(Vocals, guitar, songwriter, b. 1932) CMA’s 1976 Entertainer Of The Year caught malaria as an infant, which left him with a speech defect (reflected in the title of his autobiography – Stutterin’ Boy). Nevertheless, the father of Pam Tillis accumulated 77 country hits between 1958 and 1989, including three duets with Nancy Sinatra. Equally famous ...
Gamelan music had a great influence in the West, notably at the 1889 Grand Universal Exhibition in Paris, where the shimmering timbre of the orchestra made a profound impression on Debussy and Ravel. The gamelan was introduced to the United States at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. This musical style comes from the very diverse Indonesian culture ...
(Klod Goo-de-mel’) c. 1514–72 French composer Goudimel worked with the French music publisher Nicolas du Chemin, first as proofreader and later as partner. He corresponded with French humanists and writers such as Pierre Ronsard, some of whose verse he set. However, he is most important for his psalms, based on French translations begun by Clement Marot and published ...
Indie guitarist and producer Bernard Butler (b. 1970) was born in Tottenham, London. After learning violin as a child, he took up guitar at the age of 14, inspired by Johnny Marr, learning Smiths’ guitar parts by watching the band play live. He was also influenced by Bernard Sumner and Aztec Camera’s Roddy Frame. After replying to ...
Alt-rock guitarist John Frusciante (b. 1970) was born into a musical family in Queens, New York. While living in Los Angeles after his parents’ divorce, Frusciante became involved with the city’s punk-rock scene. Frusciante was particularly inspired by The Germs, teaching himself to play the songs on their first album before taking guitar lessons. He studied Jeff Beck ...
During the 1970s, tuneful hard rock loomed over the US charts like a fluffy, pink colossus. The arrival of baby-faced guitarist Tommy Shaw led Chicago rockers Styx to become the first American group to achieve four consecutive triple-platinum albums, and when Journey appointed singer Steve Perry, it made them one of the biggest bands in the world. ...
(Nik’-ko-lo Zho-me’-le) 1714–74 Italian composer Among the many opera composers of this period hailing from Naples, Jommelli was the greatest. His first comic opera was given in the city in 1737. It was in Rome that his first serious opera was performed, in 1740, and he then moved first to Bologna and after that to Venice, occupied as ...
(Yo’-han Ne’-po-mook Hoom’-mel) 1778–1837 Austrian composer and pianist A child prodigy, Hummel studied with Mozart soon after moving to Vienna at the age of eight, and later studied with Albrechtsberger and Salieri. From 1804 to 1811 he was Konzertmeister to Prince Esterházy, composing for the chapel (most of his sacred works date from this period), and was later Kapellmeister ...
The gamelan is a percussion ensemble played throughout Indonesia, especially in Bali and Java. A gamelan comprises mainly metallophones, xylophones and gongs. It may also include vocals, the rebab (a two-stringed spike fiddle), the keprak (a slit drum), and the kendhang (a set of three or four double headed, barrel-shaped drums). The kendhang sets the tempo and ...
The Mellotron and its predecessor the Chamberlain were in effect the earliest examples of a sample playback instrument. Chamberlain In 1949, Californian inventor Harry Chamberlain, patented the Chamberlain MusicMaster. It was the first commercially available instrument to use pre-recorded lengths of tape mounted within a keyboard in such a way that, whenever a key was depressed, a ...
(Vocals, songwriter, fiddle, b. 1938) Born in Tennessee and raised in Alabama, Melba Montgomery toured with Roy Acuff’s band between 1958 and 1962 before going solo. Fourteen of her 30 country hits were duets, initially with George Jones. Her greatest success with Jones – ‘We Must Have Been Out Of Our Minds’ (1963) – was followed ...
(Vocals, songwriter, b. 1957) The daughter of songwriter Mel Tillis started performing at the age of eight, learning to play various instruments at Nashville’s Blair Academy. In the late 1970s, she tried various musical ventures, before singing back-up in her father’s road show in the 1980s and releasing five minor chart singles. Emerging country label Arista ...
Semele was first performed at Covent Garden on 10 February 1744 in the manner of an oratorio, without action or scenery. Nevertheless, Handel’s occasional collaborator Charles Jennens regarded it as ‘a bawdy opera’. Congreve’s libretto, based on a story from Ovid, had originally been set as an opera by John Eccles in 1707, but it was ...
1714–74, Italian Jommelli scored successes with his first operas, L’errore amoroso (‘The Loving Mistake’, 1737) and Ricimero (1740) and Astianatte (1741), and before long these and other operas had won him recognition as an eminent composer. Jommelli’s services were eagerly sought and he wrote operas for Rome, where he was appointed maestro di cappella at St Peter’s in ...
1832–1906, Russian Ivan Melnikov, the Russian baritone, was best known for creating the role of Boris Godunov in Mussorgsky’s opera in 1869. Trained in Russia and Italy, Melnikov had made his debut at the Maryinsky Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg only two years earlier, as Riccardo in Bellini’s I puritani. Melnikov continued to sing at the ...
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