifully across the evening. A pop playlist can shift moods, jarring the vibe when one song is upbeat, and the next melancholy. A well-chosen classical playlist flows organically, building and releasing emotion like a natural conversation.

It affects your brain and body in good ways. Science backs this up. Listening to classical music lowers cortisol (the stress hormone), gently raises oxytocin (the “bonding” hormone), and releases dopamine that makes you feel good without the crash.

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The Playlist

Here’s the “Classical Love Songs” Spotify playlist I made to help you make any moment special. It’s gentle, romantic, and never overwhelming. Play it on Valentine’s Day, or any day with your loved one, and let it work its quiet magic.

Request

Push ‘Play’ on the playlist above, and spend some special, quality time with your loved one on Valentine’s Day.

Then come back and tell me in the comments:

Did your loved one enjoy the music?

Did it elevate your time together?

Which activity felt the most romantic with classical music playing?
Cooking, driving, games, dining, dancing?

Wishing you a Valentine’s Day filled with closeness, laughter, and beautiful music.

If this article encouraged you to think more deeply about adding classical music to your Valentine’s Day, I invite you to subscribe to this publication for more listening guides and reflections on how music fits into everyday life.

If you are interested in partnering with me in my mission to cure cultural amnesia by helping people understand and enjoy our beautiful heritage of Western classical music, I invite you to upgrade to a paid subscription.

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Imagine this: pounding 5/4 rhythms that feel like a war machine, dissonant brass that makes your heart race, and a relentless crescendo that peaks exactly when you need that final rep.

Gustav Holst wrote "Mars, Bringer of War" to capture the astrological ‘personality’ of aggression and conflict, but he accidentally created the perfect soundtrack for your most productive workouts.

And if you’re not lifting weights at the moment, it will be worth your time to dive into this amazing piece of music that inspired the soundtrack for the original Star Wars movies.

Let’s unpack this piece to see what treasures Holst has given us.

The Composer

Born 1874 in England, Holst was a quiet, mystical soul who taught music and played trombone. He became obsessed with astrology after a friend introduced him to the “father of astrology” while on a trip to Spain. After meeting Alan Leo, Holst was particularly influenced by his books such as What Is a Horoscope and How Is It Cast? (1909) and The Art of Synthesis (1912), which described the astrological “personalities” of the planets in psychological terms.

This is what gave Holst the idea for his monumental work, The Planets.

In 1914 he began sketching seven “character pieces” for orchestra, each based on the astrological personality of a planet (not mythology, and not astronomy). Mars as an archetype represents aggression, drive, conflict, and energy, which are the exact ideas that he incorporated into this piece of music.

Mars was the first movement he finished, just months before World War I broke out. By the time he finished the entire suite of The Planets in 1916, Europe was in the middle of the first mechanized war in history with trenches, machine guns, gas, and millions dead. The piece was never meant as a literal war portrait (Holst was a pacifist), yet listeners after 1918 couldn’t help hearing the horror of industrialized conflict in those pounding rhythms.

Mars in the Heritage of Western Classical Music

Mars is part of the late Romantic/early Modern music transition: Holst had just heard Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra (1914) and was absorbing Stravinsky. You might say it is a bridge from one period to the other.

This great work is programmatic music at its most vivid, conjuring up visions of mechanical aggression. Because it is so descriptive in its nature, its influence was massive. The famous contemporary film score composer John Williams openly borrowed the rhythm and brass theme for the Imperial March in Star Wars. You can also hear its mark in video game soundtracks, and progressive rock bands.

When Holst wrote this work, it was completely original, and no one else had ever written anything like it. It was groundbreaking and ahead of its time.

The Music

Gustav Holst (English composer, 1874–1934)
The Planets, Op. 32: I. Mars, the Bringer of War (1914)

Read this section before you watch the video, as it will help you recognize the themes when they are played.

There are 4 prominent patterns/themes I want you to listen for:

1. Rhythm ostinato in 5/4 time - that means a constant, repetitive rhythm in almost every measure, and each measure has 5 beats in it, which is unusual. (Our ears are used to 4, 2, or 3 beats per measure).

