Music

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.

Mark Juddery looks at the historical backdrop to the much-loved 1950s Hollywood musical, Singin’ in the Rain in which Hollywood tells its own story of the arrival of sound to the big screen.

Opera has flourished in the United States. But how did this supposedly ‘elite’ art form become so deep-rooted in a nation devoted to popular culture and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal? Daniel Snowman explains.

A subject and servant of Europe’s most cosmopolitan empire, the composer Joseph Haydn played an important role in the emergence of German cultural nationalism during the 18th and 19th centuries, writes Tim Blanning.

The man who wrote the words of 'Hark! the Herald Angels Sing', 'Love Divine, All Loves Excelling' and hundreds of other much-loved hymns was born on December 18th, 1707.

The premiere of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto at the Vienna opera house on December 23rd, 1806, was not a success.

Joannes Chrisostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart was born in Salzburg on January 27th, 1756.

Tom Neuhaus looks at the subversive young Germans known as Swing Youth who refused to have their hobbies and tastes dictated to them by the Nazis and provoked the regime by their devotion to American and British music and fashion.