(Piano, bandleader, 1903–83) Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines was the key transitional figure between the early ragtime and stride styles and the essentials of modern piano. He stripped away much of the density of 1920s piano, replacing it with more linear octaves and edgy single-note lines with the right hand – his ‘trumpet style’ – while softening the rhythmic accompaniment ...
Winchester Troper: one of the earliest sources of polyphony, an English manuscript dating from the early eleventh century and originally used in Winchester; now in Cambridge. Montpellier Codex: an important source of motets, compiled during the thirteenth century; now in the Bibliothèque interuniversitaire, Montpellier. Roman de Fauvel: a satirical poem about the church written in the early fourteenth ...
Although researchers continue to make discoveries about the way music was performed in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, little is known about one of its most crucial aspects: how did singers actually sound ? Many medieval theorists and writers mention performers with voices ‘like those of angels’, and words such as ‘sweetness’ occur again and again; equally, the ...
Alternative-rock guitarist Mike McCready (b. 1966) was born in Pensacola, Florida. His family moved to Seattle soon afterwards. He was 11 when he bought his first guitar and began to take lessons. In high school, McCready formed a band that disintegrated after they were unsuccessful in obtaining a record contract in Los Angeles. Disillusioned, he did not pick ...
As is the case with pretty much all stars, before the beautiful butterfly came the unremarkable caterpillar. Bowie was born not on Mars but in Brixton, South London. He started life as David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947. His father was a promotions officer for the children’s charity Barnardo’s and his mother a cinema usherette. He had one ...
The word ‘Baroque’ is derived from the Portuguese barrocco, a term for a misshapen pearl, and it was still with this sense of something twisted that it was first applied – to the period between about 1600 and 1750 – in the nineteenth century. In 1768, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote: ‘a Baroque music is that in which the harmony ...
The revival and imitation of ancient theatrical genres in sixteenth-century Italy bore fruit in seventeenth-century England and France in the works of the great dramatists of those countries: William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. In Italy, however, the sixteenth-century innovations in spoken drama were followed in the next century not by a great national ...
Broadly speaking, empiricism, from the Greek empeiria (‘experience’), is a philosophical tradition that accepts as fact only what can be verified by observation, or experience, through the use of the five senses. Galileo Galilei’s support of Copernican theory was a result of his observation of the planet Venus through a telescope. His insistence that what he saw ...
In the first part of the seventeenth century, two traditions of absolute power were struggling to maintain their hold. In England, after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, the Stuart dynasty fought for survival for 40 years. Then the dream crumbled in the face of civil war and the execution of the king, Charles I, ...
(Hin’-rikh Eg’-nats Frants fun Be’-ber) 1644–1704 German composer Biber was a violin virtuoso and one of the most imaginative composers of his time. He was employed at the Moravian court of Kromeriz (near Brno in today’s Czechoslovakia) during the 1660s, but from the early 1670s worked at the Salzburg court of the Prince-Archbishop, where he subsequently became Kapellmeister (‘chapel master’) ...
1649–1708 English composer Blow held various court appointments and served as the first Composer of the Chapel Royal (1700). His greatest gifts lay in the composition of vocal music, notably anthems and services for the church. Among the finest of his verse anthems is ‘God spake sometime in visions’, for the coronation of James II (1685). In this piece, ...
(Ga-ôrg’ Böm) 1661–1733 German composer Böhm was a Lutheran organist-composer who studied with members of the Bach family before becoming organist at Lüneburg. At an early age he travelled to Hamburg, where he encountered Johann Adam Reincken (1623–1722), one of the most influential North German organists. Böhm contributed to the principal forms popular with the organists of this region, notably ...
(Det’-rikh Books-te-hoo’-de) c. 1637–1707 German composer Buxtehude was born in Scandinavia, but from 1668 until his death held the post of organist at St Mary’s, Lübeck. The position did not require him to provide much in the way of vocal music; he also wrote cantatas and arias for the Abendmusiken (public concerts), in which he was deeply involved. His cantatas ...
(Jool’-yo Ka-che’-ne) c. 1545–1618 Italian composer Caccini was a singer and instrumentalist at the Medici court. His most important publication was Le nuove musiche (‘The New Music’, 1602), which contained madrigals and strophic songs with basso continuo. Its preface, in which ornamentation and figured bass are discussed, outlines the stile rappresentativo. In this new monodic style he sought to follow ...
(Ja’-ko-mo Ka-res’-se-me) 1605–74 Italian composer Carissimi was the most important composer of oratorios of his time. He was born in Rome where, in about 1630, he became maestro di cappella at Sant’Apollinare, the church of the Jesuit Collegio Germanico, renowned for its musical tradition. Carissimi composed masses and motets, but is chiefly admired for his cantatas and ...
AUTHORITATIVE
An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
CURATED
Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.