Composers
Hans Henning Otto Harry Baron von Voigt, best known by his nickname Alastair, was a German artist, composer, dancer, mime, poet, singer and translator. He is best known as an illustrator.
His drawings, which are often decadent in spirit and have the look of Art Nouveau, are influenced somewhat by the drawings of the English artist Aubrey Beardsley.
His drawings were in black and white ink, sometimes with one colour added. Alastair's illustrations show a strong influence from the Decadent movement in art and poetry that had begun decades earlier, with the "perverse and sinister" a recurring theme. Intricate decorative elements and fine detail are apparent in his works.
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German Baroque composer, Kapellmeister, organist and teacher.
Johann Sebastian Bach was the youngest child in the family of musician Johann Ambrosius Bach (1645-1695) and belonged to a large family of North German musicians whose dynasty he himself traced back to his great-great-grandfather Veit Bach, a Lutheran baker in the late 16th century. Johann was orphaned at an early age and was taken into care by his older brother, the organist Johann Christoph Bach. In August 1703 he was appointed official organist of the church in Arnstadt, then from 1714 he worked as Kapellmeister and concertmaster at the Weimar court, to which time his first compositions date. In 1736 he was appointed court composer to the King of Saxony, thus recognizing his merits as a composer and organist. While working as a concertmaster, Bach also mastered almost all the instruments in the orchestra.
In the last years of his life, Bach was nearly blind and living poorly, and his Baroque music was considered outdated as tastes changed. But in the 19th century, interest in Bach's works increased dramatically, and he became the favorite composer of many subsequent musicians. Johann Sebastian's sons Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian continued the family dynasty and also became musicians. And Johann Sebastian Bach himself was surrounded by students throughout his life.
Although his contemporaries admired Bach's playing on the harpsichord and organ, today it is his compositions that are considered some of the finest works of mature Baroque music. His most widely known works today include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Masses in B minor, and many other masterpieces of church and instrumental music. Bach's rich legacy includes sacred and secular compositions, especially cantatas, organ pieces and concertos (Bach composed more than 1,000 musical works in all significant genres of his time, except opera), which influenced many later composers. Johann Sebastian Bach was able to encompass and unite the major styles, forms and national traditions developed in previous generations. Today he is considered one of the greatest composers of all time.
Alban Berg, full name Alban Maria Johannes Berg, was an Austrian composer, representative of expressionism in music, teacher and music critic.
A meeting with composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) in September 1904 played a decisive role in Berg's life. The latter saw talent in the young man and taught him free of charge for six years. In 1907 Berg performed his "Sonata for Piano" for the first time.
Alban Berg was very self-critical and worked on pieces for a long time. He composed orchestral music (including "Five Orchestral Songs," 1912), chamber music, songs, and two groundbreaking operas, "Wozzeck" (1925) and "Lulu" (1937). "Wozzeck," the most frequently performed theater work in the atonal idiom, is Berg's first attempt to address social issues within the framework of opera. However, its premiere turned into a scandal, with critics even calling the composer a musical fraud.
Only a few years after his death, Alban Berg was widely recognized as a composer of expression. He broke with tradition and mastered a radical technique, but at the same time he combined the old and the new and created, together with Schoenberg and Webern, the New Viennese School of the 20th century. Alban Berg was also an outstanding teacher of composition.
Hector Berlioz, full name Louis-Hector Berlioz, was a French composer, conductor, and music critic of the Romantic era.
Berlioz received his primary education from his father, an enlightened physician, who gave him his first lessons in music and Latin. By the age of 12, he was already composing music for local chamber ensembles and learning to play the guitar and flute with virtuosity. In 1821 his father sent him to Paris to study medicine, and he received his first scientific degree. But in parallel, he often visited the Paris Opera, where he studied the entire repertoire on the score.
Against the will of his parents, Berlioz took a compulsory course of study at the Conservatory of Paris and in 1830 received the Prix de Rome. In Italy he met the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka and became lifelong friends with Mendelssohn. From 1832 Berlioz worked for 30 years as a music critic for periodicals. He was acquainted with many of the leading writers and musicians of his time, including Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Niccolò Paganini, and George Sand.
Berlioz adored the works of Weber and Beethoven, as well as Gluck, and tirelessly introduced audiences to their works. As a result of his many trips as a conductor to Germany, Belgium, England, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, he taught the leading orchestras of Europe a new style.
Berlioz during these years wrote, among other things, the "Symphonie Fantastique" (1830) that made him famous, and the symphony "Harold in Italy" (1834). After a concert in 1838, where he conducted their performance, the famous violin virtuoso Paganini declared Hector Berlioz a continuator of Beethoven's musical traditions and presented him with 20,000 francs. A grateful Berlioz wrote a choral symphony, Romeo and Juliet, dedicated to Paganini.
In 1844, Berlioz created "Treatise on Modern Instrumentation and Orchestration", which is not just a technical manual, it served as an introduction to the aesthetics of expression in music for generations to come. Among Berlioz's dramatic works, The Damnation of Faust (1846) and The Nativity (1854) are world-famous.
Johannes Brahms was a great German composer, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era.
Johannes showed a talent for music early on, learning to play the piano and earning a living from it; in 1850 he met the Hungarian violinist of Jewish origin Eduard Remenyi - from him he learned gypsy music, which often manifested itself in his later work.
In 1853, Brahms had a fateful encounter with the composer Robert Schumann. Schumann wrote an enthusiastic article about Brahms in a periodical, and from that moment the general public became aware of the young talent. In 1859 Brahms was appointed conductor of the women's choir in Hamburg, which gave him ample time for his own work. During this period he composed two Serenades for orchestra and a String Sextet in B flat major, and completed the Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor. A little later he settled in Vienna and directed the Singakademie choir.
In 1868 Brahms completed his most famous choral work, the German Requiem, which is still considered one of the most important works of 19th century choral music. The following year he composed two volumes of Hungarian Dances for piano duet - these were brilliant arrangements of gypsy melodies, their success was phenomenal, and they were performed all over the world.
For the rest of his life, Brahms never stopped composing works in a wide variety of genres: symphonies, concertos, chamber music, piano works, choral works, waltzes and songs. Brahms was a great master of the symphonic and sonata style of the second half of the nineteenth century, which placed him in the first ranks of German composers. He made his last concert appearance in March 1897, and died of cancer in Vienna in April.
Benjamin Britten, full name Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, was a British composer, conductor and pianist.
Britten studied at the Royal College of Music in London, and had already written a set of choral variations, A Boy is Born (1933). He then worked as a composer for radio, theater and film, working closely with the poet W.H. Auden. His Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge for string orchestra received international acclaim in 1937. Between 1939 and 1942 Britten worked in the United States, where he composed several significant works.
His later operas include The Rape of Lucretia (1946), the comic Albert Herring (1947), Billy Budd (1951), Gloriana (1953, written for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II), and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960). These and other works established his reputation as a leading British composer of the mid-20th century, whose operas are considered the best English works in the genre.
His song cycles occupy a significant place in Britten's oeuvre, and his largest choral work is War Requiem (1962) for chorus and orchestra. The composer wrote the Symphony in D major for cello and orchestra (1963) especially for the famous Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Britten's best-known works also include the opera Peter Grimes (1945) and the orchestral production The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1945).
In addition to his work as a composer, Britten performed as a pianist and conductor, touring internationally and visiting the USSR on several occasions.
Max Bruch, full name Max Christian Friedrich Bruch, was a German composer and conductor, violinist and teacher of the late Romantic period.
Bruch studied with the composer and pianist Ferdinand Hiller (1853-1857), wrote a symphony at age 14, and won a scholarship that allowed him to study in Cologne. His first opera, Joke, Deceit and Revenge, was performed in 1858. He conducted orchestral and choral societies in Germany, England and Poland, and from 1890 to 1911 he was a professor at the Berlin Academy of Arts.
Bruch was an ambitious and prolific composer. His greatest success during his lifetime was his huge works for chorus and orchestra, Beautiful Ellen (1867) and Odysseus (1872). He was also the author of string concertos and pieces for violin and orchestra. His Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor (1866) is one of the most popular Romantic violin concertos.
Anton Bruckner, full name Joseph Anton Bruckner, was an Austrian composer, organist and music educator.
Bruckner was born into a poor family, which prevented him from receiving an education suited to his musical talent. His father taught him to play the violin and organ, and he worked as a teacher and organist for many years. Already after the age of 30, he began composing organ and choral works, including the Solemn Mass (1854). In 1855 he became organist at Linz Cathedral and took a five-year course in harmony and counterpoint with the Viennese teacher Simon Sechter. A little later Bruckner studied orchestration with Otto Kitzler, who in 1863 introduced him to the music of Wagner - a powerful impetus for him to begin composing significant compositions.
After moving to Vienna in 1686, Bruckner taught at the Conservatory and the University of Vienna and composed at the same time. Over the next 28 years he wrote most of his famous works: symphonies Nos. 2-9, a string quintet and the Te Deum. But it was not until the premiere of his Seventh Symphony in Leipzig in 1884 that he received the recognition he deserved. Until his death, he continued to compose new works and rework his earlier works.
Anton Bruckner was an outstanding virtuoso organist and a superb teacher. His symphonies are often considered symbolic of the final phase of Austro-German Romanticism, and he also composed much sacred secular choral music and chamber works.
Silvano Bussotti is an Italian composer, painter and opera director, set and costume designer.
Silvano learned to play the violin at an early age, studied harmony and counterpoint at the Cherubini Conservatory in Florence, and studied with various teachers. In addition to music, he was fond of drawing and painting. His first works, influenced by Luigi Dallapiccola and Roberto Lupi, were written in the avant-garde dodecaphonic technique, and he also made extensive use of the aleatoric method. Bussotti was a participant in "anti-music" concerts, for which he created works without any sounds at all.
Bussotti's compositions include numerous pieces for various vocal, instrumental and mixed ensembles. In 1963 he co-founded the Group of 70 (Florence). Between 1968 and 2001 he worked as a director, costume designer and stage designer at the leading opera houses in Italy, La Scala, La Fenice; Massimo (Palermo), Reggio (Turin) and others. In total, he created about 40 opera productions.
Bussotti's art exhibitions are held in various countries around the world. Bussotti is also known for his extravagant graphic scores, in which he found self-expression as an artist, but this hides the meaningful nature of his musical achievements.
John Milton Cage Jr. is an American composer, philosopher, poet, musicologist, and artist. Cage is considered one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde.
