(Vocal group, 1969–75) British supergroup Humble Pie were created around former Small Face Steve Marriott (guitar, vocals) and ex-Herd man Peter Frampton (guitar, vocals), with Greg Ridley (bass) and Jerry Shirley (drums). Initially combining acoustic and hard-rocking sets, the former were abandoned shortly before Frampton left to be replaced by Colosseum’s Dave Clempson. The band split in ...
(Pe-âr’ de La Rü) c. 1460–1518 Flemish composer Like Isaac, La Rue joined the Habsburg court after spending some years working in Italy. He served under four rulers: Maximilian, Philip le Beau (La Rue may have composed his Requiem for him), Margaret and Charles (the future Emperor Charles V). His works do not show the influence of Italian music, ...
(Jo-van’-e Per-loo-e’-je da Pa-les-tre’-na) 1525/6–94 Italian composer Palestrina is named after a small town near Rome, where he is thought to have been born. He was educated in Rome; in 1537 he was a choirboy at the basilica of S Maria Maggiore, one of the city’s principal churches and an important musical establishment. By 1544 he was back in Palestrina ...
(Yän Pe’-ter-sun Sva’-lingk) 1562–1621 Netherlandish composer Sweelinck was a composer, organist and teacher, numbering Scheidt among his pupils. He was enormously influential in the development of north and mid-German organ music, later prompting the most important writer on music of the German Baroque, Johann Mattheson (1681– 1764), to describe him as the ‘creator of Hamburg organists’. He worked ...
(Pe-a’-tro An-ton’-yo Lo-ka-tel’-le) 1695–1764 Italian composer and violinist Locatelli studied at Bergamo and Rome, where he played for Cardinal Ottoboni. After a short appointment as virtuoso da camera (court virtuoso) at the Mantuan court (1725–27), Locatelli travelled throughout Austria and Germany appearing as a virtuoso – on one occasion with Leclair. He settled in Amsterdam in 1729 where he taught, ...
(Pi-et’-tro Met-ta-shta-syo) 1698–1782 Italian librettist and poet Metastasio was the leading Italian librettist of his era, and creator of the tradition of a particular kind of serious opera. He was born in Rome, worked initially there and in Venice, and settled in Vienna in 1730 as poet to the imperial Habsburg court. He wrote numerous texts for music, ...
At a time when expression was more important than maintaining classical forms, freer structures that enabled the communication of a single mood or idea became particularly popular with pianists as an alternative to sonatas. Schubert, for example, is best revealed in his short lyric pieces in which his melodic expansiveness is not constrained. His Moments Musicaux (‘Musical Moments’, ...
(Pe-a’-tro Mas-kan’-ye) 1863–1945 Italian composer The son of a baker, Mascagni studied law before becoming a conductor and piano teacher. In 1890, while a conductor in Cerignola, he shot into the limelight with his prize-winning one-act opera Cavalleria rusticana which, at its legendary premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, received an unprecedented 60 curtain calls. Based ...
While the Mississippi Delta gave birth to guitar-based acoustic blues, in the area known as the Piedmont region – which stretches along the Atlantic seaboard from Virginia to Florida – a wide range of blues styles flourished, from the backwoods sound of the Appalachian foothills of Virginia to the more urbane sound of big cities such as Atlanta. The ...
(Vocals, 1898–1986) Beaulah Thomas was raised in Houston, Texas. From an early age she sang in church and worked with her pianist brother Hersal Thomas. She moved to Chicago in 1923 and recorded for OKeh, creating blues standards such as ‘Up The Country Blues’ and ‘I’m A Mighty Tight Woman’. She moved to Detroit in 1929 and joined ...
John Birks ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie shares the credit for creating bebop with Charlie Parker, but his place in the history of twentieth-century music rests on a considerably wider achievement. He was born in Cheraw, South Carolina in 1917 and acquired his nickname in the 1930s. He moved to New York and worked in big bands with Teddy Hill, Lionel ...
(Vocals, 1921–91) Louisiana-born Webb Pierce was one of the most popular honky-tonk singers of the post-Hank Williams zenith of the style in the 1950s. Throughout this decade, he dominated the charts with hits such as ‘Back Street Affair’ (1952), ‘There Stands The Glass’ (1953), and ‘Honky-Tonk Song’ (1957). Styles & Forms | War Years | Country Personalities | Ray ...
1606–84, French Pierre Corneille, the renowned playwright, wrote verse dramas on heroic and classical themes that were tailor-made for operatic treatment. Corneille’s list of plays that were turned into libretti is not nearly as long as William Shakespeare’s or Sir Walter Scott’s, but it is impressive enough. Corneille’s verse dramas were still attracting composers in the early ...
1665–1733, Italian Pariati was born in Reggio Emilia, and was secretary to the Duke of Modena. He spent time in Madrid, wrote works for Barcelona and spent three years in an Italian prison. He lived in Venice for 15 years, until he was appointed a court poet at Vienna in 1714. While in Venice he worked with ...
The Singspiel was a German form of opera in which songs and other music alternated with dialogue. Although the Singspiel originated in the seventeenth century, the term was not generally used until the eighteenth. Croesus (1711) by Reinhard Keiser (1674–1739) was an early example of Singspiel. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, other forms of opera – the ...
AUTHORITATIVE
An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
CURATED
Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.