1925–2010 Australian conductor Mackerras began his career as an oboist in Australia before coming to Europe to study conducting. In Prague he became interested in Czech music, particularly Janáček, whose operas he championed through definitive recordings and performing editions. He was music director of Sadler’s Wells (later English National) Opera 1970–77, Welsh National Opera 1987–92, and later ...
1709–70 English composer Avison was a teacher, writer, concert promoter and organist of St Nicholas’s Church, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, from 1735. As well as composing several sets of his own concertos, published over a period of some 30 years, he arranged 12 of Domenico Scarlatti’s harpsichord sonatas as concerti grossi (1744), orchestrating them skilfully. Along with almost ...
1726–1814 English music theorist and writer Burney was undoubtedly the most important English writer on music of his time. The theorist was born in Shrewsbury and brought up in Chester. There he met Arne, to whom he was apprenticed. Later he took posts as organist and worked in the London theatres. In the 1770s he made two long journeys through ...
1745–1814 English composer Dibdin began his career as a chorus singer at the Covent Garden Theatre, London. He composed many English operas and other dramatic pieces, spending most of his life around the London theatres and pleasure gardens (with journeys to France to elude his creditors and other enemies). His chief success came with his one-man ‘Table Entertainments’, songs ...
(Shärl On-re’ Va-lon-tan’ Al-kan’) 1813–88 French pianist and composer One of the only virtuosos before whom Liszt, a contemporary, was believed to be anxious about playing, Alkan extended the technical challenges of piano repertory to astonishing new peaks. A child prodigy and young virtuoso, he performed alongside Frédéric François Chopin (1810–49), but thereafter became an eccentric recluse, ...
(Sharl Goo-no) 1818–93 French composer Gounod is best known as the composer of one of the most popular French lyric operas, Faust. His teachers at the Paris Conservatoire were the opera composers Jacques-François-Fromental Halévy (1799–1862) and Jean François Le Sueur (1760–1837) and in 1839 he won the coveted Prix de Rome. Alongside much sacred music, such as the florid ...
1848–1918 English composer Parry’s precocious musical talents earned him an Oxford music degree while still a schoolboy at Eton. From 1867 he studied with Sterndale Bennett and Macfarren at Oxford, where he became Professor of Music (1900–08); he then succeeded Sir George Grove as director of the Royal College of Music. Although he produced four symphonies and chamber music, ...
1852–1924 British composer Born in Dublin where he studied the organ, Stanford moved to London at the age of 10 to study the piano with Ernst Pauer. At Cambridge he was organist of Trinity College (1873–92) and founder-conductor of the Cambridge University Musical Society, where he gave the premieres of many of Brahms’ works. He also studied in Leipzig ...
(Piano, vocals, 1922–99) Charles Mose Brown was born in Texas City, Texas and had extensive classical piano training as a youth. He moved to Los Angeles in 1943 and by September 1944 had become the vocalist-pianist in Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers. The Blazers had several hits before Brown went solo in 1948 and scored success with songs such ...
Ray Charles Robinson was born on 23 September 1930 in Albany, Georgia. Blind by the age of seven, he was educated at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, where he studied piano and learned to read music in braille. A Musical Education Shortly after his fifteenth birthday, he was expelled and left ...
(Bass, piano, composer, 1922–79) Charles Mingus had a tempestuous, multi-faceted personality, which is reflected in the almost schizophrenic extremes of his music and the sheer magnitude of his creative aspirations. Early work with Lionel Hampton and Red Norvo brought him in 1951 from California to New York, where he worked with Miles Davis, Duke ...
(Various saxophones, b. 1938) Charles Lloyd was an inspirational figure in 1960s jazz and was also enthusiastically embraced by the hippy culture. He moved from playing blues in Memphis to West Coast jazz with Gerald Wilson and Chico Hamilton. His quartet with pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Ron McClure and drummer Jack DeJohnette was the first American jazz group to ...
1745–1814, English In the late eighteenth century, Charles Dibdin – composer, actor and singer – catered for the English taste for Singspiels and afterpieces, which were short operas or pantomimes provided as extra entertainment after the main work had finished. Initially, Dibdin favoured the Italianate style, but after The Waterman (1774), he turned to a ...
1710–92, French Charles Favart became director of the Comédie-Italienne in Paris in 1758. His 11-year term as director was evidently important in the theatre’s history, for in 1871 it was renamed Salle Favart. As a librettist, Favart’s output was prodigious: he wrote 150 libretti for composers such as Gluck, Philidor and Grétry. Favart’s forte was the comic ...
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 ...
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