1.
1869 in music
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This article is about music-related events in 1869. February 28 - The premiere of Brahms Rinaldo took place in Vienna at a concert of the Akademischer Gesangverein, the composer conducted, with the tenor Gustav Walter, a student chorus numbering 300, and the Court Opera orchestra. April 3 – Edvard Griegs Piano Concerto is premiered at Copenhagens Casino, may 25 – The Vienna State Opera is inaugurated with a performance of Mozarts Don Giovanni. September 22 – Richard Wagners opera Das Rheingold debuts at the Königlich Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich, approximate date – Start of golden age of flamenco. Tchaikovsky completes the initial version of Romeo and Juliet and it will be revised the next year and in 1880. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Six romances, Op
2.
1875 in music
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This article is about music-related events in 1875. January 5 – Palais Garnier opera house in Paris, designed by Charles Garnier, march 3 – Georges Bizets opera Carmen debuts, at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. May 6 – Richard Wagner conducts portions of Götterdämmerung in concert in Vienna, october 25 – The first performance of Tchaikovskys Piano Concerto No.1 is given in Boston, Massachusetts, with Hans von Bülow as soloist. Robert Volkmann becomes professor of harmony and counterpoint at the National Academy of Music in Budapest, composer Zdeněk Fibich marries operatic contralto Betty Hanušová, sister of his first wife Růžena Hanušová. Angels, Meet Me At the Cross Road w. m, will Hays Carve Dat Possum by Sam Lucas & Herbert Hershy Dreaming Forever of Thee w. m. John Hill Hewitt Ill Take You Home Again, Kathleen w. m,3, ballet Swan Lake Camille Saint-Saëns – Piano Concerto No.4 Má vlast – Six symphonic poems by Bedřich Smetana Carmen first performed in Paris. Music by Georges Bizet and libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, die Königin von Saba, music by Karl Goldmark and libretto by Salomon Mosenthal
3.
1876 in music
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This article is about music-related events in 1876. February – Baritone Lithgow James joins the English Opera Company, where he begins a partnership with his future wife Florence St. John, february 24 – Incidental music composed by Edvard Grieg for Henrik Ibsens Peer Gynt premieres. May 17 – Antonín Dvořák begins composing his Moravian Duets, august 16 – Richard Wagners Siegfried debuts in the new Bayreuth Festspielhaus. August 17 – Richard Wagners Götterdämmerung debuts in the new Bayreuth Festspielhaus, soprano Rosa Hasselbeck marries the conductor and composer Josef Sucher. Gabriel Faure - Violin Sonata No
4.
1886 in music
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March 21 - Anton Bruckners Symphony No.7 is performed for the first time publicly in Vienna, conducted by Hans Richter. May 1 - The final version of Tchaikovskys Romeo and Juliet is performed for the first time, in Tbilisi, Georgia, under Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov. June 9 - The centennial of the Stoughton Musical Society is celebrated in the United States, june - Soprano Adelina Patti marries tenor Ernesto Nicolini in south Wales. July 19 - Franz Liszt plays his last concert, in Luxembourg, December - Anton Seidl conducts the first American staging of Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera. The celesta is invented by Auguste Mustel, John Philip Sousa Johnny Get Your Gun w. m. Monroe H. Rosenfeld Semper Fidelis m. John Philip Sousa Somebodys Mother by James W. Wheeler Two Lovely Black Eyes, Oh, What a Surprise w. Charles Coborn m. 2, op.54 John Philip Sousa - The Gladiator March Richard Strauss - Aus Italien Alfredo Catalani - Edmea Adonis, London production opened at the Gaiety Theatre on May 31, dorothy, London production opened at the Gaiety Theatre on September 25. It transferred to the Prince of Wales Theatre on December 20 and to the Lyric Theatre on December 17,1888, erminie - the Broadway production of this British show opened at the Casino Theatre on May 10 and ran for a very successful 571 performances. The Queen of Hearts, music by John Philip Sousa, January 22 - John J. Becker, American composer and editor January 25 - Wilhelm Furtwängler, conductor March 3 - R. O
5.
1877 in archaeology
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The year 1877 in archaeology involved some significant events. Artist and photographer William Henry Jackson participates in the Hayden Survey of the Western United States, producing maps of Chaco Canyon, french diplomat and archaeologist Ernest de Sarzec begins excavation at Girsu in Mesopotamia. City architect Charles Edward Davis begins extended excavation and reconstruction at the Roman Baths in England, george Smith excavates Later Stone Age tools in caves near Smithfield, Free State. John Postlethwaite - Mines and Mining in the Lake District, ephraim G. Squier - Peru, Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas
6.
1877 in architecture
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The year 1877 in architecture involved some significant events. Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, designed by Giuseppe Mengoni, is completed, galleria dellIndustria Subalpina in Turin, designed by Pietro Carrera, is completed. Manchester Town Hall in Manchester, England, designed by Alfred Waterhouse, is completed, trinity Church in the United States, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, is consecrated. New railway stations for the North Eastern Railway are completed at York, largely designed by Thomas Prosser, maria Pia Bridge in Porto, Portugal, built by Gustave Eiffel, is completed. Rebuilt Ardverikie House in Scotland, designed by John Rhind, is completed, march 22 - Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings established by William Morris and others meeting in Bloomsbury, London. Richard Norman Shaw appointed architect to Bedford Park, London, RIBA Royal Gold Medal - Charles Barry
7.
