Recently, a New York flutist had a scare when her instruments went temporarily missing. It inspires this list of the most notorious musical instrument thefts ever.

In honor of Father's Day we've gathered five musical dads and their supremely talented kids who are currently making pops proud across international stages.

Since the release of her debut album "Horses" in 1975, Patti Smith has created music rooted in noisy, primitive, three-chord rock & roll. Smith is also an opera lover.

Whether because of music’s intrinsic power or a distaste for its composers, the art form seems to be scrutinized more than others, as these five examples illustrate.

The tenor Jonas Kaufmann recently admitted that he lip synched his performance of the Champions League soccer match. But he's not the first to fake a performance. Here are our top five.

Along with independent movie theaters and sports stadiums, music festivals are no longer a culinary wasteland littered with funnel cakes and soft pretzels.

Members of the Ebène Quartet, an ensemble from Paris with credits in standard classical repertoire but also jazz and pop, name their five favorite string quartets.

Now is the time of caps and gowns, Pomp and Circumstance and more than a few speeches offering worldly advice to this year’s crop of college graduates.

As we celebrate Mother's Day, we take a look at some of the composers who commemorated these life-giving women in music with our top pieces for and about mom.

Baritone Nathan Gunn has received almost as much fame for his strapping build — and unbuttoned shirts — as for his vocal and dramatic prowess. He names five roles in which he had to shed some clothing.

Whether generated by the appeal of reality television or the means of promoting talented musicians, competitions seem to be more popular than ever these days. While we’ll let the experts debate the worth of these contests, they certainly have made the careers of some musicians and also created scandals, of which we’ve collected the five most notorious:

This week, The Economist’s More Intelligent Life Web site began polling readers on “Which Instrument Is the Best?” We've come up with a list of our own, for the symphony orchestra.

We’ve picked our top five musically inspired works of art hanging in New York museums, including art by Chagall, Picasso and Kandinsky.

Over the last century, the Titanic tragedy has spawned several books, movies, musicals and plenty of music. Here are five notable pieces.

Whether it’s in spite of—or due to—the solemnity of the holiday, Easter and its lead up has inspired some of the greatest art in the Western canon. Here are five standouts.

A few organizations have been at the forefront in establishing enviable collections of freely-available manuscripts on the Web. Here are five standouts.

The "Godfather" franchise, which turned 40 last week, will be forever connected to Pietro Mascagni’s Cavelleria rusticana. But Hollywood has long included live opera performances as plot devices.

This St. Patrick's Day, as you raise a glass, make it a melodious one with our top five brews that have or had ties to opera and classical music.

There's little doubt about music’s power to convey feeling. Some composers go farther and try to express metaphysical and epistemological, not to mention esthetic ideals within their works.