The tale of Romeo and Juliet as told in Shakespeare’s play has inspired artists, writers, and composers for centuries. Even Shakespeare himself was inspired by earlier 16th century Italian sources, which were in turn part of a tradition of tragic romances

In the early 20th Century, British composers like Vaughn Williams, Butterworth, and Holst worked to develop a distinctly British style and sound different from the German and French traditions that had so dominated 19th Century romanticism. They turned to the

The music of Dmitri Shostakovich, like that of most composers, touches on the full gamut of human emotions, and this should not be surprising. But for those of us who lived a good portion of our lives during the cold