Rage can be a funny emotion, as long as you’re not the one who is feeling it. Musicians are lucky – when we have emotions bottled up within us, we can play music to blow off steam or come to terms with our feelings.

We usually don’t associate Art Music with feelings like rage, but when you feel this way, you have to find an appropriate outlet. When you’re too worked up to play something calming, and too frazzled to play something structured, you have to find something barbaric. Enter Béla Bartok, and his Allegro Barbaro. Bang those keys, make it ugly, until everyone knows how angry you are!

… they STEAL.

Frédéric Chopin had a pretty kickin’ idea when he wrote his nocturnes for solo piano. They are perfect – intimate, romantic, dreamy. Well, when Chopin kicked the bucket in 1849, Franz Liszt took his idea and ran with it. The guy wasn’t even cold in his grave, and already Liszt was penning a shameless copy of his style.

Oh man, there are soooooo many good Viola jokes. How many, you ask? So many, that Wikipedia has a an entry for “Viola Jokes“.

The viola is definitely the black sheep of the string family. Essentially, it’s an oversized violin – but it’s out of proportion to the violin and the cello – the body is larger than the violin, but the neck isn’t proportionally longer, and so the strings aren’t as tense as the violin or cello, giving it a sound distinct from its family members (a subtle difference, but it’s there.) Historically, violinists who couldn’t cut it on the violin were “demoted” to viola, which tended to have boring, easier parts to play.

But that was soooooo 1700. Nowadays, violists might still be the black sheep, but they can play just as well as their violin/cello counterparts, and have even managed to score a handful of pieces specifically for their instrument. Carl Maria von Weber was attracted to the dark, muted timbre of the instrument, and churned out this little two-movement Hungarian dance for the instrument.