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Soundtrack albums are the hidden pleasures of pop. Composed and performed to accompany moving images, they're emotional enhancers. This dramatic quality, coupled with the depth of sound-field in full cinema reproduction, ensures that many soundtracks stand apart from their parent films as a listening experience.

Benedictus XVIJoseph Ratzinger  Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music - The Musical Offering in MP3 The Musical Offering A selection of sacred and classical music in Mp3 played by teachers and students of Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music

Gustavo Dudamel is back in town, and Thursday night he conducted a magnificently theatrical performance of Verdi’s Requiem that felt like his first real concert as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. All Los Angeles, of course, knows that last month Dudamel began his tenure with a free event at the Hollywood Bowl, and that was followed by nervous-making high-profile programs in Walt Disney Concert Hall the next week.

Carl Orff Orff was born in Munich on July 10, 1895. His family was Bavarian and active in the German military. Orff started studying the piano at age five and also took organ and cello lessons. By the time he was a teenager, Orff was writing songs, although he had not studied harmony or composition. His mother helped him set down his first works in musical notation. Orff wrote his own texts and he learned the art of composing, without a teacher, by studying classical masterworks on his own. In 1911-12, Orff wrote a large work for baritone voice,...

Alicia de Larrocha, the diminutive Spanish pianist esteemed for her elegant Mozart performances and regarded as an incomparable interpreter of Albéniz, Granados, Mompou and other Spanish composers, died on Friday evening in a hospital in Barcelona. She was 86.

The eminent American composer Leon Kirchner, who was also a pianist, a conductor, and an influential professor at Harvard University, died at his Central Park West apartment in Manhattan on Thursday morning. He had been receiving home hospice care for several weeks, and died of congestive heart failure, said Lisa Kirchner, her daughter. Mr. Kirchner was 90.

Johann Pachelbel Johann Pachelbel Johann Pachelbel was born on September 1, 1653 in Nuremburg, which, at the time, was a great center of learning and culture. He studied music with Heinrich Schwemmer and G. C. Wecker, attended lectures at the Auditorium aegidianum and entered the university at Altdorf in 1669, where he also served as organist at the Lorenzkirche. He was forced to leave the university after less than a year due to lack of funds, and became a scholarship student at the Gymnasium poeticum at Regensburg, taking private instruction under Kaspar Prentz. While at Regensburg, he began to...

Robert Schumann Introduction Robert Schumann was born June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Saxony, (Germany). He died July 29, 1856, Endenich, near Bonn, Prussia, (Germany). He was a German Romantic composer renowned particularly for his piano music, songs (lieder), and orchestral music. Many of his best-known piano pieces were written for his wife, the pianist Clara Schumann. His Early Years Schumann’s father was a bookseller and publisher. After four years at a private school, the boy entered the Zwickau Gymnasium (high school) in 1820 and remained there for eight years. He began his musical education at the age of six,...

http://www.classiccat.com The index to some 6000 free classical music performances!

The New York Times Company has announced that it has sold Classical 96.3 WQXR New York for $45 Million as part of a three way deal with Univision and WNYC. The way the deal is structured, Univision will pay $33.5 Million for the 96.3 frequency while WNYC pays $11.5 Million for the 105.9 frequency from Univision and the WQXR intellectual property. Spanish Tropical “La Kalle” WCAA will shift to the stronger 96.3 allocation. 96.3 WQXR is a Class B broadcasting with 6kw at 1362′, while 105.9 is a Class B1 with 610 watts at 1365 feet. The Non-Commercial WNYC operates...

Sergey Rachmaninov Rachmaninoff was born in 1873 in Semyonovo, near Novgorod, in north-western Russia. His parents were both amateur pianists. He began studying piano at an early age and in 1885 entered the Moscow Conservatory. There his piano teachers included the stringent disciplinarian Nikolay Zverov and Rachmaninoff's cousin Aleksandr Siloti, who gave him the heritage of his own teacher, Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt. There also, Rachmaninoff studied with three eminent Russian composers: Anton Arensky, Sergey Taneyev, and his most important musical mentor, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor (1892), for piano and orchestra, and his...

