How is writing music like writing fiction? Cinda Yager shares her correspondence with composer Conrad Winslow.


How do writers work? A composer corresponds with an author of fiction

A piece's written score tells a musician a lot about how a composition is meant to be played - but it doesn't say everything.


More than the score: What written notes do and don't tell us

What purpose do I want the music to have at my memorial service?


Choosing music for a funeral - my own

Music takes my mind and body into a calm, receptive state for meditation, or for just relaxing. I close my eyes, breathe in the sound and let it fill my body. The day's stresses melt away, my mind clears, and I feel at peace.


What makes classical music relaxing?

In 1982, Cinda Yager found herself terrorized by a strange, threatening caller. To help herself stay calm and brave, she turned to the music of Johannes Brahms.


How Brahms kept me centered in a time of terror

Summer dusk in the Catskills. The shadows lengthened under the park's lush trees, and the fireflies winked in time to the march's beat as my sixth-grade teacher's daughter played the clarinet in time with her tapping toes. The piccolo pierced the darkening air, and behind me, my mother laughed.


Ice cream socials: Remembering a community music tradition

Bombastic. Choppy. Melodically starved. Too loud. Muddy and incomprehensible. In need of a firm editing. That's what I thought of Anton Bruckner's symphonic music. I hated it.


Beguiled by Bruckner: How I learned to give difficult music a chance

On the morning I was to leave the hospital, I developed a complication that delayed my discharge for two days. I was devastated. I asked my nurse for soothing music. What music have I used for healing my mind and heart?


How classical music helped to heal my mind and heart after surgery

Composers have given us musical humor to tickle our funny bones whether we're alone at home or in the concert hall. It's perfectly okay to laugh if something strikes you as funny!


Can classical music be funny?

I've listened to classical music all my life. I feel now that I've been eavesdropping on an amazing conversation in music among composers from Pergolesi to Bernstein. You can be a part of that conversation, too.


Cinda Yager

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