AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• 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 ...

• Instruments
• Percussion

and was used to provide a sparkle to orchestrations such as in Franz Liszt’s (1811–86) Piano Concerto No. 1 (1853) and in ‘Anitra’s Dance’ from Peer Gynt (1876) by Edvard Grieg (1843–1907). Classical composers included the triangle to create Turkish effects, but this may well have been a triangle with jingles attached, which could be shaken and struck. Playing ...

• Classical

The story of classical music is not bound up simply with the traditions of any one country: it is tied up with the cultural development of Europe as a whole. This section attempts to pick out the composers from each successive age who, looked at from one point of view, exerted the greatest influence on their contemporaries and subsequent ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

1899–1974 American composer Although his heartland was the chiaroscuro world of jazz, Ellington transcended its boundaries, frequently lauded as ‘America’s greatest living composer’. A fine pianist, his keyboard skills were overshadowed by his writing abilities – evident in a multitude of jazz standards – and by his arranging. With the Ellington Orchestra he created dynamic unison passages using ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

American music, which he felt reflected ‘the youthful optimistic vitality and the undaunted tenacity of spirit that characterize the American man’. His strong European influences, with echoes of Grieg and Liszt, who admired his First Piano Concerto (1882), combine with an individual lyricism in many of the character pieces for piano for which he is best known: Woodland ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

drowned tragically, when their ship was torpedoed in the English Channel. Recommended Recording: Danzas españolas, Alicia de Larrocha (Decca) Introduction | Late Romantic | Classical Personalities | Edvard Grieg | Late Romantic | Classical ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1858–1944, British Overcoming family resistance, Smyth studied composition at Leipzig Conservatory, where her early influences included Wagner and Berlioz and she met Grieg, Tchaikovsky and Dvořák. Her 1906 opera, The Wreckers, is now acknowledged to be an important contribution to British operatic repertoire. She has the disappointing honour of remaining the only woman to have ...

• 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 ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Instrumentalist

, made his Proms debut in 1991, and has since appeared regularly with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and other major orchestras. Praised especially for his Grieg performances, his repertoire also embraces Mozart, Schubert, Rachmaninov, Lutosławski and Kurtág. He co-founded the Risør Chamber Music Festival in Norway, and was its artistic director ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

1882–1961 Australian composer Influenced by Grieg and by Delius, Grainger spent his early years as a concert pianist and, after that, in the US as a teacher. He was also particularly interested in folksong and much of his output consists of arrangements of such pieces. He is best known for such brief and catchy pieces as ‘Country Gardens’ ...

• Personalities
• Hard Rock
• Mod
• Rock
• Sixties
• Sixties Pop

January Saville Theatre Concerts With a new record label (Lambert and Stamp’s Track Records) and the lure of America ahead, the year started well. The Who appeared at the Saville Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue for one of Brian Epstein’s Sunday Soundarama shows. Playing two performances on 29 January, the supporting bill included Track stablemates The Jimi Hendrix Experience, ...

• Performance
• High Romantic
• Opera

world-class significance. This historic occasion was attended by the emperors of Germany and Brazil, and some of the greatest contemporary composers, including Tchaikovsky, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Grieg and Liszt. Innovative technology provided special attractions. For instance, a magic lantern illuminated the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in Act III of Die Walküre, the second opera in ...

• Inside the Music
• Classical
• Early Romantic

Unlike the ‘New German School’ of Liszt and Wagner, Schumann did not pursue a path of radical experimentation in form and harmony; his style more aptly encapsulates German literary Romanticism in music, interpreting the rhythms and melodic shapes of German poetry and folk music through his own ardent and whimsical nature, and incorporating themes and ideas from Goethe ...