In his Dialogo della musica (‘Musical Dialogue’), published in 1544, Antonfrancesco Doni describes two performances, one in an all-male academy, the other at a more informal gathering including a woman. The singing of madrigals by contemporary composers is interspersed with conversation. Is this a realistic picture of a social gathering in mid-sixteenth century Italy? Diverse clues suggest that it is. Madrigals were published in partbooks: each singer held a book containing ...
Several other non-Western cultures have developed genres of musical performance similar to that of opera – they combine music, song, story-telling and theatrical presentation. The most famous of these is the Nō theatre of Japan. Nō theatre was essentially established in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by the two great playwrights Kan’ami (1333–84) and his son Zeami (1363–1443). These two men drew upon earlier traditions of music and drama to form ...
Just as virtuoso composer-violinists dominated the instrumental scene in the seventeenth century, and composer-pianists in the eighteenth and nineteenth, so were singers in constant demand throughout the medieval and Renaissance periods. In northern France and modern Belgium and the Netherlands, a rich tradition of cathedral choirs produced a thriving community of singers who travelled throughout Europe, spreading their style of performance. In their native lands the most successful ones became ...
The six intermedi composed to celebrate the marriage of Ferdinando de’ Medici of Florence and Christine of Lorraine in 1589 were the most spectacular and expensive ever seen. So lavish was the presentation that it completely dominated the play it accompanied – La pellegrina (‘The Pilgrim’) by Girolamo Bargagli. All the texts and music survive, together with the designs for the costumes and sets. The intermedi were devised by Giovanni ...
Pierre-Jacques Fougeroux visited London and attended Handel’s operas Tolomeo, Siroe and Admeto during the Royal Academy of Music’s final season in 1727–28. His account of what he saw and heard is invaluable: 'The Opera, which was once negligible, has become a spectacle of some importance in the last three years. They have sent for the best voices [and] the most skilled instrumentalists from Italy … the orchestra consisted of 24 violins ...
Most instrumental music of the Renaissance was written for small ensembles. At the time, the major distinction was between the consort and the broken consort. The former consisted of a set of instruments from the same family. The fact that recorders, shawms, viols, violins and many others existed not as single instruments but as a whole range – from large and deep to small and shrill – meant that each ...
Handel was notoriously tough on singers who caused him problems. While rehearsing Flavio (1723), the tenor Alexander Gordon became exasperated with Handel’s method of continuo accompaniment, and threatened to jump on the composer’s harpsichord. It is said that Handel retorted ‘Oh! Let me know when you will do that, and I will advertise it. For I am sure more people will come to see you jump, than to hear you ...
In the first part of the seventeenth century, two traditions of absolute power were struggling to maintain their hold. In England, after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, the Stuart dynasty fought for survival for 40 years. Then the dream crumbled in the face of civil war and the execution of the king, Charles I, in 1649. Eleven years later Charles II was restored to the throne and proceeded ...
The elaborate attempt to stage Rinaldo in London aroused interest from satirists Joseph Addison and Richard Steele in the Spectator. Addison, after examining the printed wordbook, reported: ‘The Opera of Rinaldo is filled with Thunder and Lightning, Illuminations, and Fireworks; which the Audience may look upon without catching Cold, and indeed without much danger of being burnt; for there are several Engines filled with Water, and ready to play at a ...
Modern writers refer to the mixed instrumental chamber ensembles of the Renaissance as broken consorts. Different kinds of instruments were brought together with choirs for special occasions, but there was no large ensemble encompassing different families of instruments and performing its own recognizable genres of music, until the Baroque period. The introduction by Monteverdi of string players into the 16-strong brass ensemble of St Mark’s, Venice, at the beginning of ...
During the Renaissance period, the performance of serious music outside sacred or ceremonial occasions took place in mainly private and domestic contexts – at courts, academies or individuals’ homes – in front of small groups of friends. By the end of the Baroque era, in contrast, public performances – larger-scale entertainments before a paying audience – were well established. This had long been the case in cities such as Venice; ...
Les troyens was such a monumental proposition that even Berlioz was daunted by it. An entry for 1854 in his memoirs read: ‘For the last three years I have been tormented by the idea of a vast opera for which I would write both the words and the music … I am resisting the temptation of carrying out this project, and I hope I will resist to the end (Footnote: ...
One of the catalysts of eighteenth-century music was the Palatine court at Mannheim under Elector Carl Theodor, who reigned from 1742 until he became Elector of Bavaria in 1778 and the court dissolved. Carl Theodor appointed Johann Stamitz (1717–57) leader of the orchestra in the 1740s and director in 1750. Stamitz assembled an orchestra of unprecedented skill, many of them composers; Charles Burney (1726–1814) called them ‘an army of generals, ...
Bayreuth in Bavaria had had an opera house, the Margraves’ Opera House, for 130 years before King Ludwig II contributed towards the construction of the Festspielhaus – the Festival Theatre. The foundation stone was laid on 22 May 1872, and the 1,345-seat theatre opened four years later (it has since been repeatedly enlarged and now seats 1,925). The complete Ring cycle was performed there on 13, 14, 16, and 17 ...
The opening of Otello at La Scala on 5 February 1887 was a major occasion, which musicians and critics attended from all over the world. People’s excitement mounted to fever pitch, both inside and outside the opera house. They were not to be disappointed. The seamless continuity of the opera, the lavish costumes, the richness and sophistication of the orchestral settings and the perfect harmony of the poetry and music ...
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