1877
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As of the start of 1877, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923. January 1 – Queen Victoria is proclaimed Empress of India by the Royal Titles Act 1876, introduced by Benjamin Disraeli, january 8 – American Indian Wars – Battle of Wolf Mountain, Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle with the United States Cavalry in Montana. January 20 – The Conference of Constantinople ends with Ottoman Turkey rejecting proposals of internal reform, january 29 – The Satsuma Rebellion, a revolt of disaffected samurai in Japan against the new imperial government. The Rebellion lasts until September of that year when it is crushed by a professionally led army of draftees, march – The Nineteenth Century magazine is founded in London. March 4 Emile Berliner invents the microphone, pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovskys ballet Swan Lake debuts. March 15 –1877 Australia v. England series, The first Test cricket match is held between England and Australia, march 24 – For the only time in history, The Boat Race between the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford is declared a dead heat. April 10 – The first human cannonball act in the British Isles, April 12 – The United Kingdom annexes the South African Republic, violating the Sand River Convention of 1852, causing a new Xhosa War. April 24 – Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire, may 5 – American Indian Wars, Sitting Bull leads his band of Lakota into Canada to avoid harassment by the United States Army under Colonel Nelson Miles. May 6 – Realizing that his people are weakened by cold and hunger, may 8–11 – At Gilmores Gardens in New York City, the first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is held. May 9 – Iquique earthquake and tsunami, An earthquake of at least magnitude 8.5 Ms occurs on the west coast of South America, may 16 – The 16 May 1877 crisis occurs in France. May 21 – By a speech in the Parliament of Romania by Mihail Kogălniceanu, june 15 – Henry Ossian Flipper becomes the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy. June 17 – American Indian Wars – Battle of White Bird Canyon, june 20 – Alexander Graham Bell installs the worlds first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. June 21 – The Molly Maguires are hanged at Carbon County Prison in Mauch Chunk, june 26 – The eruption of the volcano Cotopaxi in Ecuador causes severe mudflows that wipe out surrounding cities and valleys, killing 1,000. June 30 – The British Mediterranean fleet is sent to Besika Bay, july – Conclusion of serial publication of Leo Tolstoys Anna Karenina in The Russian Messenger. July 9 – The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club begins its first lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon, Louis, briefly establishing a Communist government before U. S. President Rutherford B. Hayes calls in the armed forces. July 19 – Russo-Turkish War, The first battle in the Siege of Plevna is fought, july 30 – The second battle in the Siege of Plevna is fought. July 30 – Russo-Turkish War, The Turkish army and its allies destroy the Bulgarian city of Stara Zagora, the army loses 29 soldiers and the Indians lose 89 warriors in an Army victory. August 12 – American astronomer Asaph Hall discovers Deimos, the moon of Mars
8.
Johannes Brahms
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Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his life in Vienna. Brahms composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works and he worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the concert repertoire. An uncompromising perfectionist, Brahms destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished, Brahms has been considered, by his contemporaries and by later writers, as both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg, the diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahmss works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Embedded within his meticulous structures, however, are deeply romantic motifs, Brahmss father, Johann Jakob Brahms, was from the town of Heide in Holstein. The family name was sometimes spelt Brahmst or Brams, and derives from Bram. Against the familys will, Johann Jakob pursued a career in music, arriving in Hamburg in 1826, where he work as a jobbing musician. In 1830, he married Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen, a seamstress 17 years older than he was, in the same year he was appointed as a horn player in the Hamburg militia. Eventually he became a player in the Hamburg Stadttheater and the Hamburg Philharmonic Society. As Johann Jakob prospered, the family moved over the years to better accommodation in Hamburg. Johannes Brahms was born in 1833, his sister Elisabeth had been born in 1831, Fritz also became a pianist, overshadowed by his brother he emigrated to Caracas in 1867, and later returned to Hamburg as a teacher. Johann Jakob gave his son his first musical training, Johannes also learnt to play the violin, from 1840 he studied piano with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel. Cossel complained in 1842 that Brahms could be such a good player, at the age of 10, Brahms made his debut as a performer in a private concert including Beethovens quintet for piano and winds Op.16 and a piano quartet by Mozart. He also played as a solo work an étude of Henri Herz, by 1845 he had written a piano sonata in G minor
9.
Symphony No. 2 (Brahms)
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Symphony No.2 in D major, Op.73, was composed by Johannes Brahms in the summer of 1877, during a visit to Pörtschach am Wörthersee, a town in the Austrian province of Carinthia. Its composition was brief in comparison with the 21 years it took Brahms to complete his First Symphony, the symphony is scored for 2 flutes,2 oboes,2 clarinets,2 bassoons,4 horns,2 trumpets,3 trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings. I have never written anything so sad, and the score must come out in mourning, a typical performance lasts between 40 and 50 minutes. The woodwinds develop the section and other instruments join in gradually progressing to a full-bodied forte, at bar 82, the cellos and violas introduce a new theme in F-sharp minor, which eventually moves to A major. After a development section based mostly on motives of the principal theme group, the recapitulation begins at bar 302, with the second theme returning at bar 350. Towards the conclusion of the movement, Brahms marked bar 497 as in tempo, sempre tranquillo, Brahms bases much of the first movement on a melody he formerly composed for Wiegenlied, Op.49, the tune commonly referred to as Brahmss Lullaby. It is introduced at bar 82 and is brought back. A brooding theme introduced by the cellos from bars 1 to 12, a second theme, marked Listesso tempo, ma grazioso, appears in bar 33. After a brief development section, the recapitulation is highly modified, the movement then finishes with a coda-like section in which the main theme is reintroduced in the end. An interesting use of material is used in this movement. Here we see the use of the variation of the theme. The third movement scherzo opens with pizzicato cellos accompanying a lilting oboe melody in G major, a contrasting section in 24 time marked Presto ma non assai begins in the strings, and this theme is soon taken over by the full orchestra. Bar 107 returns to the tempo and gentle mood, but the idyll setting is again disrupted in bar 126 when the earlier Presto marking makes a re-entry. Brahms yet again diverts the movement back into its principal tempo, the third movement contains very light articulated sections, which could be due to the influence of Mozart or Schubert. This lighter element provides a contrast to the two movements. Busy-sounding strings begin the final Allegro con spirito, again in sonata form, a loud section breaks in unexpectedly in bar 23 with the full orchestra. As the excitement appears to fade away, violins introduce a new subject in A major marked largamente, the wind instruments repeat this until it develops into a climax. Bar 155 of the movement repeats the symphonys first subject again, a mid-movement tranquillo section elaborates earlier material and slows down the movement to allow a buildup of energy into the recapitulation
10.
Vienna
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Vienna is the capital and largest city of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austrias primary city, with a population of about 1.8 million, and its cultural, economic and it is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Today, it has the second largest number of German speakers after Berlin, Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city is located in the part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region, along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, apart from being regarded as the City of Music because of its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be The City of Dreams because it was home to the worlds first psycho-analyst – Sigmund Freud. The citys roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city and it is well known for having played an essential role as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century. The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first for the worlds most liveable cities, between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne, Australia. Monocles 2015 Quality of Life Survey ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world to make a base within, the UN-Habitat has classified Vienna as being the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013. Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is used as a case study by urban planners. Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the worlds number-one destination for international congresses and it attracts over 3.7 million tourists a year. The English name Vienna is borrowed from the homonymous Italian version of the name or the French Vienne. The etymology of the name is still subject to scholarly dispute. Some claim that the name comes from Vedunia, meaning forest stream, which produced the Old High German Uuenia. A variant of this Celtic name could be preserved in the Czech and Slovak names of the city, the name of the city in Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and Ottoman Turkish has a different, probably Slavonic origin, and originally referred to an Avar fort in the area. Slovene-speakers call the city Dunaj, which in other Central European Slavic languages means the Danube River, evidence has been found of continuous habitation since 500 BC, when the site of Vienna on the Danube River was settled by the Celts. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north
11.
