(Goos’-tav Holst) 1874–1934 English composer As young men, Holst and Vaughan Williams were musically and personally close, collecting folk songs together and playing through each other’s works. Unlike Vaughan Williams, Holst had no private income; he made his living first by playing the trombone, then as an inspiring teacher, at St Paul’s Girls’ School, London ...
(Goos’-taf Ma’-ler) 1860–1911 Austrian composer and conductor Gustav Mahler bestrode the world of music at the end of the nineteenth century. ‘My time will come’, he remarked about his often misunderstood compositions. For Mahler the conductor, due recognition did come during his lifetime, but another half-century had to pass before a fully sympathetic appreciation of his creative achievement was possible ...
No discussion of this period in opera’s history would be complete without looking at Gustav Mahler (1860–1911). Although he is known primarily for his expansive, neurotically tinged symphonies and orchestral song cycles, he contributed hugely to the development of opera through his work as a conductor. Mahler was born in 1860 and he began his conducting career at Bad ...
1860–1956, French Born in 1860, Charpentier studied the violin at the Lille Conservatory and subsequently entered the Paris Conservatoire where he studied both violin and composition. Having begun composition studies with Hector Pessard, he later studied under Massenet, whose advice contributed to Charpentier’s victory in the Prix de Rome in 1887. Part of the prize involved a ...
Composed: 1889–96 Premiered: 1900, Paris Libretto by the composer or Saint-Pol-Roux Act I From the balcony of her parents’ house in Montmartre, Louise can see Julien, a poet. He has written two letters to her father, asking to marry her, although she says she loves her parents too much to elope. Her mother drags her away ...
b. 1981 Venezuelan conductor From the age of five Dudamel was educated within the Venezuelan network of children’s orchestras known as El Sistema. In 1999 he was appointed music director of its leading orchestra, the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra (now the Simón Bolívar Symphony). After appearing as guest conductor with orchestras such as the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic, he ...
1928–2012 Dutch harpsichordist After studying at the Schola Cantorum in Basle, Dutch-born Leonhardt made his debut as a harpsichord player in Vienna in 1950. He was professor of harpsichord at the Vienna Academy of Music 1952–55. From 1954 he taught at the Conservatory in Amsterdam, where he was organist of the Nieuwe Kerk. Introduction | Contemporary | Classical Personalities ...
The celesta is a type of keyboard glockenspiel, with a range of four octaves upwards from middle C, and a damping pedal like a piano. Inside the body of the instrument is a series of chromatically tuned metal bars, which are struck with felt hammers when the performer plays the keyboard. Creation of the Celesta The celesta was ...
b. 1932 American composer Early work as a studio pianist in Hollywood led to pockets of work in the 1960s. During the 1970s, he produced music for a number of films including The Towering Inferno (1974). Following collaborations with Steven Spielberg in the mid-1970s, Williams wrote music to Star Wars (1977). Stylistically, he adopts the romantic breadth of ...
(Poul Hin’-de-mit) 1895–1963 German composer and violist Hindemith began his career as an enfant terrible, shocking conservative audiences with a ragtime based on a theme by J. S. Bach and a trilogy of one-act operas – Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (‘Murder, Hope of Women’), Das Nusch-Nuschi, Sancta Susanna (‘Saint Susannah’) – that mingled themes of sexual obsession ...
The 1860s saw a number of major reorganizations in European politics. Italy became a united country under the king of (former) Piedmont-Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II, in 1861 and its new national government tried to retain the kingdom’s liberal ideals, such as removing instances of operatic and intellectual censorship. However, Italy’s liberalism was not aspired to by other ...
The Modern Age was characterized by rapid and radical change and political turmoil. By 1918 the Russian tsar, the Habsburg emperor and the German kaiser had lost their thrones. The two Russian revolutions of 1917 resulted in a Communist government led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was fragmented to allow self-determination to the newly formed countries of Czechoslovakia ...
If any city could be cited as epitomizing the sense of decline and despair in the late nineteenth century it would be Vienna. Heartland of the oldest existing European empire, its shift from the liberalism of the 1840s towards the political conservatism of the 1890s onwards was typical, as was the inability of its emperor and ruling aristocracy to ...
Unusually among musical instruments, a specific date has been posited for the invention of the clarinet. Johann Christoph Denner of Nuremberg has been claimed as the man who, in 1700, devised and built the first of these instruments. Like all the best stories, however, the history of the clarinet is shrouded in mystery. The instrument attributed ...
A musical ensemble is a group of two or more musicians who have come together to play music. In theory, an ensemble could contain any number of instruments in any combination, but in practice, certain combinations just don’t work very well, either for musical reasons or because of the sheer practicality of getting particular instruments and players ...
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