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 ...

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 ...

Musical tradition is at times a rather odd element of this popular art. One of those traditions that still holds true for today is that of using Italian terms to instruct a performer in notated scores ...

The influence of W.A. Mozart across all areas of culture has been colossal, from the Baby Mozart Project through to contemporary song. You can hardly pass through a day without encountering the music ...

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 ...

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 ...

With the distance of one hundred and ten years between us now and the premiere of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring, it can be difficult to understand what the fuss was all about. Several things ...

Army of Me was released in 1995 on Björk’s second studio album, Post. The song opens with the repeated bass line in the Locrian mode. Although the root note is somewhat ambiguous, it will be revealed ...

It’s maybe an odd thought to consider that once there were no orchestras. That fabulous collection of a hundred or more hard-working musicians ready to perform a symphony or concerto, not existing.

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 ...

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 ...

Both of these types of choral music have enjoyed popularity for many hundreds of years. Such was the demand for cantatas during the Baroque era that Georg Philipp Telemann (1686-1767), is credited ...