Giuseppe Verdi Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (October 10, 1813 - January 27, 1901) was born in Roncole into a family of small landowners and taverners. When he was seven he was helping the local church organist; at 12 he was studying with the organist at the main church in nearby Busseto, whose assistant he became in 1829. In 1832, because he was over the age limit, he was refused placement at the conservatory in Milan and, instead, studied with Vincenzo Lavigna, composer and former La Scala musician, from 1932 to 1835. While in Busseto, Verdi lived with Antonio Barezzi,...

Hector Berlioz Louis Hector Berlioz was born in La Côte-Saint-André in the French province of Isère on December 11, 1803. He began studying music at age 12 by writing small compositions and arrangements. His father, a physician, sent him to Paris to study medicine. Berlioz was horrified by the process of dissection, and, despite his father's disapproval, abandoned medicine to pursue a career in music. He studied music from 1823 to 1825 at the Paris Conservatoire under the French composer Jean François Le Sueur and the Czech composer Anton Reicha. When he was twenty-three, Berlioz was overwhelmed with the...

Poland's Krystian Zimerman, widely regarded as one of the finest pianists in the world, created a furor Sunday night in his debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall when he announced this would be his last performance in America because of the nation's military policies overseas. Before playing the final work on his recital, Karol Szymanowski’s "Variations on a Polish Folk Theme," Zimerman sat silently at the piano for a moment, almost began to play, but then turned to the audience. In a quiet but angry voice that did not project well, he indicated that he could no longer play in...

Get 'em here: http://soniventorum.com/soniventorum_archives.html Pieces by Beethoven, Mozart, Grieg, Haydn, plus some others I hadn't heard of before. Their server seems a little slow, so be patient.

Johann Sebastian Bach Bach was born on March 21, 1685, in Eisenach, Thüringen, into a family that over seven generations produced at least 53 prominent musicians, from Veit Bach to Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach. Johann Sebastian received his first musical instruction from his father, Johann Ambrosius, a town musician. When his father died, he went to live and study with his elder brother, Johann Christoph, an organist in Ohrdruf. In 1700 Bach began to earn his own living as a chorister at the Church of Saint Michael in Lüneburg. In 1703 he became a violinist in the chamber orchestra...

 Here are some links to go to if you would like to download some wonderful music for Easter: Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music - The Musical Offering in MP3The download links at the page above look like this: Introitus: Resurrexi (Graduale Romanum)Hover your mouse cursor over the underlined / italicized text and right-click, then select 'save target as' from the right-click menu and choose your preferred download location. Hymns for the Celebrations of the Liturgical Year, Pontifical Musical Chorus of the Sistine ChapelThe download links at this page are different, they look like this: IO SONO RISORTO  For these...

Edward Elgar Elgar was born June 2, 1857, near Worcester. As a young man he filled several musical posts before succeeding his father as organist at Saint George's Roman Catholic Church, Worcester, in 1885. In 1889 he married and resigned his position to devote himself to composing. Elgar then lived alternately in London and near Worcester. The 1890 performance of his overture Froissart brought Elgar some recognition, but he did not become well known until 1899, when the Hungarian conductor Hans Richter performed Elgar's Variations on an Original Theme in London. That composition, better known as the Enigma Variations...

Maurice Ravel Born on March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, Ravel studied at the Paris Conservatoire from 1899 to 1905, where his most influential teacher was the French composer Gabriel Fauré. Because of the tonal color, harmonies, mood, and extramusical associations of much of his music, Ravel is often associated with the French impressionistic composer Claude Debussy. Unlike Debussy, however, he was strongly attracted to abstract, logical musical structures. His vivid, transparent orchestral colors rank him as one of the modern masters of orchestration. Ravel's impressionistic leanings are foremost in the piano suites Miroirs and Gaspard de la nuit,...

They're calling it the great musical cover-up, news that Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman and the rest of their Inauguration Day ensemble pre-recorded their music for fear that cold temperatures would force their instruments out of tune. The renowned musicians did play live -- but only those closest could hear it, and that probably didn't include President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama or their daughters, Malia and Sasha. The Ticket has to say, they did sound marvelous.

Antonio Vivaldi His Life Vivaldi was born March 4, 1678, in Venice, and was trained by his father, a violinist at Saint Mark's Cathedral. Ordained a priest in 1703, Vivaldi began teaching that year at the Ospedale della Pietà, a conservatory for orphaned girls. He was associated with the Pietà, usually as music director, until 1740, training the students, composing concertos and oratorios for weekly concerts, and meanwhile establishing an international reputation. From 1713 on, Vivaldi was also active as an opera composer and producer in Venice and traveled to Rome, Mantua (Mantova), and elsewhere to oversee performances of...

