What was your favorite holiday present as a child? Was it the Millennium Falcon starship you coveted after seeing “Star Wars” in the late 1970s? A Buck Rogers “ray gun” from the ’50s? One of those ...

Today in Music History for Dec. 21: In 1672, Benjamin Schmolck, German Lutheran clergyman and prolific hymn writer, was born. Though a busy pastor, he found time to pen 900 hymns, the best remembered ...

Sample helped to plot Cage’s trajectory toward the outer limits of art. He also made an impression on Hay, who, in his 1996 ...