During his brief life, the Polish master of the musical miniature became a living symbol of his troubled nation. Adam Zamoyski looks at the reception given to Chopin by a divided public when he visited Britain in 1848, a year of revolution through Europe.
Opera has flourished in the United States. But how did this supposedly ‘elite’ art form become so deep-rooted in a nation devoted to popular culture and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal? Daniel Snowman explains.
A subject and servant of Europe’s most cosmopolitan empire, the composer Joseph Haydn played an important role in the emergence of German cultural nationalism during the 18th and 19th centuries, writes Tim Blanning.
The man who wrote the words of 'Hark! the Herald Angels Sing', 'Love Divine, All Loves Excelling' and hundreds of other much-loved hymns was born on December 18th, 1707.
Glen Jeansonne and David Luhrssen look at how the King of Rock’n’Roll managed his rule during the cultural shifts of the 1960s.
The premiere of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto at the Vienna opera house on December 23rd, 1806, was not a success.
The prodigious composer was born in Salzburg on January 27th, 1756.
Adrian Mourby welcomes a new wave of opera houses around the world, and compares this with the previous surge in the late 19th century.
Janet Vitmayer previews the new Music Gallery at the Horniman which is due to open this winter.
John D. Pelzer shows the connections between jazz, youth and the German Occupation.
