MUSIC IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF MY LIFE

By Klaus Döring

Music is an important part of our life as it is a way of expressing our feelings as well as emotions. No matter where you are living on this globe.  Some people consider music as a way to escape from the pain of life. It gives you relief and allows you to reduce stress. ... Music plays a more important role in our life than just being a source of entertainment.

Music affects our emotions. When we listen to sad songs, we tend to feel a decline in mood. When we listen to happy songs, we feel happier. Upbeat songs with energetic riffs and fast-paced rhythms (such as those we hear at sporting events) tend to make us excited and pumped up. 

Music means the world to me. It makes me think about how it relates to life and I love the beats. Music is a way to express yourself, keep you company while you're alone, and always give you something to do. Music is a way of expressing me and being able to relate to other people.

It won't be a surprise to most that music can affect the human brain emotionally. ... Happy, upbeat music causes our brains to produce chemicals like dopamine and serotonin, which evokes feelings of joy, whereas calming music relaxes the mind and the body.

Music is a form of art; an expression of emotions through harmonic frequencies. ... Most music includes people singing with their voices or playing musical instruments, such as the piano, guitar, drums or violin. The word music comes from the Greek word (mousike), which means "(art) of the Muses.

Music is love. David Crosby sang this wonderful song already in 1971. "Everybody's sayin' music is love .

Music tells stories. Well, composers and musicians use music to tell stories. From all over the world.  Music can be used to depict characters, places, actions and even emotions. Music is often used to heighten a mood, or to express a thought or feeling when mere words are not enough.

“[Music] can propel narrative swiftly forward, or slow it down. It often lifts mere dialogue into the realm of poetry. It is the communicating link between the screen and the audience, reaching out and enveloping all into one single experience.” The best stories engage all of the senses.

One of the great things about music in general, and in particular concert music, is that playing it opens up a whole new world of experience that further enhances the mind, physical coordination, and expression. Music lovers, who are also amateur performers, may choose to play in community ensembles (orchestra, band, choir), take lessons, perform with others, compose, and nearly anything else a professional musician may do, while maintaining their regular lives. All of this involves intense physical coordination in performing an instrument alone or with others, while reading musical notation, and adding delicate or strong nuanced changes to the music that only a performer can bring. In general, to an amateur musician, music can provide an escape from everyday life or an alternative means of expressing one's own capabilities. It is an important part of their lives and fills a need or an urge to create music.

I have been a music lover since my 4th birthday. Meanwhile, living as a German expat in the Philippines, I found out that Filipinos and Germans are music lovers. Among indigenous Filipinos, one important function of music is to celebrate or commemorate important events in the human life cycle. Fortunately, until today, these rich indigenous musical traditions live on. They serve as a reminder of the Filipinos' long history of musical talent and ingenuity.

Such is the case of Philippine music which today is regarded as a unique blending of two great musical traditions – the East and the West. ... The majority of Philippine Music revolves around cultural influences from the West, due primarily to the Spanish and American rule for over three centuries.

Becoming a German expatriate in the Philippines in 1999, I have attended many music events. I fell in love with Filipino classical music. So what does music really mean to Filipinos? It simply tells them where they've been and where they could go. It tells a story that everyone can appreciate and relate to, which is why it's a big part of every Filipino culture. 

Music of the Philippines (Filipino: Himig ng Pilipinas) include musical performance arts in the Philippines or by Filipinos composed in various genres and styles. The compositions are often a mixture of different Asian, Spanish, Latin American, American, and indigenous influences.

Notable folk song composers include the National Artist for Music Lucio San Pedro, who composed the famous "Sa Ugoy ng Duyan" that recalls the loving touch of a mother to her child. Another composer, the National Artist for Music Antonino Buenaventura, is notable for notating folk songs and dances. Buenaventura composed the music for "Pandanggo sa Ilaw".