Vienna Philharmonic
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The Vienna Philharmonic, founded in 1842, is an orchestra regularly considered one of the finest in the world. The Vienna Philharmonic is based at the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria and its members are selected from the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera. Selection involves a process, with each musician having to demonstrate his or her capability for a minimum of three years performing for the opera and ballet. After this probationary period, the musician may request from the Vienna Philharmonics board an application for a position in the orchestra, until the 1830s, orchestral performance in Vienna was done by ad hoc orchestras, consisting of professional and amateur musicians brought together for specific performances. Nicolai and the orchestra gave only 11 concerts in the five years, and when Nicolai left Vienna in 1847. Between 1854 and 1857 Karl Eckert – the first permanent conductor of the Vienna Court Opera – led the Vienna Philharmonic in a few concerts. In 1857, Eckert was made Director of the Hofoper – the first musician to have given the post, in 1860. Since that time, writes Vienna Philharmonic violinist and president Clemens Hellsberg, in 1860, the orchestra elected Otto Dessoff to be permanent conductor. According to Max Kalbeck, the Vienna-based music critic, newspaper editor, and biographer, after fifteen years, in 1875, Dessoff was pushed out of his position in Vienna through intrigue, and he left Vienna to become conductor of the Badische Staatskapelle in Karlsruhe, Germany. In Karlruhe the next year, he fulfilled the request of his friend Johannes Brahms to conduct the first performance of his Symphony no,1, in 1873 Brahms had conducted the premiere of his Variations on a Theme by Haydn with Dessoffs Vienna Philharmonic. In 1875, the orchestra chose Hans Richter to take Dessoffs place as subscription conductor and he remained until 1898, except for the season 1882/1883 when he was in dispute with the orchestral committee. Richter led the VPO in the premieres of Brahmss Second Symphony, Tragic Overture. 3, the Violin Concerto of Tchaikovsky in 1881, and in 1892 the 8th symphony of Anton Bruckner and it was Richter who in 1881 appointed Arnold Rosé as concertmaster, who was to become Gustav Mahlers brother-in-law and was concertmaster until the Anschluss in 1938. In order to be eligible for a pension, Richter intended to remain in his position for 25 years, Richter recommended Mahler or Ferdinand Löwe to the orchestra as his replacement. In 1898, on 24 September, the orchestra elected Gustav Mahler, under Mahlers baton the Vienna Philharmonic played abroad for the first time at the 1900 Paris World Exposition. He resigned on 1 April 1901, like Richter, citing health concerns as a pretext, in 1901, Joseph Hellmesberger, Jr. briefly took his place, he remained only until 1903. He was most renowned for his Beethoven – he programmed at least two symphonies per season, and complete cycles in 1916/17 and 1926/27 and it was Weingartner who led the orchestras first concert devoted to entirely to the music of Johann Strauss, Jr. on 25 October 1925. In 1927, when Weingartner resigned, the orchestra elected Wilhelm Furtwängler and he resigned at the end of the 1929/30 season because of increased professional demands in Berlin
12.
Hans Richter (conductor)
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Hans Richter was an Austrian–Hungarian orchestral and operatic conductor. Richter was born in Raab, Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire and his father was a good local composer, conductor and regens chori Anton Richter. His mother was opera-singer Jozefa Csazenszky and he studied at the Vienna Conservatory. He had a particular interest in the horn, and developed his career at several different opera houses in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He became associated with Richard Wagner in the 1860s, and in 1876 he was chosen to conduct the first complete performance of Wagners Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. In Europe his work was based in Vienna, where he gave much attention to the works of Brahms himself, Anton Bruckner and Antonín Dvořák. In later years, Richter became an admirer of Sir Edward Elgar. On one occasion, he laid down his baton and allowed a London orchestra to play the second movement of Tchaikovskys Pathétique Symphony itself. Never afraid to experiment on behalf of the music he loved, in 1909 he delivered the British premiere, very shortly after the world premiere in Boston, of Ignacy Jan Paderewskis Symphony in B minor Polonia. Failing eyesight forced his retirement in 1911 and he died at Bayreuth in 1916. True Artist and True Friend, A Biography of Hans Richter
13.
Thomas Edison
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Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman, who has been described as Americas greatest inventor. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Edison was an inventor, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France. Edisons inventions contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications and these included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures. His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his career as a telegraph operator. Edison developed a system of generation and distribution to homes, businesses. His first power station was on Pearl Street in Manhattan, New York, Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. and Nancy Matthews Elliott. His father, the son of a Loyalist refugee, had moved as a boy with the family from Nova Scotia, settling in southwestern Ontario, in a known as Shewsbury, later Vienna. Samuel Jr. eventually fled Ontario because he took part in the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837 and his father, Samuel Sr. had earlier fought in the War of 1812 as captain of the First Middlesex Regiment. By contrast, Samuel Jr. s struggle found him on the losing side, once across the border, he found his way to Milan, Ohio. His patrilineal family line was Dutch by way of New Jersey and his mother taught him at home. Much of his education came from reading R. G, parkers School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Edison developed hearing problems at an early age, the cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections. In his later years, he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, Edisons family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, after the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854 and business declined. Edison sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit and he briefly worked as a telegraph operator in 1863 for the Grand Trunk Railway at Stratford, Ontario railway at age 16. He was held responsible for a near collision and he also studied qualitative analysis and conducted chemical experiments on the train until he left the job. Edison obtained the right to sell newspapers on the road, and, with the aid of four assistants, he set in type and printed the Grand Trunk Herald
14.
