Books & arts
10 November 2025
It’s not me, it’s you, our critic tells Lily Allen
Books & arts
9 October 2025
Two very different books mark the anniversaries of two very different composers
Books & arts
10 September 2025
Melody, rhythm, lyrics, arrangements: it’s the sonority of familiar music that we carry with us
Books & arts
24 July 2025
This year’s BBC Proms celebrate composer, conductor and audience favourite Pierre Boulez
Books & arts
3 July 2025
Is the act of composition itself a performance?
Books & arts
13 June 2025
What “Scarborough Fair” tells us about popular music-making
Books & arts
16 May 2025
What is Spotify doing to music?
Books & arts
4 April 2025
Thirty-six year after its premiere, there is finally a recording of Michael Tippett’s problematic last opera
Books & arts
13 March 2025
For writer Charles King, Handel’s Messiah offers “the staggering possibility that the world might turn out all right”
Books & arts
1 February 2025
Looking for the music in James Mangold’s biopic
Books & arts
9 December 2024
Musicologist Lawrence Kramer wants his readers to think differently about the sound of music and the music of sound
Books & arts
4 November 2024
A poem, a painting, a chance remark — almost anything can ignite the composer’s imagination
Books & arts
8 October 2024
Authenticity isn’t quite the right word for what Neal Peres Da Costa is aiming to achieve
Books & arts
10 September 2024
Composer Alexander Goehr swam against the postwar tide
Books & arts
13 August 2024
How do you pack the history of music into less than fifty thousand words?
Books & arts
8 July 2024
Despite her clean-living reputation, the great American singer was a risk taker
Books & arts
12 June 2024
The drive for musical authenticity needn’t always reach back
Books & arts
2 April 2024
In the wake of a war and the Holocaust, how should music commemorate?
Books & arts
9 February 2024
Packed with back story, a generation of TV themes showed producers to be taking music more seriously
Books & arts
15 December 2023
It’s not just slimmer royalty payments for his compositions that make our music writer look back wistfully
Books & arts
6 November 2023
The new Rolling Stones album circles back to the band’s earliest days
Books & arts
27 September 2023
How pianist Paul Grabowsky benefited from the generosity of the Wilfred brothers and other Indigenous musicians
Books & arts
4 September 2023
The many lives of Noël Coward, playwright, composer, director, actor and singer
Books & arts
9 August 2023
The Hungarian composer György Ligeti remained endlessly inquisitive
Books & arts
28 February 2023
Not everything famous musicians do is magic
Books & arts
3 February 2023
Does music really reflect its place of composition?
Books & arts
7 December 2022
How Doctor Who found its distinctive sounds
Books & arts
4 November 2022
A fresh musical performance can reveal unrecognised qualities
Books & arts
21 September 2022
Music played the role only it could play at the Queen’s funeral
Books & arts
7 September 2022
Pianist and composer Tim Stevens eventually returned to the jazz standards, and we have the pandemic to thank