Which Famous Novels Prominently Feature Classical Music? Part II

 by Siri Livingston  December 24th, 2025

In part one of this article, we considered the complexities of the relationship between music and literature. As sensitive, art-loving souls, many authors hold a close connection to music and wish to bring this to their works of fiction. This tendency is made rather more complex by the difficulty of describing, or the impossibility of “transcribing,” music directly into language, and by the unbridled musicality of language itself, which has its own lilt, metre, and rhythm. Nonetheless, we saw how authors have made music a central component of their celebrated novels: as a key device of affect, as symbolic of something else, or even as part of a moral argument. In Kreuzer Sonata, we see Tolstoy communicate the intensity of music and align it with lust, jealousy, and lack of self-control, whereas for E.M. Forster in A Room with a View, music represents freedom of expression and feeling, authenticity of the self, and sensual communion with nature. In Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, music is treated as evocative, as a reinforcer of memories and a source of nostalgia: a way of tracing a thread of consistent meaning through years of life and disparate experiences, to make sense of a complex and evolving relationship to a person or place.

Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus

Doctor Faustus First edition cover in Europe © Wikipedia

This work of fiction is gargantuan not only in length but in its relation to aesthetics, the politics and history of Germany (both medieval and pre-WWII), and the intellectual life of many prominent German artists and theorists. As such, many of the complexities of this novel will go untouched in this article, but we will endeavour to look at some of the interesting ways in which the book relates to music.

Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus (1947) draws on the legend of Faust, a semi-historical medieval tale originating with Johann Georg Faust (c. 1480–1540), alchemist, astrologer, and magician. The story of Faust in early books soon grew into many retellings in the form of ballads, dramas, and puppet-plays; Christopher Marlowe wrote his play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus in 1592, and Goethe also reworked the legend in the early nineteenth century. The story has enduring appeal, as it frames a central aesthetic and ethical conflict of human experience: at what cost should human excellence and knowledge be obtained? In the original Faust, the eponymous character meets the Devil at a crossroads, and, unsatisfied with his already successful and erudite life, sells his soul for infinite knowledge and experience. The adjective “Faustian” has come to mean any kind of sacrifice of spiritual goodness, wholesomeness, and health for power and greatness, often with the implication of self-defeat in the form of degradation, illness, or death. The “Faustian pact” varies in its details but is always made with Mephistopheles or a similar figure. The existence of such a corrupting influence implies, to varying degrees depending on the retelling, the presence and rejection of theological morality and God, though this was of greater focus in the medieval tales.

Delacroix: Faust and Mephistopheles, 1827 (The Wallace Collection)

In the novel by Thomas Mann, fictitious composer Adrian Leverkühn, of great genius and ambition, intentionally contracts syphilis so that the madness and hallucinations may deepen his artistic genius. He is visited by a Mephistophelean being, and renounces love for other human beings in exchange for twenty-four years of brilliance and creation. Leverkühn eventually looks upon his nephew, Echo, with love and fondness while working to finish his final masterpiece. When Echo dies, Leverkühn believes it to be caused by the pact and descends fully into madness and infirmity, unable to premiere his last work. The book situates this final downfall as happening at the same time as the full initiation of the Third Reich – the political allegory of Germany’s descent into sickness is clear.

The author’s son published an article on the musical symbolism of Doctor Faust. In it, Michael Mann quotes his father: “It is a grave error of the historical legend that it did not establish any connection between Faust and music.” Thomas Mann clearly saw something in the disposition of musicians, or composers, well-suited to corruption by temptation – or the Devil! His son notes that “critical thought and music – love of music and inner musicality of the word – are the very cornerstones of that work.” For Mann, music had a dual nature, “a Christian art with negative sign… [consisting of] both calculative order and chaos-breeding irrationality.” Arnold Schoenberg, then, was the perfect model for the character of Leverkühn, as the inheritor of the German Romantic musical lineage of Wagner and Mahler, and yet a famous inventor of the meticulous, mathematical twelve-tone system in response to the events of WWII. Schoenberg was displeased by Mann’s “homage” – in the book, the fictional Leverkühn is said to invent serialism – and Mann later added an addendum at Schoenberg’s request, in which the composer is credited for both serialism and the information Mann drew from studying Harmonielehre, Schoenberg’s treatise on harmony.

