(Vin-chant’-zo Ga-le-la’-e) c. 1520–91 Italian theorist and musician The father of Galileo Galilei, Vincenzo, also had a scientific mind. His experience as a lutenist and composer formed the practical basis for a significant body of music theory. His later works, especially, are heavily influenced by contemporary humanist enquiry into the nature of ancient music and, in particular ...
(Ven-chant’-zo Bel-le’-ne) 1801–35 Italian composer One of the most important opera composers of the nineteenth century, Bellini cultivated a bel canto (literally ‘fine singing’) melodic style that influenced not only other opera composers but also Chopin and Robert Schumann. He studied first with his grandfather, composing youthful sacred works, ariettas and instrumental pieces, and in 1819 moved to ...
1801–35, Italian The musical abilities of Vincenzo Bellini were already well known in his home city of Catania in Sicily before he went to Naples at age 18 to study at the conservatory under Zingarelli. A competent pianist at age five, composer of his sacred music at six, the youthful Bellini’s ariettes and instrumental works were performed in ...
‘The Sleepwalker’ Vincenzo Bellini’s two-act opera La sonnambula, which had a pastoral background, was first produced at the Teatro Carcano in Milan on 6 March 1831. The story derived from a comédie-vaudeville of 1819 and a ballet-pantomime of 1827, both part-written by the French dramatist Eugène Scribe. The title role, Amina, was created by Giuditta Pasta ...
Norma, Bellini’s eighth opera and his masterpiece, followed hard on the heels of his La sonnambula when its first performance was given at La Scala less than four months later, on 26 December 1831. Once again, Giuditta Pasta created the title role, although this time she had parts of the opera transposed down to the key ...
(Jo-van’-ne Gab-re-a’-le) c. 1553–1612 Italian composer Gabrieli was taught by his uncle Andrea Gabrieli and, like him, was first employed in Munich with Lassus. After Andrea’s death Giovanni became principal composer for St Mark’s, Venice, and he wrote much of his music with its choir (and building) in mind. His musical debt to his uncle is evident in ...
Perhaps the most important developments in music around the year 1600 were the emergence of the basso continuo and the fashion for virtuosity. The presence of an independent bass line moved composition away from the flowing polyphony of the Renaissance, in which all voices played an equal role in the texture, leaving the upper voices free to indulge in ...
The Renaissance, with its renewed interest in the music of the ancient world, is where the true roots of opera lie. The word ‘Renaissance’ means ‘rebirth’ and refers to the revival of the artistic and intellectual ideals of classical civilization following the intervening Middle Ages. The Renaissance began in Italy in the late fourteenth century and later spread to ...
Broadly speaking, empiricism, from the Greek empeiria (‘experience’), is a philosophical tradition that accepts as fact only what can be verified by observation, or experience, through the use of the five senses. Galileo Galilei’s support of Copernican theory was a result of his observation of the planet Venus through a telescope. His insistence that what he saw ...
One of the best-known Renaissance music manuscripts, the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, was compiled by the musician Francis Tregian (1574–1619) during his imprisonment in London for recusancy from 1609 until his death. The manuscript contains an unusually wide-ranging collection of nearly 300 keyboard pieces by English composers (many of them also known for their Catholic sympathies), including Tallis, Byrd ...
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. ...
Literary clubs that were established in seventeenth-century Italy were commonly known as ‘academies’, taking their name from the Athenian garden where Plato was thought to have met with his followers. One of the most important such groups in the early eighteenth century was the Roman ‘Arcadian Academy’. It was formally established in 1690 to honour the late Queen Christina of Sweden ...
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 ...
The humanist principles of the Enlightenment removed opera from the extravagant world of baroque and landed it in entirely new territory. After 1720, Baroque became a target for changes initiated by the scholar Gian Vincenzo Gravina of the Arcadian Academy in Rome. Baroque operas based on classical myths had developed exaggerated and ultimately ludicrous forms. Under the Enlightenment principles that ...
The Romantic period in opera, music, literature and art lasted more than a century overall, from around 1790 – the year after the French Revolution – to 1910, four years before the outbreak of the First World War. In this context, the meaning of ‘romantic’ went far beyond the usual amorous connotations: it stood for the ...
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