AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Hip Hop
• Rock
• Twenty-First Century

(Rapper, b. 1975) Curtis James Jackson II was born in New York, and has come to symbolize a brand of rap/actor that somehow manages to place circumstance over actual style. 50 Cent’s main claim to infamy is the fact he has been shot numerous times. Understandably brash in his delivery, his thuggish attitude towards many aspects of life ...

• Arts & Culture
• Classical
• Medieval Era

In the second half of the twelfth century, the new cathedral of Notre Dame was the focus of an extraordinary effort by Leonin and others to create a whole new musical liturgy. Thanks to their efforts and to the presence of the increasingly independent University of Paris, whose curriculum was aimed towards ecclesiastical careers, the city became a ...

• Personalities
• Country
• Guitar Heroes
• Rock

Johnny Hiland (b. 1975) is one of the top guitarists to emerge from the Nashville music scene in recent years. His playing combines country chicken pickin’ with elements of blues, metal and jazz. Often compared to Danny Gatton, Hiland displays an amazing vocabulary as he plays seemingly effortlessly onstage. His skill is also noteworthy because he is legally blind ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Twentieth Century

By the turn of the twentieth century, Western classical music seemed to have reached a crisis in language. Tonality had become enfeebled by its own progressive tendency, via increasing chromaticism, toward subtler and more complex forms of expression. European society had become similarly enervated by the familiar comforts of a bourgeois existence. In many quarters across the Continent ...

• Styles & Forms
• World
• World: Russia & Central Asia

The turbulent history and immense size of Russia and the Soviet Union make it a difficult place to sum up in musical terms – not because there are incalculable varieties, and generalizing would necessarily favour one style or region over another, but because what is authentic is bound up in politics. The Tzars wanted to hear professional musicians demonstrating ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Classical Era
• Composer

(Fi’-then-ti Mar’-ti-ni So-le) 1754–1806 Spanish composer Martín y Soler had moved to Naples by 1777, when his Ifigenia in Aulide was staged there. By the early 1780s, his operas were being given in north Italy and he moved to Venice; from this time on he wrote only comic operas. Three years later he was in Vienna, where he had ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Early Romantic

1812–65 Irish composer Between 1835, when he emigrated to Tasmania, and 1845, when he appeared in concert in London, Wallace travelled across the globe establishing a considerable reputation as a virtuoso performer on the piano and violin, and initiating a number of fanciful tales of his expeditions that seemed to precede him wherever he went. Once ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

(Van-son’ Dan-de’) 1851–1931 French composer An influential member of Franck’s circle, D’Indy was a vociferous promoter of Franck’s ideas, and his biographer. He was a prolific composer in every genre. He excelled in programme music, inspired by French and Swiss landscapes and nature. Best known are the colourful tone-poems for piano and orchestra, Jour d’été à la montagne ...

• Personalities
• Country
• Rockabilly

(Vocals, 1935–71) Despite a leg permanently crippled in a road accident, Eugene Craddock, from Norfolk, Virginia, rocketed to stardom in 1956 with his multi-million seller ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’ for Capitol. Other hits and movie appearances followed, and along with his group, The Blue Caps, he developed a wild and highly visual stage act. Vincent’s health ...

• Personalities
• Country
• New Country & The Neo-Traditionalists

(Vocals, b. 1954) Multi-award winning Oklahoma-born Reba McEntire’s introduction to country music came through singing as a teenager with her siblings, Dale (nicknamed Pake) and Susie, as The Singing McEntires. Red Steagall heard her sing the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ at the National Rodeo finals in 1974, and she signed to Mercury Records, where mostly minor hits ...

• Personalities
• Alt. Country & The Bluegrass Revival
• Country

(Vocals, mandolin, b. 1962) Vincent won six consecutive Female Vocalist Of The Year Awards (2000–05) from the IBMA for a reason. She has a high, lonesome voice reminiscent of bluegrass pioneers Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin, and she pushes it ever forward with her hard, driving mandolin riffs. After her mid-1990s fling with mainstream country, ...

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

1754–1806, Spanish The Spanish composer Martín y Soler wrote his first opera, entitled La Madrilena (‘The Girl from Madrid’, 1776), which was probably a zarzuela. Afterwards, Martín went to Italy, where he gained a reputation for writing both serious and comic operas that were performed in Lucca, Parma, Turin, Venice and Naples. Soon his ...

• 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 ...

• Opera
• Turn of the Century

The schools of naturalism and realism had an immediate effect in Italy. With scant literary tradition to draw on from this period, Italian writers in the second half of the nineteenth century seized upon Zola’s beliefs as a potent dramatic source. The style they developed came to be known as verismo and was exemplified by writers such as Giovanni Verga ...

• Techniques
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

Developing instrumental technologies and increased expressive demands ensured that the orchestra grew in both size and variety during the nineteenth century. Italian opera, perhaps unexpectedly, given its devotion to the beauty of the voice, showed considerable imagination with composers such as Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864) and Saverio Mercadante (1795–1870) making use of saxhorns, bass clarinets and the viola ...