AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Country
• Early Years of Hillbilly

(Vocals, harmonica, guitar, autoharp, 1893–1968) Stoneman might be considered the first fully professional country artist. He saw the music’s potential and was involved in it from the 1920s to the 1960s, spanning music technology from the cylinder recording to the stereo LP. In the 1920s and 1930s, singing and playing harmonica, guitar and autoharp ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Classical Era
• Composer

(An-dra Âr-nest’ Mo-dest’ Gra’-tre) 1741–1813 Belgian (French) composer Born in Liège, Grétry studied in Rome and in 1767 settled in Paris. With the success the next year of Le Huron he quickly became the leading composer of opéra comique, having particular successes with Zémire et Azor (1771), La caravane du Caire (‘The Caravan of Cairo’, 1783) and Richard Coeur-de-Lion (‘Richard ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

(Âr-nest’ Sho-sôn’) 1855–99 French composer After qualifying in law, Chausson studied with Massenet and Franck at the Paris Conservatoire and absorbed Wagnerian style, attending the Bayreuth premiere of Parsifal on his honeymoon. All three influences pervade his highly polished oeuvre in all genres. Best known are his masterly Symphony in B flat (1889), his sparkling concerto for piano, violin ...

• Personalities
• Country
• War Years

One of honky-tonk’s most enduring and beloved figures, Ernest Tubb (1914–84) was born near Crisp, Texas, one of five children from a broken home. He began his career singing at local radio stations and working a string of day jobs – among them a ditch digger, drugstore clerk and brewery worker. As a young man, in ...

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

1741–1813, French Grétry, who was born in Liège, composed two intermezzi before he headed for Paris and his preferred genre, the opéra comique. His first success, Le Huron (1768), came a year after his arrival and was followed in 1769 by the equally well received Lucile and Le tableau parlant (‘The Talking Picture’). Grétry charmed French ...

• Major Operas
• Classical Era
• Opera

‘Richard the Lionheart’ Composed: 1784 Premiered: 1784, Paris Libretto by Michel-Jean Sedaine Prologue Richard I has disappeared on his way home to England from the Third Crusade. Blondel, his squire and a troubadour, is trying to find his master. Act I Peasants are returning in the evening to their homes near Linz Castle. A local boy, Antonio ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1861–1936, Austro-American Schumann-Heink’s voice was renowned for its richness and wide range. Studies with Marietta von Leclair led to her concert debut in 1876 and her operatic debut in Dresden two years later, in Il trovatore. For many years she sang at Hamburg and Bayreuth, while also appearing at London’s Covent Garden in Wagnerian roles. Schumann-Heink made her ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

1880–1959 Swiss-American composer Bloch studied in Belgium and Germany, and his early works are in a rich late-Romantic style that owes much to Richard Strauss; this stage culminated in his powerful opera Macbeth (1909). In the following years, he sought a language that would reflect his Jewish faith in music of fervent solemnity with Eastern colouring: the symphony with ...

• Personalities
• Country
• Early Years of Hillbilly

Although routinely – and fairly – described as the father of country music, Jimmie Rodgers (1897–1933) was actually something more. Having established himself in that genre, he gradually moved towards mainstream popular music and, but for his early death, would probably have found a niche there. So far as country music is concerned, though, his ...

• Inside the Music
• Country
• Early Years of Hillbilly

If you look for country music’s Big Bang, there is nothing more momentous than Bristol, 1927. Within four summer days, two stars appeared that would change the cosmology of country – remap the sky. And it all happened in a disused office building in a quiet mountain town perched on the state line between Virginia and Tennessee. Why ...

• 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 ...

• Arts & Culture
• Classical
• Modern Era

In the twentieth century, Paris regained its place as the centre of musical innovation, especially in the years either side of World War I. In the late nineteenth century, Debussy’s influential musical innovations and explicitly anti-Wagnerian stance made Paris the centre of post-Wagnerian modernity. This was confirmed in the early modern period by the arrival of Serge Diaghilev ...

• Inside the Music
• Country
• Nashville & Beyond

Just as sports have their pantheon of greats, the country-music industry established its own Hall Of Fame in 1961 to honour its most influential figures and deepen public understanding and appreciation of the music’s rich heritage and history. A Pantheon Of Country Stars As of 2005, 62 artists and industry leaders – starting with Jimmie Rodgers (1897–1933) and songwriter ...

• Inside the Music
• Country
• West Coast Scene

The singing cowboys did not have the monopoly on country music on the silver screen, although it was their breed that first caught Hollywood’s attention. By the time the 1940s rolled around, several of Nashville’s top stars found that they could expand their careers by bringing their talents to the vast new audiences. Singing Stars In the earlier decade ...

• Country

Country music has been euphemistically called ‘white man’s blues’ or ‘the poetry of the common man’. While both descriptions have elements of truth, neither is quite accurate. It is, in fact, a broad, nebulous, over-reaching category with no exact boundaries or parameters. Over the decades country music has grown to encompass a greatly varied assortment of ...