1.
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
2.
Jean Sibelius
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Jean Sibelius, born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius, was a Finnish composer and violinist of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. The core of his oeuvre is his set of seven symphonies which, like his major works, continue to be performed and recorded in his home country. His other best-known compositions are Finlandia, the Karelia Suite, Valse triste, the Violin Concerto, the choral symphony Kullervo, throughout his career, the composer found inspiration in nature and Nordic mythology, especially the heroic legends of the national epic, the Kalevala. Although he is reputed to have stopped composing, he attempted to continue writing, including abortive efforts on an eighth symphony, in later life, he wrote Masonic music and re-edited some earlier works while retaining an active but not always favourable interest in new developments in music. The Finnish 100 mark note featured his image until 2002, when the euro was adopted, since 2011, Finland has celebrated a Flag Day on 8 December, the composers birthday, also known as the Day of Finnish Music. In 2015, the 150th anniversary of the birth, a number of special concerts and events were held. Sibelius was born on 8 December 1865 in Hämeenlinna in the Grand Duchy of Finland and he was the son of the Swedish-speaking medical doctor Christian Gustaf Sibelius and Maria Charlotta Sibelius née Borg. The family name stems from the Sibbe estate in Eastern Uusimaa which was owned by his paternal great-grandfather, Sibeliuss father died of typhoid in July 1868, leaving substantial debts. As a result, his mother—who was again pregnant—had to sell their property and move the family into the home of Katarina Borg, her widowed mother, who also lived in Hämeenlinna. Sibelius was therefore brought up in a decidedly female environment, the only male influence coming from his uncle, Pehr Ferdinand Sibelius and it was he who gave the boy a violin when he was ten years old and later encouraged him to maintain his interest in composition. For Sibelius, Uncle Pehr not only took the place of a father, from an early age, Sibelius showed a strong interest in nature, frequently walking around the countryside when the family moved to Loviisa on the coast for the summer months. In his own words, For me, Loviisa represented sun, Hämeenlinna was where I went to school, Loviisa was freedom. It was in Hämeenlinna, when he was seven, that his aunt Julia was brought in to give him piano lessons on the familys upright instrument and he progressed by improvising on his own, but still learned to read music. He later turned to the violin, which he preferred and he participated in trios with his elder sister Linda on piano, and his younger brother Christian on the cello. Furthermore, Sibelius often played in quartets with neighboring families, adding to his experience in chamber music, fragments survive of his early compositions of the period, a trio, a piano quartet and a Suite in D Minor for violin and piano. Around 1881, he recorded on paper his short pizzicato piece Vattendroppar for violin, in 1881, he started to take violin lessons from the local bandmaster, Gustaf Levander, immediately developing a particularly strong interest in the instrument. Despite such success as an instrumentalist, he chose to become a composer. Although his mother tongue was Swedish, in 1874 Sibelius attended Lucina Hagmans Finnish-speaking preparatory school, despite having to repeat a year, he succeeded in passing the schools final examination in 1885 which allowed him to enter a university
3.
Helsinki
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Helsinki is the capital and largest city of Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. Helsinki has a population of 629,512, a population of 1,231,595. Helsinki is located some 80 kilometres north of Tallinn, Estonia,400 km east of Stockholm, Sweden, Helsinki has close historical connections with these three cities. The Helsinki metropolitan area includes the core of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen. It is the worlds northernmost metro area of one million people. The Helsinki metropolitan area is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the Nordic countries, Helsinki is Finlands major political, educational, financial, cultural, and research center as well as one of northern Europes major cities. Approximately 75% of foreign companies operating in Finland have settled in the Helsinki region, the nearby municipality of Vantaa is the location of Helsinki Airport, with frequent service to various destinations in Europe and Asia. In 2009, Helsinki was chosen to be the World Design Capital for 2012 by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, the city was the venue for the 1952 Summer Olympics and the 52nd Eurovision Song Contest 2007. In 2011, the Monocle magazine ranked Helsinki the most liveable city in the world in its Liveable Cities Index 2011, in the Economist Intelligence Units August 2015 Liveability survey, assessing the best and worst cities to live in globally, Helsinki placed among the worlds top ten cities. Helsinki is used to refer to the city in most languages, the Swedish name Helsingfors is the original official name of the city. The Finnish name probably comes from Helsinga and similar names used for the river that is known as the Vantaa River. Helsingfors comes from the name of the parish, Helsinge and the rapids, which flowed through the original village. As part of the Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire, one suggestion for the origin of the name Helsinge is that it originated with medieval Swedish settlers who came from Hälsingland in Sweden. Others have proposed that the name derives from the Swedish word helsing, other Scandinavian cities located at similar geographic locations were given similar names at the time, for example Helsingør and Helsingborg. The name Helsinki has been used in Finnish official documents and in Finnish language newspapers since 1819, the decrees issued in Helsinki were dated with Helsinki as the place of issue. This is how the form Helsinki came to be used in written Finnish, in Helsinki slang the city is called Stadi. Hesa, is not used by natives to the city, helsset is the Northern Sami name of Helsinki
4.