In Faustus, music becomes a kind of ethical, political, and aesthetic battleground – but Michael Mann notes that “the musical world of Adrian Leverkühn is not the musical world of Thomas Mann.” While Schoenberg’s theory ignited his literary excitement, his son notes that “his ears rejected Schoenberg’s music… his was the world of Richard Wagner…

Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns.” Even in the process of writing Faust he remarked: “If I were a composer, I should compose, perhaps, like Cesar Franck.” In his private life, Mann still sought the “beautiful illusion of art” that he “denounced in his workshop,” deeply rooted in the bürgerliche Kunst, bourgeois art, of the 19th century. In Mann’s Doctor Faustus, we find one of the most complex and paradoxical musico-literary relationships in history, as well as a harrowing and rich narrative for any lover of history or music.

The Pyramid, William Golding

The Pyramid First edition cover © Wikipedia

Of all the works thus far, Golding’s The Pyramid (1967) displays what we might call the “lightest” treatment of music out of the novels surveyed. Instead of making music representative of weighty concepts like genius or freedom, or imbuing it with a powerful ethical valence, Golding’s book centres upon the protagonist Oliver’s upbringing in the fictional sleepy English village of Stilbourne, his transition to Oxford, and his mid-adulthood, in a gentle, reflective coming-of-age narrative. Oliver and his family are very musical, and as such, music features in a way that is faithful to the ways of life of the English countryside: Oliver plays violin and piano, takes lessons with the local organist, and takes part in local community productions with his mother. Music and its practical realities, familiar to any musician – struggling with a new piece, scales, having a melody stuck in your head, and the silly mundanities of lessons and rehearsals – are all woven into the daily fabric of Oliver’s life. Mundane realities of the music world are also shown to be entangled with questions of social status and class – Oliver is ashamed of his secret desire to be a professional pianist, and is told by his father to prioritise studies – and getting into Oxford – over his music lessons.

The poignancy and beauty of music are explored alongside Oliver’s life and experiences with no strong sense of separation – music is one of the languages he speaks on a daily basis, a model of a life lived with music as a companion rather than a master, idol, or unbridled temptation. As such, we end this two-part article on the least sensational, but perhaps most realistic and healthy, portrayal of music in literature – as a daily source of comfort and beauty to those who love it.

Recommended Recordings of Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11

 by Anson Yeung  April 5th, 2022

Frédéric Chopin, after a portrait by P. Schick, 1873
© Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

One of the greatest piano concertos ever, Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor has long been a cornerstone in the repertoire of many concert pianists. It was actually Chopin’s second piano concerto, as it was written after the premiere of Piano Concerto “No. 2” in F minor. Preceded by trials with a quartet and a small orchestra, the premiere took place in October 1830 at the National Theatre of Warsaw with great success. The concerto enjoyed immediate popularity and remained so up to this day.

As we appreciate this masterpiece, we should imagine ourselves as the 20-year-old Chopin deeply enchanted by his first love, Konstancja Gładkowska, who inspired both of his piano concertos. Chopin wrote to his friend Tytus Woyciechowski, “As I already have, perhaps unfortunately, my ideal, whom I faithfully serve, without having spoken to her for half a year already, of whom I dream, in remembrance of whom was created the Adagio of my Concerto” (referring to his Piano Concerto in F minor). Before Chopin left Warsaw, Gładkowska wrote the following poem in Chopin’s diary to bid him farewell:

Yet while others may
Better appraise and reward you,
They certainly cannot
Love you more strongly than we.

I. Allegro maestoso

Konstancja Gladkowska

The orchestra makes a majestic declaration, followed by the second theme in E major marked cantabile, but the music soon resumes its agitated mood. In fact, the indication maestoso often appears in Chopin’s music, such as in Polonaises Op. 26 No. 2, Op. 53 (“Heroic Polonaise”), Op. 71 No. 1, as well as the first movement of Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor. The piano part presents itself with a powerful, dignified first theme, while the second theme in E major conveys much warmth and intimacy. Later, the second theme appears again but this time in G major, creating a heartrending contrast with the ensuing section with spiralling anxiety and coda, ending in sudden unison in forte.