Born in the United States, he studied architecture in Europe, but music and painting seemed more interesting to him and he has achieved impressive success there. John Cage is considered a pioneer of uncertainty in music and the unconventional use of instruments, and is highly regarded for his paintings and prints. In addition, he played a crucial role in the development of modern dance and performance art.
His father John Milton Cage (1886-1964) was an inventor.
Petr Ilich Chaikovskii (Russian: Петр Ильич Чайковский) was a great Russian composer, teacher, conductor and music critic.
Petr was born into the family of a mining engineer; later his father became manager of the Alapaev and Nizhnekamsk factories and director of the Technological Institute in St. Petersburg. Already at the age of five Peter began to learn to play the piano and compose. Educated as a lawyer, he was appointed to the Ministry of Justice and retired in 1867.
In 1865, Chaikovskii graduated with honors from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, composing several significant works during his years of study. From 1866-1878, Chaikovskii was a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, translated several musical-theoretical works, and wrote A Guide to the Practical Study of Harmony. In 1868 he made his first appearance in the press as a music critic, and later worked as a music reviewer for the Moscow newspapers Sovremennaya Annals and Russkiye Vedomosti.
Petr Ilich destroyed his first operas - "Voevoda" and "Undina" - apparently dissatisfied with the result, but his next concertos and symphonies, the operas "Oprichnik" (1874) and "Vakula the Blacksmith" (1876) were already quite successful. In 1877 patron of the arts and admirer Nadezhda von Meck arranged for Chaikovskii to receive an annual subsidy of six thousand roubles, thanks to which he devoted his later life to composing, and from 1888 the composer also received an annual pension of three thousand roubles from the Russian Emperor Alexander III.
From the 1880s Chaikovskii became known not only in Russia but also abroad: he gave numerous concerts in European cities, and his music was recognized and loved in the USA.
A man of extraordinary sensitivity, Petr Chaikovskii revealed in music the inner world of man from lyrical intimacy to the deepest tragedy, creating the highest examples of operas, ballets, symphonies and chamber works. During this period he wrote the operas "Eugene Onegin" (1878), "The Maid of Orleans" (1879), "Mazepa" (1883), "Cherevichki" (1885), "Queen of Spades" (1890), "Iolanta" (1891) and others. And also ballets "Swan Lake" (1876), "Sleeping Beauty" (1889), "The Nutcracker" (1892). All of these works are still going with enduring success in all the world's theaters.
His cycle The Seasons and his Sixth Symphony ("Pathetique") are also widely known. Chaikovskii 's six symphonies, the symphony "Manfred" (1885), "Italian Capriccio" (1880), three concerti for piano and orchestra (1875-93), a concerto for violin and orchestra, "Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra" (1876), a piano trio "In Memory of the Great Artist" (1882), and romances belong to the world's masterpieces.
Chaikovskii died unexpectedly, having contracted cholera during an epidemic in St. Petersburg. In honor of the composer in 1958, one of the most prestigious performing competitions was organized - the International Chaikovskii Competition, which is held in Moscow every four years. The city of Chaikovskii in the Perm Region, streets in many cities in the former Soviet Union, and a crater on Mercury are named in the composer's honor. The Moscow State Conservatory bears Tchaikovsky's name. Petr Chaikovskii is one of the most performed composers all over the world.
Domenico Cimarosa was an Italian opera composer of the Neapolitan school of the late 18th century.
For 11 years Cimarosa studied at the Conservatory of Santa Maria di Loreto. His first successful work was the comic opera Stravaganze del Conte, staged at the Teatro Fiorentini in Naples in 1772. It was followed by The Italian Woman in Londre (1778), which is still performed in Italy, and others. Cimarosa composed both serious and comic operas (more than 80 in all), which were staged in Rome, Naples, Florence, Vicenza, Milan and Turin.
In 1787, at the invitation of Catherine II, he traveled to Russia, replacing Giovanni Paisiello as court musician. He staged two operas in St. Petersburg, and in 1791 he traveled to Vienna at the invitation of Leopold II. There in 1792 Cimarosa staged his masterpiece, the opera The Secret Marriage, which made him famous. In 1793 he returned to Italy and composed many more works.
Cimarosa was a prolific and popular composer. His numerous operas are characterized by vivid imagery and rich comic content. He also wrote many choral works, including the cantata Maestro di cappella, a popular satire on modern opera rehearsal methods. His instrumental works include many sonatas for harpsichord and a concerto for two flutes.
François Couperin was a French composer, organist and harpsichordist.
François Couperin is a member of a large dynasty of French musicians. At the age of 18, François succeeded his father, Charles Couperin (1638-1679), as organist at the Church of Saint-Gervais in Paris, and in 1693 he became one of the four organists of the Chapel Royal. He soon became a harpsichord teacher for the royal children, and in 1717 was appointed court harpsichordist.
François Couperin is known primarily for his harpsichord music; between 1713 and 1730 he published four books of more than 250 pieces for harpsichord. Some of them are characterized by complex accompaniment and dialogues between violin and bass, while others are light, graceful and expressive. Couperin's harpsichord pieces, even during the author's lifetime, gained great fame not only in France but also abroad. Couperin also wrote chamber music, including trio sonatas (for harpsichord and two violins) and "Royal Concertos", which he composed for Sunday evening royal entertainment. He also composed motets and other church music. Couperin's last and most significant liturgical work, Leçons de ténèbres (c. 1715), has no parallel in either French or Italian music of the period. Johann Sebastian Bach knew and appreciated this work by Couperin.
Couperin authored The Art of Touching the Clavier (1716), in which he explained in detail the technique of playing the harpsichord. And in his publications of the early 1720s, he suggested a wide variety of ways of combining French and Italian styles.
Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called «a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise».
Jean-Benjamin de La Borde was a French composer, music historian, publisher and financier.
De La Borde played the violin and trained in composition. In 1748 he composed his first small opera, and in 1751 his opera Le Rossignol ou Le Mariage secret (The Nightingale or The Secret Marriage) was staged in Paris. The prolific composer went on to compose an average of 30 operas a year for 30 years, mostly of a comic nature.
De La Borde was also a prominent cultural figure of his time: he authored Essays on Music, a four-volume collection of songs for solo voice, and initiated the publication of the General and Private Description of France (1781-96).
For several years de La Borde was valet and favorite of Louis XV; he refused to leave France during the Revolution and was arrested and executed by guillotine on July 22, 1794.
Jorge de la Vega was an Argentine painter, graphic artist, draftsman, singer, and songwriter.
Although de la Vega studied architecture in Buenos Aires for six years, he then became self-taught as a painter. From 1961 to 1965 he was a member of the art movement called Nueva Figuración. During his involvement in this movement, he became a member of the Otra Figuración group. In the final years of his career and life he wrote and sang popular protest songs which expressed his humorous view of the world. In addition to museums in Argentina, his works hang in the Phoenix Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the Art Museum of the Americas at the OAS in Washington, DC.
Claude Debussy, full name Achille-Claude Debussy, was a French composer, conductor, pianist and critic, a leading representative of Impressionism in music.
Debussy showed musical talent early and entered the Paris Conservatory. He lived in poverty, but at the same time he learned a luxurious life: the Russian philanthropist and the richest woman, Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck, took him under her tutelage, he mused with her children and traveled with her around Europe. His sensitive nature could not but respond to all these contrasts. During this period Debussy created one of his masterpieces, Moonlight from the Bergamo Suite.
Debussy spent the summers of 1881 and 1882 near Moscow, at the von Meck estate. In this house Debussy became acquainted with the new Russian music of Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Balakirev and Modest Mussorgsky. His stay in Russia had a beneficial effect on the young musician's development. Debussy was also influenced by the work of Richard Wagner. He developed a highly original system of harmony and musical structure that in many ways expressed the ideals to which the Impressionist and Symbolist artists and writers of his time aspired.
Debussy toured with concerts and conducted his works in England, Italy, Russia and other countries. Claude Debussy's famous works include the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894), the operas Pelléas et Mélisande and The Sea (1905), the suite Children's Corner (1906-1908) and the orchestral cycle Images (1912). In 1913 he composed music for the ballet Games, which was performed by Sergei Diaghilev's Russian Seasons company in Paris and London.
Orlando di Lasso (French: Roland de Lassus, Latin: Orlandus Lassus) was a Franco-Flemish composer and Kapellmeister of the late Renaissance.
In his youth Orlando had a good voice and sang in a choir, traveled in Italy and eventually began composing music himself. In 1563, Lasso was appointed Kapellmeister at the court of Duke Albrecht V and made his chapel professional, and his work earned Munich a reputation as one of the musical centers of Europe. Lasso also taught music and lived mainly in Bavaria.
Lasso was highly gifted, and is considered one of the most versatile and prolific composers in the history of music. He wrote some 1,350 (mostly vocal) compositions in all genres and forms contemporary to his time, of which some 1,200 were published during his lifetime. Lasso was a master of sacred music, but was equally adept at secular composition, spanning Italian, French, and German genres.
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of the Romantic era and one of the founders of the Czech national school of music.
Dvořák showed musical talent early on and became an accomplished violinist. After graduating from the Institute of Church Music in Prague, he worked as a musician in various ensembles and taught, but lived very poorly. However, already in the 1860s he composed two symphonies, an opera, chamber music and many songs.
In 1875 Dvořák received a state scholarship from the Austrian government and met Johannes Brahms, with whom he developed a fruitful friendship. Dvořák's Moravian Duets (1876) for soprano and contralto and Slavonic Dances (1878) for piano duet first brought the composer and the music of his country to the world's attention. In 1884 he made a successful visit to England, and in 1890 the great composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky arranged two concerts for him in Moscow. The following year Dvořák became an honorary doctor of music at Cambridge University.
In 1892 Dvořák accepted the post of director of the newly established National Conservatory in New York and, in addition to this work, traveled extensively in the United States, but in 1895 he returned to his homeland.
Through his work Dvořák expanded the path of the Czech national music school started by Bedřich Smetana. He composed in almost all classical music genres, and his symphonies and concertos, choruses and chamber compositions continue to be performed all over the world. Dvořák's best-known works include Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" (written in the USA), the opera Rusalka, the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, the "American" String Quartet, Requiem, Stabat Mater and Slavonic Dances.
Edward William Elgar (Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet) was a British composer of the Romantic period.
