Composers Archive

The story of Robert and Clara Schumann is a familiar one: He was a brooding, poetic soul with a passion for music, literature and composition and she the prodigious daughter of his piano teacher. Their …

The B-flat Concerto, K. 595, is Mozart’s final work in the concerto form. The Concerto, completed in January 1791, broke a nearly three-year concerto dry spell, the longest period without a new piano-orchestra work since …

Although Beethoven was at the time this music was composed already an experienced orchestral composer, the Concerto in B-flat was the first orchestral work he considered fit for publication. But, to avoid criticism, he would …

The Goldberg Variations by J. S. Bach are comprised of a theme (the so-called Aria) and 30 variations. The Aria resembles a binary dance movement known as “sarabande,” where the movements are repeated. The Aria …

In late September or early October 1828—two months before his death—Franz Schubert completed his C-major string quintet. He passed the work to his Leipzig publisher Heinrich Albert Probst on 2 October 1828, writing in the …