C major (often just C or key of C) is a musical major scale based on C, with pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. Its key signature has no flats/sharps.

Its relative minor is A minor, and its parallel minor is C minor.

C major is one of the most commonly used key signatures in music. Most transposing instruments playing in their home key are notated in C major; for example, a clarinet in B-flat sounding a B-flat major scale is notated as playing a C major scale. The white keys of the piano correspond to the C major scale. Among brass instruments, the more common trumpet is the trumpet in C, and the contra-bass tuba is in C. A harp tuned to C major has all its pedals in the middle position.

C major is often thought of as the simplest key, owing to its lack of either sharps or flats, and beginning piano students' very first pieces are usually very simple ones in this key, and the first scales and arpeggios that students learn are usually C-major ones. However, going against this common practice, the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin regarded this scale as the most difficult one to play with complete evenness, and he tended to give it last to his students. He regarded B major as the easiest scale to play on the piano, because the position of the black and white notes best fitted the natural positions of the fingers, and so he often had students start with this scale. A C-major scale lacks black keys, and thus does not fit the natural positions of the fingers very well.

Joshua David Bell (born December 9, 1967) is an American Grammy Award-winning violinist.

Bell was born in Bloomington, Indiana, United States, the son of a psychologist and a therapist. Bell's parents were Shirley and Alan P. Bell, Professor Emeritus of Indiana University, in Bloomington, and a former Kinsey researcher. His father is of Scottish descent, and his mother is Jewish (his maternal grandfather was born in Israel and his maternal grandmother was from Minsk). Bell told The Jewish Journal, "I identify myself as being Jewish".

Bell began taking violin lessons at the age of four after his mother discovered that her son had taken rubber bands from around the house and stretched them across the handles of his dresser drawer to pluck out music he had heard her play on the piano. His parents got a scaled-to-size violin for their then five-year-old son and started giving him lessons. A bright student, Bell took to the instrument but lived an otherwise normal midwest Indiana life playing video games and excelling at sports, namely tennis and bowling, even placing in a national tennis tournament at the age of ten.

Joel Krosnick (born 1941) is an American soloist, cellist, recitalist, and chamber musician who has performed all over the world for over thirty-five years. As a member of the Juilliard String Quartet since 1974, he has performed the great quartet literature throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Joel Krosnick was born in 1941 to a family of enthusiastic amateur musicians-his mother was a pianist, his father a violinist/doctor. There was so much recorded and live chamber music in his home that by the time Joel was twelve years old, he had played most of the Classical and Romantic piano trio literature with his mother and (now professional) violinist brother, Aaron. By the age of seventeen, he had read much of the standard quartet repertory with his family and friends.

Attending Columbia University, Joel became involved with composers and new music, eventually becoming a founding member of the Group for Contemporary Music. The connection with the music of his time has become a lifelong passion for Joel Krosnick, and has led to premieres and performances of the works by such composers as Roger Sessions, Elliott Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Ralph Shapey, Richard Wernick, Stefan Wolpe, Perry Goldstein, Milton Babbitt, Paul Zonn, Donald Martino, Stanley Walden, and Morton Subotnick.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( /ˈvɑːɡnər/; German pronunciation: [ˈʁiçaʁt ˈvaːɡnɐ]; 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, conductor, theatre director and polemicist primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as he later called them). Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex texture, rich harmonies and orchestration, and the elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with individual characters, places, ideas or plot elements. Unlike most other opera composers, Wagner wrote both the music and libretto for every one of his stage works. Perhaps the two best-known extracts from his works are the Ride of the Valkyries from the opera Die Walküre, and the Wedding March (Bridal Chorus) from the opera Lohengrin.

Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works such as The Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser which were broadly in the romantic vein of Weber and Meyerbeer, Wagner transformed operatic thought through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"). This would achieve the synthesis of all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts and was announced in a series of essays between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realized this concept most fully in the first half of the monumental four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. However, his thoughts on the relative importance of music and drama were to change again, and he reintroduced some traditional operatic forms into his last few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.