Phonograph
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The phonograph is a device invented in 1877 for the mechanical recording and reproduction of sound. In its later forms it is called a gramophone. To recreate the sound, the surface is rotated while a playback stylus traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it. In later electric phonographs, the motions of the stylus are converted into an electrical signal by a transducer. The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison, while other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edisons phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound. His phonograph originally recorded sound onto a sheet wrapped around a rotating cylinder. A stylus responding to sound vibrations produced an up and down or hill-and-dale groove in the foil, in the 1890s, Emile Berliner initiated the transition from phonograph cylinders to flat discs with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the center. Later improvements through the years included modifications to the turntable and its system, the stylus or needle. The disc phonograph record was the dominant audio recording format throughout most of the 20th century, from the mid-1980s on, phonograph use on a standard record player declined sharply because of the rise of the cassette tape, compact disc and other digital recording formats. Records are still a favorite format for some audiophiles and DJs, vinyl records are still used by some DJs and musicians in their concert performances. Musicians continue to release their recordings on vinyl records, the original recordings of musicians are sometimes re-issued on vinyl. Usage of terminology is not uniform across the English-speaking world, in more modern usage, the playback device is often called a turntable, record player, or record changer. When used in conjunction with a mixer as part of a DJ setup, the term phonograph was derived from the Greek words φωνή and γραφή. The similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings, the roots were already familiar from existing 19th-century words such as photograph, telegraph, and telephone. In British English, gramophone may refer to any sound-reproducing machine using disc records, the term phonograph was usually restricted to machines that used cylinder records. Gramophone generally referred to a wind-up machine, after the introduction of the softer vinyl records, 33 1⁄3-rpm LPs and 45-rpm single or two-song records, and EPs, the common name became record player or turntable. Often the home record player was part of a system that included a radio and, later, from about 1960, such a system began to be described as a hi-fi or a stereo. In American English, phonograph, properly specific to machines made by Edison, was used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder-playing machines made by others
15.
Richard Wagner
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Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works and he described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and his advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music. His Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music, Wagner had his own opera house built, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which embodied many novel design features. The Ring and Parsifal were premiered here and his most important stage works continue to be performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival, until his final years, Wagners life was characterised by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors. His controversial writings on music, drama and politics have attracted extensive comment, notably, since the late 20th century, where they express antisemitic sentiments. The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the 20th century, his influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, Richard Wagner was born to an ethnic German family in Leipzig, where his family lived at No. 3, the Brühl in the Jewish quarter and he was baptized at St. Thomas Church. He was the child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife, Johanna Rosine. Wagners father Carl died of typhus six months after Richards birth, afterwards his mother Johanna lived with Carls friend, the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer. In August 1814 Johanna and Geyer probably married—although no documentation of this has found in the Leipzig church registers. She and her family moved to Geyers residence in Dresden, until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He almost certainly thought that Geyer was his biological father, Geyers love of the theatre came to be shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in his performances. In his autobiography Mein Leben Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel, in late 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzels school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher. He struggled to play a scale at the keyboard and preferred playing theatre overtures by ear. Following Geyers death in 1821, Richard was sent to the Kreuzschule, at the age of nine he was hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Carl Maria von Webers opera Der Freischütz, which he saw Weber conduct. At this period Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright and his first creative effort, listed in the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis as WWV1, was a tragedy called Leubald. Begun when he was in school in 1826, the play was influenced by Shakespeare
16.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
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He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conductor in Europe and the United States. Tchaikovsky was honored in 1884, by Emperor Alexander III, although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant. There was scant opportunity for a career in Russia at that time. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Tchaikovskys training set him on a path to reconcile what he had learned with the native musical practices to which he had been exposed from childhood. From this reconciliation, he forged a personal but unmistakably Russian style—a task that did not prove easy, Russian culture exhibited a split personality, with its native and adopted elements having drifted apart increasingly since the time of Peter the Great. This resulted in uncertainty among the intelligentsia about the countrys national identity—an ambiguity mirrored in Tchaikovskys career, despite his many popular successes, Tchaikovskys life was punctuated by personal crises and depression. His homosexuality, which he kept private, has also been considered a major factor. Tchaikovskys sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera, there is a debate as to whether cholera was indeed the cause of death. While his music has remained popular among audiences, critical opinions were initially mixed, some Russians did not feel it was sufficiently representative of native musical values and expressed suspicion that Europeans accepted the music for its Western elements. Others dismissed Tchaikovskys music as lacking in elevated thought, according to longtime New York Times music critic Harold C, schonberg, and derided its formal workings as deficient because they did not stringently follow Western principles. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, a town in Vyatka Governorate in the Russian Empire. His father, Ilya Petrovich Tchaikovsky, had served as a lieutenant colonel and engineer in the Department of Mines and his grandfather, Pyotr Fedorovich Tchaikovsky, served first as a physicians assistant in the army and later as city governor of Glazov in Viatka. His great-grandfather, a Ukrainian Cossack named Fyodor Chaika, distinguished himself under Peter the Great at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, Tchaikovskys mother, Alexandra Andreyevna, was the second of Ilyas three wives,18 years her husbands junior and French on her fathers side. Both Ilya and Alexandra were trained in the arts, including music—a necessity as a posting to an area of Russia also meant a need for entertainment. Of Tchaikovskys six siblings, he was close to his sister Alexandra and twin brothers Anatoly, alexandras marriage to Lev Davydov would produce seven children and lend Tchaikovsky the only real family life he would know as an adult, especially during his years of wandering. One of those children, Vladimir Davydov, whom the composer would nickname Bob, in 1844, the family hired Fanny Dürbach, a 22-year-old French governess. Four-and-a-half-year-old Tchaikovsky was initially too young to study alongside his older brother Nikolai. By the age of six, he had become fluent in French, Dürbach saved much of Tchaikovskys work from this period, which includes his earliest known compositions, and became a source of several childhood anecdotes
17.
Antonina Miliukova
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Antonina Ivanovna Miliukova was the wife, and after 1893, the widow, of Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. After marriage she was known as Antonina Tchaikovskaya, little is known of Antonina before she met Tchaikovsky. Her family resided in the Moscow area and they belonged to the local gentry but lived in poverty. The family was also a highly fractious one, in a separate letter to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck he added that, in the company of his in-laws, all nearly at daggers drawn with one another. I find it difficult to express, what a terrible degree my moral agonies were reaching. Antonina first met Tchaikovsky in 1865 at the Moscow home of a friend, Anastasia Khvostova. His close friend Alexei Apukhtin was staying with her, and Anastasias brother Nikolai had been a classmate of Tchaikovskys brother Modest at the School of Jurisprudence, Antonina was 16 at the time, Tchaikovsky was 25. He did not remember her from this meeting and she, on the other hand, reportedly held a torch for him from that time forward. She reportedly gave up work as a seamstress to study music at the Moscow Music Conservatory. Tchaikovsky was one of her professors, eventually she had to abandon her studies at that institution, probably as a result of financial troubles. She wrote to Tchaikovsky on at least two occasions in 1877, two years after she had left school, at that time she was 28, far past the age at which women of that time generally married. By June 1877, Tchaikovsky proposed marriage, in order to please his family, a woman with whom I am not the least in love. They were married at the Church of Saint George in Moscow on 18 July 1877, a permanent separation followed after only six weeks of them being together. This has traditionally been blamed in part on Antoninas character. Modest describes her as a crazed half-wit and she may have been a simpleton, a woman of common ideas and tastes, as she has been described dismissively. Or maybe just a naive and inexperienced girl, responsibility for the failure of the marriage may actually lie more with Tchaikovsky than with her. In truth, Tchaikovskys biographer Anthony Holden suggests, Antonina was as much the right woman for Tchaikovsky as any other and it was marriage which was the wrong institution. Moreover, Tchaikovsky and Antonina did not come to a mutual understanding before their marriage regarding Tchaikovskys homosexuality and he might not have told Antonina that he preferred men to women
18.
