How music turns ideas into molecular movement.

Look back to our music and sexuality issue.

Russian classical music’s money machine.

Is a popular perfect pitch course a revelation or a scam?

Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker starts with the score.

Composers who don’t feel jealous of Kendrick Lamar.

The eclectic influences on classical music, in issue #101.

On Music and Activism.

“The Gender Agenda,” a musical gameshow by Philip Venables.

Ben Johnston looks back.

After 100 issues of VAN, revisit the articles that started it all.

From the past, from tradition, and the unlearnable in issue #100.

Why we still need dedicated classical music spaces.

Is a popular perfect pitch course a revelation or a scam?

Robin Ticciati wants to hear internal fire.

Writing and thinking about the very first instrument.

The trials of reinvention in issue #99.

Stephen Wadsworth on writing words for Leonard Bernstein.

And wound up hating Mozart.

Raven Chacon looks for shared experience.

Music intersects with other arts.

Ways of making art, in issue #98.

Peter Ablinger on creating texture.

Is a popular perfect pitch course a revelation or a scam?

Meredith Monk translates biological process into a new language.

Why the conductor’s honorific is horrific.

How the far-right Polish government targets artists.

The personal and political in classical music.

Issue #96 focuses on process.

On Borealis, an experimental festival for music.

John McCowen goes from experimental music to rock fame and back again.

Daniel Mendelsohn on music.

Why do people stop playing music? Conversations with current and former musicians.

A student remembers Lilian Kallir and her unusual illness.

The violinist Christian Tetzlaff goes deeper.

The soprano explores her character Ophelia, in Hans Abrahamsen’s “let me tell you,” through song.

A photo essay from an organ builder’s workshop.

A concert in São Paulo’s Cracolândia.

An interview with the composer Betsy Jolas.

A former El Sistema violinist on endless rehearsals, political manipulation, and what needs to change for the Venezuelan youth orchestra training program to live up to its reputation.

Is El Sistema really a revolution in music education?

On Johannes Brahms and his ever-complicated relationship with women.

The composer on her—mostly non-classical—musical influences.

An interpretation of Schubert’s “Erlkönig” by the composer Georg Friedrich Haas.

The composer Georg Friedrich Haas starts living his sexuality.

Did Claude Vivier predict his own murder?

The director Morgan Neville discusses his documentary on Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble.

A poem by David Ferry, in sound.

Conversations with members of Europe’s first black and minority ethnic orchestra, Chineke!

Listening to Kim Jong-il’s operas.

Christian Gerhaher doesn’t want to entertain.

Is it better for your music to be streamed or pirated?

From mountain camping to Concertgebouw audition.

Cellist Kevin McFarland on his favorite melancholy, macabre music.

Playing Chopin and poker, at home and abroad.

The baritone Thomas Hampson on listening to his own voice, the vulnerability of Lied, and bringing an opera role home.

A conversation with Olga Neuwirth on the persistence of sexism in classical music.

Dr. Joanne Loewy, director of the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine, on the pitfalls of the audition process.

A new staging of George Benjamin’s opera “Written On Skin.”

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

On experiencing the Boston Symphony Orchestra live.

An interview with the German mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier.

A new production of “Lucia di Lammermoor,” by Heartbeat Opera.

An interview with Odradek Records founder John Anderson.

What does it mean when a conductor says he’s “bringing music” to societies with rich musical traditions?

Two graphic designers on new classical album covers.

Improvisation with family as a cure for orchestral burnout.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The formative sounds and experiences of composer Pauline Oliveros.

Transfiguration and tradition in Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht.”

The composers who matter to Ilan Volkov.

The composer Liza Lim on judging composer competitions.

Scoring Hong Kong film and arranging Harry Partch.

The world of custom baton makers.

Conversations with Polish music engravers.

What the mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča looks for in a production.

An opera playlist on injustice, violence, and making a beautiful ruckus.

The violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja is fed up.

An interview with the composer Christian Wolff.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The prevailing 19th-century attitudes towards injury and disability in classical music harm musicians and those around them.

