First performed as an incomplete work on 2 June 1937 in Zurich, this opera boasts a Berg libretto that is based on two Frank Wedekind tragedies: Erdgeist (‘Earth Spirit’, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (‘Pandora’s Box’, 1904). Following the composer’s death, controversy arose as to the fate of the incomplete third act. Berg’s widow asked Schoenberg, Webern ...
Composed between 1917 and 1922 and first performed in Berlin on 14 December 1925, this work features Berg’s own libretto, based on the Georg Büchner play Woyzeck. Written a century earlier, the play recounts the true story of a soldier, barber and drifter who is executed for murder. Büchner may have read about Johann Christian Woyzeck as ...
(Al’-ban Bârg) 1885–1935 Austrian composer Berg came from a cultured background, but had little serious musical training until, at 19, he began studying with Schoenberg. His progress was rapid, but although he was Schoenberg’s most naturally talented and most devoted pupil, Mahler’s influence on him remained strong. His first published work, the Piano Sonata op. ...
1885–1935, Austrian The composer of just two operas, Berg was a man who took atonality and stretched it to its expressionistic limits. While Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) are often referred to as the First Viennese School, the so-called Second Viennese School consists of Berg together with fellow student Anton Webern (1883–1945) and their ...
(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 ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1958) Ringenberg is perhaps the only alt.-country performer who actually grew up on a farm (his daddy raised pigs in Illinois) and that background lent a rural authenticity to his music, whether it was his Dylanesque solo projects or the revved-up rockabilly group, Jason And The Scorchers. That band came together in Nashville ...
‘The Mastersingers of Nuremberg’ Die Meistersinger has often been described as a comedy. This, though, is not ‘comedy’ as found in the operas of Rossini or in Verdi’s Falstaff: what ‘comedy’ means in this context is the bitter ‘human comedy’. The premiere of Die Meistersinger took place in Munich on 21 June 1868. Wagner based his opera on the real-life ...
b. 1935, Spanish Combining a rich, sensual voice with a refined onstage presence, Herbert von Karajan called Berganza ‘the best mezzo-soprano in the world’. After studying at the Royal Conservatoire in Madrid, she made her operatic debut at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. This led to invitations from the world’s leading opera houses. A Rossini specialist, Berganza’s recitals ...
1924–2014, Italian Known as ‘the tenor of all tenors’, Bergonzi had a lyrical voice that was both refined and intense. Vocal lessons were interrupted when he was interred in a prisoner-of-war camp, but resumed upon his release and in 1947 he began to make a series of debuts as a baritone. Retraining his voice, he emerged four years ...
1874–1951, Austrian One of the most important and controversial figures of twentieth-century composition, Schoenberg was a true visionary who paved the way for serialism – a system that, while abandoning traditional western harmony and melody, gave direction to the chaos of atonality. In so doing, he attracted plaudits and outright vitriol, for although serialism has ...
Composed: 1930–32 Premiered: 1957, Zurich Libretto by the composer Act I Moses prays in the desert. He is answered by voices from the Burning Bush telling him to become a prophet and the leader of the Israelites. He pleads that he does not have the eloquence to explain God’s will in terms they can understand, but is told that ...
(Är’-nolt Shön’-bârg) 1874–1951 Austrian composer Together with Stravinsky, Schoenberg has become the most influential figure in twentieth-century music. In his youth he wrote music in a ripe and sumptuously orchestrated late-Romantic style, but came to believe that the later music of Wagner, and that of Mahler and Richard Strauss, as well as his own, was undermining ...
b. 1958 Finnish composer He studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and later with Ferneyhough and Lachenmann. He made several visits to IRCAM, the research institute founded by Boulez in Paris, and while electronics no longer feature extensively in his music, his distinctive harmonic language owes much to the experiments in spectral analysis he undertook there. ...
b. 1935 Spanish mezzo-soprano Berganza made her debut as Mozart’s Dorabella at Aix-en-Provence, and sang Cherubino (The Marriage of Figaro) at Glyndebourne the next year. Her roles included Sesto (La clemenza di Tito, ‘Titus’ Clemency’), Zerlina (Don Giovanni) and, later, Carmen, but she was most sought after for Rossini heroines. Introduction | Contemporary | Classical Personalities ...
1924–2014 Italian tenor Bergonzi studied as a baritone, singing Rossini’s Figaro in Lecce in 1948 before retraining as a tenor. His second debut was as Giordano’s Andrea Chénier in 1951. He sang regularly at the Metropolitan Opera 1956–88. At Covent Garden, where he made his debut in 1962, he sang many roles including Verdi’s Alvaro and Manrico (conducted ...
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