Members of the Texas Southern University marching band perform following the HBCU Swingman Classic at Globe Life Field on July 12, 2024 in Arlington, Texas.

The Storied History of HBCU Marching Bands

Marching bands at historically Black colleges and universities can be seen as both celebratory emblems and complicated arbiters of Black American culture.
Concert of Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon by Maerten van Heemskerck

A Brief History of the Muses

Scholar Alison Habens tells us more about the Greek goddesses who provided divine inspiration for ancient poets.
Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher’s “Musical Ark”

The first algorithmically generated music came to us in the seventeenth century, courtesy of Kircher and his Arca musarithmica.
Das Vogelkonzert (The Bird Concert) by Jan Brueghel the Younger, c. 1640-1645

Every Good Bird Does Fine

Is birdsong music, speech, or something else altogether? The question has raged for millennia, drawing in everyone from St. Augustine to Virginia Woolf.