II. Romanze: Larghetto

The second movement is a breathtakingly beautiful, reverie-like recollection of fond memories, despite the transient turbulence in the middle. In Chopin’s letter to Woyciechowski, he wrote “The Adagio of the new concerto is in E major. It is not meant to create a powerful effect; it is rather a Romance, calm and melancholy; giving the impression of someone looking gently toward a spot which calls to mind a thousand happy memories. It is a kind of reverie in the moonlight on a beautiful spring evening.” There’s probably no better description than this.

III. Rondo: Vivace

While the first two movements were swiftly written, the third movement was completed with some difficulty in August 1830. Full of zeal, vigour and youthful energy, the final movement is based on Krakowiak, a syncopated folk dance from Kraków in 2/4 time. The styl brillant lives up to its full potential with the dazzling passagework, demanding much virtuosity from the soloist. Aside from the technical bravura, the underlying dancing pulse adds even more vivacity to the music. Eventually, the music is brought to a truly triumphant conclusion.

Below are some recommended recordings from me, which are by no means exhaustive!

Krystian Zimerman, Polish Festival Orchestra

© Deutsche Grammophon

Zimerman’s unremitting pursuit of perfection is astonishing – hand-picking each of the musicians of the orchestra, meticulously (or obsessively) planning the travel route, accommodation and meals for musicians during the concert tour, rehearsing for painstakingly long hours, etc. The outcome is equally remarkable, to say the least.

Right from the opening of Allergo maestoso, there was immaculate attention to orchestral parts, revealing many nuances that haven’t been heard of previously. Every sound was tastefully sculpted, each phrase scrupulously shaped, with rubato plentiful. Zimerman’s pianism was exceptional as usual – from the luscious tone colours in Romanze to the technical brilliance in Rondo. This is not only a legendary recording of this masterpiece but also of Chopin’s music as a whole.

Bella Davidovich, Sir Neville Marriner, London Symphony Orchestra

Having studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Konstantin Igumnov and Yakov Flier, Bella Davidovich shared the first prize with Halina Czerny-Stefańska in Chopin Competition in 1949. When I encountered this recording, I was immediately struck by the simplicity, naturalness and poetry in her Romanze. Long singing lines were maintained with bel canto by Davidovich, who was known for her singing tone and sensitive touch. It was completely devoid of sentimentality, coupled with a fine balance between classicism and romanticism, which many pianists overlook today. On the other hand, her reading of Rondo, albeit not the most extroverted, had such poise with a natural emphasis on the underlying pulse.   

Kyohei Sorita, Andrzej Boreyko, Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra

In my humble opinion, this is the most outstanding rendition in Chopin Competition in 2021. Combining respect for tradition and creativity, Sorita unearthed so many details throughout (especially inner voices from the left hand), which asked for a deep understanding of the score. For instance, listen to his left hand from 9:20 to 9:28, from 14:18 to 14:22, and the inner line from 12:47 to 12:52. Meanwhile, the emotional aspect was never ignored – żal, poignancy, tranquillity and bliss were all distilled into the first movement, while the final movement was filled with ebullience and verve. What a delight!

Twenty Quotes by Women Composers Throughout Classical Music History

 by Emily E. Hogstad  November 27th, 2023

Throughout classical music history, remarkable women have not only contributed their musical talents, but imparted wisdom through their words.

In this article, we’ve gathered twenty thought-provoking quotations by women composers, offering a glimpse into both their struggles and their triumphs, with a focus on the issues that tend to be especially relevant for women.

© musicbywomen.org

On Inspiration

Glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars. Gaze at the beauty of the Earth’s greenings. Now, think.

Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)  

Composing gives me great pleasure… There is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.

Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896)   

On the Process of Composing

Rebecca Clarke

There’s nothing in the world more thrilling, or practically nothing. But you can’t do it unless – at least I can’t; maybe that’s where a woman’s different – I can’t do it unless it’s the first thing I think of every morning when I wake and the last thing I think of every night before I go to sleep.   

On New Music and the Canon

I think Beethoven needs someone next to him that reminds you the music is vulnerable rather than it’s just a masterpiece and so therefore why should we even bother to think about it. The wonderful thing about new music is the reaction it provokes. “Do I like this or don’t I like it?” The audience is reacting to the music itself. With Beethoven, they don’t do that. 

