Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Music Box

  • Tumultuous crescendos and tranquil decrescendos in Ravel’s work

    Michael YafiChaden YafiHouston, Texas, United States The world is commemorating the 95th anniversary of Maurice Ravel’s Boléro. The composer continues to be one of the most enigmatic classical music personalities. Born in 1875 in Ciboure, France, he displayed from an early age a keen interest in the piano. Guided by his father, who would offer…

  • The parallel paths of opera and medicine

    In 1597 when Jacopo Peri composed Dafne, the first opera ever written, sporadic epidemics of bubonic plague were still striking his city of Florence. Venice was also suffering greatly. It had been visited by the plague twenty-two times, and some 50,000 of its people had died in 1576. The plague affected predominantly the poor in…

  • And for unto us… Medicine, Messiah, and Christmas

    Desmond O’NeillDublin, Ireland Although the very first performance of the Messiah took place in April 1742 in Dublin with the London première following in March 1743, the oratorio is closely associated with the Christmas season in the Anglophone world. The origin of this custom has been claimed by the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston…

  • Franz Liszt and Lisztomania: “Le concert, c’est moi”

    Elizabeth ColledgeJacksonville, Florida, United States Much has been written about the hysteria accompanying Beatlemania, and before that, the frenzies generated by Elvis, Sinatra, and similar artists, primarily musicians. But before the Beatles, before Elvis, before Frank, there was Franz Liszt, whose 1844 concert in Berlin shocked the musical world and generated the term and medical…

  • Stay inside: A toast to the frontline

    Tyler BeauchampRushay AmarathAndy NguyenAugusta, Georgia, United States The COVID-19 pandemic introduced us to a danger we knew little of how to protect ourselves from. I had spent the last four years fighting for the chance to become a physician, and now, in March 2020, I found myself useless to help. My parents were doing everything…

  • Nikolai Medtner: his forgotten melodies, music, and life

    Michael YafiHouston, Texas, United States The music of Nikolai Medtner (1880 -1951) is among the most enigmatic of the piano repertoire. Medtner was an opinionated composer who admired Rachmaninoff and rejected all attempts at modernism in music. Rachmaninoff met Medtner in Russia and the two composers had a mutual admiration for one another. Rachmaninoff told…

  • Béla Bartók (1881-1945): The years in America, triumph over tragedy

    James L. FranklinGeorge DuneaChicago, Illinois, United States Black clouds of war were hanging over the world when Béla Bartók and his wife Ditta Pásztory (1903-1982) disembarked in New York Harbor on October 30, 1940. For the remainder of his life, Bartók would learn, as had Dante, “. . . how salt the taste of another…

  • Charles Valentin Alkan

    Charles-Henri Valentin Morhange was a precocious child who played the piano at the age of five and gave his first public performance at seven. He was the second of six children of an old Ashkenazi family that for centuries had lived near the town of Metz in Alsace. Born in Paris in 1813, he later…

  • Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

    For nearly half of his life Joseph Haydn occupied the humble position of musician in the service of the Esterhazy princes, wearing livery and playing his wonderful compositions while the guests at dinner most likely only half- listened while discussing the latest political intrigues in Vienna. In time his reputation grew and when leaving in…

  • The patronage and playability of Mozart’s flute works

    Stephen MartinDurham, United Kingdom It is therapeutic to have an intellectual interest outside clinical work, a hinterland to recharge the batteries. Music gives stimulation, enjoyment, and refreshment while resting the verbal brain. This is nothing new. Dr Ferdinand Dejean1 paid Mozart to write an extraordinary number of flute works, the largest example of a great…