Episode 4 of Tim The Composer's podcast is all about Monteverdi's opera, Orfeo, one of the very earliest of all operas. Tim discovers the fascinating story behind the opera's creation, exploring how and why Monteverdi and his collaborator Striggio ended up picking on this story in particular and creating this new artform, and the background in the Duchy of Mantua and the influence of the remarkable House of Gonzaga.
In Episode 3 of Tim the Composer's Podcast, Tim goes back to the earliest origins of reliably written music, and talks about Guido d'Arezzo, his life, and his solutions to the problem of writing down music such that it can be reconstructed precisely years, decades, or centuries later. Tim also discovers a number of surprising and entertaining connections between Guido d'Arezzo and the musical film "The Sound of Music"!
In Episode 2 of Tim the Composer's Podcast, Tim looks at J.S. Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier". He explains what both "well-tempered" and "clavier" mean precisely, and then explores the music itself in the dramatic context of Bach’s life at around the time of the music’s composition.
In this first episode of Tim the Composer’s Podcast, Tim explores Beethoven’s First Symphony. The story starts as Beethoven leaves home in Bonn for a new life in Vienna and his friends give him a send-off, and ends 8 years later with the first performance there of his first symphony - a revolutionary moment in music!
In Episode 0 of Tim The Composer's Podcast, Tim introduces the podcast and explains what it's all about, including why he doesn’t call it "classical" music!