Whether it is art or pop, high or low, terms such as creativity, authenticity, innovation and uniqueness can help us judge a work of music. And Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. brims with these qualities.
The last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony gave us ‘Ode to Joy’, one of the most famous tunes of all time. But the composer initially thought he’d made a grave mistake with it.
Johann Sebastian Bach was 30 when he became head of music in Anhalt-Cöthen, in what is now Germany. Here he started an uncharted experiment in classical music: solo works for string instruments.
Sergei Rachmaninoff fled the Russian revolution 100 years ago. Spending the remainder of his life in the US, he composed what is perhaps his greatest work in 1940, the Symphonic Dances.
On September 29 1941, Nazis murdered more than 30,000 Jews in a ravine outside Kiev. Dmitri Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony, Babi Yar, is a damning critique of the Soviet Union’s lack of recognition of the massacre, and a condemnation of Stalinism.
A year before his death at 31 Franz Schubert published ‘Winterreise’ or ‘winter’s journey’, a series of 24 poems set to music exploring unrequited love. Schubert described them as ‘truly terrible’.
In the late 1930s, Australia sought to restrict the flow of refugees, ruling that musicians were ‘unsuitable’ as migrants. Yet some talented Jewish musicians did arrive here and their work has enriched our cultural life.
Debussy’s Clair de Lune, meaning ‘moonlight’, is one of the most easily recognised pieces of music, but its origins are complex. The piece was influenced by poetry, Baroque music and the Impressionist movement.
Is birdsong simply a hard-wired, functional, primitive sound – or could we call it ‘music’? Australia’s pied butcherbirds show there are surprising overlaps between birds’ and humans’ musical abilities.
With An Alpine Symphony, Richard Strauss achieved something remarkable: the painting of the German alps, complete with cow meadows and waterfalls, in sound.
Whoever finds it beautiful is beyond help, quipped critic Eduard Hanslick upon hearing Franz Liszt’s Sonata in B minor for the first time. Fortunately, posterity did not agree with him.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of Fugue is a work of high art. But in keeping with the late works of artists such as Shakespeare, Beethoven and Goya, it contains elements of pathos, humour, gravity, exuberance and tragedy.