AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Modern Era

1882–1977 American conductor Born in London, Stokowski was organist of St James’s, Piccadilly, and of St Bartholomew’s, New York. A conducting post in Cincinnati led to his appointment as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, 1912–36, where he created the world-famous ‘Philadelphia sound’. Introduction | Modern Era | Classical Personalities | Arturo Toscanini | Modern ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1916–2006, Canadian One of the great Mozartian tenors of his age, Simoneau married French-Canadian soprano Pierrette Alarie. They went to Europe, where he sang at the Paris Opéra, Aix-en-Provence, Glyndebourne and London’s Covent Garden. In 1952, Simoneau sang in a historic recording of Oedipus Rex, with Stravinsky conducting and librettist Jean Cocteau as narrator. ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Modern Era

1878–1968 Italian conductor Serafin was principal conductor at La Scala, Milan, 1909–14 and 1917–18, and conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, 1924–34. After World War II he returned to La Scala, where he conducted the Italian premiere of Britten’s Peter Grimes. At Covent Garden in 1959 he conducted Joan Sutherland in her triumphant performance ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

1896–1989 American composer Thomson was trained in Paris (where he lived for many years) by Nadia Boulanger, and was friendly with several of ‘Les Six’, but his own music is more influenced by Satie and is deeply rooted in American folk music and hymns. It is melodically fresh, harmonically plain and of great simplicity; he was an influence on ...

• Arts & Culture
• Classical
• Late Baroque

As the violin family acquired the musical respectability previously enjoyed by the viols, so the upper-middle classes began to take an interest in becoming amateur players. Accordingly, a market grew up for tutors, or instruction books. The earliest known volume devoted to the violin was The Gentleman’s Diversion (1693) by John Lenton (d. 1718) and this served as ...

• Inside the Music
• Classical
• Classical Era

It was in the late eighteenth century, as Enlightenment thinking developed, that the business of writing about music for an informed public began to flourish. There were historians, such as Padre Martini in Italy, La Borde in France, Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg in Germany and Charles Burney in England; there were lexi­cographers; and there were theorists, ...

• 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 ...

• Classical
• Late Romantic

The 1860s saw a number of major reorganizations in European politics. Italy became a united country under the king of (former) Piedmont-Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II, in 1861 and its new national government tried to retain the kingdom’s liberal ideals, such as removing instances of operatic and intellectual censorship. However, Italy’s liberalism was not aspired to by other ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

‘The Knight of the Rose’ For the follow-up to Elektra, Strauss declared he wanted to write a Mozart opera. Despite Hofmannsthal’s protests about a light, Renaissance subject set in the past, the librettist soon came up with a scenario that delighted Strauss. The correspondence between librettist and composer was good-natured and respectful. Each made suggestions to the other ...

• Major Operas
• Early & Middle Baroque
• Opera

‘The Golden Apple’ Premiered: 1668, Vienna Libretto by Francesco Sbarra Prologue Personifications of the Habsburg territories gather in praise of Austria and its emperor, Leopold I. Act I During a banquet in Giove’s palace, Discordia, goddess of strife, throws a golden apple inscribed ‘to the most beautiful’ among the assembled goddesses. Venere, Pallade and Giunone ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Guitar Heroes

Classical-guitar legend Andrés Segovia (1894–1987) was born in the city of Linares, Spain and reared in Granada. He received musical instruction at an early age and was tutored in piano and violin but warmed to neither. When he heard the guitar in the home of a friend, however, he was hooked. Disregarding the objections of his family and ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Early Baroque

(An-ton’-yo Chas’-te) c. 1623–69 Italian composer Cesti was a Franciscan monk who studied music in Rome. Employed as a singer at the Florentine and Sienese courts, he then travelled to Venice, where his first opera Orontea (1649) was successfully performed at the Teatro di SS Apostoli. Following an affair with a singer, Cesti moved to Innsbruck, Austria, ...

• Personalities
• Early & Middle Baroque
• Opera

c. 1627–98, Italian Poet and librettist Count Nicolo Minato wrote 11 texts for the Venetian opera houses, including Cavalli’s Pompeo Magna (‘Pompey the Great’, 1666). In 1669, the Emperor of Austria, Leopold I, appointed Minato his court poet, and some very exciting opportunities opened up for the count. At that time, the court composer ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1906–75, Russian Born in tsarist Russia, Shostakovich spent his entire career under the critical and often hectoring gaze of the Soviet regime, yet he still managed to produce some of his nation’s most powerful and engaging twentieth-century music. Studying composition at the Petrograd Conservatory from 1919 to 1925, he presented Symphony No. 1 as his graduation piece ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Instrumentalist
• Late Baroque
• Theorist

(Yo’-han Yo’-sef Fooks) 1660–1741 German composer, organist and theorist There are large gaps in the biographical knowledge of Fux. It is almost certain that he was born into a peasant family somewhere in Germany, but precisely where he acquired his musical skills remains a mystery. Real knowledge of the composer begins from 1698, when Emperor Leopold I appointed Fux ...