A dulcimer is a stringed folk instrument which basically comes in two different varieties: the hammered dulcimer – which has strings stretched over a sounding board with a trapezoidal shape, generally ...

Contemporary classical music is a varied genre that generally includes music written throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The term “contemporary classical music” embodies a wide range ...

Reggae music has had a profound influence on many aspects of Western culture from fashion to popular music. Across the United Kingdom, the USA and Africa, Reggae secured a strong foothold in the ...

The tambourine is probably one of the easiest and most fun musical instruments to play anywhere in the world. If you have any rhythm at all, and sometimes even if you don’t, you, too, can play a ...

French composer Claude Debussy did not align himself with the movement that became known as Impressionism. Understandably, Debussy resisted this classification as with it could come restrictions, ...

When it comes to accurately measuring the impact Ludwig van Beethoven had on the musical world, numerous academic tomes deal with this in an appropriate level of detail. In a nutshell, Beethoven’s ...

When the world of the moving picture arrived in the early part of the 20th century, it was a revolution. What is often referred to as the silent years from around 1910 to 1927 marked a turning point ...

As musical history has developed pieces of music written by composers have gradually been increasing in duration. An early symphony by Haydn or Mozart would have lasted around the twenty-minute mark ...

When we think of an orchestra, we immediately think of a large number of violinists sitting in front of the stage, in an almost privileged place near the conductor, just like the cellos and violas.

This first extract is taken from a 2015 performance called ‘Bugs Bunny at the Symphony II’. The remarkable achievement here is that the music is performed live to the cartoon that plays on a gigantic ...

If we trace harmonic history back in time we discover that is was during Bach’s lifetime that the present system of keys and tonality was established. Before this, there were many other equally valid ...

Extraordinary as it may sound, there have been bagpipes in a vast array of forms for around 3,000 years. The instruments are known to have been used not only in Europe but in Asia too. These ...