Carmen, the habañera and El Arreglito
It wasn’t until a friend mentioned it recently (thanks Eddie) that I discovered that the most famous bit of music by Bizet, the Habañera from Carmen, isn’t actually by Bizet…
Musical surprises #23: Vauxhall, Strauss & Tchaikovsky
Although the light and popular dance rhythms of Johann Strauss II seem a sociocultural world away from the ‘classical’ Tchaikovsky, they’re not. It’s our own snobbery that obscures the connections…
Tchaikovsky’s Großvater
Tchaikovsky’s Großvater: two sources The source of Tchaikovsky’s Großvater (the “grandfather dance” in the party scene in Act 1 of The Nutcracker, and the tune that Schumann quotes in Carnaval…