Composed: 1920–25 Premiered: 1925, Monte Carlo Libretto by Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) The child has been naughty. His mother does not think he deserves more than tea without sugar and dry bread. He must think about how sad he has made her. He shouts after her, ‘I don’t love anybody! I’m naughty!’ He starts smashing and ill-treating everything ...
Composed: 1907–09 Premiered: 1911, Paris Libretto by Franc-Nohain, after his own play Ramiro, a muleteer, brings a watch for repair to Torquemada’s workshop in Toledo. Concepcion reminds her husband that it is Thursday, when he has to wind all the municipal clocks. He asks Ramiro to wait until he gets back. Concepcion, however, is ...
(Mo-res’ Ra-vel’) 1875–1937 French composer Ravel is often described (like Debussy, but still more misleadingly) as an ‘Impressionist’, but Ravel’s music is in fact precisely and delicately crafted, subtly perfect in its artifice (in the best sense of the word). Influenced by Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–94), Satie and his close friend Stravinsky, attracted to Spain temperamentally (he never visited ...
1875–1937, French A meticulous craftsman whose constant reworking and rewriting may have accounted for his relatively small body of work, Ravel composed music that consciously moved away from the influence of Richard Wagner. Along with Claude Debussy, he invented a highly personalized French style. Ravel also imbued his music with his love for Spanish culture (perhaps because his ...
1862–1949, Belgian Maeterlinck is best known for his play Pelléas et Mélisande set verbatim but with cuts by Debussy. It has become one of the pinnacles of French opera. Maeterlinck was one of the main founders of symbolist theatre. Thoroughly Belgian in his dark mysticism, he took Paris by storm in the early 1890s and was suddenly proclaimed the ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1988–present) This New York jam band initially favoured the extended blues rock format made popular by The Grateful Dead. John Popper (vocals, harmonium), Chan Kinchla (guitar), Bobby Sheehan (bass) and Brendan Hills (drums) built a solid following that was vastly amplified when aptly named fourth album – Four (1995) – sold four million copies on the back ...
The saxophone occupies an unusual position in that it is a bespoke instrument that has barely changed since its creation. Although it does not occupy the position in the orchestra its creator had envisaged, Adolphe Sax’s invention has played a central part in music ever since it burst on to the scene in the 1840s. Sax’s father, Charles, ...
The snare drum and tenor drum both originated in the Middle East. Today, cylindrical drums like these are played in western classical music, and in pop, rock and jazz. They appear in marching and military bands, in the orchestra and as part of the drum kit. Cylindrical Drums The body of a cylindrical drum is usually made ...
The trumpet is one of the most ancient instruments still played today. Clear depictions of trumpets survive in Egyptian paintings and two trumpets – one of silver, the other of gold and brass – found in the tomb of Tutankhamun date back to at least 1350 BC. There are many examples of Roman and Greek trumpets which, like the ...
In the history of musical instruments, the keyboard is something of a Johnny-come-lately, having first appeared some 2,250 years ago. The earliest instrument of all is the human voice, and some form of rudimentary percussion probably came next. The plucked string – ancestor of the harpsichord family – is likely to have arrived with the firing of ...
(Ga-bre-el’ Fô-ra’) 1845–1924 French composer Fauré, a pre-eminent master of French song, studied with Saint-Saëns in 1866, and succeeded him as as chief organist at the Madeleine in 1896. Fauré was appointed Director at the Paris Conservatoire (1905–20) and also served as critic for Le Figaro. He was thus a powerful influence on twentieth-century French music, especially through ...
(Syir’-ga Pru-kôf’-yef) 1891–1953 Russian composer Prokofiev’s music oscillates between motor rhythm and lyricism, and between irony and expressive sincerity. This gives his compositions extreme variety: works composed closely in time, even adjacent movements in the same work, are of quite different characters. He began composing as a child, and had his first success (with his First Piano ...
1891–1953, Russian One of the most accessible and well known of twentieth-century Russian composers, Prokofiev merged an experimental approach with melodic conventionality to create music that was distinct in its national style. A fine pianist and impetuous personality who studied orchestration at the St Petersburg Academy with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1909), Prokofiev wrote three childhood operas by the age of ...
By the turn of the twentieth century, Western classical music seemed to have reached a crisis in language. Tonality had become enfeebled by its own progressive tendency, via increasing chromaticism, toward subtler and more complex forms of expression. European society had become similarly enervated by the familiar comforts of a bourgeois existence. In many quarters across the Continent ...
In order to put Western classical music into a global and historical context, one must survey the music of ancient civilizations as well as the traditions of the non-Western world. From what is known of this music it was – and is – performed in a vast range of cultural environments and with many functions other than for entertainment in ...
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David Bowie
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