With any new kind of programming and endeavor, you take a leap of faith that the audiences are going to be into it. I find audiences show up because they want to experience live music, live theater, something that sparks their imagination and soothes their pain. That’s how it functions, really, at the end of the day.  

On Accessibility

You don’t need any specialized education and you don’t need to know anything about the world in which I work. I think my music should be able to speak to you even if you’ve never been to a concert of classical music before.

– Jennifer Higdon (1962-)   

I want my music to be something that people use in order to access parts of themselves. So in that sense, every piece I write is about all emotions at once, about the lines in between. It’s never only about one thing or another. It’s emotionally getting at those things that we can’t really describe – things for which we don’t have labels.

Missy Mazzoli (1980-)  

Music has a unifying effect on the peoples of the world, because they all understand and love it… And when they find themselves enjoying and loving the same music, they find themselves loving one another.

On Piano Playing

Teresa Carreño

I wish to make my pupils feel that piano playing is easy, not difficult; to make them regard practice as a joy, not a burden; to have them go to the piano as a painter, with a beautiful idea to express, goes to his canvas, takes up his palette and brushes and mixes his colours. But the tension under which so many players labor is dreadful.  

On Sexism

Music is the superlative expression of life experience, and woman by the very nature of her position is denied many of the experiences that color the life of man.

Amy Beach (1867-1944)  

Women are expected to be wives, mothers, and do all the nasty things in the community (oh, I do them). And if a woman is cursed with having talent too, then she keeps apologizing for it… It really is a curse, in a way, because instead of working 12 hours a day like other women, you work 24.  

On Perseverance

Fanny and Wilhelm Hensel

It must be a sign of talent that I do not give up, though I can get nobody to take an interest in my efforts.

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847)   

I have had a very difficult life, you know. Only I do not like to talk about it, because I write happy music as a release. But anyway things were always against me. Whatever happened, it was against me.

Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983)   

On Bravery

I hate silence when it is time to speak.

Kassia (810-865)   

If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another; strike out for yourself; don’t listen to the shriek of your relations…don’t be afraid of public opinion in the shape of the neighbours in the next house, when all the world is before you new and shining, and everything is possible, if you will only be energetic and independent and seize opportunity by the scruff of the neck.

Bettina von Arnim (1785-1859)   

On Ambition

I feel I must fight for [my music], because I want women to turn their minds to big and difficult jobs; not just to go on hugging the shore, afraid to put out to sea.

Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)   

To tell the truth, I struggle with my body to free myself; I want to be fully and wholly to myself; I must triumph, and I give up the idea of living for someone else. The needs of my art create a life that I ought not to forsake.

Marie Jaëll (1846-1925)   

On Racism

One of the most evil effects of racism in my time was the limits it placed upon the aspirations of blacks, so that though I have been “making up” and creating music all my life, in my childhood or even in college I would not have thought of calling myself a composer or aspiring to be one.

Undine Smith Moore (1904-1989)   

On the Future of Music

Since music is making very fast progress thanks to the young composers, I know that I can only take the back seat now, because I can’t outdo myself, and the truly novel things will be invented by the young ones, not by me. But this doesn’t worry me at all. Everyone has their place in the world. I do, or rather I would like to do, what I can do best – and that’s all.

Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969)   

I do not believe that the few women who have achieved greatness in creative work are the exception, but I think that life has been hard on women. It has not given them opportunity, it has not made them convincing. A woman has not been considered a working force in the world, and the work that her sex and conditions impose upon her has not been so adjusted as to give her a little fuller scope for the development of her best self. She has been handicapped and only the few through force of circumstances or inherent strength have been able to get the better of that handicap. There is no sex and art. Genius is an independent quality. The woman of the future with her broader outlook, her greater opportunities will go far, I believe, in creative work of every description.   

Baroque Era Music: A Beginner’s Guide

 by Emily E. Hogstad  July 19th, 2026

Baroque music – composed roughly between 1600 and 1750 – is some of the most recognisable and beloved music ever written.

You almost certainly know more of it than you think. The driving pulse of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, the soaring melody of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, the thunderous chorus of Handel’s Messiah: all of it is Baroque music.

