1759–1805, German Friedrich von Schiller, the great German poet, playwright and historian, trained for the Church, the army, the law and military medicine before he finally found his niche. It happened when, at his own expense, Schiller published his revolutionary drama Die Raüber (‘The Robbers’, 1781). When the play was staged in Mannheim ...
(Oz’-valt fun Vol’-ken-shtin) c. 1376–1445 South Tyrolean poet Oswald von Wolkenstein has been called the most important poet writing in German between Walther von der Vogelweide and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). He is known to have been a singer and was also very active in the political sphere. Well over 100 poems can be attributed to him, but it ...
(Vol’-ter fun dâr Fo’-gel-vi-da) fl. c. 1200 German Minnesinger Both in his time and in ours Walther von der Vogelweide has been considered the leading figure in medieval German poetry, and his music was mentioned for its excellence by his contemporaries. His poetic works are found in a large number of manuscripts – an indication of his popularity – but ...
(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’) ...
(Kärl Fre’-drikh A’-bel) 1723–87 German composer Abel was born at Cöthen, where his father played in J. S. Bach’s group. In 1759 he travelled to London, where he eventually settled, becoming a chamber musician to King George III’s wife Charlotte. It was also in London, in 1764, that Abel, together with J. C. Bach, established ...
(Kärl Dit’-ters fun Dit’-ters-dôrf) 1739–99 Austrian composer One of the most important Viennese composers in the age of Haydn and Mozart, Dittersdorf held appointments as violinist, composer and Kapellmeister in Vienna, Grosswardein (now Oradea, Romania) and other courts in the Austrian Empire. He was a prolific composer, particularly of symphonies (among them 12 based on texts from ...
(Khres’-tof Vil’-le-balt fun Glook) 1714–87 Bohemian composer Gluck was born in Erasbach, by the Czech-German border; his native language may well have been Czech. His father, a forester, was opposed to a musical career, but the boy left home at 13 to study in Prague, where he took musical posts and went briefly to the university. At ...
(Fre’-drikh fun Flo’-to) 1812–83 German composer Flotow was a prolific composer of operas. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire (1828–30) and was influenced by the major opera composers of the day, including Rossini, Meyerbeer and Donizetti, and later by his friendships with Charles Gounod (1818–93) and Jacques Offenbach (1819–80). His early operas are in the French lyric style, but ...
(Fre’-drikh Koo’-lau) 1786–1832 Danish composer and pianist Kuhlau grew up in Germany, but when Napoleon invaded Hamburg in 1810 he fled to Copenhagen. He earned a living as a pianist and through various appointments (among them chamber court musician and chorus master), and to supplement his income he fulfilled the considerable demand for flute music, although not himself a flautist. ...
(Kârl Ma-re’-a fun Va’-ber) 1786–1826 German composer Weber was a central figure in the growth of the Romantic movement in Germany, and one of its most important composers. He resuscitated and spread an enthusiasm for German opera, to which his own three-act opera Der Freischütz (‘The Free-shooter’, 1812) contributed. A gifted Kapellmeister and astute critic, he raised standards of ...
(Hans fun Bü’-lo) 1830–94 German conductor One of the first great Wagner conductors, Bülow was a pupil of Liszt at Weimar and married Liszt’s daughter Cosima in 1857. He was Head of Piano at the Berlin Conservatory (1855–64) and later, as director of the Munich Court Opera, conducted the premieres of Wagner’s Tristan (1865) and Die Meistersinger (1868). Although ...
(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 ...
1714–87, German Famous above all as the composer of Orfeo ed Euridice, Christoph Willibald von Gluck was, more than anyone, responsible for purging opera of what he dubbed the ‘abuses’ of opera seria in favour of ‘beautiful simplicity’, emotional directness and dramatic truth. From Bohemia to Vienna Born in the small town of Erasbach in the Upper ...
‘Orpheus and Eurydice’ When the Emperor Franz I and his retinue attended the premiere of Orfeo ed Euridice at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 5 October 1762, they were doubtless expecting a lightweight pastoral entertainment. The occasion – the emperor’s name day – and the opera’s billing as an azione teatrale (literally ‘theatrical action’) promised as much. What they got ...
Triumphantly premiered in Vienna’s Burgtheater on 26 December 1767, Alceste was the second of the three collaborations between Gluck and Calzabigi. Today it is probably more famous for the reforming manifesto of its preface than for its magnificent music. Like Orfeo, Alceste cultivates Gluck’s ideal of noble simplicity, with the whole opera based essentially on a single situation ...
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