(Moodz’-yo Kla-man’-te) 1752–1832 Italian pianist and composer Born in Rome, at the age of around 15 Clementi went to England and spent seven years in Dorset becoming an accomplished keyboard player. Most of his career was spent in London, where he was involved in piano manufacture and publishing, playing and composing. He undertook extended concert tours on the continent ...
1889–1936, Italian The daughter of a stage director and a chorus member, soprano Muzio debuted in Arezzo in 1910 before making a number of appearances in Turin. She appeared at La Scala, Milan in 1913 and then Covent Garden in 1914. It is often said of Muzio that she had very little private life, choosing instead to ...
In 1905, and probably for several decades before that, there were more pianos in the United States than there were bathtubs. In Europe, throughout the nineteenth century, piano sales increased at a greater rate than the population. English, French and German makers dispatched veritable armies of pianos to every corner of the Earth. It was the ...
1816–75 English composer Bennett was a leading figure of the ‘London Piano School’, a significant group of pianist-composers that included Muzio Clementi (1752–1832), Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870) and Johann Baptist Cramer (1771–1858). A boy chorister at King’s College, Cambridge, he began studies aged 10 at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM), where his teachers included Cipriani Potter. Close friends included ...
(Do-ma’-ne-ko Che-ma-rô’-za) 1749–1801 Italian composer Trained in Naples, Cimarosa quickly launched himself on an operatic career with successes in Naples, Rome and Venice. In 1787 he was invited to St Petersburg. On the way home he paused at Vienna, where his Il matrimonio segreto (‘The Secret Marriage’) had a huge success in 1792 – uniquely, the entire opera ...
(Fri-drikh Fran’-zhek [Fra-da-rek’ Fran-swa’] Sho-pan) 1810–49 Polish composer Chopin was unique among composers of the highest achievement and influence in that he wrote all his works, with the merest handful of exceptions, for the solo piano. Leaving Warsaw, which at the time offered only restricted musical possibilities, and living most of his adult life in Paris, ...
One reason why music of the Classical period lends its name to Western art music in general is because it best embodies the values on which the modern world was built. The ideas of the Enlightenment movement emphasized the rights of the individual, and would lead to the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. One of the Enlightenment’s ...
(Wôlf’-gäng Am-ä-da’-oos Mot’-särt) 1756–91 Austrian composer The ‘miracle which God let be born in Salzburg’ – to quote his father, Leopold – came into the world on 27 January 1756 and was baptized the next day as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus; he normally used only the last two names, in the forms Wolfgang Amadeus or Wolfgang Amadè. His father, ...
On the face of it, barrels and music would seem unlikely bedfellows. Their alliance, however, goes back at least to the ninth century, when the first detailed description of a barrel organ appeared in an Arab treatise. Mechanics of the Barrel Organ The mechanical principle underlying all such instruments, from the automated organ and piano to ...
The name ‘player piano’ is a misnomer, indeed the precise opposite of the truth. In fact, this is a playerless piano – a piano that plays itself. Origins of the Player Piano Though almost exclusively associated with the early-twentieth century, the idea of a self-playing piano had been around for centuries. Henry VIII’s self-playing virginals and Clementi’s studded-cylinder ...
One of the most startling developments in instrumental music during the first half of the nineteenth century was the rise of the virtuoso performer, particularly the composer-performer who wrote very difficult works to demonstrate his own flamboyant skills. Virtuoso performers were nothing new, of course – Mozart and Clementi were both dazzling pianists who wrote works for their own ...
1685–1759, German Handel composed 42 operas between 1704 and 1740, but most of these were neglected and seldom performed after his lifetime. In the twentieth century, Handel’s music dramas and in particular his operas underwent a renaissance that has established him as the definitive theatre composer of the late Baroque period. Handel was a maverick composer who pursued ...
1782–1837 Irish composer and pianist Born in Dublin to a Protestant Irish family, Field moved to London in 1793, where he studied with Clementi. His reputation as a pianist spread and he was soon in great demand. In 1802 he went on a prolonged European tour with Clementi, ending up in St Petersburg. When Clementi left the following ...
1861–1931, Australian Melba made her debut in Brussels in 1887 at the Théâtre de la Monnaie and the following season sang at Covent Garden and the Paris Opéra. She sang Lucia at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1893, which began an intermittent relationship that lasted until 1910. Her musical mainstay, however, was Covent Garden. Melba ...
1897–1981, American Soprano Ponselle’s auspicious debut took place in 1918 at the Met, as Leonore in La forza del destino with Enrico Caruso. That season, she sang 23 times, mainly in leading roles, and often with Caruso. Ponselle was soon the Met’s leading Italian dramatic soprano, with a dark, ringing, sonorous sound not ...
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