Monday - Friday at 7:00 pm
Pastoral Symphonies
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.
Pastoral Symphonies
March 17, 2025
This week will explore symphonic music inspired by bucolic nature scenes. Bill mentions that we will listen to Harold in Italy, Richard Strauss in the mountains, Vaughan Williams in clover, and Beethoven right where you expect him to be, in the Austrian countryside. We’ll also feature the thoughts and writings of two notable American figures: environmentalist John Muir and novelist ...
I Lost it at the Movies
March 10, 2025
Music for (silent) film started in France when Saint-Saëns composed an original score for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (L’Assassinat du duc de Guise, 1908) and Hollywood took it from there. Bill recalls some of his favorite original and arranged scores for many great films: Bernard Herrmann’s work for Citizen Kane and several Hitchcock films; Elmer Bernstein for ...
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
March 3, 2025
A look at the life and music of one of Russia’s most talented and controversial composers, Sergei Prokofiev. Born in Tsarist Russia, Prokofiev was a brilliant pianist who delighted in shocking the bourgeoisie with his outrageous creations. He went on to become one of the most beloved composers of the 20th century, creating seven symphonies, great concertos, and ballets such ...
Merrie England
March 24, 2025
Ready your passport! We’re traveling to Merrie, Old England. Ralph Vaughan Williams, Edward Elgar, and John Dowland all composed music inspired by the folk tunes in country pubs, the pageantry of Royal Albert Hall and Covent Garden, and the stunning countryside. Join us as we walk along England’s pathways, listening to Greensleeves, Turtle Doves, and Dame Janet Baker. Rule Britannia! ...
Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977)
March 31, 2025
Leopold Stokowski was a renowned conductor known for creating over 200 orchestral transcriptions. His works are colorful and varied, spanning a wide range from the organ pieces of Johann Sebastian Bach to the operas of Richard Wagner. Stokowski played a pivotal role in the early development of orchestral recordings, collaborating with Bell Labs and the Philadelphia Orchestra. In 1940, he ...
Symphony, Part 01
April 7, 2025
In the beginning, there were Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, or so we thought. That is until we uncovered a whole world of instrumental music so varied, so wonderful, and so woefully unknown, Bill decided to take time in that glorious place. Starting with a sinfonia by Biaggio Marini from 1618, we slowly make our way through the seventeenth and eighteenth ...
Dona Nobis Pacem
April 14, 2025
Recently, Bill was staying at a beautiful little home in an oak forest in Massachusetts, near the Connecticut River. There had been tremendous thunderstorms through the night, but when he awoke, on that Sunday morning, the sun was shining, and the birds were singing. He thought what we need in the world is more days of peace and joy. So, ...
Schumann, Robert (1810-1856)
April 21, 2025
A musical biography of the torrid life of one of Germany’s early romantics. Married to composer/pianist Clara Wieck, and a friend to Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn, and Joseph Joachim, Schumann was at the very heart of the German Romantic intellectual movement in the mid-nineteenth century. He was a composer, pianist, and music critic. This week we will listen to Maurizio ...