   

2. Theme A - a melodic pattern that can be considered the first ‘melody’ of the piece. I put the word melody in quotes because it is a very different type of melody than the ones we have been discussing in my previous articles such as that in Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik or Vivaldi’s Autumn. The music leaps up (B-flat to G), then comes down a step (G to F), leaps up (F to C), then down a step again (C to B-flat), etc.

   

3. Theme B - another melodic pattern that is more rhythmic than melodic, with a bold, dotted motif.

   

4. Theme C - the final melodic pattern that is recognizable. This theme is reminiscent of a fanfare, and once again, more rhythm than melody.

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Why I Believe This Piece is Good for Working Out

• The driving, relentless rhythm can sync with your lifting tempo or running cadence

• The rising intensity in the music can mirror and increase your effort

• The raw power and aggression in the music will help you channel anger or frustration

• There are no lyrics to distract you

• The “epic” feel of the music makes your workout feel heroic

• There is a massive release at the end of the piece

Conclusion

You may be wondering what made me think of the ‘workout’ angle for this piece of classical music. Both of my sons are in their 20s, and they both lift weights regularly. I’m very familiar with their routines, and their playlists - cough cough. 😏 I recently watched a performance of The Planets, and something in my mind connected the two and gave me the idea for this article.

Next time you hit the gym, queue up “Mars” at full volume the moment the bar leaves the rack. Finish your workout, then come back here and tell me how it went. Work out like a Bringer of War.

If you’re not up for a workout right now, let me know your thoughts on this intense piece in the comments. It has quite a different and more contemporary vibe than the other pieces we have discussed here. Did you like it, or perhaps not your cup of tea?

If you enjoyed this article and video listening guide of Holst’s Mars, I would be honored with your subscription.

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If you would like to go the extra step and support the mission to help cure cultural amnesia, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Join me to help people understand and enjoy classical music, our precious Western heritage.

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Allow me to explain to you how this came about.

The Harmonic Series

In order for you to understand what notes a natural (Baroque) trumpet could play prior to Haydn’s concerto, you need to understand the harmonic series.

Hold onto your hat, because what I’m about to explain to you is miraculous - I’m not exaggerating.

Imagine you pluck a guitar string or blow into a trumpet. You hear one clear note, right? But here’s the fascinating part: that single note is actually producing multiple pitches simultaneously - the fundamental tone plus a series of higher “overtones” or “harmonics.”

Our brain fuses these harmonically-related frequencies into a single sensation we call pitch, so we don’t consciously hear them as separate notes.

Think of it like this: when you hear someone’s voice, you hear one pitch when they speak or sing, but what gives their voice its unique quality, its “color” or timbre, is the specific blend of overtones present. Two people singing the same note differ only in their overtone volume distribution. That’s why your mother’s voice sounds different from your friend’s voice even when they say the same word at the same pitch.

The Pattern

For those of you who are math people:

The harmonic series follows a mathematical pattern: if the fundamental frequency is 440 Hz (the note A), the overtones are produced at 2 times 440, 3 times 440, 4 times 440, 5 times 440, and so on.

For those of you who know a little bit about music:

If you play a low C on the piano, the harmonic series above it includes (in order):

• C an octave higher (2x the frequency)

• G above that (3x)

• C another octave up (4x)

• E (5x)

• G (6x)

• And continuing upward with smaller and smaller intervals between notes

When Was This Discovered?

The ancient Greeks, particularly Pythagoras (around 500 BC), were the first to discover mathematical relationships in music and harmonics, though they didn’t fully understand the physics. Jean-Philippe Rameau, the French composer and theorist (1684-1764), was among the first to propose that the overtone series and its relationship to chords provided the foundation for emotional expressiveness in Western music. He published his groundbreaking “Treatise on Harmony” in 1722, which looked to the physics of sound to explain how music works.

How Was It Used in Music?

