Music

Bayreuth has much for which to thank Richard Wagner, but the determination of a Prussian princess to create something out of her dull and provincial 18th-century marriage helped make the city the place it is today, says Adrian Mourby.

'The War Song for the Army of the Rhine' was composed and first sung at Strasbourg some months before it was adopted by the citizens of Marseilles.

Alan Yorke-Long documents the beginnings of Georgian England's affair with the music of the Hanoverian composer.

Charles Dimont traces the background and development of the English nation's favourite song.

The great composer died on December 28th, 1937.

Ramona Wadi reports on the continuing struggle to shed light on the death in 1973 of the Chilean singer and political activist Victor Jara.

A political exile, Richard Wagner found safety in Zurich, where he also discovered the love and philosophy that inspired his greatest works, as Paul Doolan explains.

On the centenary of the death of W.S.Gilbert Ian Bradley examines the achievements of the surprisingly radical Victorian dramatist and librettist who, in collaboration with the composer Arthur Sullivan, created classic satires of English national identity.

In our series in which historians look back on the changes that have taken place in their field in the 60 years since the founding of History Today, Daniel Snowman takes a personal view of new approaches to the study of the history of culture and the arts – and of music in particular.

Stauss' 'musical comedy' was first performed in Dresden on January 26th, 1911. It was a sensation.

Richard Cavendish remembers the birth of the pianist who was also briefly prime minister of Poland.

Sexually explicit jigs were a major part of the attraction of the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration stage, as Lucie Skeaping explains. 

Richard Cavendish remembers the first performance of Porgy and Bess.