Spanish guitar legend Carlos Montoya (1903–93) helped propel the flamenco style of music from accompaniment for gypsy folk dances and songs to a serious and internationally popular form of guitar music. Montoya was born into a gypsy family in Spain. He studied guitar with his mother and a local barber, eventually learning from professionals and becoming an expert on the ...
Multitalented guitarist Carlos Santana was born the son of a mariachi musician in the Mexican town of Autlan de Navarro in 1947. The family moved to Tijuana when he was nine, and Carlos, who first played violin before changing to guitar, became interested in rock’n’roll and blues. At 13, he was earning money playing in cantinas and ...
(Kar-loos Go’-mas) 1836–96 Brazilian composer Gomes was the son of a bandmaster, and after studies at the Imperial Conservatory of Music in Rio de Janeiro, he settled in Italy. His comedies Se sa minga and Nella Luna (1867–68) were successful, but international recognition really arrived with the composition of Il Guarany (La Scala, 1870), whose exotic score includes ...
(Composer, piano, guitar, 1927–94) Jobim was the best known of the Brazilian composers who made an impact on jazz. His international reputation blossomed due to his songs in the film Black Orpheus (1959) and with João Gilberto he sparked a bossa nova craze, boosted by Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd’s Jazz Samba (1962). He led his own ...
Verdi’s five-act opera Don Carlos was taken from a drama written in 1787 by the German playwright Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805). Written for the Paris Opéra, Don Carlos was first performed there on 11 March 1867. Schiller’s play was translated and the libretto written by Joseph Méry, who unfortunately died before it was completed, and Camille du Locle ...
1930–2004 Austrian conductor Son of Erich Kleiber, he gained conducting appointments in Düsseldorf 1958–64, Zürich 1964–66 and Stuttgart 1966–68, his last full-time position. His debuts at Covent Garden, La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera brought almost unanimous critical acclaim, as did his few studio recordings, such as Beethoven’s Fifth with the Vienna Philharmonic (1974). Though ...
Wes Montgomery (1925–68) emerged in the Fifties and gained a wide following in the cool jazz movement before turning to pop-jazz in the Sixties. With his unique use of lead lines played in octaves with his left hand and strummed by his right-hand thumb, Montgomery mixed jazz harmonies with R&B rhythms to gain a pop following and exert broad influence ...
The Académie Royale de Musique (now known as the Paris Académie de Musique or the Paris Opéra), has had many homes. The Académie opened in 1671, and from 1672–87 was largely controlled by Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–87). In 1763, the building was destroyed by fire, as was the next building in 1781. The Opéra moved to rue de Richelieu ...
The history of musical instruments has always been very closely linked to the history of music itself. New musical styles often come about because new instruments become available, or improvements to existing ones are made. Improvements to the design of the piano in the 1770s, for instance, led to its adoption by composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ...
The world’s first synthesizer was the American RCA Mk I, made in 1951, whose bulk occupied a laboratory. To play it, composers such as Babbitt had to tap in punched-tape instructions – there was no keyboard. In 1964, Robert Moog (1934–2005) developed the first commercially successful synthesizer. It was capable of generating a wide range of sounds ...
No instrument has had a more dramatic impact on contemporary music than the synthesizer. Its development opened up a whole new world of seemingly endless sonic possibilities and ushered in completely new forms of music. History The birth of the synthesizer dates back to the mid-1940s when Canadian physicist, composer and instrument builder, Hugh le Caine (1914–77) built the ...
‘The Knight of the Rose’ For the follow-up to Elektra, Strauss declared he wanted to write a Mozart opera. Despite Hofmannsthal’s protests about a light, Renaissance subject set in the past, the librettist soon came up with a scenario that delighted Strauss. The correspondence between librettist and composer was good-natured and respectful. Each made suggestions to the other ...
‘The Bat’ Composed: 1874 Premiered: 1874, Vienna Libretto by Carl Haffner and Richard Genée after Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy’s Le réveillon Prologue Falke wants revenge for a practical joke when Eisenstein left him sleeping, dressed as a bat, outside the Vienna law courts. Act I Eisenstein’s wife, Rosalinde, recognizes the voice serenading her as her ...
‘The Gallant Indians’ Composed in 1735, Les indes galantes is an opéra-ballet in which each act has its own setting and self-contained plot. Its four entrées include a scene set in a Turkish garden, Incas worshipping the sun in a Peruvian desert, a flower festival at a Persian market and a village ceremony in a North American forest. ...
Composed: 1866–69, completed by Cui and Rimsky-Korsakov 1870 Premiered: 1872, St Petersburg Libretto set directly to Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin’s verse tragedy Act I Don Juan has been exiled from Madrid for murdering Don Alvaro, the commander. He has now returned in secret, accompanied by his servant Leporello, to see an old flame, the actress Laura. ...
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