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The Old Master By James Bartel With his first wife Maria Barbara, his soulmate as history tells us, Sebastian Bach fathered seven children. The first child was a daughter, Catharina. A pair of twins died within days. The final son died within a year. Months later, Maria Barbara succumbed to disease. Bach was then 35 and engaged in the full awakening of his genius. His workload was Herculean and mounting, and now there were five children at home without a mother, the oldest being 12. Staggered by grief, Bach shouldered on. Hear the Old Master speak: "I was obliged to...

Composing can be a lonely job. Hour after hour, the composer sits at a piano, trying to bring out the music in his head. But for Aaron Copland, composition was about the people. Working with people, learning from them, befriending them, organizing and mentoring them. His enthusiasm for combining music with humanity assured his place in music history almost as much as his compositions. "As organizer, teacher, propagandist, critic, lecturer and expositor, he has been by far the most voluble, articulate and respected American musician of his time," wrote Harold Schonberg in The New York Times in 1970. His ballets...

<p>Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis has followed up with a written statement on his "root of evil" remarks.</p> <p>My opinion of the Israeli people, as on all things, has always been known and I am frankly at a loss as to why such a great commotion was made this time, as if it was heard for the first time. Maybe some people judged this to be the right time to launch an attack on me.</p>

Greek government spokesman Christos Protopapas commented on the statements made by US ambassador to Athens Thomas Miller against Mikis Theodorakis. Those who exercise a specific mission in Greece should be more careful and it is not part of their duties to exercise criticism on statements made by Greek citizens especially, when they refer to issues that do not concern the country they represent, stated Mr. Protopapas.

Greek composer and cultural icon Mikis Theodorakis added his contribution to the anti-Semitic miasma rising in parts of the world by characterizing the Jews as the root of the world's evils. Theodorakis, a towering figure in Greek music best known outside his native land for scoring the music for the film Zorba the Greek, took his shot at the Jews at a press conference to launch a new book. "We, the Greeks, did not turn aggressive like them because we have more history," Theodorakis was quoted by Y-net as saying. "Today it is possible to say that this small nation...