Music

Haydn: Music's Pater Patricius

Noel Goodwin remembers Joseph Haydn, who led a dedicated life of remarkable fertility and created “a method and style of musical architecture capable of such infinite variety that more than a century of orchestral music was directly based upon it.”

Wagner’s Unsung Heroine

Bayreuth has much for which to thank Richard Wagner, but the determination of a Prussian princess to create something out of her dull and provincial 18th-century marriage helped make the city the place it is today, says Adrian Mourby.

The Marseillaise

'The War Song for the Army of the Rhine' was composed and first sung at Strasbourg some months before it was adopted by the citizens of Marseilles.

George II and Handel

Alan Yorke-Long documents the beginnings of Georgian England's affair with the music of the Hanoverian composer.

The Age of the Athlete

Each period has its heroes who inhabit the moment. Today we are living in the age of the sporting superstar.