KPAC Blog

A new book, a new recording and some old instruments, all addressing the most memorable phrase in music: the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

Matthew Guerrieri has written a book about this symphony, called The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination. Guerrieri writes about how Beethoven's piece resonated with everyone from revolutionaries to Romantics, and German nationalists to anti-German resistance fighters.

San Antonio's two period-instrument early music ensembles will join forces to present a concert that traces the evolution of musical styles from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Ensemble Cazona performs on copies of Renaissance-era recorders. Retablo will perform music of the 18th century using Baroque recorder and traverso with viola da gamba, harpsichord, and theorbo. This concert will take place at 3:00 on Sunday, November 25, in the Chapel of the Incarnate Word on the campus of Incarnate Word University located at 4301 Broadway. This event is free and open to the public.

For more than 50 years, John Williams' music has taken us to galaxies far, far away through adventures here on earth, made us feel giddy joy and occasionally scared us to death.

Arrogant, willful and brusque, not paying attention to how he dressed or even to combing his hair, Ludwig van Beethoven wasn't a man cut out for high society. Luckily in Vienna, the upper crust loved and understood music, and with that introduction, Beethoven was exactly in the right place.

Paul Jacobs is one of the leading organists of his time, and is passing along that knowledge and skill to the next generation at the Juilliard School. Known for his stunning new music performances, Jacobs is equally mesmerizing in the "standards."

San Antonio audiences can hear Paul play Bach, Mozart, and "a pair of ladies, from France - Nadia Boulanger, known for her teaching generations of composers, in a work for organ." Jacobs also says he is looking forward to spending time in San Antonio.

There are essentially two versions of Don Carlo for Giuseppe Verdi. I don't mean that one is in French and the other Italian. Historians and musicologist are manic about the fact that this is untrue; however, there is a work, Don Carlos (francophone's are insistent on this), originally written in French for the Paris Opera that was so vast (5 hrs and change, they say), and it's richness so prodigal, that it obscured the works greatness.