The opening line of Carmina Burana “O Fortuna!” could hardly be more apt. Few composers felt themselves more at the mercy of capricious gods and twists of fate than its composer, Carl Orff. He was never a diehard Nazi; indeed, he looked with disdain on their oafish cultural values. Far from espousing the hounding of “inferior races”, he was fascinated by jazz and by what today we would call world music. Yet he rose to become one of the Third Reich’s top musicians. According to one of his four wives, he “found it impossible to love” and “despised people”. Yet...

OLIVIER-EUGENE-PROSPER-CHARLES MESSIAEN (b. Dec. 10, 1908, Avignon, France.d. April 27, 1992, Clichy, near Paris), Olivier Messiaen was the son of Pierre Messiaen, a scholar of English literature, and of the poet Cecile Sauvage. Soon after his birth the family moved to Ambert (the birthplace of Chabrier) where his brother, Alain was born in 1913. Around the time of the outbreak of World War 1, Cecile Sauvage took her two sons to live with her brother in Grenoble where Olivier Messiaen spent his early childhood, began composing at the age of seven, and taught himself to play the piano. On...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart His Childhood Born January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, and baptized Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, he was educated by his father, Leopold Mozart, who was concertmaster in the court orchestra of the archbishop of Salzburg and a celebrated violinist, composer, and author. By the age of six Mozart had become an accomplished performer on the clavier, violin, and organ and was highly skilled in sight-reading and improvisation. Five short piano pieces composed by Mozart when he was six years old are still frequently played. Leopold took Wolfgang on the first of many successful concert tours through...

      Here are two links at the Vatican's website that you can go to for downloading free music for Christmas as well as other occasions.  Hymns for the Celebrations of the Liturgical Year, Pontifical Musical Chorus of the Sistine ChapelOn this page, the links to the MP3 files look like this    It will probably be easiest to hover your mouse cursor over the note picture, right-click your mouse and select "save target as" to define where you want the file saved.When the file is finished downloading it will be available to be played on your computer's MP3 player. ...

What would happen if a leading British-based music magazine ranked the world's leading orchestras and the "winning" U.S. ensemble didn't care? That's basically what's happened when leaders of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra shrugged their collective shoulders over the London monthly the Gramophone saying that it's the top classical outfit in the United States. "I think it is safe to say that we are not advocates or necessarily firm believers in lists of this sort, given the subjective nature of these types of rankings," said CSO President Deborah Rutter, using the sort of language that one usually hears from someone who's...

Joseph Haydn His Life Born in Rohrau in 1732, the son of a wheelwright, he was trained as a chorister at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, where he made his early living, before appointment to the small musical establishment of Count Morzin in 1759. In 1760 he entered the service of the Esterházy Princes, and succeeded to the position of Kapellmeister on the death of his predecessor and immediate superior Gregorius Werner in 1766. Much of Haydn's life now centred on the magnificent palace and estate at Esterháza, where his employer Prince Nikolaus Esterházy had moved his entourage for...

John Adams, one of the most revered living classical composers, has claimed that he is blacklisted in his native America and is being followed by the security services. The 61-year-old musician has accused the United States of being in the grip of a political and moral panic and has complained that he is now grilled by airport immigration officers whenever he flies home because of his controversial reputation.

Man refuses offer to reduce fine in exchange for tuning into classical music URBANA, Ohio - A defendant had a hard time facing the music. Andrew Vactor was facing a $150 fine for playing rap music too loudly on his car stereo in July. But a judge offered to reduce that to $35 if Vactor spent 20 hours listening to classical music by the likes of Bach, Beethoven and Chopin. Vactor, 24, lasted only about 15 minutes, a probation officer said.

Anton Bruckner His Life Anton Bruckner was born in Ansfelden, Austria in 1824 to a schoolmaster and organist father with whom he first studied music. He worked for a few years as a teacher's assistant, fiddling at village dances at night to supplement his income. He studied at the Augustinian monastery in St. Florian, becoming an organist there in 1851. He continued his studies to the age of 40, under Simon Sechter and Otto Kitzler, the latter introducing him to the music of Richard Wagner, which Bruckner studied extensively from 1863 onwards. Soon after ending his studies, he wrote...

