Music
Why are so many composers drawn to the Stabat Mater?
Music likes to tell the same story over and over again. This is part of its tradition but even individual…
The day I tried to rescue the alcoholic former Master of the Queen’s Music
I was looking forward to going to Malcolm Williamson’s opera English Eccentrics set to a text by Edith Sitwell at…
Memphis is a dream destination for music lovers – but how long will this last?
The bad news for old rock’n’rollers is that there’s not much time left to stay at Heartbreak Hotel — these…
Stevie Wonder, Genesis, punk and the Stones – 1976 was the year that changed music
Forty years ago, I spent 14 hours in a large field near the A1 in Hertfordshire. I had just taken…
Electronic Dance Music is not for rebels – it’s for tyrants and drones
Electronic Dance Music is dying. You may not have noticed. It may not affect you directly. But it’s a really…
In search of Mozart’s Tempest
This must rank as the most heartbreaking example of premature chicken-counting in musical history. ‘Gotter has made a marvellous free…
Satie invented the cultural poison that is Muzak – why should he be celebrated?
After peaking at around the tenth instalment, birthday celebrations get progressively less interesting, for their subjects at least. I remember…
We want them not to give us what we want: Radiohead at the Roundhouse reviewed
Radiohead have been at the top of the musical tree for so long now that it’s easy to forget what…
Our neglect of this great working-class British composer is a disgrace
One of the greatest choral symphonies of the 20th century, entitled Das Siegeslied (Psalm of Victory), has been heard only…
Peter Phillips bids farewell to his music column after 33 years
This, my 479th, is to be my last contribution as a regular columnist to The Spectator. I have written here…
The rotten fruits of Peter Maxwell Davies’s modernism
The intransigence of Maxwell Davies, Boulez and Stockhausen is coming home to roost. Here were three composers, famous if not…
Why is the organ such hard work?
My old Oxford college, Mansfield, isn’t a famous establishment, though its current principal, ‘Baroness Helena Kennedy’, as she incorrectly styles…
If we really cared about mental health, muzak would be a top priority
No one is consulted. No one is held to account. No one has the authority to turn it off. How…
Was Barenboim happy hiding inside a provincial orchestra from Venezuela?
Daniel Barenboim back at the Festival Hall! Cue The Grand March of the Musical Luvvies Across Hungerford Bridge, a bustling…
Spare us this unanimous chorus of praise for Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez, who died last week at the age of 90, would have been the last person, one hopes, to…
Can this year’s Gesualdo celebrations be about the music rather than the blood and gore?
The allure of Carlo Gesualdo, eighth Count of Conza and third Prince of Venosa, has been felt by music-lovers from…
Musical maestros and football managers have more in common than you think
You don’t have to be a follower of Liverpool Football Club, or football at all, to spot the difference. Two…
Late Brahms is wonderfully crafted - which is why it's so dull
Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet begins, writes his biographer Jan Swafford, with ‘a gentle, dying-away roulade that raises a veil of autumnal…
I want to put on a concert in Antarctica. Who will help me?
In this exciting new era of Spectator cruises I have been put in mind of a dream event long in…
Never again, I told myself last time Bob Dylan was in town
We were like four hapless contestants on University Challenge. None of us knew the answer. But just like they do…
Why I’m glad my piano teacher spent more time chatting than teaching
At the entrance to Marylebone railway station is an old piano that anyone can play. Unfortunately, whoever had this sweet…
There's a good reason why there are no great female composers
Last week a 17-year-old girl forced the Edexcel exam board to change its A-level music syllabus to include the work…
Orchestral conductors would be much better if they tried performing Renaissance music
To be honest, my friendship with Michael Tilson Thomas hasn’t gone quite as I had hoped. It started in February…
The Magic Flute has never made more cartoonish sense - an Edinburgh Festival roundup
London may cry foul over Hamlet’s misplaced to-be-ing and not-to-be-ing but Edinburgh is in raptures over a Magic Flute which…
Jascha Spivakovsky: the great lost pianist we can finally hear
William Kapell was an American concert pianist with the looks of a male model and the fingers of a wizard.…