Maurice Ravel
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Joseph Maurice Ravel was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, in the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as Frances greatest living composer. After leaving the conservatoire Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity, incorporating elements of baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with form, as in his best-known work, Boléro. He made some arrangements of other composers music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgskys Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known. As a slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, many of his works exist in two versions, a first, piano score and a later orchestration. Some of his music, such as Gaspard de la nuit, is exceptionally difficult to play. Ravel was among the first composers to recognise the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public, from the 1920s, despite limited technique as a pianist or conductor, he took part in recordings of several of his works, others were made under his supervision. Ravel was born in the Basque town of Ciboure, France and his father, Pierre-Joseph Ravel, was an educated and successful engineer, inventor and manufacturer, born in Versoix near the Franco-Swiss border. His mother, Marie, née Delouart, was Basque but had grown up in Madrid, in 19th-century terms, Joseph had married beneath his status – Marie was illegitimate and barely literate – but the marriage was a happy one. Both Ravels parents were Roman Catholics, Marie was also something of a free-thinker, a trait inherited by her elder son and he was baptised in the Ciboure parish church six days after he was born. The family moved to Paris three months later, and there a younger son, Édouard, was born and he was close to his father, whom he eventually followed into the engineering profession. Maurice was particularly devoted to their mother, her Basque-Spanish heritage was an influence on his life. Among his earliest memories were folk songs she sang to him, the household was not rich, but the family was comfortable, and the two boys had happy childhoods. Ravel senior delighted in taking his sons to factories to see the latest mechanical devices, in later life, Ravel recalled, Throughout my childhood I was sensitive to music. My father, much better educated in art than most amateurs are, knew how to develop my taste. There is no record that Ravel received any formal schooling in his early years
5.
Edward Elgar
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Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello and he also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the Kings Musick in 1924, although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically and he nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British army officer. His later full-length religious choral works were received but have not entered the regular repertory. In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity, Elgars music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death and it began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of recordings of his works. Edward Elgar was born in the village of Lower Broadheath, outside Worcester. His father, William Henry Elgar, was raised in Dover and had apprenticed to a London music publisher. In 1841 William moved to Worcester, where he worked as a tuner and set up a shop selling sheet music. In 1848 he married Ann Greening, daughter of a farm worker, Edward was the fourth of their seven children. Ann Elgar had converted to Roman Catholicism shortly before Edwards birth, William Elgar was a violinist of professional standard and held the post of organist of St. Georges Roman Catholic Church, Worcester, from 1846 to 1885. At his instigation, masses by Cherubini and Hummel were first heard at the Three Choirs Festival by the orchestra in which he played the violin, all the Elgar children received a musical upbringing. Elgars mother was interested in the arts and encouraged his musical development and he inherited from her a discerning taste for literature and a passionate love of the countryside. His friend and biographer W. H, Billy Reed wrote that Elgars early surroundings had an influence that permeated all his work and gave to his whole life that subtle but none the less true and sturdy English quality
6.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
7.
Scott Joplin
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Scott Joplin was an African American composer and pianist. Joplin achieved fame for his compositions and was dubbed the King of Ragtime Writers. During his brief career, he wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, One of his first, and most popular pieces, the Maple Leaf Rag, became ragtimes first and most influential hit, and has been recognized as the archetypal rag. Joplin was born into a family of railway laborers in Northeast Texas. Joplin grew up in Texarkana, where he formed a vocal quartet, during the late 1880s he left his job as a laborer with the railroad, and travelled around the American South as an itinerant musician. He went to Chicago for the Worlds Fair of 1893, which played a part in making ragtime a national craze by 1897. Joplin moved to Sedalia, Missouri, in 1894 and earned a living as a teacher, there he taught future ragtime composers Arthur Marshall, Scott Hayden. Joplin began publishing music in 1895, and publication of his Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 brought him fame and this piece had a profound influence on subsequent writers of ragtime. It also brought the composer a steady income for life, though Joplin did not reach this level of success again, in 1901 Joplin moved to St. Louis, where he continued to compose and publish music, and regularly performed in the St. Louis community. The score to his first opera A Guest of Honor was confiscated in 1903 with his belongings because of a non-payment of bills and he continued to compose and publish music, and in 1907 moved to New York City to find a producer for a new opera. He attempted to go beyond the limitations of the form that made him famous. His second opera, Treemonisha, was not received well at its partially staged performance in 1915, in 1916 Joplin descended into dementia as a result of syphilis. He was admitted to an institution in January 1917. His music was rediscovered and returned to popularity in the early 1970s with the release of an album recorded by Joshua Rifkin. This was followed by the Academy Award–winning 1973 movie The Sting that featured several of his compositions including The Entertainer, the opera Treemonisha was finally produced in full to wide acclaim in 1972. In 1976, Joplin was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize, according to author Edward A. Berlin, One tenacious myth tells us that Joplin was born in Texarkana, Texas, on November 24,1868. The location is easily dispensed with, Texarkana was not established until 1873, consequently, it appears possible that Joplin, born 12 years later, could have been born in Texarkana. Despite evidence to such a conclusion, some insist that Joplin was born in Linden, Texas
8.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
9.
