Classics For Kids

American-born Leonard Bernstein became famous all over the world as a composer, a conductor, and a pianist. In addition to writing classical music, composed classic Broadway musicals, including West Side Story.

Appropriately spooky classical music for Halloween.

Incidental music creates a mood, or illustrates the action for what is going on in a play, movie or television show.

Music by composers from the three official Scandinavian countries -- Norway, Denmark and Sweden -- and a couple of unofficial ones -- Finland and Iceland!

"In The Hall of the Mountain King" is part of the incidental music Edvard Grieg wrote for Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt. Hear the story of the play as you listen to Grieg's music.

Edvard Grieg was from a music-loving Norwegian family. In addition to becoming the leading Scandinavian composer of his day, Grieg became a big supporter of Norwegian arts and culture.

After Christopher Columbus made his first trip across the Atlantic Ocean, Spain and other European countries began to colonize the Americas. Spanish music had a big influence on Latin American music - and so did the music of the enslaved people who were brought over from Africa. Hear how composers and players in Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Paraguay and other parts of Latin America married European forms with Indigenous sounds, creating folk music traditions that have become classics in their own right.

In the 16th century, "conquistadores" - soldiers from Spain - sailed to Mexico, and took over the country from the Indigenous people who lived there. The Spanish brought their language, their religion, and their music to the place they called "Nueva Espana," or New Spain. Mexico became independent from Spain in the 19th century, but the music stayed, combined with African and Indigenous forms, and took on a life of its own.

When composers use their country's folk songs, dances, and rhythms to paint musical pictures of local places and legends, it's called musical nationalism. Hear how composers like Isaac Albeniz, Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla and others defined the Spanish sound with spirit, fire, and romance.

!Bienvenidos! Listen and explore the music of some of Spain's most influential composers and players, from King Alfonso X (a.k.a. "Alfonso El Sabio"/Alfonso the Wise) to Francisco Tarrega, known as "the father of classical guitar." You'll also learn how the guitarra came to Spain in the first place.

Zoltan Kodaly developed a method for teaching music. It is still used by teachers around the world today. Jill Trinka, who teaches the Kodaly Method, talks with Naomi Lewin.

Zoltan Kodaly was not the only composer to use folk tunes in the music he wrote. Here are some others.

Kodaly's opera Hary Janos is about a real person who told real whoppers - big, fat lies. If you listened to him, you'd think he defeated Napoleon's army all by himself.

Zoltan Kodaly was born in a small town in Hungary. His father worked for the Hungarian railroad, so the family moved around a lot. This meant that as a kid, Zoltan heard folk music from many different parts of the country. When he grew up, Hungarian folk music became his passion. Kodaly spent a large part of his life collecting his native music, and teaching his countrymen about it.

"Rhapsody" is an ancient word that means "songs stitched together". The Greeks used to write long poems in praise of their heroes, and then take bits and pieces of those poems and string them together for performance. In music, a rhapsody is a free-form piece that takes different tunes and strings them together.

In his day Franz Liszt was most famous as a pianist. So, were Mozart, Beethoven and a lot of other composers.

Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies were greatly influenced by gypsy, or Romani music. Brahms, Telemann and Verdi are among the many composers were attracted to this distinctive music.

Inspired by violinist Niccolo Paganini, Franz Liszt became a piano superstar. Many classical music superstars followed, including Jan Paderewski, Jenny Lind, Van Cliburn, Enrico Caruso, Yo-Yo Ma and Lang Lang.

Franz Liszt was a pianist, composer, conductor and teacher who came up with musical innovations in all those fields. He was the first of the virtuoso performers and invented the solo recital. As one of the greatest pianists the world has ever known, Liszt was a 19th century superstar.

From the late 1800's to the early 1900's, professional bands toured all over the United States, and many towns in this country had their own amateur bands.