(Hin’-rikh Shüts) 1585–1672 German composer Schütz received his early training at the Collegium Mauritianum at Hessen-Kassel. From there he went to Marburg University to study law. In 1609, Landgrave Moritz of Hessen-Kassel, of whom Schütz was a protegé, sent the young composer to Venice, where he studied with Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1553–1612). He returned to Kassel in about 1613 ...
(Hin’-rikh E’-zak) c. 1450–1517 Flemish composer Isaac worked in Florence from the mid-1480s until 1494, when the changing fortunes of the Medici family cost him his job. In 1497 he was hired by the Habsburg emperor Maximilian I, to the appointment of Hofkomponist (court composer). Although he remained in Maximilian’s pay for the rest of his life, he travelled ...
(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’) ...
(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 ...
1781–1861 American composer Heinrich was one of the most important figures in American musical life in the nineteenth century. Born in Bohemia to a German family, he tried unsuccessfully to set up business in America, and in 1817 he settled there to embark on a musical career, becoming the country’s first professional composer, and being dubbed by ...
(Hin’-rikh Marsh’-ner) 1795–1861 German composer Marschner was the most important composer of German operas during the period between Weber and Wagner. Marschner grew up in Zittau and in 1815 met Beethoven in Vienna. In 1821 he moved to Dresden before settling in Hanover in 1830 as the conductor of the Hoftheater, where many of his operas were first performed. Marschner believed ...
1795–1861, German Heinrich Marschner, the German composer, had the best possible backer for his first opera, Heinrich IV und d’Aubigné (1817–18), which was set around the turn of the seventeenth century. It featured King Henri IV of France and his follower the Huguenot poet Théodore d’Aubigné. Carl Maria von Weber, no less, staged the opera ...
Composed: 1832 Premiered: 1833, Berlin Libretto by Eduard Devrient, after a Bohemian legend Prologue Hans Heiling, the King of the Gnomes, announces that he wishes to marry Anna, a mortal. His mother tries to dissuade him, since he would lose his powers. Act I Anna and her mother Gertrude come to Heiling’s house above ground. ...
‘The Free-shooter’ The Faustian theme, with its connotations of the black arts, was not new to opera when Weber wrote Der Freischütz. Since 1796 there had already been eight operas based on the sixteenth-century legend as composers responded to one of the most seductive themes of the early Romantic era: a pact with the devil for personal gain or ...
1562–1621, Italian Ottavio Rinuccini, a member of the Bardi Camerata, wrote his first libretti for sophisticated Florentine entertainments. In 1598, Rinuccini produced the first opera libretto, Peri’s Dafne (1598). A musical setting of Dafne composed by Heinrich Schütz in 1627 may have been the first German opera. Rinuccini’s libretto Euridice was set to music by both ...
The revival and imitation of ancient theatrical genres in sixteenth-century Italy bore fruit in seventeenth-century England and France in the works of the great dramatists of those countries: William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. In Italy, however, the sixteenth-century innovations in spoken drama were followed in the next century not by a great national ...
By the end of the nineteenth century, or early in the twentieth, every self-respecting city in Europe or North America expected to have an orchestra of its own, playing regularly in a purpose-built concert hall or civic hall. Some, like the Vienna Philharmonic, the Dresden State Symphony or the Leipzig Gewandhaus, continued long traditions (Dresden ...
Many of the famous German Baroque organs are what is known as Werkprinzip (‘department principle’) organs, built up of several separate ‘departments’ (i.e. a manual or pedal keyboard and its chest), all linked into the single console at which the organist plays. This method of construction means that organs can be tailored to specific requirements and added to over ...
During the early seventeenth century a remarkable dynasty of musicians emerged, culminating in the genius of J. S. Bach. His musical forebears are too numerous to consider individually, but a handful of them were sufficiently accomplished and imaginative as composers to deserve a mention. Their music is increasingly finding a place in present-day concert programming. Their multifarious gifts and ...
A bowed string instrument, the arpeggione was invented in Vienna by J. G. Stauffer in 1823–24. A kind of bass viol, with soundholes like a viol, it is waisted, but shaped more like a large guitar than a viol or double bass. Six-stringed and with metal frets, it was tuned E, A, d, ...
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