(Ga-bre-el’ Fô-ra’) 1845–1924 French composer Fauré, a pre-eminent master of French song, studied with Saint-Saëns in 1866, and succeeded him as as chief organist at the Madeleine in 1896. Fauré was appointed Director at the Paris Conservatoire (1905–20) and also served as critic for Le Figaro. He was thus a powerful influence on twentieth-century French music, especially through ...
(An-dra’-a Gab-re-a’-le) c. 1510–86 Italian composer After spending some time in Munich as a colleague of Lassus, Gabrieli became maestro di cappella at St Mark’s, Venice in 1566. There, with the resources of its great choir at his disposal, he composed an impressive repertory of music for various combinations of voices and instruments. His style – in sacred ...
(Jo-van’-ne Gab-re-a’-le) c. 1553–1612 Italian composer Gabrieli was taught by his uncle Andrea Gabrieli and, like him, was first employed in Munich with Lassus. After Andrea’s death Giovanni became principal composer for St Mark’s, Venice, and he wrote much of his music with its choir (and building) in mind. His musical debt to his uncle is evident in ...
1830–1914, French The French baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure – impressive on stage, with fine vocal discipline and strong dramatic sense – made his debut at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1852, singing Pygmalion in Galathée by Victor Massé (1822–84). Faure continued singing at the Opéra-Comique until 1859. Meanwhile, he taught singing at the Paris Conservatoire 1857–60. He performed ...
1863–1938, French D’Annunzio’s most famous influence on music was Debussy’s elaborate incidental music for his extraordinarily long play The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (1911). In fact, his connections with music were far wider. He was an extravagant eccentric and continually sought the company of musicians. The French pianist Raoul Pugno and the composer Nadia Boulanger collaborated on a setting ...
(Singer-songwriter, b. 1950) Gabriel left Genesis in 1975. His first solo album produced the intriguing hit ‘Solsbury Hill’, telling of that departure. In 1980, the avant-pop of ‘Games Without Frontiers’ began a run of accessible art rock albums and singles including the political ‘Biko’, 1982’s Peter Gabriel (Security in the US), and 1986’s triumphant world-music influenced So and its ...
(Fer’-enk Er’-kel) 1810–93 Hungarian composer and conductor A pioneer of Hungarian national opera, Erkel was conductor at the National Theatre in Pest from 1838 and later of the Budapest Philharmonic concerts. His early works in the style hongroise predate even Liszt’s Hungarian works, and he forged a national operatic style in such works as Hunyádi László (1844), with its Hungarian ...
The late Baroque era (1700–50) was a time of major political change throughout Europe, involving a shift in the balance of power between sovereign states. Across the continent it was a period of almost continuous warfare, the effects of which were later felt in other parts of the world as a result of conflicting ambitions among the various trading ...
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, opera was established in some form in most major European centres. The basic types of serious and comic opera in both Italian and French traditions shared similarities, although the content and style of an operatic entertainment could vary according to whether it was intended to flatter a private patron, resound with ...
The Chapman Stick is a large instrument with a wide fretboard and eight, 10 or 12 strings. It is played by tapping (or ‘hammering-on’) a string at the desired fret with the finger and holding it down with the sustain of the note. Since only a single finger of one hand is needed to sound each note, the accomplished ...
Like the synthesizer, the sampler has had a huge influence on the course of electronic music. A sampler is an instrument that can record, store and replay brief sections of audio – ‘samples’. In many ways, the Mellotron might be regarded as the earliest example of a sampling instrument. However, the sampler really came into its own ...
The 1860s saw a number of major reorganizations in European politics. Italy became a united country under the king of (former) Piedmont-Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II, in 1861 and its new national government tried to retain the kingdom’s liberal ideals, such as removing instances of operatic and intellectual censorship. However, Italy’s liberalism was not aspired to by other ...
Donizetti’s three-act comic opera, Don Pasquale, full of fun and infectious humour, was first performed at the Théâtre Italien in Paris on 3 January 1843. There was no hint here of Donizetti’s failing health, but as time proved, Don Pasquale was among the last of his remarkable total of 67 operas. The first performance was a ...
(Sharl Goo-no) 1818–93 French composer Gounod is best known as the composer of one of the most popular French lyric operas, Faust. His teachers at the Paris Conservatoire were the opera composers Jacques-François-Fromental Halévy (1799–1862) and Jean François Le Sueur (1760–1837) and in 1839 he won the coveted Prix de Rome. Alongside much sacred music, such as the florid ...
(Klod De’-bu-se) 1862–1918 French composer Debussy was one of the father figures of twentieth-century music, often associated with the Impressionist movement. He was not only influential on subsequent French composers such as Ravel and Messiaen, but also on other major European figures, including Stravinsky and Bartók. His early songs experimented with an intimate kind of word-setting, while ...
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David Bowie
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