Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin

Monday - Friday at 7:00 pm

Music for the Masses

Exploring Music is an adventure — an expedition through the world of classical music. We pick a theme each week and follow the music wherever it leads us. Over the years we’ve explored Shakespeare and music, have followed the lives of many composers (a sort of five-part mini-series), and visited the music of various locales — Paris, Venice, Spain, Hungary, the Pacific Rim. Each five-episode program is a musical journey that focuses on a particular, genre, music festival, or classical theme. It’s a sort of Outward Bound for music, with Bill McGlaughlin as our guide to make sure we all get home safe and sound.

Listeners' emailed suggestions have played a very important role in choosing themes. We’ve recorded over two hundred adventures, and the ideas keep turning up. We don’t think we’ll exhaust the possibilities. Exploring Music is familiar and welcoming, and is where you feel at home on your first visit and can’t wait to get back to sample what the series has come up with for its next five-episodes.

The player below features a continuous five hour loop of the most recent Exploring Music episode.

Music for the Masses

March 25, 2024

For the past eight centuries, Latin Masses have continuously been written and played for many different occasions, religious or not. This program spotlights recordings that bring these ancient Latin texts to life. Spanning from the beginning of written masses to modern times, Bill demonstrates the process it takes to compose these enduring masses that continue to be played

The Four Seasons

March 18, 2024

This week, Bill welcomes the vernal equinox with music inspired by the seasons: spring, summer, fall, and winter. We’ll be able to envision the boundless majesty of the summer sun in Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten, and the frosty and shivering winds of Vivaldi’s Winter, and then to spice up our week, Astor Piazzolla’s tango, Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (Cuatro Estaciones ...

Shostakovich, Dmitri, Part II

March 11, 2024

This week we conclude our two-part series on the life and times of Dmitri Shostakovich. From his later symphonies to the Jazz Suite No. 2, Bill explores all forms of Shostakovich’s writing. Starting with Shostakovich’s Four Romances after Pushkin, Op. 46, and his Symphony No. 5, The Market Place from The Gadfly, Op. 97, Bill ends the week with Kim ...