J.S. Bach and Handel © CMUSE

But what exactly is Baroque music? What does it sound like, and why did it sound that way? Who made it, and who paid for it – and why does any of it still matter today?

This is your guide to one of the most important and fascinating eras in the history of Western music.

What Does the Term “Baroque” Mean?

Scholars believe that the word Baroque may have come from the Portuguese word “barroco,” meaning “flawed pearl.”

It is also possible that the origins of the term date back to the Latin word baroco, a term that had originated in the field of Aristotelian logic, but eventually came to be a derogatory term for anything overly complex.  

Regardless of the exact etymology, the word “Baroque” has come to refer to the style of art, architecture, writing, music, and the like created between 1600 and 1750.

The word “baroque” was essentially a mild insult – meaning overwrought, too complicated – and yet the music (and art) that got labelled that way turned out to be some of the most magnificent ever written.

We wrote an article tracing the fascinating connections between music and the other arts during this time: https://interlude.hk/the-age-of-the-baroque-in-music-and-the-arts/

When Was the Baroque Era?

The Baroque era is commonly described as lasting from 1600 to 1750, although the styles of the surrounding eras bled into early and late Baroque works.

It’s also worth remembering that the era was named after it happened – i.e., nobody was going around in the 1600s and calling themselves a “Baroque composer.”

Why are those dates the ones that scholars have settled on?

The first answer is that 1600 was the year that opera was invented.

The oldest surviving opera, Euridice, composed by Jacopo Peri, was premiered in Florence in October 1600, as part of the wedding celebrations between King Henry IV of France and Maria de Medici.

Opera would become a major subgenre of Baroque music over the next 150 years.   

Meanwhile, the year 1750 marks the death of Johann Sebastian Bach.

For many, Bach’s death is a natural endpoint to use to mark the end of the era, since his compositions marked the intellectual and emotional high-water mark of the Baroque.

J.S. Bach’s composer sons all wrote in a markedly different, more modern style than their father did, signalling an evolution in style.

Bach’s towering legacy, and the impossibility of writing works in a Baroque style that would live up to his, make 1750 feel like the most logical endpoint.

We tracked the fates of Bach’s twenty children – including all of his composer sons – here: https://interlude.hk/what-happened-to-bachs-twenty-children/

What Does Baroque Music Sound Like?

At the heart of most Baroque music is a driving, almost mechanical pulse.

This pulse is created by rapid repeated notes in the cellos, basses, or instruments with similar ranges. They create a foundation for everything else: the harmonies, the melodies, the sudden shifts in dynamics, the moments where the instrumentation drops away or surges forward.  

Sometimes this pulse is provided by a line called the basso continuo, or “continuous bass.” A basso continuo consists of a lower bass line and chords that fill in the texture of the music and provide a bass for the instruments playing melody.

The details of the basso continuo were often left to individual performers and improvisers, providing space for a certain amount of creativity within certain rules and conventions.

Baroque music is also famous for its reliance on improvisation and ornamentations such as trills, turns, and other embellishments – all of which combine to give the music its distinctive decorative quality.

Arguably, the style of these decorations helped lead to Baroque music’s later reputation as being “too complex” or even “a flawed pearl.”

Who Paid For Baroque Music?

Put bluntly, the famous Baroque composers didn’t write for themselves. They all had bosses, and those bosses impacted what – and even how – these composers wrote music.

The Church – especially the Catholic Church – was employing music as part of the Counter-Reformation and its aftermath. Music was seen as a tool of spiritual persuasion, as well as an assertion of institutional and political power.

Bach is an interesting counterpoint here since he worked within the Lutheran tradition rather than the Catholic one. But the basic dynamic – composer as servant within a religious institution – still holds.

The Flute Concert of Sanssouci

The other category of bosses is leaders of the courts. Kings, princes, and other wealthy European aristocrats employed composers the way they employed painters or architects. Music was used as a status symbol. Having a brilliant court composer demonstrated a ruler’s power, culture, and wealth.

One interesting tension is that these two patrons tended to want slightly different things. For instance, the Church was especially interested in continuing and evolving its long choral music tradition, while the courts became increasingly interested in cultivating innovative instrumental virtuosity.

