(Hin’-rikh Shüts) 1585–1672 German composer Schütz received his early training at the Collegium Mauritianum at Hessen-Kassel. From there he went to Marburg University to study law. In 1609, Landgrave Moritz of Hessen-Kassel, of whom Schütz was a protegé, sent the young composer to Venice, where he studied with Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1553–1612). He returned to Kassel in about 1613 ...
1562–1621, Italian Ottavio Rinuccini, a member of the Bardi Camerata, wrote his first libretti for sophisticated Florentine entertainments. In 1598, Rinuccini produced the first opera libretto, Peri’s Dafne (1598). A musical setting of Dafne composed by Heinrich Schütz in 1627 may have been the first German opera. Rinuccini’s libretto Euridice was set to music by both ...
The seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were infused with a spirit of scientific and philosophical enquiry. In 1722’s Traité de l’harmonie (‘Treatise on Harmony’), Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–64), who dominated French opera in the 1730s – Castor et Pollux (1737) – set out the rules of the tonal method that composers had long been developing in practice. At the same time, ...
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 ...
Many of the famous German Baroque organs are what is known as Werkprinzip (‘department principle’) organs, built up of several separate ‘departments’ (i.e. a manual or pedal keyboard and its chest), all linked into the single console at which the organist plays. This method of construction means that organs can be tailored to specific requirements and added to over ...
By the end of the nineteenth century, or early in the twentieth, every self-respecting city in Europe or North America expected to have an orchestra of its own, playing regularly in a purpose-built concert hall or civic hall. Some, like the Vienna Philharmonic, the Dresden State Symphony or the Leipzig Gewandhaus, continued long traditions (Dresden ...
‘The Free-shooter’ The Faustian theme, with its connotations of the black arts, was not new to opera when Weber wrote Der Freischütz. Since 1796 there had already been eight operas based on the sixteenth-century legend as composers responded to one of the most seductive themes of the early Romantic era: a pact with the devil for personal gain or ...
1842–1918, Italian Although best known as a librettist, Arrigo Boito was also a composer in his own right. He studied music in Milan with Alberto Mazzucato (1813–77). Later he went to Paris, where he met Verdi and began to think about subjects for operas. The choice was between Nero, the Roman Emperor, and Faust – a ...
1918–2005 Swedish soprano Nilsson made her debut as Agathe (Der Freischütz) in Stockholm in 1946. She sang many German and Italian roles there before her Glyndebourne debut as Mozart’s Elettra (Idomeneo) in 1951. In the 1950s she became known as a Wagner specialist, singing regularly at Bayreuth 1957–70. She frequently appeared at Covent Garden from 1957, singing Turandot, ...
(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 ...
1786–1826, German Carl Maria von Weber was a teenage prodigy who wrote his first opera aged 14. By 1804 Weber, still only 18, was musical director in Breslau. By the time he had moved on to Stuttgart, Weber had reworked his first opera, Das Waldmädchen (‘The Forest Girl’, 1810), and gave it the new title of ...
1795–1861, German Heinrich Marschner, the German composer, had the best possible backer for his first opera, Heinrich IV und d’Aubigné (1817–18), which was set around the turn of the seventeenth century. It featured King Henri IV of France and his follower the Huguenot poet Théodore d’Aubigné. Carl Maria von Weber, no less, staged the opera ...
1806–54, German The German soprano Henriette Sontag made her debut in 1821 as the princess in Boieldieu’s Jean de Paris (1812). In 1823, in Vienna, Weber asked Sontag to create the title role in his Euryanthe (1822–23) after seeing her in Rossini’s La donna del lago. He was justified when her appearance in Berlin in 1825 caused an ...
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 ...
(Yo-han Hâr’-man Shin) 1586–1630 German composer Schein trained at Dresden, Naumburg and Leipzig and finally took charge of the music at St Thomas’s, Leipzig, in 1616. His first vocal music collection, Cymbalum Sionium (1615), brings together settings of Latin and German texts in a variety of styles. A more modern outlook, embracing the Italian idiom and demonstrating ...
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