Vernon Handley, one of the best-loved and most respected of British conductors, has died. Throughout his life he was a devoted champion of British repertoire, making some of the most intuitive and masterful recordings of works by Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Holst.

Celebrating Music in Religion Some History Several types of Christian chant, which is often called plainsong, developed during the first 1000 years of the Christian era. A repertory called Ambrosian chant developed at Milan, Italy; named after St. Ambrose, it is still used in some Roman Catholic services in Milan. In Spain, until about the 11th century, there was a chant repertory called Mozarabic chant, named after the Mozarab Christians who lived in Arab-dominated Spain during the Middle Ages. Today Mozarabic chant survives in a few Spanish cathedrals. Until the 9th century, France had its own chant repertory, called...

Johannes Brahms Introduction Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg on May 7, 1833. After studying the violin and cello with his father, a double bass player in the city theater, Brahms mastered the piano and began to compose under the guidance of the German music teacher Eduard Marxsen, whose conservative tastes left a lasting imprint on him. In 1853 Brahms went on a concert tour as accompanist to the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi. In the course of the tour he met the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, who introduced him in turn to the German composer Robert Schumann. Schumann was...

Celebration Music Water Music After a stay in England, George Frideric Handel returned to Germany in 1710 and became court composer for the Elector of Hanover, George Ludwig, who would later become King George I of Great Britain and Ireland. Late in 1712, Handel asked George for permission to return to England and overstayed his visit while receiving a severance from Queen Anne of England, the last of the House of Stuart. After the passing of Queen Anne, Handel composed "Water Music," in an effort to regain the favor of the Elector of Hanover (now King George I), his...

Gustav Mahler His Life Mahler was born in Kalist (Kalischt, Kaliste), Bohemia. His parents moved to Jihlava, Moravia in the first year of his life, where Mahler spent his childhood. In 1875 he was admitted to the Vienna Conservatoire where he studied piano under Julius Epstein. Subsequently, Mahler attended lectures given by Anton Bruckner at Vienna University. His first major attempt at composition came with Das Klagende Lied which he entered in a competition as an opera (he later turned it into a cantata). However, he was unsuccessful, and turned his attention to conducting. After his first conducting job...

Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise tells the story of what happened to Western classical music in the twentieth century. We all know that the invention of recorded sound around 1900 made possible an extraordinary dissemination of the riches of the classical repertoire – largely composed for the rich and powerful – to the mass of ordinary people. On the gramophone, the radio, television and, subliminally and hence more powerfully, through the movies, the classical sound in all its variants (even the supposedly rebarbative confections of the Second Viennese School) has insinuated itself into the culture at large. Never before...

Giacomo Puccini Giacomo Puccini, (1856-1924), was born in Lucca (Italy), a member of a large family of musicians going back to the early 18th century. His first job, at age 14, was as organist to the two churches of Lucca; but he quickly became more interested in opera (especially Verdi) than church music. He studied at the musical conservatory in Milan (1880-83), and there he came into contact with a group of Milanese artists, called the Scapigliati, who lived the Bohemian lifestyle. This group included the great librettist Arrigo Boito (himself a composer whose opera Mefistofele is still popular...

It's probably as revolutionary and groundbreaking as Mozart gets these days. A German-based quartet staged Saudi Arabia's first-ever performance of European classical music in a public venue before a mixed gender audience. The concert, held at a government-run cultural center, broke many taboos in a country where public music is banned and the sexes are segregated even in lines at fast food outlets.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - It's probably as revolutionary and groundbreaking as Mozart gets these days. A German-based quartet staged Saudi Arabia's first-ever performance of European classical music in a public venue before a mixed gender audience. The concert, held at a government-run cultural center, broke many taboos in a country where public music is banned and the sexes are segregated even in lines at fast food outlets. The Friday night performance could be yet another indication that this strict Muslim kingdom is looking to open up to the rest of the world. A few weeks ago, King Abdullah made an...

Amazing piano pyrotechnics from Hungarian pianist Gyorgy Cziffra. Performance was apparently from the 1950s. The music was one of Franz Liszt's "lighter" pieces... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmq5JBpFf9w

Click, listen, and enjoy.