The son of an organist, Elgar was a fine violinist, played the bassoon, and worked as a Kapellmeister and church organist. Then in Malvern, Worcestershire, he began composing music himself. He composed several major choral works, notably the oratorio The Light of Life (Lux Christi (1896,), and in 1898-99 he wrote the popular Enigma Variations for orchestra. Another major work followed in 1900, the oratorio The Dream of Gerontius, which is considered his masterpiece.
From 1905 to 1908 Elgar was the first Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham. During World War I, he periodically wrote patriotic works. His marches, introductions, symphonies, and concertos for strings are well known. Elgar's vibrant works contributed to the revival of English music in the 20th century during the transition from late Romanticism.
Wolfgang Flatz is a contemporary Austrian artist, stage designer, musician and composer. Currently lives and works in Munich, Germany.
After engaging with contemporary art movements such as Heppening and Viennese Actionism, Flatz creates works using a variety of media - painting, sculpture, performance, video, computer, film, photography, theatre, music, design and architecture. Subjects include voyeurism, the body, violence, aggression, pain, love, politics and audience interaction.
George Gershwin, born Jacob Gershwin, is an American composer and pianist.
George's parents emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1891, and he was about 12 years old at the piano, becoming virtually self-taught. Gershwin published his first song in 1916, but it was Swanee, written by a 20-year-old Gershwin in 1918, that made him famous. The income he received for it allowed Gershwin to concentrate on musical theater. In the 1920s, however, George, along with his older brother Ira, were major songwriters and hit songwriters on Broadway. The lyrics for all of Gershwin's films were written by Ira Gershwin, as were the lyrics for most of his musicals, although early in his career Gershwin worked with other lyric writers, including Irving Caesar and Buddy De Silva.
The Gershwin brothers' first Broadway hit was the song Lady Be Good in 1924. In his songs, Broadway shows, and movie scores, composer George Gershwin achieved unprecedented success with his masterful mastery of jazz, classical, and popular music styles. These include "Rhapsody in Blue" in 1924, "Concerto in F" in 1925, "An American in Paris" in 1928, and "Second Rhapsody" in 1931. Between 1919 and 1935. Gershwin wrote music for 31 musicals, one of which - Of Thee I Sing - in 1932 became the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Dramaturgy. Gershwin's songs have also been used in numerous films and award-winning musicals over the years.
The opera Porgy and Bess, co-written with Dubose, Dorothy Hayward, and Ira Gershwin, was the Gershwin brothers' most ambitious project, combining memorable songs with drama. It was first performed in Boston in 1935 and was made into a movie in 1959.
In 1937, at the age of only 39, the brilliant composer died of a brain tumor. George Gershwin was at the height of his career, leaving a significant and lasting mark on the world of classical music. Today, his orchestral works are performed by most of the world's prestigious symphony orchestras. Ira Gershwin, who was two years older, lived 46 years after George's death.
Aleksandr Konstantinovich Glazunov (russian: Александр Константинович Глазунов) was a Russian late Romantic composer, conductor and teacher.
Glazunov belonged to a well-known dynasty of book publishers in St. Petersburg and showed musical ability early on. He studied music with Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov, wrote his first symphony at the age of sixteen, and was noticed by the patron of the arts Mitrofan Belyaev, who became his admirer and benefactor. Thanks to him, the young Glazunov traveled all over Europe and was introduced in Weimar to Franz Liszt, who promoted the performance of his First Symphony at the congress of the General German Musical Union.
After the death of composer Borodin, Glazunov helped Rimsky-Korsakov finish his opera Prince Igor, and in the late 1890s he was already collaborating with the Imperial Theaters and writing three ballets. In 1899 Glazunov was appointed professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and from the end of 1905 he became its director, retaining this post even after the October Revolution of 1917. Glazunov's personality is characterized by the fact that he spent his director's salary on helping poor students. And in general, during the hungry years of post-revolutionary devastation, he supported students, even if he did not share their musical beliefs - among them the greats Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich.
In 1922, Aleksandr Glazunov was named People's Artist of the young Soviet republic. In 1928 he traveled to Vienna to take part in the jury of the Schubert Centenary Composition Competition and never returned to the USSR. However, even while living in Europe, he retained his Soviet citizenship. Officially, Glazunov's stay in Paris was explained by his serious state of health and the need for medical treatment. Already in 1972 Glazunov's ashes were transported to the USSR and reburied in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
In addition to ballets, Aleksandr Glazunov wrote eight symphonies (the ninth remained unfinished), seven string quartets and a great deal of orchestral music. He wrote mainly for piano and organ, and at the end of his life he composed works for saxophone - a solo concerto and a quartet for saxophones. Glazunov's most popular works today are his ballets The Seasons (1898) and Raymonda (1897), his Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Polonaise from Les Sylphides, and his two concert waltzes.
Christoph Willibald Gluck was a German classical composer and reformer of the opera genre.
Christoph showed a talent for music early on, playing violin and cello, leaving home and studying music with various teachers in Prague, Vienna and Milan. In 1741, Gluck had his first significant success with his first opera, Artasers, at the Milan theater. In 1745 Gluck, by then already well known as an opera composer, was invited to England, but in 1750 he settled in Vienna, where he lived for the rest of his life. While in Paris in 1773-79, he won the favor of Louis XVI's wife Marie Antoinette.
Christoph Gluck played a historic role in the formation of a new operatic style, becoming the main reformer in the transition from baroque to classical opera.
During his career, Christoph Gluck composed about 40 operas. Of these, his first "reformist" opera was Orpheus and Eurydice, staged in Vienna in 1762. Next were "Alceste" (1767), "Parida et Helena" (1770), "Iphigenia in Aulida" (1774), a French version of "Orpheus" (1774), and "Iphigenia in Tauris" (1779). He also wrote five ballets, of which Don Giovanni (1761) was one of the first successful action ballets.
Gluck spent the last eight years of his life in Vienna, continuing to work tirelessly. During these years he met several times with Wolfgang Mozart, who by then had already become a bright star.
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie or Woody Guthrie is an American folk and country singer and musician.
Guthrie was born in difficult economic times in the United States. At first, he earned a living as a sign painter in different cities, traveling by hitchhiking. At the age of 20, he began learning to play guitar, playing in saloons and labor camps during the Great Depression. In his travels, the musician absorbed and performed many of the old folk ballads he heard around him and wrote many new songs reflecting the everyday joys and hardships of the ordinary people he met in his travels.
Guthrie was a major influence on folk and rock musicians from Bob Dylan to Wilco. Among Guthrie's best-known songs are Pastures of Plenty, Bound for Glory, and This Land is Your Land, the latter of which, due to its popularity, has become something of an "alternative national anthem" in the United States. In 1940, he recorded four hours of songs and stories for the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center). Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Guthrie had a high-profile career in radio broadcasting and recording.
Woody was a very prolific composer, writing thousands of songs. He also wrote an autobiographical novel, On the Road to Fame, and drew thousands of pen and ink drawings, many of which are now in the Ralph Rinzler Center's Folklife Archives and Collections.
George Frideric Handel was a German-born English composer of the Baroque period.
After receiving a musical education, Handel worked briefly as an organist at the cathedral in Halle, then joined the violin section of the opera orchestra in Hamburg. After spending several years in Italy, he wrote many works there, including two operas. The style of Italian music permeated the composer's work throughout his life. Having become famous in Italy, in 1710 Handel was appointed Kapellmeister to the Elector of Hanover, the future King George I of England, and two years later he was already staging his operas in London.
In 1727 Handel became a British subject and was appointed composer to the Chapel Royal. In this capacity he wrote many musical works. From 1720 to 1728, operas at the Royal Theater in London were staged by the Royal Academy of Music, and Handel wrote the music for most of them.
In 1741, Handel wrote the most famous of his many oratorios, Messiah. Handel had a talent for musically portraying a human character in a single scene or aria - a gift he used with great dramatic power in his operas and oratorios. Although much of his music was vocal, Handel was also one of the recognized instrumental composers of the late Baroque era. Handel paid tribute to church music by composing many solemn hymns.
Handel's music has become an integral part of the national culture of England, and in Germany he is also honored as a major national composer.
Franz Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer of the classical school, who created the string quartet and symphony forms.
Haydn discovered unusual musical abilities very early, but the poverty of his family did not favor the development of his talents. He was a singer, interrupted earnings and engaged in musical self-education. Fate led young Haydn to Prince Pal Antal Esterhazy, whose wealthy and influential family of the Austrian Empire maintained his own orchestra. In 1766, Haydn became music director at the Esterhazy court and remained in that service for the rest of his life. In addition to his operas for the court, Haydn composed symphonies, string quartets and other chamber music. On one of his visits to Vienna, Haydn met Wolfgang Mozart, and their interactions brought many benefits to both great composers and musicians.
In the 1760s, Haydn's fame began to spread throughout Europe. In 1792, he met the young Ludwig van Beethoven and foreshadowed his greatest fame as a composer.
Haydn was an extremely prolific composer. He created 108 symphonies, many quartets, oratorios, sonatas, concertos, etc. As a true representative of the Enlightenment, Haydn was the most famous composer in Europe in the 18th century.
Frederick William Herschel (German: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel) was a German-born British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel (1750–1848). Born in the Electorate of Hanover, William Herschel followed his father into the military band of Hanover, before emigrating to Great Britain in 1757 at the age of nineteen.
John Hilton the Younger was a British composer of the early Baroque period.
His father was the church musician, organist and composer John Hilton Senior, who died in Cambridge in 1609. Hilton Jr. earned a Bachelor of Music degree and became organist at St. Margaret's Cathedral in Westminster. In the 1630s he composed several oratorio-like works and later published a collection of 42 pieces. He is also credited as the author of several church hymns.
Gustav Holst, birth name Gustavus Theodore Von Holst, is an English composer and educator. Holst studied at the Royal College of Music in London, including playing the trombone, and for several years after graduation he earned a living as a trombonist in various orchestras. In 1905 he became a music teacher at St. Paul's Girls' School and later music director of Morley College, positions he retained throughout his life. A brilliant educator, Holst pioneered music education for women.
Holst's music is often built on English national folklore and has much in common with the work of composer and contemporary Vaughan Williams. However, he combines it with an international flavor based on the styles of Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, and other innovators, with a continuation of English Romanticism. This influence is reflected in Holst's most famous work, the orchestral suite The Planets. Also in the Hindu opera Savitri and other cosmopolitan works.