“The assumption is often that music is used to drown out other sounds of torture; in fact, music is an additional weapon used against prisoners.”

A Concerto with Cornel West and pieces on Sonia Sotomayor and Donald Trump at the Apollo Theater.

Faced with a hostile government, new, improvised music in Russia is flourishing on the fringe.

A conversation with the cellist Jan Vogler on the rise of Pegida in Dresden.

The liberation of the Syrian city of Palmyra from ISIS by Russian forces called for a celebration. But this was no ordinary open air concert.

Reflecting on musical white privilege in Kenya and Benin.

Artists take over the Brazilian Ministry of Culture.

The Black tenors who’ve taken on the role of Otello.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Marin Alsop in São Paulo and Baltimore.

Herbert von Karajan and Arthur Honegger’s “Symphonie Liturgique.”

The present and future of artificial intelligence in composition.

A visit with Rebecca Saunders.

The composer Jakob Ullmann’s ongoing resistance.

Discovering the New York Opera Fest.

Dispatches from the Ojai Music Festival and Jordan Hall.

The evolving relevance of John Adams and his music.

Samir Chatterjee seeks detachment.

On Autism and emotion in music.

The risks of using famous artists as opera set designers.

An interview with the composer Tristan Murail.

Hold music and dance music with the choreographer Mark Morris.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard after the Aldeburgh Festival.

In Berlin with the South African composer Philip Miller.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Composing in the era of entrepreneurship.

A concert of black female composers in New York.

The actor chooses voices of the past and present.

Why aren’t we discussing structural inequality in classical music?

A strange homage to Ligeti’s Violin Concerto.

At the Belvedere Singing Competition, in Cape Town, with the tenor Lukhanyo Moyake.

Matt Haimovitz in Fishtail, Montana.

An interview with the composer and sound artist Lisa R. Coons.

Science fiction and Morton Feldman’s “Three Voices.”

Hartmut Haenchen jumps in at Bayreuth.

“The Hubble Cantata” in Brooklyn.

The composer Nathan Currier preserves the Midtown scene.

Early music specialist Reinhard Goebel still knows best.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Procrastination and the search for simplicity with the composer Natalie Draper.

A new release of a pivotal Julius Eastman work.

The personal and political histories of Lukas Ligeti.

The composer and saxophonist Matthew Evan Taylor on false binaries, anger as pitch, and the surprises of working with visual artists.

On the Multi-Story Orchestra, an ensemble based in a car park.

Where do piano tuners spend their days?

Matt Haimovitz in Cormons, Italy.

Bibliophilia, secrecy, Valium, and the world’s most important collection of contemporary music manuscripts.

Wolfgang Rihm teaches the Lucerne Festival’s Composer Seminar.

The mixes of the electroacoustic composer Carl Stone.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Who’s Your Conductor Soul Mate?

An interview with the composer Jüri Reinvere, on a musical life in the orbit of Ingmar Bergman and Käbi Laretei.

An interview with Helmut Lachenmann.

On pacifism in Britten and the music world today.

Selling the manuscript of Mahler’s Second Symphony.

An interview with the journalist and musicologist William Robin on “a scene without a name.”

What’s behind the obsession with children who compose?

Cult appeal and the universe with the composer Dylan Mattingly.

The conductor on intimate, intertwined threads of Finnish music.

The “Human Requiem,” before it arrives in New York City.

An interview with the composer Sarah Nemtsov, a winner of RicordiLab.

Weinberg and Lady Gaga with the Baltic Sea Philharmonic.

“Dichterliebe” in a collage with the pop and the pornographic.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Explorations of experimental music with Jennie Gottschalk.

What fan fiction based on a rock opera tells us about the musician’s life.

Katherine Balch dives into plant sounds, nonlinear novels, humming, and shivering.

The music of the people who tried, and failed, to achieve America’s highest office.

The composer and songwriter Gabriel Kahane is staying candid.

The violinist Leila Josefowicz is a tough cookie.

A profile of the Cambodian composer Him Sophy.

The conductor Elena Schwarz is developing her intuition.

What’s a classical musician to do in Trump’s America?

An interview with the violinist Hilary Hahn.

