Musically Speaking

We still understand formality at weddings and funerals. We dress differently, speak differently, behave differently. But when the living God calls His people into His presence each Lord’s Day, we seem increasingly tempted to make the occasion feel as ordinary as possible. In this episode I reflect on what our worship teaches us about God, why holiness and joy are not opposites, and what music spec...

Someone once asked me how you get a person to love Bach when they would rather listen to Taylor Swift. In this episode, I reflect on why that question is framed the wrong way and how C.S. Lewis’s distinction between cutting down jungles and irrigating deserts relates to musical education. The goal is not to take things away. It is to enlarge a person’s capacity to hear. Good music rewards return v...

In 1829, a twenty-year-old Felix Mendelssohn conducted Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in Berlin and helped awaken a new generation to music that had largely disappeared from public performance. In this episode, I reflect on that remarkable act of musical stewardship, and on the deeper pattern it illustrates. Mendelssohn did for Bach what Bach did for those who came before him: he received an inheritan...

On what would have been John Lennon’s 86th birthday, I return to “In My Life,” one of his most reflective songs and one of the great tracks from Rubber Soul . In this episode, I consider the restraint of Lennon’s lyric, George Martin’s iconic keyboard interlude, and the way memory, people, and the passing of time shaped some of Lennon’s best writing. I also make a case for listening to Rubber Soul...

Reginald Heber’s “The Son of God Goes Forth to War” is a familiar hymn text in many Christian traditions, but one lesser-known setting brings out something different in it. In this episode, I reflect on Leonard Payton’s Dorian setting of the hymn and the way its musical character holds together suffering, sacrifice, solemnity, and hope. Rather than turning the text into a simple victory march, the...

In 1951, Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong teamed up for “Gone Fishin’,” and the recording’s charm comes from the fact that they never try to sound alike. Crosby is smooth, relaxed, and conversational. Armstrong is gravelly, flexible, and unmistakably himself. In this episode, I reflect on the teasing, rhythmic give-and-take, and unlikely vocal blend that make the performance so much fun, and on why...

Jon Batiste comes from one of New Orleans’ great musical dynasties, not unlike the Marsalis family. He was playing drums in the Batiste Brothers Band at age eight, earned his bachelor’s and master's degrees in jazz at Juilliard, served as bandleader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, won the Grammy for Album of the Year for We Are, and won an Oscar for co-composing the score for Soul. In this...

Samuel Barber composed his Adagio for Strings in 1936 as an intimate meditation inspired by a passage from Virgil's Aeneid. He did not write it for grief. And yet grief found it. On this 25th anniversary of September 11th, I reflect on how this piece became the unofficial anthem of American mourning, from the radio announcement of Franklin Roosevelt's death to the assassination of John F. Kennedy...

On September 4, 1907, Edvard Grieg died in Bergen, Norway, the same city where he was born. 119 years later, his music is still among the most recognized in the classical repertoire. In this episode, I reflect on two pieces from his Peer Gynt suite that could not be more different. In the Hall of the Mountain King , which Grieg himself reportedly thought was too crude, and Morning Mood, which reve...

Dolly Parton passed away this week at the age of 80. In this episode I add to the conversation about her music, hopefully by taking you on some of the backwoods roads rather than the main road of her best known hits. Everybody is doing those right now. Instead I want to point you to the 1987 Trio album with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, three of the great voices of that era stripped down to c...

Everyone knows Kind of Blue . But the pianist at that session, Bill Evans, was quietly developing something extraordinary of his own. In this episode I put the spotlight on Portrait in Jazz, recorded in a single day in December 1959 with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian. Evans called their approach simultaneous improvisation, three equal voices in conversation rather than a piano suppo...

What do Paganini’s dazzling Caprice No. 24 and one of the most beloved melodies ever written have in common? More than you might think. In this episode, I discuss the interesting path from Paganini’s famous violin caprice to Sergei Rachmaninoff’s unforgettable Eighteenth Variation from Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini . Along the way, I explore musical inversion, Jeremy Begbie’s insight into the pi...