Holst's works also include the opera Sita, Hymn to Jesus for chorus and orchestra (1917); Ode to Death for chorus and orchestra (1919), the opera The Perfect Fool (1923), the Choral Symphony (1923-24), the Double Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra (1929), and Hammersmith for Orchestra (1930).
Arthur Honegger was a Swiss-French composer, violinist and cellist, and music critic.
Honegger was born into a Swiss family but spent most of his life in France. He studied at the Zurich and Paris conservatories. After World War I, he joined Les Six, a group of young composers that also included Georges Auric, Germain Taillefer, Francis Poulenc, Darius Millau, and Louis Durey.
In the early 1920s Honegger asserted himself with strong orchestral and chamber works, including Pacific 231 (inspired by the sounds of a steam locomotive) and Pastorale d'Eté. In his dramatic oratorios Joan of Arc at the stake and Dance of the Dead, he turned to mysticism and religious meaning, which informed many of his later works.
Honegger was a prolific composer and composed several operas and a ballet, oratorios, five symphonies, and several chamber works for strings. He also wrote music for several movies. Honegger's music is written in a relaxed musical style that combines the French avant-garde with the large forms and massiveness of the German tradition.
Honegger is also known for his critical publications and musicological essays, particularly on composer Igor Stravinsky, whom he considered a genius and an example.
Francis Hopkinson was an American politician, member of the Continental Congress, lawyer, writer and composer.
Hopkinson was educated at Philadelphia College and studied law and was admitted to the bar. In 1774 Hopkinson was appointed a member of the governor's council, and in 1776 he represented New Jersey in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. He was a judge of the Pennsylvania admiralty court from 1779 to 1789 and then served as U.S. District Judge for eastern Pennsylvania until his death.
Hopkinson is credited as one of the designers of the Flag of the United States as well as continental paper bills. As an artist, he designed the seal of the American Philosophical Society, the seal of the State of New Jersey, and the seals of various departments of the U.S. government.
In addition to politics, Hopkinson dabbled in the arts: he played the harpsichord and composed music, and wrote poetry and essays. During the Revolution, he mocked the British and their Loyalist supporters in witty political satires. After the Revolution, he maintained an active correspondence with Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson.
Leoš Janáček, birth name Leo Eugen Janáček, was a Czech composer and musicologist, folklorist, publicist and teacher.
Janáček was a singer in Brno, and studied at the Prague, Leipzig and Vienna Conservatories. In 1881 he founded the Collegium of Organists in Brno, which he directed until 1920. From 1881 to 1888 he directed the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1919 he became professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory.
Janáček was deeply in love with national music, collecting folklore and publishing the journal Musical Pages. He was inspired by Moravian and other Slavic music, including Eastern European folk music, to create an original modern musical style.
In his early period of creativity, Janáček was strongly influenced by the musical style and aesthetics of his friend Dvořák. His first opera, Šarka (1887-88), was a romantic work in the spirit of Wagner and Smetana. In his later operas he developed his own distinctly Czech style, built on the intonations of his native speech and folk melodies. Janáček's most important operas are Jenůfa (1904) and Her Foster Daughter, which established the composer's international reputation; The Case of Macro Pulos (1926), From the Dead House (1930), and others. Most of Janáček's operas have been staged in Czech.
Janáček visited Russia three times, and his interest in Russian language and literature resulted in the opera Katya Kabanova (1921) and the orchestral rhapsody Taras Bulba (1918). Janáček also wrote a number of instrumental chamber works. The world-famous composer spent most of his life in Brno, where the vast majority of his works were performed for the first time. Today, Janáček is the most frequently performed Czech opera composer in the world.
André Jolivet was a French composer.
André's composition teacher was the French composer Marie-Paule Le Flem. Jolivet became interested in atonal music and then became a student of composer Edgar Varèse, who taught him musical acoustics, atonal music, and orchestration.
In 1936 Jolivet co-founded the group La jeune France, and in 1945 he was appointed music director of the Comédie Française. He developed an expressive melodic style, epitomized in the virtuosic Concertino for trumpet, strings and piano (1948) and the 1949 Flute Concerto.
André Jolivet is known for his complex, expressive experiments with rhythm and new sounds. He adapted music from Egypt, the Middle East, Africa and Asia into his distinctly French style.
Jens Gerd Joneleit is a German abstractionist and composer who lives and works in Germany and the United States.
He studied art and music at the University of South Dakota and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then returned to Germany.
His paintings and other visual works have been the subject of numerous gallery exhibitions of contemporary art in the United States and Europe.
As a composer, Jens Jonleit has written numerous compositions for orchestras, ensembles, and chamber groups in Europe and the United States. He is also known as a composer of music and theater works and opera.
György Ligeti, full name György Sándor Ligeti, was a Hungarian and Austrian composer and musicologist.
Ligeti was born into a Jewish family, but his mother tongue was Hungarian and from an early age he was exposed to Romanian and Hungarian folk music. His first significant work was the Romanian Concerto, which he wrote in 1951. In 1956 Ligeti emigrated from Hungary to Austria, receiving Austrian citizenship in 1968.
In 1957 in Cologne, Ligeti met the experimental composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gottfried König and worked with them in the field of academic electronic music, but soon switched to instrumental music. He gained recognition from the Western avant-garde in 1961 with his work Visions and others, in which he used sonorics and the micropolyphony technique he had invented. In 1965 Ligeti completed one of his major works, Requiem.
During his life, Ligeti changed his compositional style and technique several times, ranging from electronic music and sonoricism (1950s and 1960s) to neoromanticism (1980s and 1990s). He has also written many theoretical articles on new currents in music.
Jean-Baptiste Lully, born Giovanni Battista Lulli, was an Italian-born French composer, violinist, and conductor.
Lully spent most of his life working as a musician at the court of Louis XIV and became a French subject in 1661. He began composing music for court ballets in 1658 and collaborated with Molière on numerous comedy ballets between 1664 and 1670.
Lully is considered the leading composer of the French Baroque musical style, to which he contributed many of his own innovations. He composed several operas, chief among them the opera Armide, written especially for Louis XIV. Lully's other works include sacred works, dance music for various instruments, and suites for trumpet and strings.
James Lyon was a clergyman and one of the first American composers.
James Lyon was one of the few composers in mid-eighteenth-century America. He earned a master's degree from the College of Philadelphia and became a Presbyterian minister. He is known to have begun writing music while still a student. While living in Philadelphia, Lyon published his Urania, or Select Collection of Psalms, Hymns, and Anthems, in 1761. It contained many English tunes as well as six original pieces by Lyon. Lyon is believed to be the author of the tune that eventually became the song "America (My Country 'Tis of Thee)."
He served the Congregational Church in Machias, Maine from 1771 until his death in 1794. James Lyon was an ardent and active patriot and even made George Washington a detailed proposal to conquer Nova Scotia.
Michael Vasilyevich Matyushin (Russian: Михаил Васильевич Матюшин) was a pivotal figure in Russian art and music, known for his multifaceted talents that spanned painting, composing, and theoretical contributions to the avant-garde movement. Born in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, in 1861, he initially made his mark as a musician, becoming the first violinist of the St. Petersburg Court Orchestra after studying at the Moscow Conservatory. Matyushin's artistic journey took a significant turn when he delved into painting, studying under various tutors and eventually meeting his future wife, Elena Guro, in an artist's studio. This partnership led to the creation of the "Crane" publishing house, fostering connections with futurists and other avant-garde artists.
Matyushin is perhaps best known for his theory of "extended seeing," which focused on the exploration of space and the interactions between color, form, and perception. This innovative approach aimed at extending the boundaries of human perception, a concept he developed further through his establishment of the Zorved group. His efforts were grounded in the belief that individuals could learn to perceive more than the visible, including information and events occurring outside their immediate sensory range.
His contributions to both the visual and musical arts culminated in notable works like the futurist opera "Victory Over the Sun," where his collaboration with Kazimir Malevich and Alexei Kruchonykh marked a significant moment in avant-garde history. After the Russian Revolution, Matyushin led an art class on Color at the Free Workshops, despite facing challenges from neoclassical revivalists. Despite these obstacles, he remained a prominent figure in Leningrad's Institute of Artistic Culture, where he continued his experimental work.
Today, Matyushin's legacy is preserved in the Museum of Avant-Garde in Saint Petersburg, housed in the very building where he lived and worked alongside other luminaries of the Russian avant-garde. For art collectors and experts, Matyushin's work represents a fascinating confluence of artistic innovation and theoretical exploration, highlighting his significant impact on both Russian art and the broader avant-garde movement.
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Felix Mendelssohn (full name Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy) was a German composer, pianist, conductor, teacher, and one of the greatest representatives of Romanticism in music.
Felix was born into a Jewish musical family that later converted to Christianity. He received a versatile education and already as a child wrote many musical compositions, including 5 operas, 11 symphonies for string orchestra, concertos, sonatas and fugues. Mendelssohn's first public performance took place in Berlin in 1818, when he was nine years old. In 1821 Mendelssohn was introduced to J.W. von Goethe, for whom he performed works by J.S. Bach and Mozart and to whom he dedicated his Piano Quartet No. 3 in B minor. A friendship developed between the famous wise poet and the 12-year-old musician.
A few years later, the talented musician began conducting in various orchestras in Europe, and became acquainted with Carl Weber. In England, where Mendelssohn visited very often, by the middle of the 19th century his music had become very popular, even with Queen Victoria he was the most favorite composer. He dedicated his Symphony No. 3 in A minor major (Scottish Symphony) to the Queen.
Among Mendelssohn's most famous works are A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826), the Italian Symphony (1833), a violin concerto (1844), two piano concertos (1831, 1837), the oratorio Elijah (1846) and several chamber pieces. The tradition of playing the "Wedding March" from A Midsummer Night's Dream in wedding processions dates back to its performance at the wedding of a royal princess in 1858, already after Mendelssohn's death.
In 1843, Mendelssohn founded a conservatory in Leipzig, where he taught composition with Schumann. Mendelssohn was one of the first great Romantic composers of the nineteenth century.
Olivier Messiaen, full name Olivier Eugène Charles Prosper Messiaen, was a French composer, music theorist, and teacher.
At the age of seven Olivier taught himself to play the piano, at the age of 11 he entered the Paris Conservatory, where his teachers were organist Marcel Dupré and composer Paul Duca. At the conservatory, Messiaen also began to study Eastern rhythms, the peculiarities of birdsong and microtonal music, which uses intervals of less than a semitone. All of this knowledge he innovatively utilized later in his compositions.
