Monday - Friday at 7:00 pm
Nielsen, Carl
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.
Nielsen, Carl
Bill welcomes us to a weeklong look at the life and music of Carl Nielsen, who rose from humble beginnings to one of Denmark’s most prominent composers. A remarkably original and appealing composer, he wrote in every genre – chamber music, concerti, operas, piano music, and composed six symphonies. We will hear Nielsen’s orchestration of Danish folk tunes, his popular ...
How Strange the Change from Major to Minor, Part II
When our listener wrote asking Bill to describe the different scales and modes in music, he said a week ought to do it. Bill quickly realized that a week ought NOT to do it, and two weeks were better! So, this week we continue listening to music change from major to minor, plus harmonic surprises that composers add to their ...
How Strange the Change from Major to Minor, Part I
“There’s no love song finer, but how strange the change from major to minor.” ‑ Cole Porter This two-week series comes from a listener who wrote asking about the different scales in Western music. You may know of major and minor scales, and hear the change of mood that composers can achieve by transitioning between them, but there are five ...