Claude Debussy
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Achille-Claude Debussy, known since the 1890s as Claude-Achille Debussy or Claude Debussy, was a French composer. He and Maurice Ravel were the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music and he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1903. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Debussys music is noted for its sensory content and frequent usage of nontraditional tonalities. The prominent French literary style of his period was known as Symbolism, Debussy, the oldest of five children, was born Achille-Claude Debussy on 22 August 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. His father, Manuel-Achille Debussy, owned a shop there, his mother. The family moved to Paris in 1867, but in 1870 Debussys pregnant mother fled with Claude to his aunts home in Cannes to escape the Franco-Prussian War. At the age of seven, he began lessons with an Italian violinist in his early 40s named Jean Cerutti. In 1871 he drew the attention of Marie Mauté de Fleurville, Debussy always believed her, although there is no independent evidence to support her claim. His talents soon became evident, and in 1872, at age ten, Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire and he also became a lifelong friend of fellow student and distinguished pianist Isidor Philipp. After Debussys death, many pianists sought Philipps advice on playing his works, Debussy was experimental from the outset, favouring dissonances and intervals that were not taught at the Academy. Like Georges Bizet, he was a brilliant pianist and a sight reader. However, Debussy never once won a competition, and his personal opinion on competitions are that it is rather. The rules are taught in places called Conservatories, Art Schools, the contests, preceded by strict training, take place once a year and the umpires of the game are members of the institute —Monsieur Croche. The pieces he played in public at this time included sonata movements by Beethoven, Schumann and Weber,2, a movement from the Piano Concerto No. 1, and the Allegro de concert, during the summers of 1880,1881, and 1882, he accompanied Nadezhda von Meck, the wealthy patroness of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, as she travelled with her family in Europe. Despite von Mecks closeness to Tchaikovsky, the Russian master appears to have had effect on Debussy. In September 1880 she sent his Danse bohémienne for Tchaikovskys perusal, a month later Tchaikovsky wrote back to her, It is a pretty piece. Not a single idea is expressed fully, the form is terribly shriveled, Debussy did not publish the piece, and the manuscript remained in the von Meck family, it was eventually sold to B
10.
Adelina Patti
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Adelina Patti was an Italian-French 19th-century opera singer, earning huge fees at the height of her career in the music capitals of Europe and America. She first sang in public as a child in 1851, the composer Giuseppe Verdi, writing in 1877, described her as being perhaps the finest singer who had ever lived and a stupendous artist. Verdis admiration for Pattis talent was shared by numerous music critics and she was born Adelina Juana Maria Patti, in Madrid, the last child of tenor Salvatore Patti and soprano Caterina Barilli. Her Italian parents were working in Madrid, Spain, at the time of her birth, because her father came from Sicily, Patti was born a subject of the King of the Two Sicilies. She later carried a French passport, as her first two husbands were French and her sisters Amalia and Carlotta Patti were also singers. Her brother Carlo Patti was a violinist who married actress Effie Germon, in her childhood, the family moved to New York City. Patti grew up in the Wakefield section of the Bronx, where her familys home is still standing, Patti sang professionally from childhood, and developed into a coloratura soprano with perfectly equalized vocal registers and a surprisingly warm, satiny tone. Patti learned how to sing and gained understanding of technique from her brother-in-law Maurice Strakosch. Adelina Patti made her debut at age 16 on 24 November 1859 in the title role of Donizettis Lucia di Lammermoor at the Academy of Music. On 24 August 1860, she and Emma Albani were soloists in the premiere of Charles Wugk Sabatiers Cantata in Montreal which was performed in honour of the visit of the Prince of Wales. In 1861, at the age of 18, she was invited to Covent Garden, to execute the role of Amina in Bellinis La sonnambula. During an 1862 American tour, she sang John Howard Paynes Home, Sweet Home at the White House for the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, the Lincolns were mourning their son Willie, who had died of typhoid. Moved to tears, the Lincolns requested an encore of the song, henceforth, it would become associated with Adelina Patti, and she performed it many times as a bonus item at the end of recitals and concerts. Pattis career was one of success after success and her girlish good looks gave her an appealing stage presence, which added to her celebrity status. Patti, however, turned into a singer in the final phase of her operatic. She knew what suited her aging voice to perfection and she stuck to it, typically, her recital programs during the 1890s featured an array of familiar, often sentimental, not-too-demanding popular tunes of the day, which were sure to appeal to her adoring fans. She also had been prepared to tackle quite dramatic parts in operas like LAfricaine, Les Huguenots and she never attempted to sing any verismo parts, however, because these became popular only in the twilight of her career, during the final decade of the 19th century. Many years earlier, Patti had experienced an encounter in Paris with the bel canto-opera composer Gioachino Rossini
