SEARCH RESULTS FOR: Franz Liszt
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(Frants List) 1811–86 Hungarian composer and pianist Liszt was one of the leading and most adventurous composers of the nineteenth century. His vast output is unusually complicated: many works exist in more than one version, and he was constantly revising and redrafting. His body of work may be somewhat uneven, but it should hardly be surprising if a composer at ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(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’) ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Frants Bâr’-vald) 1796–1868 Swedish composer Berwald played the violin in the court orchestra in Stockholm from 1812 until 1828. In 1829 he went to Berlin, where he worked on various operatic projects. His efforts were largely fruitless, and it was not until the 1840s that he met with success; all the works on which his reputation now rests date from ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Frants Dant’-se) 1763–1826 German composer At the age of 15 Danzi was a cellist in the famous Mannheim orchestra. He was appointed deputy Kapellmeister in Munich in 1798, and in 1807 became Kapellmeister in Stuttgart, where he befriended Weber, before holding a similar position in Karlsrühe. Danzi’s positions as theatre Kapellmeister encouraged him to compose extensively for the stage ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Frants Shoo’-brt) 1797–1828 Austrian composer Described by Liszt as ‘the most poetic of all composers’, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) was both the heir to the great Viennese classical tradition of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and the first true Romantic composer. In his short life, spent almost entirely in Vienna, he was known almost exclusively as a composer of songs ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Frants fun Zoo-pa’) 1819–95 Austrian composer Suppé’s full name was Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppé-Demelli. He came from Dalmatia, but received his musical education with Ignaz Xaver Seyfried (a pupil of Haydn) in Vienna, in whose famous theatres (an der Wien, Carl and Leopoldstadt) he conducted operetta. He composed over 150 operettas, including Boccaccio (1879), highly popular in ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

1797–1828, Austrian Celebrated for his instrumental works and over 600 songs, Franz Schubert knew that musical fame and fortune in Vienna lay above all in the opera house. In his teens he completed several one-act comedies and the ‘magic opera’, Des Teufels Lustschloss (‘The Devil’s Pleasure Palace’, 1814). Thanks to his friend, the baritone Johann Michael Vogl, ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

1835–1900, German The German baritone Franz Betz made his debut in Hanover in 1856, singing the part of Heinrich in Wagner’s Lohengrin. Three years later, he was at the Hofoper in Berlin as Don Carlo in Verdi’s Ernani. He also sang Don Giovanni in Mozart’s opera, Amonasro in Verdi’s Aida and the title roles in Hans Heiling ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

1870–1948, Austro–Hungarian Lehár’s father worked as a bandmaster as well as composing dances and marches. Lehár himself played in the theatre orchestra at Barmen-Elberfeld before playing in a band for his military service. He left the military having arrived in Vienna, where he took up a position as conductor at the Theater an der Wien. Lehár’s youth and early ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

‘The Merry Widow’ Composed: 1905 Premiered: 1905, Vienna Libretto by Victor Léon and Leo Stein, after Henri Meilhac’s L’attaché d’ambassade Act I Baron Zeta, the Pontevedrin ambassador in Paris, must ensure that only a Pontevedrin marries Hanna Glawari, a rich, glamorous widow. All the French guests swoon over her at an embassy reception. Zeta thinks ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

1878–1934, German Schreker’s work was once placed alongside that of Richard Strauss and Arnold Schoenberg, as all three were considered to be important avant-garde figures in the early years of the twentieth century. Influenced by the French musical style as characterized by Debussy, Schreker’s music is notable for its harmony and sensual quality. Schreker, who lived most ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Frantz La’-här) 1870–1948 Austrian composer Of Hungarian ancestry and Czech training (his contemporary Dvořák helped him as a young man), Lehár began his career as an army bandmaster, while also writing waltzes in his spare time. These were so successful that he was able to leave the army in his early thirties to begin a long career composing operettas. Welcomed ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Frants Shmit) 1874–1939 Austrian composer A remarkably versatile musician, Schmidt played the piano, the organ and the cello and was a skilful conductor; he was also a vastly learned one (he knew much of the standard orchestral and chamber repertory by heart). He was both a friend of Schoenberg and his opposite: his comprehensive knowledge of the Austro-German tradition ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Frants Shrek’-er) 1878–1934 Austrian composer A contemporary and friend of Schoenberg (he conducted the first performance of his Gurrelieder), Schreker never followed him into atonality. He was strongly influenced by Mahler (in his fine Chamber Symphony, by the chamber textures often found in late Mahler) and by Richard Strauss in his operas, of which Der ferne Klang (‘The Distant ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Vocal/instrumental group, 2002–present) Glasgow’s Franz Ferdinand – Alex Kapranos (vocals), Robert Hardy (bass), Nicholas McCarthy (guitar) and Paul Thomson (drums) – formed from the scene around the city’s college of art, but only drummer Thomson actually attended. Many wrongly consider their tightly suggestive brand of ‘art rock’ to be a result of years spent studying the visual arts, ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, general editor Michael Heatley
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