Ludwig Thuille
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Thuille was born at Bozen, then part of Tyrol, now in Italy. He lost both his parents in 1872 when he was 11, and moved in with his step-uncle in Kremsmünster, there he sang in the Benedictine choir and studied organ, piano, and violin. His musical abilities were exceptional, so in 1876 the widow of a conductor, Matthaus Nagiller. There, in the summer of 1877, he met the young Richard Strauss, whose family was visiting the town, a year later he became a teacher, and few years thereafter a professor of theory and composition. His many pupils included Hermann Abendroth, Ernest Bloch, Ernst Boehe, Richard Wetz, Paul von Klenau, Rudi Stephan, Walter Braunfels, Henry Kimball Hadley, see, List of music students by teacher, T to Z#Ludwig Thuille. His second opera Lobetanz was premiered the year in Karlsruhe and was a considerable, if short-lived. He also composed a Symphony in F major, much praised by Strauss, five other works,13 choral pieces. Despite his friendship with Strauss, and despite his devotion to music-drama and he died at the age of 46 in 1907 in Munich of heart failure. He was married for twenty years to Emma née Dietl, with whom he had two children, until his death and his posthumously-published Harmonielehre went through many editions and was highly influential. Works by or about Ludwig Thuille at Internet Archive Free scores by Ludwig Thuille at the International Music Score Library Project Texts of songs by Ludwig Thuille at The LiederNet Archive
19.
Richard Strauss
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Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. Strauss was also a prominent conductor in Western Europe and the Americas, enjoying quasi-celebrity status as his compositions became standards of orchestral and operatic repertoire. Strauss was born on 11 June 1864 in Munich, the son of Josephine and Franz Strauss, in his youth, he received a thorough musical education from his father. He wrote his first composition at the age of six and continued to write music almost until his death, during his boyhood Strauss attended orchestra rehearsals of the Munich Court Orchestra, where he received private instruction in music theory and orchestration from an assistant conductor. In 1872 he started receiving violin instruction at the Royal School of Music from Benno Walter, in 1874 Strauss heard his first Wagner operas, Lohengrin and Tannhäuser. The influence of Wagners music on Strausss style was to be profound, but at first his musically conservative father forbade him to study it. Indeed, in the Strauss household, the music of Richard Wagner was viewed with deep suspicion, in later life, Strauss said that he deeply regretted the conservative hostility to Wagners progressive works. Nevertheless, Strausss father undoubtedly had a influence on his sons developing taste. In early 1882 in Vienna he gave the first performance of his Violin Concerto in D minor, playing a piano reduction of the part himself. The same year he entered Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he studied philosophy and art history, Strauss learned the art of conducting by observing Bülow in rehearsal. Bülow was very fond of the man and decided that Strauss should be his successor as conductor of the Meiningen Court Orchestra when Bülow resigned in 1885. Strausss compositions at time were indebted to the style of Robert Schumann or Felix Mendelssohn. 1, Op.11, is representative of this period and is a staple of modern horn repertoire, Strauss married soprano Pauline de Ahna on 10 September 1894. She was famous for being irascible, garrulous, eccentric and outspoken, throughout his life, from his earliest songs to the final Four Last Songs of 1948, he preferred the soprano voice to all others, and all his operas contain important soprano roles. The Strausses had one son, Franz, in 1897, Franz married Alice von Grab-Hermannswörth, daughter of a Jewish industrialist, in a Roman Catholic ceremony in 1924. Franz and Alice had two sons, Richard and Christian, some of Strausss first compositions were solo instrumental and chamber works. After 1890 Strauss composed very infrequently for chamber groups, his energies being almost completely absorbed with large-scale orchestral works and operas. Four of his pieces are actually arrangements of portions of his operas, including the Daphne-Etude for solo violin and the String Sextet
20.
Innsbruck
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Innsbruck is the capital city of Tyrol in western Austria. It is located in the Inn valley, at its junction with the Wipp valley, Innsbruck lies about halfway between Munich in Germany and Verona in Italy. Located in the valley between high mountains, the so-called North Chain in the Karwendel Alps to the north. Innsbruck is an internationally renowned winter sports centre, and hosted the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics as well as the 1984 and 1988 Winter Paralympics, Innsbruck also hosted the first Winter Youth Olympics in 2012. The name translates as Inn bridge, earliest traces suggest initial inhabitation in the early Stone Age. Surviving pre-Roman place names show that the area has been populated continuously, in the 4th century the Romans established the army station Veldidena at Oenipons, to protect the economically important commercial road from Verona-Brenner-Augsburg in their province of Raetia. The first mention of Innsbruck dates back to the name Oeni Pontum or Oeni Pons which is Latin for bridge over the Inn, the Counts of Andechs acquired the town in 1180. In 1248 the town passed into the hands of the Counts of Tyrol, the citys arms show a birds-eye view of the Inn bridge, a design used since 1267. The route over the Brenner Pass was then a major transport, the revenues generated by serving as a transit station enabled the city to flourish. Innsbruck became the capital of all Tyrol in 1429 and in the 15th century the city became a centre of European politics, the city benefited from the emperors presence as can be seen for example in the Hofkirche. Here a funeral monument for Maximilian was planned and erected partly by his successors, the ensemble with a cenotaph and the bronze statues of real and mythical ancestors of the Habsburgian emperor are one of the main artistic monuments of Innsbruck. A regular postal service between Innsbruck and Mechelen was established in 1490 by the Thurn-und-Taxis-Post, in 1564 Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria received the rulership over Tirol and other Further Austrian possessions administrated from Innsbruck up to the 18th century. He had Schloss Ambras built and arranged there his unique Renaissance collections nowadays mainly part of Viennas Kunsthistorisches Museum, up to 1665 a stirps of the Habsburgian dynasty ruled in Innsbruck with an independent court. In the 1620s the first opera house north of the Alps was erected in Innsbruck, in 1669 the university was founded. Also as a compensation for the court as Emperor Leopold I again reigned from Vienna, during the Napoleonic Wars Tyrol was ceded to Bavaria, ally of France. Andreas Hofer led a Tyrolean peasant army to victory in the Battles of Bergisel against the combined Bavarian and French forces, the combined army later overran the Tyrolean militia army and until 1814 Innsbruck was part of Bavaria. After the Vienna Congress Austrian rule was restored, until 1918, the town was part of the Austrian monarchy, head of the district of the same name, one of the 21 Bezirkshauptmannschaften in the Tyrol province. The Tyrolean hero Andreas Hofer was executed in Mantua, his remains were returned to Innsbruck in 1823, during World War I, the only recorded action taking place in Innsbruck was near the end of the war
21.
