AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Contemporary Classical

b. 1941 Italian conductor Muti won the Guido Cantelli International Conductors’ Competition in 1967. He was appointed principal conductor of the Florence Maggio Musicale in 1969. Principal conductor and music director of the New Philharmonia Orchestra 1973–82, and of the Philadelphia Orchestra 1980–92, he went on to become music director of La Scala, Milan 1986–2005 and of the ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Early Romantic

who knows only individual numbers. His finest operas include La vestale (1807) and Fernand Cortez (1809). Recommended Recording: La Vestale, soloists, La Scala Chorus and Orchestra (cond) Riccardo Muti (Sony) Introduction | Early Romantic | Classical Personalities | Giovanni Battista Viotti | Early Romantic | Classical ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Contemporary Classical

up into a world-class ensemble. He excelled in the music of Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich; the latter dedicated his Eighth Symphony to him. Introduction | Contemporary | Classical Personalities | Riccardo Muti | Contemporary | Classical ...

• Hip Hop

Like so many of black America’s most enduring musical genres, hip hop was born out of invention. When, as the 1970s came to a close, a combination of disco and big record company involvement had diluted funk and soul to the extent that it had become boring to go out to a club on a Saturday night, something rumbled out of New ...

• Major Operas
• Modern Era
• Opera

First performed at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden on 1 December 1951, this adaptation of Herman Melville’s short story saw E. M. Forster writing large portions of prose while Eric Crozier focused on the dramatic execution. Accordingly, Billy Budd was one of the most meticulously researched and well-written librettos of any Benjamin Britten opera. Typically for ...

• Personalities
• Jazz & Blues
• Thirties

The parents of William Lee Conley Broonzy were born into slavery. He was born in June 1893 in Scott, Mississippi, one of 17 children. Raised on a farm in Arkansas, Broonzy’s first musical instrument was a home-made violin, which he played at church and social functions. In the early teens he was an itinerant preacher, while ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Critic
• Early Romantic

(Loo-e’ Ek-tôr’ Ber-lyoz’) 1803–69 French composer and critic Berlioz was the leading French musician of his age. His greatest achievements, and those for which he is best remembered, were with large-scale orchestral and vocal works, although he also wrote in other genres. He was rooted in classical traditions – his earliest influences included Gluck and the music of the ...

• Styles & Forms
• American Punk
• Rock

Like the majority of their British counterparts, the original American punks had been making music for years before they began to receive acknowledgement in late-1975. In common with the Brits once again, the biggest problem was that nobody had a clue what to call it. Drawing their wild, high-energy style from such Detroit-based rock acts of the late-1960s ...

• Styles & Forms
• American Punk
• British Punk
• Rock
• Seventies
• Seventies Rock

Early ’76 The Sex Pistols’ First Gigs The Sex Pistols played their first gig at London’s St Martin’s School of Art in November 1975, racing through a batch of Faces and Who numbers plus some of their own, including ‘Pretty Vacant’ and ‘Did You No Wrong’, while Rotten sneered at the audience, calling them ‘f***ing boring’. The pattern ...

• Inside the Music
• Classical
• Early Baroque

From the late sixteenth century, castratos were engaged as singers by the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Although castration had been forbidden by Pope Gregory XIII, some children who had suffered mutilation were trained as castrato singers. Their voices were found to be much stronger, and their vocal ranges wider, than those of falsettists, whom they gradually ...