AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

(A’-tôr Vel’-la Lo’-bos) 1887–1959 Brazilian composer As a boy, Villa-Lobos played in dance bands and travelled throughout Brazil before studying composition. Concerts in Rio de Janeiro made him sufficient money to travel to Paris, where the colourful exoticism of his music became very popular. He then returned to Brazil, where he taught as well as composed. He wrote ...

• Instruments
• Stringed

of respected concert-hall instrument. His influence was naturally focused on Spain and South America, encouraging composers including Joaquín Rodrigo (1901–99), Manuel de Falla (1876–1946), Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895–1968) and Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959) to write for the guitar. By the time of his death in 1987, there existed a strong body of music that continues to grow. The guitar repertoire has ...

• Instruments
• Stringed

of the twentieth century – such as Pablo Casals and Yo-Yo Ma – encouraged a cluster of works from the likes of Edward Elgar and Shostakovich. By contrast, Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos uses eight cellos and no other instruments to support a soprano voice in his ‘Cantilena’ from Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5. Dobro The dobro has often served as a bluesy supplement ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Guitar Heroes

Classical-guitar legend Andrés Segovia (1894–1987) was born in the city of Linares, Spain and reared in Granada. He received musical instruction at an early age and was tutored in piano and violin but warmed to neither. When he heard the guitar in the home of a friend, however, he was hooked. Disregarding the objections of his family and ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Instrumentalist
• Modern Era

1893–1987 Spanish guitarist Self-taught, Segovia made his debut at the age of 15. Considering it his mission to have the guitar taken seriously, he transcribed music written for the lute and the vihuela. Contemporaries who wrote for him included Falla, Joaquín Rodrigo (1901–99) and Villa-Lobos; he played with much passion and intensity. Introduction | Modern Era | Classical ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

related Fifth Symphony). Recommended Recording: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 5, New Philharmonia Orchestra, LPO, Sir Adrian Boult (EMI/Warner) Introduction | Modern Era | Classical Personalities | Heitor Villa-Lobos | Modern Era | Classical ...

• Classical
• Modern Era

Granados (1867–1916) and Manuel de Falla (1876–1946) quickly establishing a Spanish style and the presence of Spanish composers with a distinct voice. In Latin America, Silvestre Revueltas (1891–1940), Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959) and Alberto Ginastera (1916–83) each did the same for Mexico, Brazil and Argentina respectively. Each explored in particular his country’s dance rhythms, and in this way found ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Modern Era

common to both seemed an ideal basis on which to reconstruct a characteristically English idiom. Others made use of vernacular styles closer to their immediate cultural environment. For the Brazilian Villa-Lobos, it was the dance rhythms of the Rio de Janeiro street bands with which he played as a teenager that penetrated both the complex, multi-layered textures of the ...

• Houses & Companies
• High Romantic
• Opera

King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845–86), a homosexual and a strange, obsessive character, came from a royal family, the Wittelsbachs, which had a strong streak of madness in it. Ludwig virtually fell in love with Wagner and his music, calling the composer his ‘one true friend whom I shall love until death.... If only, ...

• Major Operas
• Classical Era
• Opera

Composed in 1787 and triumphantly premiered in Prague on 29 October that year, Don Giovanni reworks the old legend of the serial seducer, drawing on the Spanish play by Tirso de Molina (1630) and Molière’s Don Juan (1665). The opera revolves around the tensions of class and sex that were so central to Figaro. Ensembles and propulsive ‘chain’ finales ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

In Tosca, Puccini created his most complex and challenging of female roles and it is partly for this reason that the work has gained such a central place in the public consciousness. The role has been a magnet to sopranos wishing to demonstrate not only their vocal abilities, but also their acting skills. Victorien Sardou’s play La Tosca first ...

• Performance
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

The premiere of Salome on 9 December 1905 was a scandal. Even before the work had been heard in public, there were serious problems. Rehearsals became increasingly difficult because of both the demands Strauss placed on the voice and the eroticism of the subject. At the first piano rehearsal, the entire cast handed back their scores, declaring it ...

• Personalities
• Guitar Heroes
• Hard Rock
• Heavy Metal
• Prog Rock

For over 30 years, guitarist Alex Lifeson has quietly served as the cohesive key to success for progressive rockers Rush – arguably the most enduring and successful hard-rock band of all time. A guitarist always more interested in finding the right chord voicing or textural effect to make a chorus work than in shredding the frets off his axe du ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Instrumentalist
• Late Baroque

(An-ton’-yo Ve-val’-de) 1678–1741 Italian composer and violinist Vivaldi was born in Venice. After learning the violin with his father, and possibly other teachers too, he joined the orchestra of St Mark’s. He was ordained in 1703, later acquiring the nickname Il prete rosso (‘the Red Priest’), because of his red hair. Partly because of fragile health and partly perhaps ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

1678–1741, Italian Vivaldi’s father was a talented violinist who was employed at St Mark’s in Venice, and it is likely that his father was also involved in managing operas in that city during the late seventeenth century. Although Vivaldi was nominally a Catholic priest by profession, he did not have to say Mass for most of his life ...