In the late nineties I came across a compilation called Guitar Fingerstyle: A Narada Collection, and it has never really left my rotation. In this episode I reflect on the opening track, Little Martha , played by Tim Farrell in a solo fingerstyle arrangement of a piece originally written by Duane Allman shortly before his death in 1971. There is a story behind this melody, and it makes the listeni...

Bach wrote his Two-Part Inventions in 1722 and 1723 as teaching pieces for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, who was twelve years old at the time. Fifteen short pieces, each built from a single musical idea developed through imitation, inversion, and sequence. In an age where most music is built on block chords with one thing happening at a time, the polyphony of a Bach Invention can feel like di...

Most people associate the harmonica with blues, folk, and country music. But in the hands of British virtuoso Philip Achille, the chromatic harmonica becomes something altogether different. In this episode, I reflect on Achille's remarkable performances, from the BBC Proms to the London Underground, and explore how one musician can completely reshape our expectations of an instrument. Sometimes al...

The tuneful singing voice of a child is one of the most beautiful and surprising sounds in all of choral music. But you would not always know it from what you hear in many modern settings. In this episode I reflect on what it takes to help young singers find their head voice, why so much popular music works against that goal, and what is at stake for young men especially before their voices change...

It is summer, and hopefully your pace is a little more leisurely. This week I recommend a group I have been enjoying and thought you should know about if you do not already. The Quebe Sisters are three sisters from North Texas who play triple fiddle and sing tight three-part harmony in a style they call Progressive Western Swing. If you know the Good Lovelies, this group will feel like familiar te...

In March of 2017, I sat on the second row of the closing concert of the OAKE National Conference in Philadelphia with my friend and mentor Lamar Robertson. The American Boychoir, under director Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, closed the program with Stars and Stripes Forever , sung entirely on solfege, piccolo line and all. In this episode I reflect on what that moment revealed about music literacy, the Kod...

This week's episode comes from Atlanta, Georgia, where I am attending the Repairing the Ruins conference, the annual gathering of the Association of Classical Christian Schools. After nine years of leading morning singing in the Grand Ballroom for over a thousand classical Christian educators, I reflect on the workshop I gave yesterday — Real Harmony: Recovering Communal Singing in a Disembodied A...

Scott Joplin gave America the Maple Leaf Rag and the Entertainer. But in 1905, grieving the death of his wife of ten weeks, he wrote something entirely different. Bethena is a concert waltz, marked cantabile, wistful and searching in ways ragtime was never supposed to be. In this episode, I reflect on the backstory behind this neglected composition, a quiet parallel to Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Mi...

Nat King Cole’s first major commercial hit came from an unlikely source, his father’s pulpit. In this episode, I reflect on the story behind Straighten Up and Fly Right, the folk fable at its heart, and what made the King Cole Trio so distinctive. Along the way, I share a few of my favorite Cole recordings, including his shuffle cover of On the Street Where You Live. Sometimes the best advice and...

A few years ago, a friend told me I needed to hear Trio X of Sweden. He was right. In this episode, I reflect on this Swedish improvisational trio and their remarkable reinterpretations of Beethoven, Schumann, sacred music, and more. When they take on the Moonlight Sonata, it is not novelty or irony. It feels like another lens through which to hear a familiar work. Sometimes great art holds up pre...

As America approaches its semiquincentennial on July 4, 2026, composer and pianist Stephen Limbaugh decided the occasion deserved more than a theme song. In this episode, I reflect on his America 250 Symphony, a full four-movement, 28-minute orchestral work documented in real time over two years on X . Working in the lineage of Dvořák, Copland, and Gershwin, and collaborating with Hollywood orches...

On May 22, 1836, Felix Mendelssohn premiered his oratorio St. Paul in Düsseldorf to immediate acclaim. One hundred and ninety years later, one chorus from it still stops people in their tracks. In this episode, I reflect on what made St. Paul significant in his time, what How Lovely Are the Messengers does with a text from Romans 10, and why a group of fourth through tenth grade boys in West Monro...

This week’s episode briefly discusses the role of the choir when it comes to congregational singing in worship. The Friday FIVE is a weekly five-minute podcast series from Musically Speaking that features five minutes of music commentary, examples, and recommendations from Jarrod Richey. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episo...