Topic description and stories

Band of the second regiment of Life Guards, leaving Windsor, 1830. Oil on canvas by John Frederick Tayler, 1830. National Army Museum

Military musicians returning from Napoleonic wars invented Britain’s brass bands

30 Oct 2024

Military musicians returning from the Napoleonic wars established Britain’s first brass bands earlier than previously thought, Dr Eamonn O'Keeffe has...

Read more
A man playing a bonang

Pythagoras was wrong: there are no universal musical harmonies, study finds

27 Feb 2024

The tone and tuning of musical instruments has the power to manipulate our appreciation of harmony, new research shows. The findings challenge...

Read more

Musical preferences unite personalities across the globe

10 Feb 2022

Research involving more than 350,000 participants from six continents has found that links between musical preferences and personality are universal...

Read more
Composite image of Cambridge musicians

University of Cambridge commits to a major new centre for music performance

25 Mar 2021

The University of Cambridge is creating a Centre for Music Performance (CMP) to transform the visibility, scale, ambition and reach of musical life...

Read more

11 hip-hop artists who had something to say about mental health

09 Dec 2020

How hip hop artists are opening up about their struggles with depression and anxiety, helping reduce stigma and encouraging others to seek support.

Read more

The cellist whose Christmas starts in summer

18 Dec 2019

When he’s not running college choirs and keeping the piano tuned as Director of Music for Magdalene and Director of St John’s Voices, Graham Walker...

Read more

Music inspired by a survivor of the Nazis wins international recognition

24 May 2019

A new orchestral composition - Ik zeg: NU by Richard Causton - has been chosen by BBC Radio 3 for worldwide broadcast.

Read more

Music to the ears: Liszt’s lost opera

18 Feb 2019

Liszt's lost opera heard for the first time in 170 years

Read more
Anush Hovhannisyan (soprano), Samuel Sakker (tenor), and Arshak Kuzikyan (bass-baritone) record the trio finale with pianist and musicologist David Trippett, in Jesus College Chapel, University of Cambridge

Abandoned Liszt opera finally brought to life - 170 years later

07 Mar 2017

An Italian opera by Franz Liszt – which lay incomplete and largely forgotten in a German archive for nearly two centuries – will be given its world...

Read more
King's College Chapel

King’s College Chapel, 21 pianos, one very special performance

20 Feb 2017

One of the UK’s most iconic buildings will resonate to the sound of 21 pianos on Tuesday evening as part of a unique event involving a Cambridge...

Read more
Flamenco by Veyis Polat (cropped)

Flamenco: what happens when a grassroots musical genre becomes a marker of culture

18 Aug 2016

What happens when a musical genre becomes an identifier for a region? In his book Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain ...

Read more
CD Album Covers Wallpaper

Opinion: Musical genres are out of date – but this new system explains why you might like both jazz and hip hop

05 Aug 2016

David Greenberg (Department of Psychology) discusses the problems of labeling music by genre.

Read more

Pages