Monday – Friday at 7:00 pm
American Masters, Part I
Exploring Music is an adventure — an expedition through the world of classical music. We pick a theme each week and follow the music wherever it leads us. Over the years we’ve explored Shakespeare and music, have followed the lives of many composers (a sort of five-part mini-series), and visited the music of various locales — Paris, Venice, Spain, Hungary, the Pacific Rim. Each five-episode program is a musical journey that focuses on a particular, genre, music festival, or classical theme. It’s a sort of Outward Bound for music, with Bill McGlaughlin as our guide to make sure we all get home safe and sound.
Listeners' emailed suggestions have played a very important role in choosing themes. We’ve recorded over two hundred adventures, and the ideas keep turning up. We don’t think we’ll exhaust the possibilities. Exploring Music is familiar and welcoming, and is where you feel at home on your first visit and can’t wait to get back to sample what the series has come up with for its next five-episodes.
The player below features a continuous five hour loop of the most recent Exploring Music episode. Listen to the past two weeks of Exploring Music here.
American Masters, Part I
February 17, 2020
The first week in our series exploring great but lesser-known American composers: all born in the last decade of the 19th century. These are composers whose names are not Ellington, Gershwin, Copland, Barber, or Bernstein — Howard Hanson from Wahoo, Nebraska; Walter Piston from Rockland, Maine; William Grant Still born in Woodville, Mississippi; and Ruth Crawford Seeger born in East ...
It Was a Lover and His Lass
February 10, 2020
We start every hour of this week with a “hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino” from the incidental music in Shakespeare’s’ As You Like It. Bill rounds out each day with many different composers’ works influenced by all aspects of love.
Keyboard Smorgasbord
February 3, 2020
It’s a lot more than just pianos! We’ll follow the story of the musical keyboard,from the ancient Greeks all the way to synthesizers, examining music for many different types— clavichords, harpsichords, fortepianos, organs, harmoniums, accordions, dulcimers, cimbaloms, melodicas, and mallet instruments from Java to jazz. This is a large and interesting family!
Tone Poems
February 24, 2020
In a literal case of art imitating life, symphonic music is freed from its traditional structures and takes a programmatic turn. Generally one movement, tone poems use music to evoke the essence of a poem, a painting or other non musical source. Bill invites us to sit with him as he describes and listens to this image evoking dramatic music.
Elgar, Edward
March 2, 2020
There’s much more to Edward Elgar than graduation marches and the Enigma Variations. A composer of equally masterful symphonies, oratorios, chamber music, and concertos, he led a renaissance in 20th century England that firmly reestablished its musical identity. Don’t miss the last installment of the week when Bill features the “English Rose”, Jacqueline Du Pre in her legendary performance of ...
Millennium of Women in Music
March 9, 2020
Exploring Musicembraces works written in honor of, and by, great women — Masses for the Virgin Mary, Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, and songs by Clara Schumann. This week we feature women performers and composers going back as far as we can find them in the history books — the Benedictineabbess-composer Hildegard of Bingen;Mozart’s friend, the Spanish composer ...
Enescu, Georges
March 16, 2020
Georges Enesco’s family was steeped in the rich folklore and oral traditions of Romania. When he was just a young boy, his parents hired a gypsy violinist to teach him the violin by ear— note by note, phrase by phrase. And by the age of seven, Enesco was sent to the Vienna Conservatory to formalize his musical studies. Enesco as ...
Outward Bound
March 30, 2020
Afoot and lighthearted Bill takes to the open road with the world before him. In the steps of Walt Whitman, he explores the relationship of man to nature as expressed in music. Works include Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, Strauss’ Alpine Symphony, and Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras. Join us on this musical path.