Classical musicians respond to the election.

Music for self-reflection and post-election blues.

On the effort performers put into looking effortless.

The composer Kaija Saariaho prepares for the Metropolitan Opera’s historic production of “L’Amour de Loin.”

Music from the 64th parallel north.

On the interaction between personal identity and artistic freedom.

The conductor Thomas Sanderling’s life with Mravinsky, Weinberg, and Shostakovich.

Does marijuana have a future in classical music?

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The conductor John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi.

On the future of the Archivio Luigi Nono.

Music on the border to the Gaza Strip.

Matt Haimovitz in Sarasota, Florida.

Janáček’s “Jenůfa” and the politics of forgiveness.

The violinist Vilde Frang searches for clarity.

What classical music has been up to in 2016 on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The sounds of the composer and artist’s “obsessive aesthetic fence-straddling.”

Does a composer’s country matter?

The composer Jennifer Walshe’s overwhelming worlds.

Yuval Sharon takes on opera’s future.

A profile of George Crumb at 87.

Songs from a gay Australian childhood and youth.

Talking motherhood and opera with Margarete Joswig.

Empathy and perception with the composer Sky Macklay.

A new exhibition on the life of Richard Wagner’s decidedly gay, ambivalently Nazi son.

An interview with Nabil Arbaain, a Syrian musician who fled Damascus.

Alex Temple’s polystylistic exuberance.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

King Ludwig II’s Wagnerian castle and a lineage of obsession.

The Refugee Orchestra Project envisions an open America.

Oscar Edelstein’s curiosity and defiance.

A profile of the artist and interviewer Helga Davis.

What classical music gets up Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

What one octogenarian performer’s experience reveals about getting old in the music business.

Chaya Czernowin discusses her upcoming opera “Infinite Now.”

And that’s OK.

A new production of Robert Ashley’s “Dust.”

An interview with the soprano Marina Rebeka.

The solace of John Cage’s speaking and writing.

The extremes of the baritone Georg Nigl.

Olivier Latry and Iveta Apkalna discuss the pleasures and perils of the organ.

Musicians and listeners respond to our survey.

What music says about the history of colonialism in Brazil.

Teju Cole’s musical obsessions.

Would Pierre Boulez have approved of the Pierre Boulez Saal?

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

What gets lost when orchestras share their conductors.

Tim Rutherford-Johnson discusses his new book “Music After the Fall.”

The composer on clashes, frictions, and utopian mixtures.

An interview with Alvin Lucier.

Sigiswald Kuijken’s matters of principle.

A selection of music by women for orchestras to program.

When the concert stage becomes a trigger for trauma, and what to do about it.

What British musicians listened to as their country triggered Article 50.

A profile of the composer and ping pong player Chung Yiu-kwong.

An interview with the composer Ashley Fure.

A profile of Michael Maierhof, explorer of objects.

A call for clarity in calls for scores.

Mahan Esfahani on piety and conservatism in early music.

An interview with the new JACK Quartet cellist Jay Campbell.

Music for books, ruined pianos, stone xylophones, and more.

Steven Osborne’s piano psychologies.

How did the repertoire become so narrow?

Sounds and wanderings by the composer Kristina Wolfe.

Andreas Staier responds to our interview with Mahan Esfahani.

Yair Klartag wants to live peacefully with doubt.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

A playlist by Sung Jin Hong, artistic director of the One World Symphony.

Alex Temple’s polystylistic exuberance.

The Refugee Orchestra Project envisions an open America.

Would Pierre Boulez have approved of the Pierre Boulez Saal?

And that’s OK.

When the concert stage becomes a trigger for trauma, and what to do about it.

A photo essay from Thessia Machado’s studio.

What musicians listened to during the runoff between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.

Where did classical music’s most famous label go wrong?

Venezuelans respond to Gustavo Dudamel.

The artistic director of a Jewish orchestra discovers a genre’s roots.

Kristine Opolais on acting and emptiness.

How two amateurs created the world’s most important resource on the French composer.

The cellist Mariel Roberts searches for transformation.

Improvisations by Rhymes With Opera.

