classical music | The Smart Set

Days of Long Ago

Elliot Wilner — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 11:30:00 +0000

Dozens of young adults, most of them Scandinavian tourists, were happily chattering in the lobby of Eilat’s Hotel Snapir soon after sunset, after having spent another toasty day on the beach. The lobby was uncomfortably warm, maybe due to the heat that radiated from the tourists’ sunburned skins. Passing through the lobby, I opened the […]

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“Children (and Geniuses)”

Sarah Day-O'Connell — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 11:30:00 +0000

Lucy has never been able to make Schroeder love her. But she has a fail-safe method to arouse his passion: impugning his beloved Beethoven. PEANUTS © 1959 Peanuts Worldwide LLC. Dist. By ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. The Peanuts world is a child’s world, inhabited exclusively by children (and a dog). […]

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Melody in Tragedy

Caleb Wallis — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 13:26:48 +0000

Human beings are incredibly odd creatures. Forget the whole “debating the nature of existence” thing. We’re the only animal on the planet that chooses to weld metal rods into the teeth of our own offspring in order to fix an evolutionary issue. Our species, at some point in the past, somehow managed to invent the […]

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Playing Ninth

Colin Fleming — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 13:12:23 +0000

Ask someone who doesn’t normally listen to classical music to name a work from the genre, and it’s a reasonable bet they’ll cite Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. They’re apt to even hum a few bars of the “Ode to Joy” passage — a veritable vocal wellspring of the human spirit — and there’s a decent chance […]

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Heart Vibrato

Colin Fleming — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 13:52:12 +0000

When we think of classical music and love — that is, love of the romantic variety — our thoughts tend to go in one of two directions. The sound of Debussyian strings may be conjured inside the head, all spangled and awash in the excitement of being with the person one most cares about. Or […]

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Labor of Love

Mary Sydnor — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 16:12:43 +0000

In my first real music history class, I was confronted with a disturbing fact: I couldn’t name a single British composer. In a get-to-know-you exercise our professor asked us about our homes and histories, and then connected them to music. You’re from Louisiana? Tell us about the history of cajun and zydeco! Your family came […]

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