(Ya’-kob Ob’-rekht) c. 1450–1505 Franco-Flemish composer Obrecht, who has long lived in the shadow of his more famous contemporary Josquin, may begin to receive the attention he deserves now that changes in Josquin’s biography show that many of the musical developments once attributed to him first appeared in Obrecht’s music. Innovator or not, Obrecht was a composer of considerable ...
(Yo’-han Ya’-kop Fro’-bâr-ger) 1616–67 German composer Johann Jacob Froberger was the most important German harpsichord composer of the first half of the seventeenth century. In about 1637, he was appointed as imperial court organist at Vienna, and there he benefited from a sympathetic patron in Emperor Ferdinand III, who was himself a gifted musician. Soon after his appointment, Froberger ...
(Zhan Moo-tôn’) c. 1459–1522 French composer Having held various church jobs in France, Mouton joined the French royal court in 1502 and remained there for the rest of his life. Many of his motets are occasional works – written for a particular personage or special event that was taking place at court. He was probably among the musicians present at the ...
As a period in art history, the Renaissance dates from the beginning of the fifteenth century to the first part of the sixteenth. Under the influence of perspective and the rediscovery of Ancient Greek statuary, painting and sculpture in Western Europe, and particularly Italy, were transformed by a worldview we now know as ‘humanism’. This phenomenon led ...
Written in the early 1360s, Machaut’s Mass cycle sets all the movements of the Ordinary, the dismissal (Ite missa est), and its response. Although not all the movements are based on chant (the Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei and the dismissal are based on their respective plainchant melodies, in isorhythm, whereas the Gloria and Credo are ...
The most successful librettist of the modern era was W. H. Auden, who provided texts for Britten’s first opera, Paul Bunyan and, in collaboration with Chester Kallman, for operas by Stravinsky (The Rake’s Progress), Henze (Elegy for Young Lovers, 1961; The Bassarids, 1966), and for less acclaimed works by John Gardner (1917–2011) and Nicolas Nabokov ...
(Kle’-menz nôn Pa’-pa) c. 1510–55 Franco-Flemish composer His given name was Jacob Clemens, and it is not known how he came to be called Clemens non Papa (one translation of ‘non papa’ is ‘not the pope’ – a rather unlikely mistake). He composed some works in his native Dutch, the best-known of which are the souterliedekens. These three-voice, ...
(Ji-ro’-la’mo Fres-ko-bal’-de) 1583–1643 Italian composer Frescobaldi was appointed organist at St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, in 1608, and he remained in the post for the rest of his life. The composer did take occasional leaves of absence, however. The longest of these was taken between 1628 and 1634, during which time Frescobaldi travelled to Florence, where he ...
(Yo’-han Sa-bäs’tyan Bakh) 1685–1750 German composer Johann Sebastian Bach was born into a closely knit musical family of which he was rightly proud. His father Johann Ambrosius Bach (1645–95) had an identical twin brother, Johann Christoph (1645–93), who was like a second father to the young Sebastian. Johann was such a common name that almost all boys called Johann were known ...
Before music was written down, musicians either memorized or improvised what they played or sang. Very little is known about the earliest European music because it was not recorded in notation. The music theorist Isidore of Seville (c. ad 559–636) even said that melodies could not be written down, and two centuries passed before a system of notation was ...
The main opportunities for professional music-making in the Renaissance continued to be provided by the church and by royal and ducal courts, particularly those in Italy. They sponsored musical entertainment both on a large scale, such as the lavish Florentine intermedi, and on a more intimate level, in the form of the madrigal. The influence of humanism ...
During the Renaissance, European noblewomen were taught to sing and play particular instruments deemed suitable for them, such as the harp, lute and keyboard. Improvising songs with accompaniment was an important aspect of such music-making but, as in other improvising traditions, few women of this class ever wrote down the music they created, so it ...
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