Wagner’s music drama Tristan und Isolde, written between 1856 and 1859 and first produced at the Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865, broke the established mould of opera and took it to the threshold of ‘modern’ music. Tristan was based on an Arthurian legend, and featured a regular theme in Wagner’s operas – the plight ...
Between 1860 and 1918 Wagner became the most influential intellectual figure in Europe. For his Gesamtkunstwerk (‘Complete Art-Work’) he drew on a wide range of inspirations, including Greek tragedy, the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) and his own historicist ideas of realizing the latent tendencies of all arts. This ensured that his music-dramas reached into almost every area ...
The English horn, or cor anglais, is a member of the oboe family. It is neither English nor a horn, and the name is usually written off as a mystery. Pitched a fifth below the oboe, it had been developed in 1760 by Ferlandis of Bergamo, but was rarely heard in the orchestra before the Romantic ...
The world’s first synthesizer was the American RCA Mk I, made in 1951, whose bulk occupied a laboratory. To play it, composers such as Babbitt had to tap in punched-tape instructions – there was no keyboard. In 1964, Robert Moog (1934–2005) developed the first commercially successful synthesizer. It was capable of generating a wide range of sounds ...
Wagner’s Ring cycle is made up of four works – Das Rheingold (‘The Rhinegold’, 1851–54), Die Walküre (‘The Valkyrie’, 1851–56), Siegfried (1851–57; 1864–71) and Götterdämmerung (‘Twilight of the Gods’, 1848–52; 1869–74). Although there have been other, even more ambitious projects in the history of opera – Rutland Boughton’s cycle of choral dramas based on the Arthurian legends and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ...
‘The Elixir of Love’ Donizetti’s prolific output owed a great deal to the speed with which he was able to compose. He could compose operas at the rate of three or four a year. However, even this rate of production was overtaken by the mere fortnight it took him to write the music for L’elisir d’amore. This pastoral comedy was ...
Wagner had first encountered the early thirteenth-century romance Parzivâl by Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1170–c. 1220) in 1845 and frequently returned to the subject in the course of the decades that followed, completing the libretto in 1877 and the music in 1882. By now his views had changed, and the text and its imagery are permeated by the Aryan ...
(An’-ton Brook’-ner) 1824–96 Austrian composer Bruckner’s Masses and symphonies, alongside those of Mahler, brought the Romantic symphonic tradition to its zenith. In contrast to Mahler’s angst and irony, Bruckner’s symphonies express triumphant faith, their almost cathedral-like proportions infused with exciting orchestral power and poetry. Born in the small town of Ansfelden near Linz, where his father was ...
(Är’-nolt Shön’-bârg) 1874–1951 Austrian composer Together with Stravinsky, Schoenberg has become the most influential figure in twentieth-century music. In his youth he wrote music in a ripe and sumptuously orchestrated late-Romantic style, but came to believe that the later music of Wagner, and that of Mahler and Richard Strauss, as well as his own, was undermining ...
b. 1924, German An outstanding mezzo-soprano recitalist and concert singer, Ludwig was the daughter of two singers: tenor Anton Ludwig, and contralto Eugenie Besalla-Ludwig, who sang under Herbert von Karajan. Forced into early retirement, Eugenie became her daughter’s voice coach. Making her debut at 18 as Prince Orlovsky in Frankfurt, Ludwig remained there until 1952 ...
(Klod De’-bu-se) 1862–1918 French composer Debussy was one of the father figures of twentieth-century music, often associated with the Impressionist movement. He was not only influential on subsequent French composers such as Ravel and Messiaen, but also on other major European figures, including Stravinsky and Bartók. His early songs experimented with an intimate kind of word-setting, while ...
(D’me’-tre Shus-ta-ko’vich) 1906–75 Russian composer Shostakovich was the first of his country’s composers to come to attention after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and since Stravinsky, Rachmaninov and (until the 1930s) Prokofiev were all living abroad, his early successes made him the great hope of Soviet music. He became associated with the Western-influenced modernist movement in the Soviet ...
(E-ma-el’ Shab-re-a’) 1841–94 French composer After hearing Wagner’s Tristan in Munich in 1879 with D’Indy and Duparc, Chabrier resigned his government post to become a full-time composer. The spectacular success of España (1883), a scintillating symphonic poem, proved him a master orchestrator. He composed two successful opéras comiques, L’étoile (‘The Star’, 1877) and Le roi malgré lui (‘King in ...
1841–94, French Chabrier’s father was determined that his son should enter the legal profession, even to the extent of moving the entire family to Paris in order that he could prepare for law school. In 1858, Chabrier entered law school and was soon employed in the Ministry of the Interior. His interest in music remained potent, however ...
(Frank Mär-tan’) 1890–1974 Swiss composer Martin was an eclectic, but with his own voice. His best-known composition, the Petite symphonie concertante (1945) for harp, harpsichord, piano and strings, adopts systematic discipline from Schoenberg and rhythmic vigour from Stravinsky and jazz, but its combination of brooding solemnity and Gallic wit is Martin’s own. His concertos and ...
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