(Ka-mel’ San-San) 1835–1921 French composer Saint-Saëns was the founder of the National Society for French Music (1871) and influenced the development of the French style through his immense output and through his pupil Fauré. His music epitomizes French qualities of formal elegance, clarity of texture and craftsmanship, all allied to techniques of Romanticism. He was a prodigy, beginning his ...
1835–1921, French Camille Saint-Saëns was a child prodigy as both pianist and composer. He began composing when he was six. At 10, he gave his first piano recital, and entered the Paris Conservatory aged 13. At 17, in 1852, Saint-Saëns wrote his prizewinning Ode à Sainte-Cécile (‘Ode to Saint Cecilia’) and at 18, he produced ...
Composed: 1867–68; 1873–77 Premiered: 1877, Weimar Libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire Act I Outside the temple of Dagon, the Hebrews fear that God has deserted them. The Philistine satrap, Abimélech, mocks them, saying that they should worship Dagon. When Samson speaks out Abimélech attacks him and is slain. The gates of the temple open, revealing the ...
Composed: 1927–28 Premiered: 1934, Hartford, Connecticut Libretto by Gertrude Stein with scenario by Maurice Grosser Background The saints are introduced. Note that St Teresa of Avila is sung by two performers (soprano and contralto). Act I Seven tableaux involving St Teresa II, described as a ‘Pageant, or Sunday School Entertainment’, are revealed behind a curtain on the ...
‘Saint Alexius’ Premiered: 1632, Rome Libretto by Giulio Rospigliosi Prologue The figure of Roma (Rome), surrounded by a chorus of slaves, dedicates the performance to the Prince of Polonia (Poland). Act I Eufemiano, a Roman senator and Alessio’s father, encounters Adrasto, a knight returning from war. While pleased to see Adrasto, Eufemiano mourns the disappearance ...
c. 1586–1639, Italian Stefano Landi, who was born and gained his musical training in Rome, became maestro di cappella to the bishop of Padua in around 1618. The next year, Landi’s La morte d’Orfeo (‘The Death of Orpheus’, 1619) was performed in Rome, where the composer returned in 1620. Four years later, Landi was appointed ...
c. 1586–1639 Italian composer Although Stefano Landi was active as a church musician in his own time, he is chiefly remembered nowadays as one of the most gifted and successful opera composers of the period between Monteverdi’s Florentine dramas and those that the composer wrote for Venice. During the 1630s, the focus on dramma per musica (‘drama through music’) ...
The revival and imitation of ancient theatrical genres in sixteenth-century Italy bore fruit in seventeenth-century England and France in the works of the great dramatists of those countries: William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. In Italy, however, the sixteenth-century innovations in spoken drama were followed in the next century not by a great national ...
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) is said to have written the first film score with L’assassinat du duc de Guise (‘The Assassination of the Duke of Guise’, c. 1908). Many composers in the US and Europe followed suit, although few wished to make a career in films. A famous exception was Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957), whose scores include the Academy Award-winning The ...
The Teatro alla Scala – known outside Italy as La Scala, Milan – is one of the world’s most famous opera houses and originally opened in the sixteenth century as the Salone Margherita in the Palazzo Ducale. Both this theatre and another built on its site, the Teatro Regio Ducale, burned down, in 1708 and 1776 respectively. ...
The history of musical instruments has always been very closely linked to the history of music itself. New musical styles often come about because new instruments become available, or improvements to existing ones are made. Improvements to the design of the piano in the 1770s, for instance, led to its adoption by composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ...
Understanding how to use friction to produce sounds in glass goes back to Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), who discussed the singing effect achieved by running a moistened finger around the rim of a glass. In 1743, the Irish musician Richard Puckeridge created an angelic organ, or seraphim, from glasses rubbed with wet fingers. The glasses were filled with water ...
Often regarded as the country cousin (and hence the bumpkin) of the organ family, the harmonium did add a touch of warmth to many nineteenth-century rural homes, where the purchase of a piano would have been an unaffordable luxury. But the two instruments often cohabited, too. Harmonium Compositions Today, unlike the piano, the harmonium is a ...
Keyboard percussion instruments include the western xylophone, marimba, vibraphone and glockenspiel, the log xylophones and marimbas of Africa and Central America, and the barred instruments played in the Indonesian gamelan. The orchestral xylophone, marimba and glockenspiel have thin wooden or metal rectangular bars laid out like a chromatic piano keyboard. The back row of bars – ...
Adolphe Sax’s most famous invention, the saxophone, was patented in 1846. This new family of instruments is a cross between the single-reed woodwind family and the keyed brass instruments of the early nineteenth century such as the ophicleides, which are said to have influenced him. Each member of the family combines the single reed and mouthpiece, familiar ...
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