In 1931 Messiaen was appointed organist at the church of St. Trinité in Paris. In 1936 he co-founded La Jeune France ("Young France"), a group whose aim was to promote new French music. During these same years and until the outbreak of war, he taught.
As a soldier in the French army, he was taken prisoner by the Nazis, but even in the camp he managed to compose music, he even organized concerts for the exhausted fellow prisoners. After his release from captivity in 1942, Messiaen resumed his work at St. Trinité and later taught at the Paris Conservatoire. His students include dozens of future celebrated musicians, performers and composers.
Much of Messiaen's music was inspired by Roman Catholic theology, and the composer interpreted mystical and religious themes in his own manner. He developed his own style, characterized by rhythmic complexity, rich tonal color and a unique harmonic language. Olivier Messiaen is the author of the monumental opera St. Francis of Assisi (1983), and has toured the world as an organist and pianist, performer of his own works and brilliant improviser.
Jovan Mihailović is a Serbian and American musician, artist and writer.
Jovan Mihailović was born and raised in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, where he and his family survived the Nazi occupation and the transition to communism. From a young age, he demonstrated artistic ability and began to draw, paint and play the violin. He studied at the Belgrade Theater Academy, worked as a playwright in Yugoslavia and traveled throughout Western Europe as a folk musician before immigrating to Sweden, Canada and finally Chicago in 1971.
Jovan was an active member of Chicago's creative community for four decades, writing dozens of novels, plays, and short stories, as well as performing music in restaurants and cafes. He also created many hundreds of drawings and paintings that are full of emotionally intense images from the artist's mystical universe of beauty.
Darius Milhaud was a French modernist composer, conductor, music critic and teacher.
Born into a Jewish family, Milhaud studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Paul Dukas and Vincent d'Indy. During his years of study, he met his future colleagues in Les Six, A. Honegger and J. Taifer. Around 1913, Milhaud began to use bitonality and polychords in his music. He studied polytonality (the simultaneous use of different keys) and consistently developed this technique.
Milhaud's bold, individual style was particularly evident in the ballets Man and His Desire (1918) and The Creation of the World (1923). He wrote incidental music for Claudel's Protea (1920). His other works include the operas Christophe Colomb (1930), David (1954), Medea (1939), and others, totaling 16 operas. A prolific composer, Milhaud wrote more than 400 works, including scores for radio and film, arrangements of the Jewish Sabbath morning service, symphonies, and choral works. Among chamber works, the composer composed many concertos for strings and other instruments.
In 1940 Millau became a professor at Mills College in Oakland, California; in 1947 he was one of the founders of the Summer Conservatory of Music at the Music Academy of the West in California. After 1947, he also taught at the Paris Conservatory of Music almost until the end of his life. His students include many future jazz and classical composers.
Thomas Moore was a British poet, songwriter and composer, a representative of Irish Romanticism.
Thomas graduated from Dublin University, from the age of 14 he collaborated with various Dublin journals. In 1800 he published his "Odes of Anacreon", and a year later - a collection of Poems by the late Thomas Little ("Poems by the late Thomas Little") and became widely known. Visiting the United States, Moore published a collection of poems, where he spoke about this country very sharply.
In 1812, Thomas Moore met Byron, became his close friend and wrote one of the best biographies of him, published in 1835. Moore's most famous works are "The Last Rose of Summer" and the collection "Irish Melodies" (1807-1834), which brought him a stable income for many years. In Russia, however, he is known primarily for the poem Those evening bells from the collection published in 1818. The poem was translated by Ivan Kozlov, and it turned into the famous and beloved song "Evening Bells".
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, full name Johann Chrysostomus Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was an Austrian composer and virtuoso musician. Mozart is one of the greatest composers in music history on par with Beethoven and Haydn.
Wolfgang was born into the family of violinist and composer Leopold Mozart (1719-1787), at the age of five he had already begun composing and gave his first public performance. His older sister Maria Anna (1751-1829) was also a prodigy, and from 1763 Leopold and his children began traveling around Europe with performances.
Mozart had a phenomenal musical ear, memory and was a superb improviser. Unlike any other composer in music history, he was versatile and wrote in all musical genres of his time. During his short life, Mozart composed more than 800 works, many of which are recognized as the pinnacle of the symphonic, concert, chamber, opera and choral repertoire. The general public is familiar with the composer's three operas: The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute.
Society did not immediately appreciate the scale of Mozart's genius. It was only many years later that the vivid image of a prodigy, a refined salon composer who could miraculously think through an entire work in his head, gave way to the image of a serious, meticulous and brilliant creator of music.
Modest Petrovich Musorgskii (russian: Модест Петрович Мусоргский) was a Russian composer and pianist.
Born into an old Russian noble family, Modest was trained on the piano from an early age, then served as an officer in the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. In 1856-57 Mussorgsky became acquainted with the composer Alexander Borodin, and later with Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Cesar Cui, Mili Balakirev and the music critic Vladimir Stasov. Together they formed a friendly community that became known as the Mighty Handful.
In 1858, Musorgskii left military service and took up only music. Later, however, for the sake of earning money, he was forced to enter the civil service and work in various official positions. In music he tried for a long time to find his own style, experimented a lot, took on different genres. He composed piano and orchestral works, many satirical romances, vocal pictures and songs with vivid characters. Musorgskii's symphonic work Intermezzo (1861) and fantasy Night on Bald Mountain, the cycle of pieces Pictures at an Exhibition, written for piano in 1874 as musical illustrations to Victor Hartmann's watercolors, and the vocal cycle Children's, which included seven pieces, are widely known and often performed.
Musorgskii gradually became popular in Russia and abroad. The pinnacle of Musorgskii's work in the 1860s was his opera Boris Godunov, based on Alexander Pushkin's drama, staged at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in 1874. In 1872 he almost completed his last opera, Khovanshchina; Sorochinskaya Yarmarka and several other operas remained unfinished.
After Musorgskii's death, his friend the composer Rimsky-Korsakov decided to put all his works in order and publish them. He made many changes to the melodic and harmonic order of the compositions completed by the author, including Boris Godunov.
Carl Orff, full name Carl Heinrich Maria Orff, was a German composer, representative of expressionism in music, and teacher.
Orff studied at the Munich Academy of Music with composer Heinrich Kaminski, and later conducted in Munich, Mannheim, and Darmstadt. In 1937, he wrote the oratorio Carmina Burana, a staging with dance, based on a manuscript of medieval poems, which became one of the most popular choral works of the 20th century. Inspired, Orff later created several more operatic mysteries based on ancient Greek tragedies and medieval chants, Baroque theater, and Bavarian peasant life.
Orff's system of musical education for children, based largely on developing a sense of rhythm through group lessons and playing percussion instruments, became widespread. In 1924 in Munich he founded the School of Gymnastics, Dance and Music together with the German gymnast Dorothea Gunther. Orff believed that music, being the foundation, brought together movement, singing, playing and improvisation.
During the period of National Socialist rule in Germany, Carl Orff managed to survive quite well: he continued to compose music and teach. From 1950 to 1960, Carl Orff held the chair of musical composition at the Musikhochschule in Munich, and he received many state awards for his many years of activity.
Nigel Osborne is a British composer, educator and humanitarian activist.
He studied composition at Oxford and in Warsaw. In Poland he co-founded one of the first live electronic performance groups in Eastern Europe and worked in the Experimental Studio of Polish Radio, beginning a special relationship with electroacoustic music throughout Europe.
Nigel Osborne works extensively in long-term collaborative projects, for example with the Vienna 20jh Ensemble, the London Symphonietta, the Nash Ensemble, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and others. Theater productions have always been an important area for him. Among the major works for the theater is an interesting opera "Electrification of the Soviet Union". His series of musical and dance collaborations - "Apollo in Despair", "Wilderness", "Zanza", "Mythologies", and in opera and musical theater - "Hell's Angels", "Faust" and others are known.
Osborne's major orchestral works include Symphony 1 for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sun of Venice for the Philharmonic Orchestra. Osborne is a full-time professor at the University of Edinburgh and an advisor to War Child, the charity responsible for the humanitarian aid program in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is generally known for his extensive charity work supporting children traumatized by war, particularly in the Balkans during the Bosnian War and in the Syrian conflict, using his own music therapy techniques.
Hilda Paredes is a composer originally from Mexico, mainly living and working in London.
After studying at the Conservatory of Music in Mexico City, Hilda Paredes earned a Master of Arts degree at City University in London and a doctorate at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Professor John Casken. She has been living and working in London for some 40 years, but continues to be involved in the musical life of her native Mexico as a composer and teacher. Hilda has taught composition and lectured at the University of Manchester, the University of California San Diego, and the University of Buffalo.
Although there is evidence of the presence of Mexican art in her works, Hilda Paredes also draws inspiration from many composers and cultures from around the world. Her music has been critically acclaimed for its refinement of craftsmanship, dramatic power, and poetic approach. Hilda incorporates a wide range of electroacoustic elements into her works.
One of Paredes' most internationally acclaimed works is the chamber opera Harriet. It has been performed in Mexico, the UK, France and Belgium. For this work, Hilda was awarded the prestigious Ivors Composer Award 2019 (formerly British Composer Awards).
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, born Giovanni Battista Draghi, was an Italian composer, violinist and organist, a leading representative of the Baroque and Neapolitan school.
Around 1720 he entered the Poveri Conservatory in Naples, where he earned a high reputation as a violinist. In 1732 Pergolesi was appointed maestro of the Prince of Stigliano's Chapel in Naples and soon composed his most successful work, the opera-buffa The Lady's Maid, which quickly gained popularity. His subsequent operas did not achieve the same success.
The Lady's Maid became much more popular when it was staged in Paris in 1752 after the composer's death. It also sparked fierce debate between conservatives, supporters of traditional French opera, and fans of the new Italian comic style. Pergolesi's opera-buffa became a forerunner of subsequent classical works: these are W. A. Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, J. Rossini's The Barber of Seville, G. Verdi's Falstaff, I. Stravinsky's The Moor, and others.
Alongside secular music Pergolesi composed sacred music. His masses and hymns demonstrate the composer's ability to cope with large choral and instrumental forces, as well as with chamber music. Shortly before his death, he composed the cantata Stabat Mater, one of the composer's most inspired works, written for a small chamber ensemble (soprano, viola, string quartet and organ), filled with sublime, sincere and heartfelt lyrical feeling.