Abdul Abulbul Amir
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The names of the principal characters have been transcribed in a variety of ways in different versions of the lyrics. With respect to the character, his last name appears as both Ameer and Amir, and the syllable break between his first and middle names varies from version to version. His Russian opponents name has been drastically modified over time. First given as Ivan Potschjinksi Skidar, the character is perhaps best known today as Ivan Skavinsky Skivar, a great many versions of the lyrics exist, with the names of the principal characters spelled in a variety of ways. The following, presented by biographer James N. Healy, appears to be the most authoritative available text, various versions varied to a greater or lesser degree from Frenchs original. The song was adapted in 1941 into an MGM cartoon, Abdul the Bulbul-Ameer, with Fred Quimby producing, voice acting for the nine-minute cartoon was provided by Cliff Nazarro, Harry Stanton, Leon Belasco and Hans Conried, while Frank Crumit wrote new lyrics. It features caricatures of Groucho Marx, Lou Costello and Al Ritz as news reporters, in this version, Abdul is depicted as a bully who picks on Ivans dwarf friend, provoking Ivan into treading on the Turks toe. He has many traits of 1930s and 1940s cartoon villains, such as Bluto, including lips, a beard. The commercials starred Stephen Fry as Ivan, Tony Cosmo as Abdul, Tim McInnerny and Roy Castle, a variant of the poem appeared in an ad for Springmaid cotton sheets in Life magazine,7 January 1952. In the Star Trek, The Next Generation episode Brothers, the character Lore is heard singing verses of the song as he murders Noonien Soong, commenting Ive always loved that old ditty. In the 1935 film Shipmates Forever Dick Powells Crooner turned Midshipman character, upon leaving the room, another upper-classman asks for help with verse 38. In the 1949 film Task Force, Gary Coopers naval aviation officer character Jonathan Scott sings a line from Abdul, telling Jane Wyatts character Mary Morgan that all the Annapolis cadets in his day had to learn the song. In Beau Sabreur, the 1926 sequel to Beau Geste, the novelist has a femme fatale whistle a tune then she sings a verse to tease the French officer she calls Major Ivan and she uses the words Ivan Potschjinski Skivah. In Martin Gardners book The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix and he is later reported to have duelled with a KGB agent Ivan Skavinsky Skavar, with both of them perishing as a result. Seven years later, it turned out Dr. Matrix has faked his death to avoid retaliation by KGB, the Cartoon Song by Frank Crumit,1927
22.
Percy French
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William Percy French was one of Irelands foremost songwriters and entertainers in his day. In more recent times, he has recognised for his watercolour paintings as well. French was born at Cloonyquin House, near Tulsk, County Roscommon and he was educated at Foyle College in County Londonderry, and wrote his first successful song while studying at Trinity College Dublin in 1877 for a smoking concert. The song, Abdul Abulbul Amir was sold for £5 to an unscrupulous publisher, the song later became hugely popular and was falsely claimed by other authors. He graduated from TCD as an engineer in 1881 and joined the Board of Works in County Cavan as an Inspector of Drains. It is said that he wrote his best songs during this period and he also painted, French was a prolific painter of landscape watercolours and during this period considered art to be his true vocation. In fact, when he became later in his life, his paintings from his time as a civil engineer became fashionable. When the Board reduced its staff around 1887, French turned to journalism as the editor of The Jarvey, when the paper failed, Frenchs long and successful career as a songwriter and entertainer began. Around this time he married Ethel Kathleen Armitage-Moore, second daughter of William Armytage-Moore, but she died in childbirth at the age of 20. French became renowned for composing and singing songs and gained considerable distinction with such songs as Phil the Fluthers Ball, Slatterys Mounted Foot. One of Frenchs most famous songs is Are Ye Right There Michael, the song caused such embarrassment to the rail company that it led to a libel action against French, though this ultimately failed. French became ill while performing in Glasgow and died days later in Formby, England at the home of his cousin, Canon Richardson of Green Lea, College Avenue, on 24 January 1920. His grave is in the churchyard of St. Lukes Parish Church, Formby, a statue of him sitting on a park bench in the town centre of Ballyjamesduff in honour of him and his famous song, Come Back Paddy Reilly to Ballyjamesduff. On 20 September 2005, the Percy French watercolour Where ever I go my heart back to the County Mayo was sold by Dublin-based auctioneers Whytes for a then record price of €44,000. A comprehensive biography of French, focussing on his paintings, Lead Kindly Light, was produced by Oliver Nulty of the Oriel Gallery in 2002. Nulty promoted French from the day he opened the Oriel Gallery in 1968, sir Peter Ustinov opened the 1988 Percy French solo show at the Oriel
23.
