AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

1862–1934 English composer Bradford-born but of German descent, Delius escaped the family wool business to devote himself entirely to music. He studied in Leipzig, where he met Edvard Grieg (1843–1907), and moved to Paris, where his friends included Ravel, but also such painters as Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch. Affected by all these figures, and by ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards

In one form or another, the harpsichord ruled the domestic keyboard roost throughout Europe – and later in America – from the late-sixteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries. Apart from the organ, it was the grandest and most versatile of all keyboard instruments until the advent of the mature fortepiano in the mid- to late-eighteenth century. Rise and Fall of ...

• Folk

It was Louis Armstrong (or Leadbelly, depending on whom you believe) who came up with the famous final word on the definition of folk music: ‘It’s ALL folk music … I ain’t never heard no horse sing.…’ The quote has been repeated ad nauseam throughout the years, but it has not prevented strenuous debate about the meaning of ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

(Klod De’-bu-se) 1862–1918 French composer Debussy was one of the father figures of twentieth-century music, often associated with the Impressionist movement. He was not only influential on subsequent French composers such as Ravel and Messiaen, but also on other major European figures, including Stravinsky and Bartók. His early songs experimented with an intimate kind of word-setting, while ...

• 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 ...

• Arts & Culture
• Classical
• Late Baroque

Musicians have always enjoyed a significant role as providers of social entertainment. In the early eighteenth century, this aspect of music-making gained greater importance, as the middle classes in European towns and cities cultivated the art of courtly dancing in such forms as the minuet, the bourée and the gavotte. Most of the era’s major composers, including ...

• Houses & Companies
• Classical Era
• Opera

A composer, librettist or other musician who attracted a royal patron acquired personal influence as a result. In Germany, this great good fortune devolved on anyone favoured by King Frederick II (‘The Great’) of Prussia. Frederick was an immensely powerful and able ruler and a rigid disciplinarian and it was inevitable that he approached his great interest, opera ...

• Inside the Music
• Classical
• Late Baroque

A crucial centre for the emergence of the symphony was the electoral court at Mannheim, where the orchestra achieved an international reputation under its director Johann Wenzel Anton Stamitz (1717–57). Elsewhere in Europe, orchestral music figured significantly in the mixed programmes of the public concerts that formed a feature of musical life in many cities from the early 1700s. ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Early Baroque

Already a successful instrument in the Renaissance, the Middle Ages and indeed earlier, the flute has a long continuous history. The Renaissance flute was made of wood in one or sometimes two pieces, with a cylindrical bore and six finger holes. Its distinguishing feature was that it was not blown into directly like the recorder: the player held ...

• Classical
• Classical Era

The Enlightenment was a great wave of thought in the eighteenth century that combated mysticism, superstition and the supernatural – and to some extent the dominance of the church. Its origins lie in French rationalism and scepticism and English empiricism, as well as in the new spirit of scientific enquiry. It also affected political theory in the writings of ...

• Gospel

The first African slaves arrived in America in 1619 and brought their music with them. From then until the Civil War of 1861–65, the music both fascinated and frightened the white slave owners who would flock to see the black people celebrating their weekly ‘day off’ in New Orleans’s Congo Square. At the same time, slave owners suppressed the ...

• Classical
• Late Baroque

More sophisticated diplomatic relations between states in the late Baroque era resulted in a time of relative peace – for a short period at least – during which the arts flourished. As in the Renaissance and early Baroque eras, writers, artists and musicians turned to the classical antiquity of Greece and Rome for their standards and their in­spiration. At ...

• Major Operas
• High Romantic
• Opera

Franz Liszt, the great Hungarian composer whose daughter Cosima married Wagner in 1870, conducted the first performance of the three-act opera Lohengrin at the Court Theatre, Weimar on 28 August 1850. Wagner provided a blueprint for productions of Lohengrin, just as he did for Tannhäuser, and emphasized the duty of the stage manager not to leave ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Modern Era

1879–1961 English conductor Beecham conducted the operas of Richard Strauss at Covent Garden before World War I, and advocated the works of Delius. He founded the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1932 and the Royal Philharmonic in 1946. His conducting was admired for its rhythmic liveliness and elegant phrasing. Introduction | Modern Era | Classical Personalities | Karl Böhm | Modern ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Classical Era
• Composer

(Kârl Hin’-rikh Groun) 1703/4–59 German composer Graun worked in the opera at Dresden and then at Brunswick (where he wrote six operas), before becoming Kapellmeister in 1735 to Frederick, the Prussian prince. He was promoted to royal Kapellmeister when Frederick (who later acquired the title ‘the Great’) acceded in 1740. Graun was put in charge of the new Berlin court opera ...