(Vocal/instrumental group, 1978–present) The older generation of British heavy metal was sounding tired when out of Yorkshire came Peter ‘Biff’ Byford (vocals), Paul Quinn and Graham Oliver (both guitar), Steve Dawson (bass) and Pete Gill (drums). They released six albums in four years, including 1980’s Wheels Of Steel – the title track of which gave them their first of ...
Such detailed knowledge of the major operas of the day clearly inspired Weber in his own stage works. German National Opera At the end of 1816 Weber was appointed Royal Saxon Kapellmeister and music director at Dresden, where his brief was to develop a German national opera. The operatic traditions of Dresden were based on Italian opera seria, and ...
as a musical dramatist while establishing English oratorio as a distinctive and distinguished art form. Organ Loft to Opera House Handel was born on 23 February 1685 in the provincial Saxon city of Halle. It is reputed that the Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels persuaded Handel’s unsympathetic father to allow the boy to study music with the organist Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow. The young ...
(Zhan Se-bal-yoos) 1865–1957 Finnish composer When Jean (Johan) Sibelius, Finland’s greatest composer, was born on 8 December 1865 at Hämeenlinna, his homeland had been ruled by Russia since Napoleon snatched it from Sweden. As a child he composed and played the violin, but he was 14 before taking up the instrument seriously. He enrolled in 1886 at the ...
Eric Johnson, entitled G3 In Concert (1997). Ever open-minded, he even experimented with electronica on Engines Of Creation (2001). Styles & Forms | Eighties | Rock Personalities | Saxon | Eighties | Rock ...
riffs, creating a powered-up version of Chuck Berry’s rock’n’roll blueprint. AC/DC’s guitar sound influenced the new wave of British heavy metal that arose in the late 1970s; bands like Saxon and Iron Maiden have acknowledged their debt to the expatriate Scots, while Malcolm Young’s riffs have inspired speed metal, thrash and grunge. The rock’n’roll lifestyle caught up with ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1965–72) This Los Angeles ‘garage band’ comprised Sky Saxon (vocals), Jan Savage (guitar), Daryll Hooper (organ) and Rick Andridge (drums). Slipping into the national Top 40 in 1965, their second single, ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’, triggered further grippingly slipshod exercises prior to ‘going psychedelic’ in 1967. A desperate in-concert album, Raw And Alive signalled the end ...
and heavy metal bands of the 1970s, spawning the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, or NWOBHM for short. The NWOBHM included Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Saxon, Samson, Venom, Diamond Head and many others. Of all the NWOBHM bands, the most successful were Iron Maiden and Def Leppard. Maiden’s trademark galloping rhythm and ...
beginning and the end of the decade. The first flowering came in the shape of the so-called New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM), which spawned the long-running likes of Saxon, Iron Maiden and Motörhead. Metallica were big fans of this grass-roots movement based around live performance, the big bands of the 1970s (Purple, Zeppelin, Judas Priest) ...
the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, spent five years at the court of Cöthen and, even when finally settled in Leipzig, may have hoped to find work in the Saxon Elector’s service at Dresden. Introduction | Late Baroque | Classical Influences | Storm & Stress | Classical Era | Classical ...
Just as the individual instruments were changing in the classical period, so the way in which they were grouped together was also changing accordingly. As virtuosity became possible on a wider range of instruments, so the domination of violins in the ensemble was reduced and the more balanced four-part string section (first violins, second violins, violas and ...
Composed: 1902 Premiered: 1902, Milan Libretto by Arturo Colautti, after Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé’s play Adrienne Lecouvreur Act I Backstage at the Comédie-Française, the stage manager Michonnet tries to propose to the actress Adriana Lecouvreur, but she loves Maurizio, who is the Count of Saxony in disguise. She gives Maurizio some violets. An intercepted letter ...
(Hin’-rikh Shüts) 1585–1672 German composer Schütz received his early training at the Collegium Mauritianum at Hessen-Kassel. From there he went to Marburg University to study law. In 1609, Landgrave Moritz of Hessen-Kassel, of whom Schütz was a protegé, sent the young composer to Venice, where he studied with Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1553–1612). He returned to Kassel in about 1613 ...
1699–1783, German At the age of 22, Johann Adolf Hasse had his first opera, Antioco (1721), produced before being sent to Italy to study under Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725). In Naples, Hasse’s ‘dialect comedies’ Sesostrate (1726) and La sorella amante (‘The Loving Sister’, 1729) made him something of a local celebrity. Hasse’s Artaserse (1730), staged in Venice, ...
1813–83, German If – to quote Mark Twain – Wagner’s music ‘is not as bad as it sounds’, then the composer’s life was by no means as turpitudinous as it is generally claimed to be. Idolized by his friends and supporters as a family man who was kind to animals and plagued by self-doubts, he was demonized by his ...
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