Yet despite these opposing purposes, somehow the best of the Baroque era composers managed to produce music for both traditions – and in the process, they created work that outlasted all of their bosses.

The Giants of the Baroque Composers

Today, we’ll look at three of the most famous Baroque era composers.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). Over the course of his career, he worked for both the church and the court, so he made major contributions to both sacred and secular music.

Bach’s music is complex, planned out in patterns. Some would call it mathematical.

But there’s also always a great humanity to it, and his gift for melody was second to none. Everyone will recognise the melody to Air on the G-string or Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.   

George Frideric Handel (1685–1759). He’s a fascinating contrast to Bach because they were born the same year, in the same region of Germany, but they never met and ended up in completely different worlds.

Bach stayed close to home his whole life, rooted in the Lutheran church tradition. By contrast, Handel’s life was more cosmopolitan. He lived in Italy, then London, writing opera and oratorios for public audiences and royal patrons.

Unlike nearly all of his Baroque colleagues, Handel by and large managed to become his own boss, presenting entrepreneurial performances of his own works.

In the process, he basically invented the form of English language oratorio: a cheaper method to make money during Lent, when fully staged operas weren’t performed. The “Hallelujah Chorus” from his oratorio Messiah is one of the best-known pieces of Baroque music.   

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741). There is an old joke about Vivaldi: he wrote the same piece 500 times. There’s some truth to it insofar as his music uses similar forms, styles, and conventions, much like pop songwriters today. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t inventive within the structural boundaries he observed.

His Four Seasons is a set of four violin concertos, each one depicting a different season in music. After their rediscovery in the early 20th century, they became hugely popular and are now among the most popular pieces of classical music ever written.

Plus, Bach was notoriously fascinated by him, choosing to rearrange some of Vivaldi’s violin works for harpsichord and orchestra – and if Bach was a fan, he can’t have been all that boring.

Vivaldi spent much of his career in Venice, writing for and directing an orchestra of orphaned and illegitimate girls at the Ospedale della Pietà – one of the most unusual and remarkable musical institutions of the era. We wrote about it here: https://interlude.hk/vivaldis-internationally-  renowned-orphanage-orchestra/  

Why Does Baroque Music Still Matter?

People love Baroque music: its vigour, its structure, its inventiveness within stylistic confines.

But it’s also historically important. The Baroque era invented the infrastructure of Western music. It saw the development of the standardisation of the orchestra – the emergence of new genres like the opera, the oratorio, the concerto, and more – and created the language that composers still use to write music today.

It did all that under conditions of institutional constraint and patronage that are foreign to us today.

The miracle isn’t just that the music is beautiful (although, of course, it is that), or that it continues to speak to us long after its composers ever dreamed it would.

The miracle is that so much great Baroque music was made at all, given that it was written so quickly and prolifically by people working on short deadlines, for powerful bosses – who, ironically, are often most famous today for their appearances in the footnotes of music history textbooks.

Music Confronts Humanity and Poses Some Questions

 by Maureen Buja  July 22nd, 2026

Italian composer Maurizio Guernieri (b. 1962) wanted to explore the world of wind instruments, which he felt, as a string musician, was an unfamiliar corner of the musical world. His 2019 work Musicografie (Images in Music) starts each movement with a quotation that the movement will explore. The texts were created by the composer and pose questions or situations that can be pondered musically.

Maurizio Guernieri

In the Praeludium, the story comes from an Aesop’s fable in which the sun and the wind compete to see which is stronger, choosing a traveller on the road to show their power. The wind blows and makes the poor traveller clutch his coat all the closer to keep warm; the sun shines and makes him take his coat off to luxuriate in the heat. Despite his bluster, the wind is defeated by the sun….

Praeludium
Il vento, con il suo alito possente, voleva dimostrare di essere il più forte…	The wind, with its powerful breath, wanted to prove that it was the strongest…

Arthur Rackham: The North Wind and the Sun

Each instrument seems to push its particular sound. The traveller is alone, and around him whirls a multiplex of sound and silences.

The student asks his teacher a question, and the answer is larger than either the student or the question. Even in the midst of a crowd, we are always alone.

