It can be both enjoyable and motivating to take stock of all the sheet music we play on the piano (or aspire to play) into different categories. This can really help with the sense of progress and achievement....

My father worked from nine to five every day, never did overtime, and was back eating with the family even before Neighbours had finished – which was shown right before the 6 O’clock News. And yet he could...

Back in December 1989 Burgess wrote an article predicting the shape of the ‘90s. He died a few short years later. Burgess was always one to astutely put his finger on social trends and understand what...

Rather than consulting weather forecasts on our phones and reading off the numerical statistics for a particular location (temperature, chance of rain etc), let’s try to really understand what is happening...

Getting there You can take a train from St Lazare in Paris to Le Havre on the coast in just over 2 hours. It’s then not much of a walk from the station to the centre of town.   Le Havre is in fact a large...

During medieval times, the church was of course the overwhelming influence, and to be a philosopher was to be a theologian. Theology only really started to be questioned during the Renaissance. But that...

Let’s take a whistle-stop tour of the ideas and philosophies of the Renaissance (1350-1600). Religious ideas A cleavage appeared between boring scholastic theology and the new sciences which sought to...

The pitch of veneration that JS Bach can inspire is unbounded. For these worshippers, every measure of his music is sacred. Wagner’s description of Bach as “the most stupendous miracle in all music”...

Spinoza (1632-1677) was a bit of an eccentric. A Dutch philosopher of Jewish origin, he cultivated a very original take on the nature of God and the universe. Half rationalist, half mystic, he shocked...

Whenever I go to London I always call in on a small radical bookstore called Housmans on the lookout for interesting finds. Housmans, located behind Kings Cross on Caledonian Road This time, amongst the...

Roll recordings and the brief few seconds of Gershwin playing ‘I Got Rhythm’ (1931 film) on YouTube attest to his prowess on the piano. He produced a long string of Broadway shows with titles...

1858 is a key date in the history of chess, the year when Paul Charles Morphy dazzled the world. This was the time before grandmasters spent their lives working on prepared lines lasting until the early...

The long stretch of the Middle Ages boasts many great works of literature, from Beowulf to the Song of Roland, from Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur” to “El Cantar de Mio Cid”. But we have to wait until the...

Michel Foucault (1926-84) was a French thinker, one of the “postmodernists”. Not really a philosopher so much as a cultural critic. With his bald head and thick glasses, he certain cut a striking image....

The most accessible genres of classical music are those which combine music with drama – namely ballet and opera. These forms combine pure music with a storyline and a visual feast.   Operas are quite...

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) Alessandro was a great composer of vocal music – operas, cantatas, oratorios and motets. Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) But “Scarlatti” usually refers to Alessandro’s...

When I came across this book by chance, I pounced on it! It was written in french shortly after Chopin’s death in 1849, and represents Liszt’s only full-length book (he wrote several essays and programme...

Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto together in 1848. It’s punchy and readable. It starts “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism”, and finishes “The workers have nothing to...

We drove down the A13 from Paris and spent a few hours in Fécamp on a cold sunny day in March. This port town might not be at the top of the list when it comes to Normandy’s most scenic destinations, but...

A sizeable proportion of Bach’s oeuvre was written for the organ, and this in itself is a good enough reason for us to familiarise ourselves with the instrument. Playing an organ in a church can also be...