For brass instruments like the natural trumpet, the harmonic series wasn’t just a theory—it was the only way to play. Since these instruments had no valves or keys, players could only produce the notes that naturally occurred in the harmonic series by changing their lip tension. Natural trumpet performers played tunes by producing overtones, typically between the 3rd and 16th in the series.

The natural trumpet had one sweet spot: the high clarino register. Up there, the harmonics are packed close enough together that virtuoso players could coax out actual scales and melodic lines. But this required extraordinary skill and stamina, and by the Classical era, this specialized technique was dying out, leaving composers with an instrument that could only play simple fanfares in its lower and middle ranges.

Here’s the key problem (pun intended): some upper harmonics sound significantly out of tune.

Here is an example of the basic fanfare style trumpet part in the opening of Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 "Jupiter" in C, K.551 (1788): 1st movement:

Here is an example of an ultra-high clarino trumpet part in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major, BWV 1047 (1721): 1st movement:

Enter Haydn’s Trumpet-Playing Friend

Anton Weidinger, a famous Viennese court trumpeter and friend of Haydn, is credited with inventing the first truly successful “keyed” trumpet around 1790. Weidinger drilled five holes in an E-flat natural trumpet and covered them with spring-loaded keys. These keys are similar to the keys you see on a clarinet, saxophone, or flute.

This instrument demonstrated conclusively that keyed brass instruments could be built successfully, and it became the prototype for the numerous designs that were to follow.

The soloist’s opening phrase in Haydn’s concerto contains six notes that would have been impossible to play on a natural trumpet. For the first time, the trumpet could play lyrical, step-wise melodies in its middle and lower registers, not just high fanfares.

This is exactly why Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto was so revolutionary. The keyed trumpet freed the instrument from being locked into just the harmonic series, allowing it to play any note in any register, not just the natural overtones.

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Musical Analysis

Franz Joseph Haydn: Trumpet Concerto in E-Flat Major, III. Finale. Allegro

The movement is in the key of E-flat major, 2/4 time, marked Allegro (lively but not breakneck). It lasts roughly 4½ minutes and is in sonata-rondo form.

Sonata-Rondo Form

You may recall my explanation of the sonata-allegro form in my previous article entitled “The Secret Storytelling Formula Behind the Classical Era’s Greatest Hits.” Here is a quick reminder:

• Exposition

• Development

• Recapitulation

Haydn combined the thematic statement and development with the rondo form (ABACABA) to create a hybrid that he loved to use for finales:

A B A (Exposition) – C (Development) – A B A (Recapitulation) + coda.

This gives you the repeating “hook” of a rondo plus the journey and drama of sonata-allegro form.

So off we go…

A – Orchestra introduction, Main Theme A, first statement

B - Theme B, contrasting material, first statement

A - Main Theme A, 2nd statement

C - Theme C, development

A - Main Theme A, 3rd statement

B - Theme B, 2nd statement

A - Main Theme A, 4th statement + Coda (ending)

If this listening guide helped you hear Haydn’s finale a little more clearly, or enjoy it a little more deeply, you’re very welcome to subscribe and follow along. I publish regularly for listeners who are curious about classical music and want a way in without needing a degree or a dictionary.

I’d also love to hear how this movement struck you. What caught your ear? What surprised you? Questions and reactions in the comments are always part of the conversation here.

And if you find these articles genuinely valuable, a paid subscription is a simple way to support my work and keep this project going. It also helps spread the word that our Western classical music tradition is something worth listening to, understanding, and passing on.

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When he wrote Ma Vlast (“My Country”) in 1874, the Czechs had lived under 350 years of Habsburg rule. In 1848, he participated in the Prague Uprising by manning a barricade on the Charles Bridge. And even though he had spoken German since his childhood, he made great efforts to learn Czech, which he felt was an honor and a duty. In a letter in 1856 he wrote,

"I am not ashamed to reply to you in my mother tongue, however imperfectly, and am glad to be able to show that my fatherland means more to me than anything else."

This was a man who felt a deep, patriotic connection to the golden age of Bohemia in the 13th and 14th centuries - and he wanted to express this in his music.

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