LONDON — They had rehearsed the piece only once, but already the musicians at the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra were suffering. Their ears were ringing. Heads throbbed. Tests showed that the average noise level in the orchestra during the piece, “State of Siege,” by the composer Dror Feiler, was 97.4 decibels, just below the level of a pneumatic drill and a violation of new European noise-at-work limits. Playing more softly or wearing noise-muffling headphones were rejected as unworkable. So instead of having its world premiere on April 4, the piece was dropped. “I had no choice,” said Trygve Nordwall, the...

Johann Sebastian Bach EISENACH: 1685-1695 Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685, the son of Johann Ambrosius, court trumpeter for the Duke of Eisenach and director of the musicians of the town of Eisenach in Thuringia. For many years, members of the Bach family throughout Thuringia had held positions such as organists, town instrumentalists, or Cantors, and the family name enjoyed a wide reputation for musical talent. The family at Eisenach lived in a reasonably spacious home just above the town center, with rooms for apprentice musicians, and a large grain store. (The pleasant and informative "Bach...

Karim Wasfi, age 36, arrives driving a white Range Rover and dressed in a blazer, vest and ascot. [...] Mr. Wasfi has held that post at the Iraq National Symphony Orchestra since 2004, through the darkest of times [...] "In the car, I also listen to the Saint-Saëns requiem and the Mozart requiem -- that's usually the right mood for Baghdad," says Mr. Wasfi, in his cultivated English, as the checkpoint militias gape incredulously and wave us on. He has lost count of the times he has just missed being caught in a bomb blast or a firefight. "I vary...

William Wolcott's violin studio is about the size of a large broom closet, yet it's often the site of amazing master classes. Virtuoso Itzhak Perlman has held court there. Pinchas Zukerman, Sarah Chang and other fabulous fiddlers also have squeezed into the room. They all fit because of a miraculous little invention: the Internet. "There's an incredible amount of classical music now on the Internet, and it's really helping me teach my students," said Wolcott, an instructor at the Omaha Conservatory of Music. "We can sign on to YouTube right here in my studio and watch the world's greatest violinists...

A half-century after meeting him, the Russian people still adore Van Cliburn. That was the message conveyed by Aleksandr S. Sokolov, the Russian minister of culture, and Yuri V. Ushakov, the Russian ambassador to the United States, during toasts at a black-tie dinner and musical tribute here on March 1. Sponsored by the Van Cliburn Foundation, the event commemorated the 50th anniversary of Mr. Cliburn’s victory in the first Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow in April 1958. Before nearly 1,000 guests in an elaborate 40,000-square-foot tent on the grounds of the Kimbell Art Museum, Mr. Sokolov read a message...

Fryderyk Chopin Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, the Polish composer and pianist, was born on 1 March 1810, according to the statements of the artist himself and his family, but according to his baptismal certificate, which was written several weeks after his birth, the date was 22 February. His birthplace was the village of Zelazowa Wola near Sochaczew, in the region of Mazovia, which was part of the Duchy of Warsaw. The manor-house in Zelazowa Wola belonged to Count Skarbek, and Chopin's father, Mikolaj (Nicolas) Chopin, a Polonized Frenchman, was employed there as a tutor. He had been born in 1771...

PYONGYANG, North Korea - The New York Philharmonic arrived in North Korea on Monday on a historic trip as the most prominent American cultural institution to visit the nuclear-armed country, run by a regime that keeps its impoverished people among the world's most isolated. North Korea made unprecedented accommodations for the orchestra, allowing a delegation of nearly 300 people, including musicians, staff and journalists to fly into Pyongyang on a chartered plane for 48 hours. The Philharmonic's concert Tuesday will be broadcast live on North Korea's state-run TV and radio, unheard of in a country where all events are carefully...

The following link is to a Mozart DVD. Amazon Mozart DVD starring Hillary Clinton (above stars rating) Why is the DVD starring Hillary Clinton? Is Amazon mixed up or is this some kind of propaganda?

A soloist falls on his rare 18th Century violin. But how can it be repaired so it sounds the same? To drop a much-loved instrument is accident enough. But when it is a violin worth a cool million - and it's the tool of your trade as a virtuoso - it is unfortunate indeed. This is the fate that befell David Garrett after performing in London in December. The German musician slipped down a flight of stairs and landed on his violin case, badly cracking the fiddle inside - a 1772 violin made by Giovanni Guadagnini, who called himself...