AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Stage & Scene
• Early Romantic
• Opera

The artistry, ingenuity and creativity of Pierre Cicéri (1782–1868), the greatest designer in early nineteenth-century France, made him an almost legendary figure in the world of Romantic opera. Originally, Cicéri trained as a singer, but turned to painting and became an assistant at the Paris Opéra in 1806. When he graduated to stage design, he made ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Instrumentalist
• Modern Era

1922–2000 French flautist Rampal was principal flute in the Vichy Opera orchestra, 1946–50, and the Paris Opéra, 1956–62. He toured widely as a soloist, specializing in the music of the eighteenth century but using a modern flute. He founded the Quintette à Vent Française in 1945 and the Ensemble Baroque de Paris in 1953. Introduction | Modern ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Conductor
• Contemporary Classical

(Pe-âr’ Boo-lez’) b. 1925 French composer and conductor A student of Messiaen and René Leibowitz (1913–72), Boulez is perhaps the arch-modernist of the twentieth century. His early piano works clearly show the influence of Schoenberg (Notations, 1945). A visit from Cage in 1949 sparked a friendship and correspondence that was to be central to the progress of twentieth-century music. He ...

• Personalities
• Early & Middle Baroque
• Opera

1606–84, French Pierre Corneille, the renowned playwright, wrote verse dramas on heroic and classical themes that were tailor-made for operatic treatment. Corneille’s list of plays that were turned into libretti is not nearly as long as William Shakespeare’s or Sir Walter Scott’s, but it is impressive enough. Corneille’s verse dramas were still attracting composers in the early ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Renaissance

(Pe-âr’ de La Rü) c. 1460–1518 Flemish composer Like Isaac, La Rue joined the Habsburg court after spending some years working in Italy. He served under four rulers: Maximilian, Philip le Beau (La Rue may have composed his Requiem for him), Margaret and Charles (the future Emperor Charles V). His works do not show the influence of Italian music, ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Instrumentalist
• Modern Era

1906–86 French cellist Fournier studied the piano, but turned to the cello after an attack of polio. He was a student and a teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, and in 1943 replaced Casals in the Cortot-Thibaud-Casals piano trio. His elegant and refined playing can be heard in recordings of the Bach suites and the Dvořák Cello Concerto. Introduction | ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Modern Era

1875–1964 French-American conductor As conductor of the Ballets Russes in Paris, Monteux conducted the premieres of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé, and Stravinsky’s Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. During World War I he moved to the US, and had a long association with the Boston Symphony. He later took on the San Francisco Symphony, 1936–52, raising its ...

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

1732–99, French Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, best known for two plays on the theme of ‘Figaro’, was an amateur musician as well as a playwright. His first Figaro play, Le barbier de Séville (‘The Barber of Seville’, 1775), was produced at the Comédie-Française and his second, La folle journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro (‘The Mad ...

• Techniques
• Early Romantic
• Opera

In France audiences had a taste for imposing grandeur and the big canvas of elemental events that manifest itself in opera after about 1820 as French grand opéra. Everything about grand opéra was supersized and deliberately made so by its chief architects, the artist and set designer Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri (1782–1868), the lighting expert Louis Daguerre, the librettist Eugène Scribe ...

• Classical
• Late Romantic

The political structure of Europe changed greatly during the second half of the nineteenth century. Germany and Italy became united countries under supreme rulers. The Habsburgs’ Austrian Empire, ruled from Vienna, became fragmented into Austria-Hungary. The borders of this new confederation contained the cauldron of difficulties that eventually developed into the confrontations which culminated in World War I in ...

• Opera
• Turn of the Century

The early nineteenth century was a period of insurgence in Europe, from the French Revolution in 1789 to the uprisings of around 1848. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain before spreading south to the rest of Europe, was also making its mark. These two strands of revolution transformed society, with a growing awareness of national identity ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards
• Percussion

Keyboard percussion instruments include the western xylophone, marimba, vibraphone and glockenspiel, the log xylophones and marimbas of Africa and Central America, and the barred instruments played in the Indonesian gamelan. The orchestral xylophone, marimba and glockenspiel have thin wooden or metal rectangular bars laid out like a chromatic piano keyboard. The back row of bars – ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical

The tape recorder, invented in 1935, had been used early on to record concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic, but it was not until 1948 that Pierre Schaeffer, a technician at the Radiodiffusion Française studio in Paris, conceived his Etude aux chemins de fer. This was the first piece of musique concrète, an experimental technique that ...

• Instruments
• Electric & Electronic

Musique concrète (‘concrete music’) was the term coined by Pierre Schaeffer (1910–95) in 1948 to describe his new approach to composition, based on tape recordings of natural and industrial sounds. The term was chosen to distinguish the new genre from pure, abstract music (musique abstrait). Schaeffer was a radio engineer and broadcaster. Having gained a qualification from L’École Polytechnique ...

• Instruments
• Electric & Electronic

The ondes martenot (‘martenot waves’) was invented in 1928 by French inventor and cellist, Maurice Martenot. Martenot had met his Russian counterpart, Leon Theremin, in 1923 and the two of them had discussed possible improvements to Theremin’s eponymous instrument. In fact, Martenot’s instrument was patented under the name Perfectionnements aux instruments de musique électriques (‘improvements to electronic ...