I’m headed for the Johnson Space Center in Houston this week to deliver a series of talks and workshops on Music and Space. Because, as you already know, music is connected to everything. My main talk “Music and Space” explores those connections. Most of us have never … Read more
Haydn: Trumpet Concerto in E-Flat, III – Finale. Here at Professor Carol, we want to inspire people to discover good music. That’s why we created the courses you see on this site. But whether you take the courses or not, the music is sitting there … Read more
What do you expect in a Music History course? Perhaps you don’t have any particular expectation, but it’s something that I think about a lot. When I meet people who say they are studying music history, I ask what they mean by that. Usually, they … Read more
I just returned from seeing an eclectic, riveting, and marvelously absurd production of Václav Havel’s satire “The Garden Party” at the Estates Theater in Prague (the theater where Mozart conducted the premiere of “Don Giovanni”). Havel was a terrific playwright, a voice of Czech dissidence, … Read more
I recently did a post on Opening the Door to Russian Art, so I thought I should follow it up with Opening the Door to German Art. There’s so much to discover in the arts that many people find the topic just too big. I … Read more
A Crimean-born Armenian, Ivan Aivazovsky was raised largely in Poland and then studied art in St. Petersburg. He loved travel, found solid success, and enjoyed commissions from Russian aristocrats and highly placed officials as far away as Istanbul. Late in life he painted the oppressions … Read more
If you are looking for a place to start getting to know Russian art, here are five suggested paintings. People frequently tell me they want to get to know art or music, but they just don’t know the best place to start. Well, there really … Read more
As I began to write this post about the paintings of Konstantin Makovsky (1839-1915), a friend called to tell me about today’s catastrophe in the Moscow Metro. This is a line I easily could have been on this morning. It’s the line my Russian friend … Read more
It’s not a Moscow I recognize any more. When I first came to the Soviet Union in 1981, the grey, quiet streets of Moscow moved at an Adagio, with a formality that bespoke centuries of burden. The sufferings of the Second World still reflected in … Read more
A reader asked me to compare our 2011 Exploring America’s Musical Heritage program (2 DVDs) with the on-line course America’s Artistic Legacy. In terms of chronological scope, both programs cover approximately the same time period: 1600 to c. 1950. Beyond that, they are quite different … Read more