On a search for the perfect music education.

Yarn/Wire’s “Currents” series comes full circle.

How Berlin and techno saved Joshua Fineberg.

Behind the hype of Teodor Currentzis.

Listening to Czech music with the conductor Jakub Hrůša.

Why studies questioning the Stradivarius myth are so persuasive.

An interview with the cellist Steven Isserlis.

What classical music gets up to on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

A new choral work by Michael Gordon.

An interview with the pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

On the New York premiere of “Three Way.”

Andrés Andrade teaches opera to teenagers.

George Lewis on opera, genre, and race.

Read our coverage of divas, drama queens, and the human voice.

Explore how in issue #62.

Matthias Pintscher looks for moments of perfection.

Correcting misogynist interpretations of Élaine Radigue’s “Biogenesis.”

Is the prevalence of suicide in opera harmful or healing?

No two experiences of music are the same.

Mark Andre’s disappearing sounds.

Why that matters in issue #63.

Saul Williams’s words to music.

Rethinking the voice with contemporary music.

Classical music has always been a little different.

The sounding objects of Ellen Fullman and Theresa Wong.

Discover the sounds of issue #64.

The enigmatic composer’s obsessions and influences.

An interview with Michel van der Aa.

Tackle the pressing questions with us in issue #65.

It may be old, but it definitely isn’t boring.

When a conservatory professor fell in love with his student, it tore a class apart.

An interview with Brian Brandt, the founder of Mode Records, on the future of the music industry.

Orientalism and a plea for humanity in “The Land of Smiles.”

Classical music that takes a stand.

Find new music in old traditions, in issue #66.

Paul Jacobs trusts his audience.

What’s up at the Center for Black Music Research.

Annea Lockwood’s sonic geographies.

In music new, radical, and fraught.

What makes it hard, what makes it worth doing.

A haunting new “Meistersinger” at Bayreuth.

Claire Chase and Anna Thorvaldsdóttir shape the concert.

The musical realms of Elizabeth A. Baker.

Leaders who set the tone.

Uri Caine’s classical improvisations.

New initiatives and resistance to them, in issue #68.

Are large ensemble tours worth their environmental cost?

The aesthetic campaigning of Against Modern Opera Productions.

Underpin the music in issue #69.

Music of intricate construction and gut-punch intensity.

And how they interact with sound.

The harpsichordist Richard Egarr’s music between worlds.

Concert Hall Hopping with Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell.

Classical music’s bizarre side.

Kristian Bezuidenhout wants to program music in its context.

In issue #70, tracing the contours of context.

Philip Venables’ formalized violence.

On politics and solace in Schubert’s “Winterreise.”

Song, rap, speech and sexuality.

And how they translate to timbre, in issue #71.

Addressing the political with the classical at the Lucerne Festival.

Amy Williams’s overlapping textures.

An interview with Brian Ferneyhough.

Three artists strive for beauty through unpredictability.

Headphones and chill with VAN.

Alina Ibragimova wants it darker.

Roland Kayn’s cybernetic compositions.

Alice Goodman defends her libretto to “The Death of Klinghoffer.”

In underground scenes, mining towns, and unhealthy diets.

Provocative opinion writing in VAN.

Ton Koopman on life and his hero Buxtehude.

How Shostakovich changed the improviser Liz Durette.

Cliquishness, misogyny, and hypocrisy at an insular new music festival.

VAN investigates.

Remembering Klaus Huber.

And figuratively, in issue #74.

Do classical music and techno have common DNA?

Berlin’s Staatsoper returns to its renovated home.

Revisit the writing that got VAN started.

Three radicals in issue #75.

An attempt to revive the music of Horatiu Radulescu.

Dror Feiler’s radical politics and art.

New classical music memes are actually funny.

Illuminating interviews, the heart of what we do.

A guide to the vastly underrated composer’s music.

Like the artists and makers this week have done.

An interview with the founder of IMSLP.

Pierre Audi’s vision for the Park Avenue Armory.

Mulling over what we’ve heard.

Who loved it, who hated it – “Elektra” at the Deutsche Oper.

Look to nature, scores, and humans.

