AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

(Eng’-el-bârt Hoom’-per-dink) 1854–1921 German composer Humperdinck studied in Cologne with Ferdinand Hiller and joined Wagner’s circle in Bayreuth. He assisted in the publication of Parsifal and was music tutor to Wagner’s son Siegfried, who later praised Hänsel und Gretel (1893) as ‘the most important opera since Parsifal’. Based on a tale by the brothers Grimm, the opera was composed while ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1854–1921, German Humperdinck showed an aptitude for vocal composition from an early age and, despite the concerns of his family, entered the Cologne Conservatory in 1872. He was a high achiever, winning multiple prizes for his Schumann-influenced compositions. Wagner soon came to dominate the young composer’s artistic thoughts and, following a short visit to him, ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

(Ed’-värd Greg) 1843–1907 Norwegian composer Of Scottish ancestry, Grieg first studied music with his mother, and later went to Leipzig (1858–62) to study with Ignaz Moscheles and Carl Reinecke, and with Gade in Copenhagen. There he became organizer of the Euterpe Society for Scandinavian Music and subsequently, in Norway, founded the Norwegian Academy of Music (1867). The ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1864–1949, German Russian-born, yet once a popular German composer, Pfitzner has shrunk into the recesses of memory, not least because his esteemed position was promoted by a Third Reich that, like him, believed German culture was threatened by international Jewry. His works Von deutscher Seele (‘Of the German Soul’, 1921) and Das dunkle Reich (‘The ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1874–1929, Austrian Hofmannsthal was a precocious talent. His first published poem appeared when he was just 16 and he rapidly made the acquaintance of some of the leading literary figures of the day. Most important was a paternalistic relationship with the German poet Stefan George (1868–1933). Hofmannsthal’s youthful ability led to a creative crisis in his mid-twenties from which he ...

• Personalities
• Sixties
• Sixties Pop

February ‘Penny Lane’/‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ The first record to emerge from the studio-bound Beatles was another pair of contrasting McCartney and Lennon songs, a recurring feature of recent singles but, with time to perfect and polish, the songs had moved up another level. Both made a nostalgic return to Liverpool for their inspiration but while Paul McCartney strode ...