The 12th-century nun’s influential work represents an important development in the history of music.

Celebrating the German composer whose farsighted innovations forever changed our approaches to composing and listening.

French composer Emmanuel Chabrier might be best known for his vivid musical portrait of Spain but Wagner was his true inspiration.

What with love, war and several day jobs, it’s remarkable that the French composer found time to compose.

Given his great success in the West, why did Prokofiev return to the grip of Stalin in the USSR? Daniel Jaffé offers an explanation.

It was his understanding of human emotions that made the 18th-century composer a true operatic genius.

Hannah French explores the life, music and mysteries of a remarkable Venetian whose exquisite vocal works are without parallel.

The first woman to win the Prix de Rome, the short-lived Lili Boulanger left many questions tantalisingly unanswered.

Best known today for La Serva Padrona and his Stabat Mater, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s career is a prime example of how 18th-century music was closely associated with nobility and power.

Employment within the court of Louis XIV allowed Jean-Baptiste Lully to lavish his talents on creating spectacular works for the stage, as Jan Smaczny explains.

Despite a lack of success in his own lifetime, notably with Carmen, Bizet soon became hailed as an operatic master, as George Hall explains.

Christopher Wiley traces the career of Ethel Smyth, who was the first woman to have an opera performed at the Metropolitan Opera, wrote the suffragette’s anthem, and developed a parallel career as an author.