Fate, however, was not favorable to the young talent: Giovanni Battista Pergolesi died of tuberculosis in extreme poverty at the age of 26.
Giacomo Puccini, full name Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini, was an Italian opera composer, organist and choirmaster.
Puccini was born into the family that for two centuries directed the musical organization of the Cathedral of San Martino in Lucca, and the young musician inherited the position of cathedral organist until his adulthood. He also played organ in small local churches. Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida, which he saw in Pisa in 1876, was a boost for him and he entered the Milan Conservatory in 1880.
Puccini carefully studied contemporary operatic compositions, particularly the work of Claude Debussy, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, and Igor Stravinsky. Soon he wrote Triptych (1918), three one-act operas - the melodramatic The Cape, the sentimental Suor Angelica and the comic Gianni Schicchi. Puccini's other mature operas are La bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), and Madama Butterfly (1904).
The composer did not manage to finish his last opera, Turandot - he died of cancer with its score in his hands. This work is the only Italian opera in the Impressionist style. Puccini is also considered the greatest representative of opera realism, as well as the Verismo movement in music, attempting to faithfully portray the social and psychological conflicts of the new national-historical reality after the unification of Italy.
Jean-Philippe Rameau was a French late Baroque composer and music theorist.
Jean-Philippe's father worked as an organist all his life, so his son learned notes before he learned to read. He continued his musical education in Milan, playing the organ, violin and harpsichord. Rameau wrote works for the Paris theaters, composed sacred and secular music, and in 1745 became a court composer.
Rameau wrote many pieces for harpsichord, works for chorus and cantatas. Today he is recognized as the greatest French composer and the most prominent figure in the music of the 18th century.
Maurice Ravel, full name Joseph Maurice Ravel, was a French composer, pianist and conductor, a representative of Impressionism in music.
At the age of 14 Maurice entered the Paris Conservatory and during his studies he composed several works. Already in these early sonatas and compositions he skillfully adapted traditional structures in music to his own personal ones, thus creating his own musical style.
Of Ravel's piano works, the virtuosic "Miroir" and "Gaspard de la Nuit" are popular, while of his orchestral works the most famous are the "Spanish Rhapsody" and Bolero. After 1905, Ravel's name is placed almost on a par with the recognized Impressionist composer Claude Debussy. Ravel met the famous Russian entrepreneur and organizer of the Russian Seasons, Sergei Diaghilev, which was a highlight in his career. He was specially commissioned by him to compose music for Mikhail Fokine's ballet Daphnis and Chloe (1912), starring the great Russian dancer Vatslav Nijinsky.
Ravel toured extensively as a pianist and conductor, performing his own works in Italy, Holland and England. In 1928, he made a successful four-month tour of Canada and the United States, where he impressed with jazz and blues compositions.
Maurice Ravel has gone down in history as one of the leading exponents of musical impressionism.
Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer and professor.
Augusta Thomas studied composition at the Tanglewood Music Center and at Yale University, Northwestern University, and the Royal Academy of Music in London. She was a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for many years. Thomas was also composer-in-residence with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Augusta Read Thomas is Professor of College Composition at the University of Chicago, In 2016, she founded that university's Center for Contemporary Composition, which provides a dynamic, collaborative, and interdisciplinary environment for the creation, performance, and study of new music, as well as career development for emerging and established composers and performers.
One of Thomas' best-known works is Astral Song for solo flute, solo violin and orchestra. Her most recent works include the opera Sweet Potato Kicks the Sun (2019), and she has also written numerous orchestral and choral works, concertos, and solo compositions. Augusta Read Thomas is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is considered the best-known contemporary American composer.
Steve Reich, full name Stephen Michael Reich, is an American minimalist composer.
Reich came from a Jewish family, graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy, and pursued a parallel career in music education. At Mills College in Oakland, California, he earned a master's degree in composition.
In 1966, he founded his own ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians, where he was free to experiment with the form of composition. One of the pioneers of minimalism, he composes music that is essentially tonal-modal and characterized by repetition, a steady pulse, and a clear structure. His innovations include the use of tape loops to create phased patterns.
Reich himself cites the works of Igor Stravinsky, Johann Sebastian Bach, jazz music, and the music of West Africa as sources of his inspiration.
Teodoro Riccio was an Italian composer and Kapellmeister of the second half of the 16th century, who worked in Germany for most of his life.
Educated in church music, Riccio first worked as a Kapellmeister in the church of his hometown in Lombardy, where he composed his first madrigals. In 1575 he arrived at the court of Margrave Georg Friedrich of Ansbach-Brandenburg, to whom he dedicated a famous canon, and moved with the rest of the court musicians to Königsberg when the margrave became governor of the Duchy of Prussia in 1578. In 1585 Riccio was appointed Kapellmeister for life at the margrave's court.
Riccio's works are known mainly from printed sources, although several works survive in manuscripts in the Kremsmünster Abbey, the Koninklijke Bibliothek (Brussels), and the Nuremberg Archives.
Nikolai Andreevich Rimskii-Korsakov (russian: Николай Андреевич Римский-Корсаков) was a Russian composer, teacher and conductor, music critic, and member of the Mighty Handful.
Originally from an old noble family, Rimskii-Korsakov studied piano from the age of six and by the age of nine was already trying to compose music. After graduating from the St. Petersburg Naval School, in 1862-1865 he was on a round-the-world voyage, during which he was made an officer. He participated in an expedition to the shores of North America, visited Great Britain, Spain, Norway. In 1873-1884 he worked as an inspector of military bands of the fleet.
During his studies at the school and during the expedition Nikolai Rimskii-Korsakov continued to study music. His acquaintance in 1861 with the composer Miliy Balakirev and his circle "The Mighty Handful", which included composers Caesar Cui, Modest Mussorgsky and Alexander Borodin, became the impetus for his work. Rimskii-Korsakov 's aesthetic views and worldview were formed under the influence of the "Mighty Handful" and its ideologist V. Stasov.
Nikolai Rimskii-Korsakov was very prolific, and almost all of his works are based on folk and classical Russian literature and melodies. He composed 15 operas, including The Pskovite Girl (1872), May Night (1879), The Snow Maiden (1881), Sadko (1896), The Tsar's Bride (1898), The Tale of Tsar Saltan (1900), Kashchey the Immortal (1902), The Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh..." (1904), The Golden Cockerel (1907). Fragments from some operas have become the most performed in the world, among them "The Song of the Indian Guest" from "Sadko" and "The Flight of the Bumblebee" from "Saltan".
The composer's works also include three symphonies (the first of which he completed while sailing around the world), symphonic works, instrumental concertos, cantatas, chamber instrumental, vocal and sacred music. In 1886-1890 Rimskii-Korsakov conducted the "Russian Symphonic Concertos" in St. Petersburg, and in 1898 - in Moscow, at the same time he was also engaged in teaching. In 1871 he became a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he taught classes in practical composition, instrumentation and orchestration.
As a teacher, Rimskii-Korsakov trained over 200 composers and musicians, including Alexander Glazunov, Mikhail Gnesin, Alexander Grechaninov, Anatoly Lyadov, Sergei Prokofiev, and Igor Stravinsky. He also published several textbooks on harmony and orchestration. Rimskii-Korsakov's work had a great influence on the development of Russian classical and foreign music.
Gerhard Rühm is an Austrian author, composer and visual artist.
His artistic production is inspired by August Stramm, Kurt Schwitters, Gertrude Stein, Carl Einstein und Paul Scheerbart. Rühm's works are often located at the border between music, language, gestures and the visual. His audible works are outstanding examples of innovative radio plays and acoustic art. During a sojourn in Lebanon he became interested in eastern musical styles.
Robert Saxton, full name Robert Louis Alfred Saxton, is a British composer.
Born into a family of Jewish immigrants, Robert began composing music at the age of six and studied at Cambridge and Oxford Universities. Saxton has worked as Professor of Composition at Oxford University and as a Research Fellow in Music at Worcester College. Since 2013 he has been Composer of the Purcell School for Young Musicians Association and has been appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy.
Robert Saxton works in a wide variety of genres. His recent works include the opera The Wandering Jew, song cycles, orchestral symphonic compositions and works for strings and piano.
Arnold Schoenberg, real name Arnold Franz Walter Schönberg, was an Austrian and American composer, representative of musical expressionism, teacher, musicologist and conductor.
Schoenberg came from a Jewish family and began studying the violin at the age of eight and later the cello. While working as a bank clerk, he simultaneously studied composition with Alexander Zemlyansky (1871-1942) and soon wrote his first string quartet (1897) to acclaim. With the help of Richard Strauss, he obtained a teaching position in Berlin, and lived for a time in two cities. In 1904, Alban Berg and Anton Webern began studying with Schoenberg, and this largely determined their future artistic careers.
Around 1906, through much experimentation, Schoenberg came to the conclusion that tonality should be abandoned. He created new methods of music-making and composition involving atonality. In the subsequent period of "free atonality" from 1907 to 1916, he composed the monodrama "Reason", "Five Orchestral Pieces", "Pierrot Lunaire" and other works.
In 1933, due to the rise of National Socialism in Germany, Schoenberg was expelled from the country and emigrated to the USA, in 1941 he took American citizenship and taught at the University of California at Los Angeles until 1944. The works of this period demonstrate the composer's ever-increasing skill and freedom in the use of the 12-tone method.
Although Schoenberg was never accepted by the general public, he nevertheless had a significant influence on 20th century music, being the founder of the New Viennese School of Composition.
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer who combined classical and romantic music.
Franz was born into a musical family, where a quartet played at home and his father founded a music school. The future composer played the violin, piano and organ. At the age of 10, the young Schubert won a place in the Vienna Imperial Court Chapel Choir and quickly gained a reputation as an aspiring composer, writing several light string quartets. In 1814 Schubert began teaching, but at the same time he continuously composed a wide variety of works. These included 145 songs, the Second and Third Symphonies, two sonatas and a number of miniatures for solo piano, two masses and other short choral works, four stage works, a string quartet, and much more.
Soon the popularity of Schubert's dance music and songs grew so much that musical evenings known as "Schubertiades", where Schubert performed his own compositions while accompanying himself on the piano, became fashionable in Vienna. The talented composer effortlessly composed many masterpieces, including the song cycles Lonely Müllerin and Winterreise, as well as the Eighth ("Unfinished") and Ninth ("Great") Symphonies, the Octet for winds, three string quartets, two piano trios, the String Quintet, the Wanderer Fantasia and six sonatas for solo piano.
