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music
Books & arts
Auld acquaintance
Andrew Ford
4 April 2025
Thirty-six year after its premiere, there is finally a recording of Michael Tippett’s problematic last opera
Other Voices
The potency of jokes
Ian Leslie
21 March 2025
Why breakthroughs emerge from fooling around
Books & arts
Comfort ye my people
Andrew Ford
13 March 2025
For writer Charles King, Handel’s
Messiah
offers “the staggering possibility that the world might turn out all right”
Books & arts
The unknowable Dylan
Andrew Ford
1 February 2025
Looking for the music in James Mangold’s biopic
Books & arts
Map-making and myth-busting
Zora Simic
14 December 2024
Joni Mitchell’s latest biographer creates a new geography of her work and influence
Books & arts
Things that want to be heard
Andrew Ford
9 December 2024
Musicologist Lawrence Kramer wants his readers to think differently about the sound of music and the music of sound
Essays & reportage
What is a library?
Kieran Hegarty
6 November 2024
Targeted by hackers and sued by publishers, the Internet Archive continues to push boundaries
Books & arts
Summoning the spark
Andrew Ford
4 November 2024
A poem, a painting, a chance remark — almost anything can ignite the composer’s imagination
Books & arts
Could this be how it sounded in Mozart’s time?
Andrew Ford
8 October 2024
Authenticity isn’t quite the right word for what Neal Peres Da Costa is aiming to achieve
Books & arts
“That’s all I can do”
Andrew Ford
10 September 2024
Composer Alexander Goehr swam against the postwar tide
Books & arts
The rhythm of life
Andrew Ford
13 August 2024
How do you pack the history of music into less than fifty thousand words?
Books & arts
Becoming Ella
Andrew Ford
8 July 2024
Despite her clean-living reputation, the great American singer was a risk taker
Books & arts
Bach to the future
Andrew Ford
12 June 2024
The drive for musical authenticity needn’t always reach back
Books & arts
Music of remembrance
Andrew Ford
2 April 2024
In the wake of a war and the Holocaust, how should music commemorate?
Books & arts
Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale
Andrew Ford
9 February 2024
Packed with back story, a generation of TV themes showed producers to be taking music more seriously
Books & arts
To have and to hold
Andrew Ford
15 December 2023
It’s not just slimmer royalty payments for his compositions that make our music writer look back wistfully
Books & arts
Too young for dying
Andrew Ford
6 November 2023
The new Rolling Stones album circles back to the band’s earliest days
Essays & reportage
Blessed life
John Edwards
4 October 2023
With a new album just released and seventy years of playing under his belt, jazz pianist Mike Nock continues to perform, compose and mentor
Books & arts
The collaborators
Andrew Ford
27 September 2023
How pianist Paul Grabowsky benefited from the generosity of the Wilfred brothers and other Indigenous musicians
Books & arts
Shades of blue
Zora Simic
11 September 2023
Joni Mitchell’s
Blue
suffuses Amy Key’s memoir of single life
Books & arts
The master in the desert
Andrew Ford
4 September 2023
The many lives of Noël Coward, playwright, composer, director, actor and singer
Books & arts
What goes up must come down
Brett Evans
29 August 2023
Politics wasn’t far away when Blood, Sweat & Tears brought the house down in Romania
Books & arts
Moments of recognition
Andrew Ford
9 August 2023
The Hungarian composer György Ligeti remained endlessly inquisitive
Books & arts
Late bloomer
Zora Simic
10 July 2023
Singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams’s memoir is an instant classic
National affairs
The translator
Tim Rowse
5 April 2023
A capacity to enable fruitful cross-cultural interaction was among the strengths of Yolngu leader Yunupingu, who died last weekend
Books & arts
Fields of gold
Andrew Ford
28 February 2023
Not everything famous musicians do is magic
Books & arts
Mr Sibelius’s feeling for snow
Andrew Ford
3 February 2023
Does music
really
reflect its place of composition?
Books & arts
Delia and the Daleks
Andrew Ford
7 December 2022
How
Doctor Who
found its distinctive sounds
Books & arts
What I’ve been missing
Andrew Ford
4 November 2022
A fresh musical performance can reveal unrecognised qualities
Books & arts
The Queen’s music
Andrew Ford
21 September 2022
Music played the role only it could play at the Queen’s funeral
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