Chopsticks (music)
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For a different piece of piano music often called Chopsticks in the UK, see Der Flohwalzer. Chopsticks is a simple, widely known waltz for the piano and it was written in 1877 by the British composer Euphemia Allen under the pseudonym Arthur de Lulli. Allen, whose brother was a publisher, was supposedly only sixteen when she composed the piece, with arrangements for solo. A group of Russian composers—Alexander Borodin, César Cui, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the original edition of this collection dates from 1879. The second edition was published the year, under the title Paraphrases,24 Variations et 15 petits pièces sur le thème favori et obligé. Franz Liszt was thrilled with this volume and composed a tribute for piano solo to be inserted before Borodins Polka. Later editions of the work saw it grow from 15 to 17 other pieces, Chopsticks was used as the introductory music to Edgar Kennedys series of short comedies made at the RKO Studios, from 1931 until his death in 1948. American composer and educator John Sylvanus Thompson published a set of variations on Chopsticks in 1941, the first three Pooch the Pup cartoons used Chopsticks as their opening music. He played the piece with Hoagy taking the lower part. Mr. Russells hooks that served as hands seemingly did not deter him from delivering a rendering of the tune, the opening notes of Chopsticks are often utilized in film and TV productions to illustrate a characters relative lack of ability in playing the piano. In the 1955 Billy Wilder film The Seven Year Itch, Tom Ewell played this together with Marilyn Monroe and tried to kiss her, in the 1955 season 4 episode of I Love Lucy Ethels Home Town, Chopsticks is played by Fred Mertz. In the 1972 episode of Columbo Etude in Black Columbo plays chopsticks as a way to get under the skin of the pompous murderer/conductor Alex Benedict, the Celebrated Chop Waltz is sometimes confused with Der Flohwalzer, which in the UK is also known by the name Chopsticks. In Sesame Street, the lyrics were added where a video showed people eating food with chopsticks while the music was used. The melody is the basis of Christmas Chopsticks, recorded by Guy Lombardo, Chopsticks is the second song played by Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia in the famous piano scene at FAO Schwarz in Big. An equivalent of this rudimentary two-finger piano exercise was known in Russia in duple meter as tati-tati or the Cutlet Polka and this version alternates the notes between the hands, rather than playing them at the same time in harmony. Paraphrases, by Borodin, Cui, Liadov, Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Shcherbachov, Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
24.
The Lost Chord
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The Lost Chord is a song composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1877 at the bedside of his brother Fred during Freds last illness. The manuscript is dated 13 January 1877, Fred Sullivan died five days later, the lyric was written as a poem by Adelaide Anne Procter called A Lost Chord, published in 1858 in The English Womans Journal. Sullivan was proud of the song and later noted, I have composed music since then. Many singers have recorded the song, including Enrico Caruso, who sang it at the Metropolitan Opera House on 29 April 1912 at a concert for families of victims of the Titanic disaster. The piece has endured as one of Sullivans best-known songs, Adelaide Anne Procter was an extremely popular poet in Britain, second in fame only to Alfred Lord Tennyson. On the early published sheet music for the song, Procters name is written in larger letters than Sullivans, Sullivans fathers death had inspired him to write his Overture In C over a dozen years earlier. The composers brother, Fred Sullivan, was an actor who appeared mostly in operettas, burnand wrote of Fred, As he was the most absurd person, so was he the very kindliest. The brothers were devoted to other, but Arthur went up. Fred played roles in several of his brothers operas, Cox and Box, Thespis, The Contrabandista and he fell ill in 1876 and died in January 1877. During Freds final illness, Arthur visited his brother frequently at his home on Kings Road in Fulham, the composer had tried to set Procters poem to music five years previously but had not been satisfied by the effort. As he had been inspired by his grief at the death of their father, at Freds bedside, he sketched out the music to The Lost Chord, and the manuscript is dated 13 January 1877, five days before Freds death. Although not written for sale, the became the biggest commercial success of any British or American song of the 1870s and 1880s. The American contralto Antoinette Sterling became one of its proponents, as did Sullivans close friend and sometime mistress, Fanny Ronalds. Dame Clara Butt recorded the song several times, and many famous singers recorded it, a copy of the music was buried with Ronalds, who bequeathed the manuscript to Butt in 1914. Butts husband, baritone Kennerley Rumford, gave the manuscript to the Worshipful Company of Musicians in 1950, musicologist Derek B. Scott offers this analysis of the composition, Sullivans setting is structurally sophisticated in its treatment of Procters verses, and offers a contrast to. This demonstrates the variety of forms to be found in drawing-room ballads before there were moves toward greater homogeneity in the 1880s, for the most part, the song steers clear of the predictable. There are some delightful surprises, such as the coloring of the harmony with the old church Mixolydian mode as the singer recounts the striking of the mysterious chord. Sullivan shows an understanding of the possibilities of the piano, ranging widely across its compass and making powerful dynamic
25.
Adelaide Anne Procter
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Adelaide Anne Procter was an English poet and philanthropist. She worked prominently on behalf of unemployed women and the homeless and she became unhealthy, possibly due to her charity work, and died of tuberculosis at the age of 38. Procters literary career began when she was a teenager, her poems were published in Charles Dickenss periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round. Her charity work and her conversion to Roman Catholicism appear to have influenced her poetry, which deals most commonly with such subjects as homelessness, poverty. Procter was the poet of Queen Victoria. Her poetry went through numerous editions in the 19th century, Coventry Patmore called her the most popular poet of the day, after Alfred and her poems were set to music and made into hymns, and were published in the United States and Germany as well as in England. Nonetheless, by the early 20th century her reputation had diminished and those who have, however, argue that Procters work is significant, in part for what it reveals about how Victorian women expressed otherwise repressed feelings. Adelaide Anne Procter was born at 25 Bedford Square in the Bloomsbury district of London, on 30 October 1825 to the poet Bryan Waller Procter, family friend Bessie Rayner Belloc wrote in 1895 that everybody of any literary pretension whatever seemed to flow in and out of the house. The Kembles, the Macreadys, the Rossettis, the Dickens, the Thackerays, never seemed to be exactly visitors, author and actress Fanny Kemble wrote that young Procter looks like a poets child, and a poet. A preter-naturally thoughtful, mournful expression for such a little child, Dickens spoke highly of Procters quick intelligence. As she grew older, she acquired the French, Italian, but, as soon as she had completely vanquished the difficulties of any one branch of study, it was her way to lose interest in it, and pass to another. A voracious reader, Procter was largely self-taught, though she studied at Queens College in Harley Street in 1850, the college had been founded in 1848 by Frederick Maurice, a Christian Socialist, the faculty included novelist Charles Kingsley, composer John Hullah, and writer Henry Morley. Procter showed a love of poetry from an age, carrying with her while still a young child a tiny album. Into which her favourite passages were copied for her by her mothers hand before she herself could write, as another little girl might have carried a doll. Procter published her first poem while still a teenager, the poem, Ministering Angels and she was also published in Good Words and Cornhill. As well as writing poetry, Procter was the editor of the journal Victoria Regia, which became the showpiece of the Victoria Press, in 1851, Procter converted to Roman Catholicism. Following her conversion, Procter became extremely active in several charitable and she became a member of the Langham Place Group, which set out to improve conditions for women, and was friends with feminists Bessie Rayner Parkes and Barbara Leigh Smith, later Barbara Bodichon. Though on paper Proctor was merely one member among many, fellow-member Jessie Boucherett considered her to be the spirit of the Society
26.