Despite his boundless talent, Franz Schubert was always insecure, indecisive and reserved, causing him to be tormented by lack of money throughout his life. The composer was able to buy his own piano almost at the end of his short life - with the royalties from his first and only public concert in March 1828. Eight months later, the brilliant musician died of illness at the age of 31.
Alfred Garrievich Shnitke (russian: Альфред Гарриевич Шнитке) was a Soviet and Russian avant-garde and postmodernist composer, music educator and musicologist.
Alfred's father was journalist and Russian-German translator Harry Shnitke, his mother was German teacher Maria Vogel, and Russian and German were spoken in the house. In 1946-1948 he lived with his family in Vienna, where he learned to play the piano and compose. From 1948 he lived in the Moscow region, then in Moscow. In 1953 Shnitke graduated from the conducting and choir department of the Music and Pedagogical College (now the Shnitke Moscow State Institute of Music), and in 1958 from the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatory. Between 1961 and 1972 he taught instrumentation, score reading, polyphony and composition at the Moscow Conservatoire. From the mid-1970s he appeared as a pianist, performing his own compositions.
In the early 1960s Shnitke turned his attention to modern compositional techniques, including dodecaphony, became an active supporter of the European musical avant-garde and tried to find his own style. His first significant achievements in this field were Dialogue for cello and seven instrumentalists (1965) and the Second Violin Concerto (1966).
Shnitke wrote more than 200 musical works in various genres, including the operas The Story of Dr. Johann Faust (1983-1994) and Life with an Idiot (1991); and the ballets Labyrinths (1971), Sketches (1971-1985) and Per Gynt (1986). Among his choral works, Requiem (1975) is widely known, as well as Poems of Penitence for a cappella choir (1987) and others. The composer wrote nine symphonies, concertos for violin, viola, cello, piano and other instruments. Shnitke also wrote music for many famous and popular films and cartoons from 1964-1994, as well as for theatrical productions of the main theaters of Russia.
Alfred Shnitke is an Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR, winner of the N.K. Krupskaya State Prize of the RSFSR and the State Prize of the Russian Federation. In 1990 the composer, together with his wife, pianist Irina Kataeva-Shnitke, moved to Germany and received German citizenship, as an exception he was allowed not to renounce his Soviet citizenship. He taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, and was elected a member of the West Berlin Academy of Arts, the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, and the Royal Swedish Academy.
Shnitke died in Hamburg from the effects of four strokes, and is buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
Ean Sibelius, birth name Swedish Johan Julius Christian Sibelius, is a Finnish symphonic composer and a prominent representative of the Finnish national art.
Sibelius was born in a city belonging to the Russian Empire to a family of Finnish Swedes. At the age of about 20, he left Finland to pursue music studies in Berlin and Vienna, before returning to his homeland. Sibelius' first large-scale orchestral work, the Kullervo Symphony ((Kullervo, 1892), created a sensation in his homeland. His next works - En Saga (1892), Karelian Music and Four Legends - established him as Finland's leading national composer working in the Romantic tradition. These were years of patriotic upheaval in Finland, and in recognition of his merit and genius, the Finnish Senate granted Sibelius a lifetime pension.
The composer's main creative achievements relate to orchestral music, including 7 symphonies, symphonic poems and suites. The violin concerto, the orchestral "Sad Waltz" and the choral "Hymn of Finland" are also widely known. Many of Sibelius' compositions are directly or generalized related to Finnish national themes. He is a prominent representative of the "golden age" of Finnish art in the period 1880-1910.
Thomas Simaku is an Albanian and British composer living and working in York.
Simaku graduated from the Albanian State Conservatory of Music in Tirana, before being appointed music director of the Palace of Culture of Permet in southern Albania. In 1991 Simaku moved to England, studied with David Blake at the University of York and earned a doctorate in composition.
Thomas Simaku rose to fame in 1995 when his work Epitaph for String Orchestra was selected by an international jury to participate in the ISCM World Music Days in Germany. It was the first time the music of an Albanian composer was included in this prestigious festival. His works then participated many times in various world music festivals.
In 2000, Simaku was granted British citizenship. He lives in York and teaches composition at the University of York.
Howard While Skempton is a British composer, pianist and accordionist.
From 1967 Skempton studied in London with Cornelius Cardew, who helped him discover a musical language of great simplicity. Skempton and became known for the particular clarity of his musical language. He wrote over 300 works, many of which are miniatures for solo piano or accordion.
Skempton calls his works the "central nervous system" of his oeuvre. They include pieces for solo cello and guitar, Chamber Concerto for fifteen instruments, Concerto for Hardy Gurdy and Percussion, and others. Skempton's first major success came in 1991 with the premiere of his orchestral composition Lento. His orchestral and instrumental works have been recorded by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Bash Ensemble, among others.
In recent years Skempton has increasingly concentrated on vocal and choral music; his choral commissions include works for the BBC Singers and the Belfast Philharmonic Society. He is Professor Emeritus of Music at De Montfort University.
Bedřich Smetana, baptized Friedrich, was a prominent Czech composer, pianist and conductor, and the founder of the Czech national school of composition.
Smetana studied music under his father, who was an amateur violinist, and also began piano lessons early and performed as early as the age of six. He later became a music teacher and opened a piano school in Prague in 1848. Smetana was a recognized piano virtuoso.
In 1856 Smetana wrote his first symphonies and in the same year was appointed conductor of the philharmonic of Gothenburg (Sweden), where he remained until 1861, and then, returning to his homeland, he became one of the founders of the national opera theater. Smetana's first opera, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia, was staged in Prague in 1866, and in the same year the public saw his second opera, The Sold Bride, and he gained a reputation as the national Czech composer.
By the end of 1874 Smetana had gone completely deaf, but for several years he continued to create: he wrote a cycle of six symphonic works, concertos, many piano pieces and other works. Smetana's works, in particular The Sold Bride, My Country and the Piano Trio, are still performed all over the world.
Bedřich Smetana is rightly considered the founder of the national school of composition: he was the first composer to use Czech folk themes and motifs in his works, and the opera Brandenburgers in Bohemia was written entirely in Czech for the first time. Smetana's work had an enormous influence on Czech composers of subsequent generations - Antonín Dvořák and Zdeněk Fibich - and the symphonic poem Vltava from the cycle My Homeland became the unofficial Czech national anthem.
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German innovative and avant-garde composer, conductor, and musical theorist.
Stockhausen studied at the State Academy of Music in Cologne and the University of Cologne, then in 1952 in Paris with composers Olivier Messiaen and Darius Millau. Returning to Cologne in 1953, he joined the electronic music studio West German Broadcasting (Westdeutscher Rundfunk), of which he was artistic director from 1963 to 1977. Stockhausen created his first electronic music piece in 1953.
In the mid-1950s Stockhausen studied phonetics, acoustics and information theory at the University of Bonn, all of which he used in his musical compositions. From 1953 he began teaching composition in Darmstadt and later organized seminars in Cologne. From 1971 to 1977 he was already professor of composition at the State Academy of Music in Cologne.
Stockhausen used both electronic and traditional instrumentation and supported his approach with rigorous theoretical reasoning and radical innovations in musical notation. He ensured that sounds were equally interesting regardless of the order in which they appeared; random decisions of musical order play an important role in many of his compositions.
Stockhausen lectured and gave concerts with his works throughout Europe and North America. As a creator and theorist of electronic and serial music, he had a significant influence on avant-garde composers of the 1950s and 1980s.
Richard Strauss, full name Richard Georg Strauss, was a German composer of the late Romantic era, a bright representative of German expressionism, and a conductor.
Richard received his first musical education from his father, a virtuoso French horn player at the Munich Opera. The boy was very musical and from the age of six began composing pieces. Growing up, Strauss led a successful career as a conductor of leading orchestras in Germany and Austria. In 1889 in Weimar he conducted the first performance of his symphonic poem Don Juan, which was received with triumph. Strauss was hailed by critics as Wagner's heir and from that moment his career as a composer began.
In 1904, with his singer wife Paulina Maria de Ana, who was an outstanding performer of his songs, Strauss made a concert tour of the United States.
Richard Strauss equally idolized Wolfgang Mozart and Richard Wagner, and much of his work grew out of this reverence. He excelled at writing works for large orchestra, but he was equally successful at subtlety in chamber music. The composer possessed unrivaled descriptive power and the ability to convey psychological detail. This was particularly evident in his operas Guntram, Salome, Elektra and others.
Together with Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, which combined innovative subtleties of orchestration with an innovative harmonic style.
Igor Fedorovich Stravinskii (russian: Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский) was a Russian composer, a citizen of France and the United States. One of the greatest representatives of the world musical culture of the 20th century.
The future composer was born into a creative musical family. Igor Stravinskii's father was an opera singer, soloist of the Mariinsky Theater Fedor Stravinskii, and his mother was a pianist Anna Kholodovskaya. Igor studied music at home, the Stravinskiis were often visited by their friends: composers Caesar Cui and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, critic Vladimir Stasov and writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. For five years from 1902 Igor Stravinsky studied with the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. At the same time he became close to the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and the artists of the "World of Art" association.
Stravinskii 's first works were created under the influence of Rimsky-Korsakov and the French Impressionists, and his music bears a vivid imprint of the Russian cultural tradition. Igor Stravinskii's first ballet, The Firebird, was performed in June 1910 at the Paris Grand Opera House, and he later wrote music for Diaghilev's ballets Petrushka (1911) and Sacred Spring (1913). It was after the premiere of his ballets at Sergei Diaghilev's Russian Seasons in Paris that Stravinskii gained worldwide fame. The sets for his ballets were created by the artists Alexander Benois and Nikolai Roerich, the choreography was prepared by the famous dancers Vaclav Nijinsky and George Balanchine, and the costumes were designed by Coco Chanel herself.
In 1920 Stravinskii moved to France and in 1934 he took French citizenship. In Paris, the composer composed many works that became world-famous. In 1939 Igor Stravinskii moved to the United States and in 1945 he took American citizenship. During this period, he began to turn more to biblical themes and music of the pre-Brahmsian period.
From 1924 Stravinskii also performed as a pianist and conductor of his own works. In 1962, at the invitation of the USSR Ministry of Culture, Igor Stravinsky gave several concerts in Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).
