I don’t know what anyone else’s definition of miracle is, but in my opinion Mendelssohn’s octet for strings is a miracle. What a fabulous piece of music! Mendelssohn was only 16 when he composed it. This octet in four movements is so beautiful, so buoyantly happy, and so marvelous in its musical ...
I will now discuss the process of star and planet formation while raising certain questions concerning the nomenclature and definitions of certain categories of objects.
The dividing line between a red dwarf (the dimmest, least massive main-sequence stars) and a brown dwarf or “failed star” is definite and easy to define. It is ...
Not every piece of classical music is, or was meant to be, an awesome masterpiece. In this short essay I would like to discuss a few examples of classical music that are good, but not profound or complex. Such pieces are well-thought-out works, yet they are not in-depth, complex, profound works, nor ...
The reality we are immersed in is illusory. That’s right, this world is an illusion. That is not to say that it doesn’t exist. Rather, it is not perceived as what it really is, and furthermore, our physical reality is only one of an infinite number of realities, parallel universes, if you ...
The so called Standard Model of physics is a masterpiece of mathematical reasoning. It is the most successful theory of nature ever devised by humans. Most of its predictions have been verified by three decades of experimentation. Before the Standard Model, there were numerous theories proposed to explain physical reality. Almost as ...
If there was ever a composer who was acutely aware of his place in history, it was Johannes Brahms. He knew from a very young age, what he wanted to do in life, and by the time he reached middle age, he was well aware of his standing in the history of ...
I would like to open this essay by quoting from Charles Rosin’s book, “The Classical Style.” On page 281 he says, “No other composer of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ever understood the demands of writing for three voices as Mozart did, except for Bach in his trio-sonatas for double manual and ...
