One for all

James Fenton bemoans the fate of the chorister in Bach's St Matthew Passion

On wings of song

James Fenton on why singing lieder demands emotional restraint

Man and superman

Wagner searched myths for tales of ancient heroism. But the ideals he found there - of sacrifice, redemption and the sanctity of love - led him back to the modern world

Orders, orders

Couperin wanted to hear his music performed with taste, and filled his scores with careful instructions to be sure of it. Even now, a player ignores them at their peril, says pianist Angela Hewitt.

In harmony

Daniel Barenboim is an Israeli and a world-famous conductor, Edward Said a Palestinian, renowned advocate of his people and a professor of literature. They tell Suzie Mackenzie about their unlikely friendship and their shared passion - music

Defenders of lost causes

James Fenton argues that the operatic repertoire expands backwards, at the expense of new work

Sound and fury

After a lifetime of frustration at her tone-deafness, Margaret Drabble has, thanks to Brahms, experienced a musical miracle

For God and Gilead

Margaret Atwood was surprised when a composer suggested making an opera of The Handmaid's Tale, her dystopian vision of America under a theocracy. Now she's dazzled by the work's power and prescience

More sound!

Beethoven wanted to write music full of comedy and tragedy - if only he could find a piano robust enough for the job

Prokofiev and propaganda

An opera written for the Stalinist state is beginning to transcend its time, says James Fenton

The versatile peer

With his dyed doves, literary pranks and modernist zeal, Lord Berners wasn't merely an amateur composer. Gavin Bryars celebrates the man who 'did more to civilise the wealthy than anyone'

Rock opera

Wagner's Götterdämmerung is set in a dry, harsh land. So when John Kinsella was asked to adapt the libretto, moving it to Western Australia seemed only natural

The voice of America

Civil war marches, hymns, parlour songs - Charles Ives transformed his country's everyday sounds into some of the most innovative orchestral music ever written

Don’t look back

Four hundred years ago, Claudio Monteverdi wrote Orfeo, one of the earliest operas. It sparked a debate, says Ian Bostridge, that has endured to this day: what comes first, words or music?