Critics believe that in recent years Stravinskii was moving further and further away from the Russian style, but the composer himself believed otherwise. On the basis of Russian folk songs, in 1965 he created a canon for orchestra, "Not a Pine Tree at the Gate Rocked". A year before his death, in 1966, the composer wrote the requiem "Funeral Chants", which he considered to be one of the major works of his life.
Giles Swayne, full name Giles Oliver Cairnes Swayne, is a British composer.
Swayne began composing music at an early age, receiving his musical training at Ampleforth College and the University of Cambridge, and then at the Royal Academy of Music. He wrote a series of relatively small pieces, mostly aimed at children or amateurs, which explored ways of conveying complex musical thought as simply as possible.
Swayne's stylistic approach to virtuosic simplicity is noted in his Symphony for Small Orchestra and Naaotwa Lala, his Mozart chamber opera The Wedding of Cherubino, written in 1984. Many other works in various genres followed, including "Silent Land" for cello and 40-part choir, Symphony No. 1 - "Small World," String Quartet No. 4 and others.
Rabindranath Tagore was a South Asian Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful" poetry of Gitanjali, he became in 1913 the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Referred to as "the Bard of Bengal", Tagore was known by sobriquets: Gurudev, Kobiguru, Biswakobi.
Luís Tinoco is a Portuguese composer and producer of new music programs on radio.
Tinoco studied at the Escuela Superior de Musica de Lisboa, then at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at the University of York, where he received his doctorate in composition. Since 2000 he has been working as a freelance composer. He is also the author and producer of new music radio programs for Antena 2/RTP and lectures at the Escuela Superior de Música de Lisboa (EMSL).
Luis Tinoco's major works include the operas Evil Machines and Color Me, as well as the cantata The Wanderings of a Lonely Dreamer.
Tristan Tzara, originally named Sami (Samuel) Rosenstock, was a Romanian and French artist and writer best known as a founding figure of the Dada movement. Born in 1896 in Moinești, Romania, Tzara's influence extends across poetry, performance, and manifesto writing, marking him as a pivotal personality in 20th-century art and culture. His work challenged conventional norms and sought to disrupt the traditional boundaries of art, making him a central figure in the avant-garde community.
Dada, the movement with which Tzara is most closely associated, emerged as a reaction against the horrors of World War I, advocating for irrationality and anti-bourgeois protest. Tzara's contributions, including his manifestos, poetry, and performances, were instrumental in shaping Dada's legacy. His art and writings emphasized the importance of spontaneity and chaos, challenging the status quo and the very definition of art itself. Tzara's approach was not confined to a single medium; he explored poetry, playwriting, and critical theory, leaving a diverse and impactful body of work.
Though Tzara is not widely known for sculpture or painting in the traditional sense, his influence on these and other art forms is undeniable. His work and ideas laid the groundwork for later avant-garde movements, including Surrealism. While specific works of Tzara in museums or galleries were not detailed in the research, his legacy is preserved through the collections of major institutions worldwide, reflecting his enduring impact on the arts.
For collectors and experts in art and antiques, understanding Tzara's contributions provides insight into the radical shifts in culture and art in the early 20th century. His work remains a testament to the power of art to challenge, provoke, and transform. To stay informed about new product sales and auction events related to Tristan Tzara, sign up for our updates. This subscription ensures you're alerted to unique opportunities to engage with the history and legacy of a key figure in modern art.
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer, pianist, and conductor, one of the most famous and celebrated composers in world history.
Beethoven showed an aptitude for music at a very early age; from the age of four his father began to teach him. Beethoven's early works - piano sonatas and symphonies - were composed under the strong influence of the music of the great classical composers Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As Beethoven matured, however, he began to experiment with new forms and harmonic sequences, and his music became more complex and emotionally charged.
Unfortunately, at the height of his talent, Beethoven began to gradually lose his hearing, to the point of complete deafness by the end of his life. Despite this, he continued to compose and conduct, using special devices to feel the vibrations of the music.
Beethoven's work is considered pivotal in classical music and is a bridge between the classical and Romantic eras. His works vividly express a wide range of emotions, from triumph and joy to sadness and despair. Beethoven was also one of the first composers to include soloists and chorus in his symphonies. Beethoven's best-known works include nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets and the heroic opera Fidelio. These and many other works have cemented Beethoven's place in music history as one of the greatest composers of all time. His music continues to be played and studied by musicians and music lovers around the world.
Giuseppe Verdi, full name Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi, was an Italian opera composer.
The son of a village innkeeper, Giuseppe showed musical talent very early, already playing the organ in church by the age of nine. He studied music in Milan, taught, and in March 1839 staged his first opera "Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio" at La Scala. In 1842 Verdi's opera "Nabucco" was a great success, passing through all the major theaters of Europe.
Verdi wrote a total of 26 operas during his career, the most famous of which are Rigoletto (1851), Trovatore (1853), La Traviata (1853), Don Carlos (1867), Aida (1871), Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893).
In 1873, Giuseppe Verdi decided to retire from the world of opera. He settled in Sant'Agata, where he became a large landowner and a very wealthy man due to his tireless work in agriculture, he also financed large charitable organizations.
Verdi took a break from these activities for his opera Otello, but after a successful tour of Europe with it, he retreated again to Sant'Agata. The work of Giuseppe Verdi is one of the greatest achievements of world opera art. Many generations of opera lovers still enjoy the composer's brilliant works.
Carl Maria von Weber, full name Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber, was a German opera composer and conductor during the transition from classical to romantic music, pianist and music critic.
Weber was born into a musical and theatrical family, and his father cherished dreams of making him a second Mozart. The young Weber received his first appointment when he became the musical director of Duke Eugene of Württemberg, for whose private orchestra he wrote two symphonies, then he was secretary at the court of King Frederick I of Württemberg. At the same time he composed musical works, gaining experience and knowledge.
In 1813 Weber was appointed conductor of the opera in Prague, and four years later he was appointed director of the German opera in Dresden. Here he deployed his talents, taking on the entire job of preparing an opera production: he selected the repertoire, staff and actors; he handled the scenery, lighting and staging, as well as the orchestra and singers, taking special care to ensure that each performer fully understood the words and plot of each opera. The composer also found time to compose his own works.
During this period he created the opera The Free Rifleman (1821), where he was able to free German opera from French and Italian influences. The opera was first successfully staged in Berlin and then traveled throughout Europe. "The Free Rifleman" is the most popular German opera written to date, and it marked the beginning of German Romantic opera. Weber also wrote the operas Euryanthe (1823), Oberon (1826), and others.
Carl Weber composed many fugues, sonatas, concertos, and sacred music, and was also one of the significant piano virtuosos and music critics. From 1809 to 1818, he wrote a considerable number of reviews and quite incisive music criticisms. All his activities, music and critical writings promoted the ideals of Romanticism as an art in which feeling prevails over form and heart over head.
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German pioneering composer, conductor and opera reformer.
His first proper Symphony in C major was performed at the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts in 1833. Wagner lived in a colony of poor German artists and made his living in music journalism. Nevertheless, in 1841 he wrote his first representative opera, The Flying Dutchman, based on the legend of a ship captain doomed to sail forever. In 1842 his Rienzi was triumphantly performed in Dresden, after which Wagner was appointed conductor of the court opera and held this position until 1849.
In 1848-49 Wagner became involved in the German Revolution, wrote a number of articles in support of it, and took an active part in the Dresden Uprising of 1849. When the uprising failed, he was forced to flee Germany. His subsequent years were occupied mainly with writing theoretical treatises on philosophy and music. Wagner held anti-Semitic and Nazi views. And reflecting on the future of music, he predicted the disappearance of opera as an artificial entertainment for the elite and the emergence of a new kind of musical stage work for the people, expressing the self-realization of free humanity. This new work was later called "musical drama."
By 1857 his style had been enriched with new interpretations, and Wagner had composed "Rheingold," "Die Walküre," and two acts of "Siegfried." By 1864, however, unwise financial habits had driven him into debt and ruin, and he was forced to flee from prison to Stuttgart. He was rescued by King Louis II, an ardent admirer of Wagner's work. Under his patronage for six years in Munich, the composer's operas were successfully staged. The King also practically ensured him a trouble-free life, thanks to his support Wagner built his own opera house (Bayreuther Festspielhaus), in which many new constructive ideas were realized. The premiere of "The Ring" and "Parsifal" took place here.
As a result of all Wagner's creative innovations and methods, a new kind of art emerged, the distinctive feature of which was a deep and complex symbolism, operating in three inseparable planes - dramatic, verbal and musical. He had a significant influence on European musical culture, especially on the development of opera and symphonic genres.
Richard Wagner's major works include The Flying Dutchman (1843), Tannhäuser (1845), Lohengrin (1850), Tristan und Isolde (1865), Parsifal (1882), and his great tetralogy, The Ring of the Nibelung (1869-76).
Mili Weber, full name Berta Emilie Weber, is a Swiss artist, illustrator, writer and musician.
From childhood, Mili showed an interest in nature and painting, with her older half-sister Anna being her first mentor. Mili attended the School of Arts and Crafts in Biel, where she later taught various arts and crafts subjects, she also studied at the Academy of Painting in Munich. From 1914, Mili began painting portraits of children, producing watercolor postcards with motifs from fairy tales and fables, and illustrating books. Her most famous images are of children among magical flowers. In addition to watercolor painting, Weber wrote short stories and composed music.
In 1917, the family moved to a picturesque wooden house built by Mili's brother and father on the edge of the forest near Lake St. Moritz. The most luxurious thing in this house was the organ on which she mused. Mili created her own wonderful world here: the artist decorated the ceilings and walls of the house with her marvelous frescoes of fairy tale scenes. She lived in this house all her life and now it is the home of the Mili Weber Museum, a "fairy house".
Ralph Vaughan Williams was a British composer, organist, conductor and teacher.
Vaughan Williams studied at the Royal College of Music and Trinity College, Cambridge, continued his studies in Berlin and Paris, and worked as a music editor for a magazine. After artillery service during the First World War, he became Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music. All the while he was engaged in folkloristics, collecting English folk tunes and songs, which was reflected in his later work.
In addition to teaching and composing, Williams was active as a conductor, including the Bach and Handel Society choirs.
Vaughan Williams' legacy is extensive: he composed six operas, three ballets, nine symphonies including the London Symphony, cantatas and oratorios, works for piano, organ and chamber ensembles, arrangements of folk songs and many other works. Vaughan Williams managed to break away from German traditions and create a truly national, English tradition in the creation of classical music. He is one of the founders of the new English school of composition - the so-called "English musical renaissance".