David Schiff | The Nation

Every musical note has life in it. For six decades the composer Elliott Carter imagined that life precisely.

Finishing the Hat makes clear Stephen Sondheim’s belief that being an artist requires intellectual vigilance.

Can the conundrum of Stravinsky's wayward development be answered by exploring his national roots?

Can the conundrum of Stravinsky's wayward development be answered by exploring his Russian roots?

Terry Teachout's new biography of Louis Armstrong is stuck in the discophile groove.

Gustav Mahler's embrace of Germanness and battles with anti-Semitism.

In songs, symphonies and sonatas, Charles Ives furnished America's musical past with a future.

A recent production of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes is a grim masterpiece of opera noir.

Why listen to Stravinksy in sequence when you can click shuffle on your iPod and rediscover the music anew?

Edward Said's musical predilections capture the full complexity of the master theorist.