Arthur Sullivan
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Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. The best known of his hymns and songs include Onward Christian Soldiers, the son of a military bandmaster, Sullivan composed his first anthem at age eight. He was selected as soloist in the choir of the Chapel Royal. His graduation piece was a suite of music to Shakespeares The Tempest. When it was performed in London in 1862, it was an immediate sensation, Sullivan began his composing career with a series of ambitious works, interspersed with hymns, parlour ballads and other light pieces. Among his best received early pieces were a ballet, LÎle Enchantée, from 1861 to 1872, he supplemented his income by working as a church organist and music teacher, and writing hymns and songs. In 1866, Sullivan composed a comic opera, Cox and Box. His most successful work, the Overture di Ballo, premiered in 1870. Sullivans talent and native charm earned him friends in musical and social circles, including Queen Victorias son Alfred. In 1871, Sullivan wrote his first opera with W. S. Gilbert, Sullivan then produced his Festival Te Deum, an oratorio, The Light of the World, and incidental music for West End productions of several Shakespeare plays. He also had conducting and academic appointments, in 1875, producer Richard DOyly Carte reunited Gilbert and Sullivan to create a one-act piece, Trial by Jury, which was a surprise hit. Pinafore became a sensation, as did The Pirates of Penzance and Patience. Sullivan never married but had a love affair with an American socialite. After the death of his brother Fred in 1877, Sullivan supported Freds large family financially for the rest of his life, effectively adopting his nephew Bertie. Carte used his profits from the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership to build the Savoy Theatre in 1881, later hits in the series were Iolanthe, The Mikado, The Yeomen of the Guard and The Gondoliers. Sullivan was knighted for his contributions to music in 1883 and his infrequent serious pieces during the 1880s included two cantatas, The Martyr of Antioch and The Golden Legend, his most popular choral work. Sullivans only serious opera, Ivanhoe, though successful in 1891, was little-heard after that
27.
W. S. Gilbert
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Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for the fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. The most famous of these include H. M. S, Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, The Mikado. The popularity of works was supported for over a century by year-round performances of them, in Britain and abroad, by the repertory company that they founded. Eleven of the Savoy operas continue to be performed in the English-speaking world and beyond by opera companies, repertory companies, schools. Lines from these works have become part of the English language, such as short, sharp shock, What, and Let the punishment fit the crime. Gilberts creative output included over 75 plays and libretti, and numerous stories, poems and lyrics. He also began to write burlesques and his first comic plays, developing a unique absurdist and he also developed a realistic method of stage direction and a reputation as a strict theatre director. M. S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance, in the 1880s, Gilbert focused on the Savoy operas, including Patience, Iolanthe, The Mikado, The Yeomen of the Guard and The Gondoliers. Gilbert won the lawsuit, but the argument caused hurt feelings among the partnership. Although Gilbert and Sullivan were persuaded to collaborate on two last operas, they were not as successful as the previous ones, in later years, Gilbert wrote several plays, and a few operas with other collaborators. He retired, with his wife and ward, Nancy McIntosh, to a country estate, Gilbert died of a heart attack while attempting to rescue a young woman to whom he was giving a swimming lesson in the lake at his home. Gilbert was born at 17 Southampton Street, Strand, London and his father, also named William, was briefly a naval surgeon, who later became a writer of novels and short stories, some of which were illustrated by his son. Gilberts mother was the former Anne Mary Bye Morris, the daughter of Thomas Morris, Gilberts parents were distant and stern, and he did not have a particularly close relationship with either of them. They quarrelled increasingly, and following the break-up of their marriage in 1876, his relationships with them, especially his mother, Gilbert was nicknamed Bab as a baby, and then Schwenck, after his fathers godparents. As a child, Gilbert travelled to Italy in 1838 and then France for two years with his parents, who returned to settle in London in 1847. He then attended Kings College London, graduating in 1856, instead he joined the Civil Service, he was an assistant clerk in the Privy Council Office for four years and hated it. In 1859 he joined the Militia, a volunteer force formed for the defence of Britain, with which he served until 1878. In 1863 he received a bequest of £300 that he used to leave the service and take up a brief career as a barrister
28.
Anton Bruckner
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Josef Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, strongly polyphonic character. Bruckners compositions helped to define contemporary musical radicalism, owing to their dissonances, unprepared modulations, unlike other musical radicals such as Richard Wagner and Hugo Wolf who fit the enfant terrible mould, Bruckner showed extreme humility before other musicians, Wagner in particular. This apparent dichotomy between Bruckner the man and Bruckner the composer hampers efforts to describe his life in a way that gives a straightforward context for his music. On the other hand, Bruckner was greatly admired by subsequent composers including his friend Gustav Mahler, Anton Bruckner was born in Ansfelden on 4 September 1824. The ancestors of Bruckners family were farmers and craftsmen, their history can be traced to as far back as the 16th century and they lived near a bridge south of Sindelburg, which led to their being called Pruckhner an der Pruckhen. Bruckners grandfather was appointed schoolmaster in Ansfelden in 1776, this position was inherited by Bruckners father, Anton Bruckner senior and it was a poorly paid but well-respected position in the rural environment. Music was a part of the curriculum, and Bruckners father was his first music teacher. Bruckner learned to play the organ early as a child and he entered school when he was six, proved to be a hard-working student, and was promoted to upper class early. While studying, Bruckner also helped his father in teaching the other children, after Bruckner received his confirmation in 1833, Bruckners father sent him to another school in Hörsching. The schoolmaster, Johann Baptist Weiß, was a music enthusiast, here, Bruckner completed his school education and learned to play the organ excellently. Around 1835 Bruckner wrote his first composition, a Pange lingua – one of the compositions which he revised at the end of his life, when his father became ill, Anton returned to Ansfelden to help him in his work. Bruckners father died in 1837, when Bruckner was 13 years old, the teachers position and house were given to a successor, and Bruckner was sent to the Augustinian monastery in Sankt Florian to become a choirboy. In addition to practice, his education included violin and organ lessons. Bruckner was in awe of the great organ, which was built during the late baroque era and rebuilt in 1837. Later, the organ was to be called the Bruckner Organ, despite his musical abilities, Bruckners mother sent her son to a teaching seminar in Linz in 1841. After completing the seminar with an excellent grade, Bruckner was sent as an assistant to a school in Windhaag. The living standards and pay were horrible, and Bruckner was constantly humiliated by his superior, despite the difficult situation, Bruckner never complained or rebelled, a belief of inferiority was to remain one of Bruckners main personal characteristics during his whole life
