German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's best-known work, "Also sprach Zarathustra!" ("Thus Spoke Zarathustra!") has been an inspiration for many composers' works, but the best known is this 1896 symp...
Written while still a student of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky was encouraged to begin work on this piece for full orchestra in 1905. The young composer's first composition foray beyond piano, i...
One of the most popular ballets, Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) composed SWAN LAKE in 1875-76. Tchaikovsky borrowed from the Russian and German folk tales to tell the of story a princess, Odette...
The Cambridge Greek Play produced Aristophane's The Wasps as Trinity College, Cambridge in 1909, and Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was asked to compose incidental music to accompany the productio...
La Traviata (The Fallen Woman) is based on La Dame aux camélias (1852), a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas fils. The opera was originally titled Violetta, after the main character. Piave...
Written right after he turned 17 and studying at the Paris Conservatoire, this early work by Georges Bizet (1838-1875) is thought to have been a student assignment written for his teacher, Charles Gou...
The KARELIA OVERTURE, Op. 10 is part of Jean Sibelius' (1865-1957) larger KARELIA MUSIC, which he wrote for the Viipuri Students' Association in 1893 to serve as incidental music for their historical...
