1836–65, German After making his debut at Karlsruhe in 1854, playing small roles, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld attracted Wagner’s attention, who considered his dramatically powerful voice ideal for tenor roles in his operas. Schnorr von Carolsfeld created a sensation as Lohengrin and another as Tannhäuser. When Tristan und Isolde premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865, ...
(Oz’-valt fun Vol’-ken-shtin) c. 1376–1445 South Tyrolean poet Oswald von Wolkenstein has been called the most important poet writing in German between Walther von der Vogelweide and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). He is known to have been a singer and was also very active in the political sphere. Well over 100 poems can be attributed to him, but it ...
(Vol’-ter fun dâr Fo’-gel-vi-da) fl. c. 1200 German Minnesinger Both in his time and in ours Walther von der Vogelweide has been considered the leading figure in medieval German poetry, and his music was mentioned for its excellence by his contemporaries. His poetic works are found in a large number of manuscripts – an indication of his popularity – but ...
(Lood’-vikh Zen’-fal) c. 1486–1542/3 Swiss composer Senfl joined the choir of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I as a choirboy in 1498 and became Isaac’s star pupil. On Isaac’s death in 1517, Senfl succeeded him in the position of Hofkomponist. From 1523 until his death he was in Munich, at the court chapel of Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria. Although he ...
(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’) ...
(Lood’-wig van Bat’-ho-fan) 1770–1827 German composer Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the greatest composers in history – perhaps the greatest. Standing at the crossroads between the classical and Romantic eras, he created music that belongs not just to its period but to all time. He excelled in virtually every genre of his day, and had enormous influence on the ...
(Kärl Dit’-ters fun Dit’-ters-dôrf) 1739–99 Austrian composer One of the most important Viennese composers in the age of Haydn and Mozart, Dittersdorf held appointments as violinist, composer and Kapellmeister in Vienna, Grosswardein (now Oradea, Romania) and other courts in the Austrian Empire. He was a prolific composer, particularly of symphonies (among them 12 based on texts from ...
(Khres’-tof Vil’-le-balt fun Glook) 1714–87 Bohemian composer Gluck was born in Erasbach, by the Czech-German border; his native language may well have been Czech. His father, a forester, was opposed to a musical career, but the boy left home at 13 to study in Prague, where he took musical posts and went briefly to the university. At ...
(Yo’-han Lood’-vikh Kreps) 1713–80 German composer Like his father, Johann Tobias (1690–1762), Krebs was a pupil of J. S. Bach; he attended St Thomas’s School in Leipzig for nine years and won a warm testimonial from the great man. He was organist at Zwickau from 1737, then from 1744 at Zeitz and finally at Gotha (he applied unsuccessfully for the ...
(Fre’-drikh fun Flo’-to) 1812–83 German composer Flotow was a prolific composer of operas. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire (1828–30) and was influenced by the major opera composers of the day, including Rossini, Meyerbeer and Donizetti, and later by his friendships with Charles Gounod (1818–93) and Jacques Offenbach (1819–80). His early operas are in the French lyric style, but ...
(Kârl Ma-re’-a fun Va’-ber) 1786–1826 German composer Weber was a central figure in the growth of the Romantic movement in Germany, and one of its most important composers. He resuscitated and spread an enthusiasm for German opera, to which his own three-act opera Der Freischütz (‘The Free-shooter’, 1812) contributed. A gifted Kapellmeister and astute critic, he raised standards of ...
(Hans fun Bü’-lo) 1830–94 German conductor One of the first great Wagner conductors, Bülow was a pupil of Liszt at Weimar and married Liszt’s daughter Cosima in 1857. He was Head of Piano at the Berlin Conservatory (1855–64) and later, as director of the Munich Court Opera, conducted the premieres of Wagner’s Tristan (1865) and Die Meistersinger (1868). Although ...
(Frants fun Zoo-pa’) 1819–95 Austrian composer Suppé’s full name was Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppé-Demelli. He came from Dalmatia, but received his musical education with Ignaz Xaver Seyfried (a pupil of Haydn) in Vienna, in whose famous theatres (an der Wien, Carl and Leopoldstadt) he conducted operetta. He composed over 150 operettas, including Boccaccio (1879), highly popular in ...
1714–87, German Famous above all as the composer of Orfeo ed Euridice, Christoph Willibald von Gluck was, more than anyone, responsible for purging opera of what he dubbed the ‘abuses’ of opera seria in favour of ‘beautiful simplicity’, emotional directness and dramatic truth. From Bohemia to Vienna Born in the small town of Erasbach in the Upper ...
‘Orpheus and Eurydice’ When the Emperor Franz I and his retinue attended the premiere of Orfeo ed Euridice at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 5 October 1762, they were doubtless expecting a lightweight pastoral entertainment. The occasion – the emperor’s name day – and the opera’s billing as an azione teatrale (literally ‘theatrical action’) promised as much. What they got ...
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