Free Republic

The Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, who lived 2,500 years ago, applied his genius to music as well throughout his brilliant career, creating the Pythagorean comma as part of music theory, and his brilliance is still recognized to this day. The Pythagorean Theorem remains one of the fundamental concepts in the realm of mathematics and is still taught in schools across the world. The influence of the Ancient Greek thinker, who was born on the island of Samos in the year 570 BC, remains strong today in many realms—but, unfortunately, so do the mysteries surrounding the great Greek philosopher. Pythagoras’...

PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Art Commission voted Wednesday to recommend the Stephen Foster statue in Oakland be removed. The recommendation is that the statue is removed from the public and placed in a place in private and "properly contextualized." The Pittsburgh Art Commission will recommend removal of the statue within six months. Foster, a Pittsburgh native who died in 1864, is famous for classic songs including “Oh! Susanna” and “Camptown Races.” Many of his songs were used in minstrel shows in which actors performed in blackface. The statue depicts Foster sitting above shoeless, banjo-playing “Uncle Ned,” a slave character from...

When most people think about music from the 1950s, they might recall songs like the ones heard on Happy Days or American Graffiti — “Rock Around the Clock,” “The Great Pretender,” “Yakety Yak,” and other tunes that bring to mind sock hops, soda fountains, and drive-ins. But before these more innocuous songs would grace integrated radio in the late-1950s, early-50s African-American R&B took quite a few liberties with song content, and double entendres ruled the day. As a result, there are a number of songs from the period that are surprisingly suggestive, given the state of American music in the...

Choral music not heard since the time of Henry VIII has been brought to life for the first time in 500 years, as an academic unearths an untouched manuscript and shows it to a modern choir. The manuscript, a book of 34 religious songs, was given to Henry VIII as a lavish gift from a French diplomat in his early reign. Containing songs referencing Henry and his then-bride Catherine of Aragon, it is considered the most "luxurious" surviving diplomatic gift of its kind. It remained in the Royal Collection after the king's death, and was later given to the nation...

Each Sunday I post a music clip at our site and detail some of the history behind the song and the artist. I haven't posted them here before, because I'm still not sure of the protocol with regard to linking back to the site I post at. Today's song is 'Let It Be' from The Beatles, and even though it's probably a song we have all heard hundreds of times, if not more, most of us are unaware of the history of the song, in its many different versions.

IN New York and elsewhere a “Messiah Sing-In” — a performance of Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” with the audience joining in the choruses — is a musical highlight of the Christmas season. Christians, Jews and others come together to delight in one of the consummate masterpieces of Western music. The high point, inevitably, is the “Hallelujah” chorus, all too familiar from its use in strange surroundings, from Mel Brooks’s “History of the World, Part 1,” where it signified the origins of music among cavemen, to television advertising for behemoth all-terrain vehicles. So “Messiah” lovers may be surprised to learn that the...