It's funny how a personal experience with a piece of music can cause you to have a unique reaction to it, different from anyone else's. Regardless of what it's composer originally intended, it's the personal encounters we have with music that truly define what they mean to us.
A new eight-hour lullaby is so long and so relaxing that the premiere performance will actually feature beds instead of seats.
Generations have enjoyed the "Toy Symphony." What composer(s) should get the credit?
The "Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star" series of rock-based lullabies has added a new volume, featuring alt rock heroes the Replacements.
Claude-Emma Debussy was only three years old when her father wrote a six-part piano suite starring her favorite toys. Captivated by his daughter's childhood, Claude Debussy composed his tender 1908 work, "The Children's Corner," both to entertain her and to explore music through the eyes of a child.
Like a trip to the zoo or an uncle's bad jokes, "The Carnival of the Animals" is supposed to be fun. So fun, in fact, that composer Camille Saint-Saens feared it would ruin his image. Though he banned most of it from public performance until after its death, it is among his biggest hits today.
The music is new for them, and their world expands. I listen with them, as if for the first time, and it is new again for me.
Austin Gerth interviews two of the musicians behind 'Sleep Softly,' a new book/CD lullaby collection. They tell him what rhythms make for a perfect lullaby, and why some lullabies are surprisingly dark.
In the summer of 1987, my parents moved us to a farmhouse south of Kiester, Minnesota. We lived a softball's throw from Iowa. Mom was pregnant with my brother; Dad traveled as director with the high school's marching band; and I had ten cats, all named after classical composers.
Corina Bernstein grew up with music of all kinds, and she developed a lifelong passion for a wide array of sounds.