Solitude
«Ma gli uomini dove si trovano?» chiese curioso l’allievo. «Io non vedo nessuno. Qui nel deserto è pieno di solitudine…» «Siamo sempre soli. Anche in mezzo agli uomini» rispose il Maestro.	“But where are the men?” asked the student curiously. “I don’t see anyone. Here in the desert it’s full of solitude…” “We are always alone. Even among men,” replied the Master.

Each instrument plays alone, with little reference to the other ensemble members. The piano thunders in its low register, the flute quivers, and the strings (viola and violoncello) play harmonics and add their own quiver to the flute sound.

A mix of weather and music! Notes fall like rain, forming drops and then rivers until, at the end, even pianos fall from the heights.

Ostinati
Le nuvole si aprono e delicatamente cadono gocce di note. Si forma un crescendo e cadono fiumi di intere scale di note. Poi tutta la musica precipita e piovono pianoforti da altezze incommensurabili…	The clouds part, and delicate drops of notes fall. A crescendo forms, and rivers of entire scales of notes fall. Then all the music falls, and pianos rain down from immeasurable heights…

In Pavane, we have our first steps of the dance of life, coming from the sea. In the end, the sea will engulf the world, and we will all dance together.

Pavane
Il mare è l’immensa culla della vita di tutta la natura: si può dire che da lui ogni cosa abbia mosso i primi passi e forse, probabilmente, verso di lui ogni cosa si incamminerà incontro alla fine di tutto.	The sea is the immense cradle of life for all of nature: it can be said that everything took its first steps from it, and perhaps, probably, everything will move towards it towards the end of everything.

A pavane at the court of Henry III of France, ca 1581 (Louvre Museum)

In European music, the Pavane was a slow processional dance, designed to show off the magnificent clothes worn at court.

Under the title of Caccia (Hunt), Nature looks at humans and finds them…wanting. What would we do if Nature gave up on us?

Caccia
La senti la Foresta? É strana: silenziosa e viva allo stesso tempo. Consapevole e attenta a ciò che le succede intorno. Direi quasi che capisce molto di più di quanto capiscano gli uomini. E la Foresta li osserva, li scruta, li giudica e sentenzia: «Adesso basta! Se lo procurino loro, l’ossigeno».	Can you hear the Forest? It’s strange: silent and alive at the same time. Aware and attentive to what’s happening around it. I’d almost say it understands much more than humans do. And the Forest observes them, scrutinises them, judges them, and pronounces: “Enough! Let them get their own oxygen.”

In a fall of notes, the Forest world comes alive. Complex questions are asked and thought about. The piano speaks for the ground, and the other instruments inhabit the upper branches and speak for those who live there.

In the final movement, we return to the greatest of human creations: the city. Gathered together in towers, the people in the city seem to reach more and more desirously toward the sky, but what is there to reach?

Postludium
La città verticale corre verso il cielo. «Tutto si muove, tutto corre, tutto volge rapido e distratto. Verso dove?»	The vertical city races toward the sky. “Everything moves, everything rushes, everything turns quickly and distractedly. Towards where?”

Quick and distracted, the ensemble seems to pursue many different paths towards where?

It’s an interesting idea to pose questions for music to answer. More than just a single reflection on the movement titles, the musical content poses questions for us as well.

In the Praeludium, it isn’t strength that wins the competition, it’s a quiet inner glow.

The Solitude of the individual takes a long time to be understood. At first, the student sees everyone as more alike than different. It’s his teacher who tells him to look beneath the surface and to recognise that the differences between people make each of them alone.

Ostinati, in the plural, makes us rethink the musical idea of an ostinato. Traditionally, it’s a recurring rhythm below the melody, but what if every voice contributes to that idea?

In the Pavane of the sea, the first steps are just as tentative as the final steps. Change doesn’t bring improvement, and slow isn’t always better.

Caccia has an intriguing title: who is involved in the hunt? The Forest can’t move to capture anything, and humans are infamous for pursuing their targets too far. Does the Forest have to help? Not necessarily.

The Postludium questions man’s achievement. What’s the point of creating more and more, higher and higher, if we don’t know what we’re seeking?