Banned from the BBC, denied its rightful place on the charts, ‘God Save the Queen’ – released 40 years ago this month – remains one of the most controversial protest songs of all time.
Nine “Muses” in Renaissance dress enjoy music-making on a pastoral Parnassus, on a painted virginals lid of c.1540.
Girolamo Romanino, National Gallery, London
Does musical taste even matter anymore? Or does a data-driven feedback loop – where what you enjoy in the past shapes what you hear today – influence what you’ll like in the future?
Composing a symphonic landscape: Caspar David Friedrich’s 1818 oil painting, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.
Wikimedia Commons
With An Alpine Symphony, Richard Strauss achieved something remarkable: the painting of the German alps, complete with cow meadows and waterfalls, in sound.
Melbourne may be the self-proclaimed music capital of Australia, but industry data suggests Sydney may have the upper hand. Meanwhile the UN recognises Adelaide as the country’s only city of music.
Deize Tigrona at the 2016 Back2Black music festival.
Midia Ninja/flickr
Just as Fitzgerald’s career was taking off, jazz was under attack for its purported connection to drug culture. If she wanted to become a mainstream superstar, she needed to make a choice.
Franz Liszt in his home in Weimar, 1884.
Bergen Public Library Norway/Flickr
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.
People watch Father John Misty perform at the 2015 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California.
Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
Music festivals have been a boon to the music industry, but now we’re starting to witness some pitfalls of commercial success: consolidation and creeping conformity.