On listening to music while airborne.

Roberto González-Monjas and his painstaking preparation.

How to tackle it, in issue #78.

The cellist’s reports from the road.

Unsuk Chin suffers for her art.

Are musicians becoming increasingly hostile towards the media?

An interview with Du Yun.

A visual approach to the art of music.

How three artists do it, in issue #79.

Tyshawn Sorey is tired of fighting.

Georges Aperghis has been thinking about robots.

“The Mother of Us All” at Hudson Hall.

Get to know the young composers.

An invitation to stop programming all-male concerts.

Each have their role in the artistic process, and in issue #80.

An openness to failure at the Ultima Oslo festival.

Ione completes an opera by her late partner Pauline Oliveros.

Artists who branch out from music in issue #81.

Jürg Frey wants to purify his sounds.

How Andrew Lawrence King tries to compose like Monteverdi.

We collect the most embarrassing moments from classical music social media.

Jessica Ekomane believes in mistakes.

Seeing the sound of music.

In issue #82.

An interview with Jean Rondeau.

Who loved it, who hated it – “Girls of the Golden West.”

On the impact of Dmitri Hvorostovsky

In issue #83, calls to treat artists as human beings.

Feminist criticism by one of our staff writers.

And failed miserably.

Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s 40-year-old essay is the most modern music book of the year.

On knowing and not knowing about James Levine.

Musical and male beauty in issue #84.

Our staff writer finds the drama in early music.

Suzanne Farrin’s subtractive composition.

And almost seriously injured myself.

William Christie has questions for himself.

Drown out the Christmas music with our bizarre and fascinating collections.

Go deep into life, death, and canned corn this week.

The cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras embraces transience.

The top 10 composers who only wrote one famous piece.

Christophe Rousset wants to help the repertoire.

Coping with the future in issue #86.

Writing on trans voices and New York visions.

For 2018, what we hope will change in classical music.

Who loved it, who hated it – Seth MacFarlane at the San Francisco Symphony.

The cellist Anner Bijlsma makes music without playing.

The music and sexuality issue.

Three calls to action, in issue #87.

How the composer Jay Schwartz found his path.

The up-and-coming alto Wiebke Lehmkuhl.

How classical music’s lack of diversity attracts the far-right.

On opera, voices, politics, and violence.

Who has it and who doesn’t, in issue #88.

Helmut Lachenmann speaks on “Marche fatale.”

A satire, a lawsuit, and a thin-skinned violinist.

Kirill Gerstein’s marathon career.

Who loved it, who hated it. From the critics that count.

To new music, to vulnerability, and to the tricks of psychoacoustics.

Mark Padmore wants attention and intention.

The trombonist and composer’s formative years.

On Making the Third Ear.

Tales from the tenacious and untamed.

Commuters, critics, and groupies.

Investigating classical music on the London Underground.

How Teodor Currentzis became a Russian sex symbol.

Nico Muhly on notes and rhythms.

The sound at classical music’s heart.

Layers of interrelation, in issue #91.

Susan McClary wants to debate the music.

On “dead wasps in the jam-jar (ii).”

Does music really have the power to heal veterans?

Issue #92 is serious. We aren’t always.

How to alleviate classical music’s insularity.

Is “Peter Grimes” a better play than opera?

“Die Gezeichneten” at the Komische Oper in Berlin.

Does classical music need a Rooney Rule?

Can music connect us with a greater power? Answers, in issue #93.

VAN and the Gesamtkunstwerk.

Terre Thaemlitz doesn’t succumb to any scene.

Craig Urquhart remembers his life with the conductor and composer.

On “Somnium” and hypnagogic hallucinations.

Stories from the ground in classical music.

Some of music’s more striking effects in issue #94.

On “La Passion de Simone.”

Why airlines don’t care about your instrument.

Donald Runnicles thinks conducting is the easy part.

Slow improvement, in creative life and the classical music industry.

Deeply personal essays on performing.

Over 20 years ago, James Levine was nearly caught.

A corrective to the 2018 Oscars Original Score shortlist.

Simon Steen-Andersen puts transformation on display.