1820–87, Swedish The soprano Jenny Lind was nicknamed ‘the Swedish nightingale’ because of her fresh, pure voice. She sang as a child performer before making her operatic debut in Stockholm in 1838 as Agathe in Weber’s Der Freischütz. In the next three years, Lind sang several demanding roles, including Lucia di Lammermoor and Norma, and her ...
the mill-house roof, several feet above the characters watching in horror on the stage below. The bridge, it seems, was the idea of the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind (1820–87) who sang the role of Amina at Her Majesty’s. When La sonnambula premiered in New York in 1835, the role was sung by the Scottish soprano Mary Ann ...
work. Meyerbeer’s fascination with singers – he was often attracted to premieres by the performers rather than the music, and did much to promote the great Swedish soprano Jenny Lind – manifests itself through his lean orchestral accompaniment to extended solo vocal passages. He also explored highly innovative instrumental textures. His later operas include Le prophète (1849) and L’africaine (1865), ...
, including Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Queen Victoria, and Franz Schubert (1797–1828) dedicated three Italian songs to him. Introduction | Early Romantic | Opera Personalities | Jenny Lind | Early Romantic | Opera ...
which perhaps balanced the straight-faced, straitlaced suppression of emotion characteristic of Anglo-American folk songs. Certainly America was ripe for gentility, as demonstrated by the huge success of Jenny Lind, the ‘Swedish Nightingale’ who, contracted by P. T. Barnum, made 93 stops on her 1850 US tour. Hillbilly Breaks Through By the time the American Civil War ...
eighteenth century, while undoubtedly beautiful and never out of fashion, even today, had neglected the ‘resonances’ that could reinforce and prolong the sound of a voice. Jenny Lind, the Swedish soprano who made her operatic debut in Stockholm in 1838, was one bel canto soprano who was able to project her voice sufficiently to make it ...
he had in mind could not perform, he would find a replacement and re-write the part. The most celebrated of all Meyerbeer’s interpreters was the great Swedish soprano Jenny Lind (1820–87), whom he discovered. Nicknamed ‘the Swedish nightingale’, Lind was principally a recitalist and oratorio singer, but her short operatic career made a huge impact. Another singer whose performances ...
Sand and Turgenev, with her intensely tragic performances. An increasing respectability in the diva’s reputation was largely the result of the image carefully cultivated by the ‘Swedish Nightingale’ Jenny Lind (1820–87), who always wore white, undertook charitable work and emphasized her devout Protestant Christianity. Nevertheless, the middle-class American singer Clara Louise Kellogg (1842–1916), before she made her debut ...
The bagpipe principle is simple: instead of the player blowing directly on a reed pipe, the air is supplied from a reservoir, usually made of animal skin, which is inflated either by mouth or by bellows. The result is the ability to produce a continuous tone, and the possibility of adding extra reed-pipes to enable a single ...
On the face of it, barrels and music would seem unlikely bedfellows. Their alliance, however, goes back at least to the ninth century, when the first detailed description of a barrel organ appeared in an Arab treatise. Mechanics of the Barrel Organ The mechanical principle underlying all such instruments, from the automated organ and piano to ...
Like the snare drum and tenor drum, the bass drum originated in the Middle East. It is a large instrument with a cylindrical body and two heads, and is the drum used to keep the rhythm in marching bands. The modern orchestral bass drum (100 cm/70 in diameter and 50 cm/20 in long) is double headed and rod tensioned. ...
Bugle Best known in its military guise, the bugle is one of the simplest of brass instruments in terms of construction, but it is very difficult to play. The single tube of metal has no valves to help create different notes, so players have to do all the work by changing their embouchure – a combination of the ...
The clarinet is a wooden instrument of cylindrical bore, with a single vibrating reed in a mouthpiece. Clarinets began to appear in music by J. C. Bach and Arne in the 1760s, although they differed in several ways from the modern instrument. The famous Mannheim orchestra championed it. Mozart wrote parts for it in his Divertimento K113, perhaps ...
The clarinet is a wooden instrument with a cylindrical bore and a single beating reed. Instead of being a kind of flattened drinking straw wedged on to a thin metal tube, as in the case of the oboe and bassoon, it is more like a thin spatula tied on to an open-topped recorder mouthpiece. A single-reed woodwind instrument called ...
Unusually among musical instruments, a specific date has been posited for the invention of the clarinet. Johann Christoph Denner of Nuremberg has been claimed as the man who, in 1700, devised and built the first of these instruments. Like all the best stories, however, the history of the clarinet is shrouded in mystery. The instrument attributed ...
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.