|
Howard Crook
Howard Crook (born June 15, 1947) is an American lyric tenor who has lived and worked in the Netherlands and France since the early 1980s. He was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, and educated at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio and then University of Illinois, where he received a master's degree in music, specialising in opera. He worked in theatre and mime for a few years before becoming a professional singer after winning second prizes in the vocal competitions of Paris and 's-Hertogenbosch. He began to specialize in early music and has performed and recorded with the leading conductors; he has performed Leclair's ''Scylla et Glaucus'', Berlioz's ''Les nuits d'été'' and Bach's ''St Matthew Passion'' with John Eliot Gardiner; with Trevor Pinnock, Handel's ''Messiah'' and with Roger Norrington, Henry Purcell's ''The Fairy-Queen''. He has sung the solos in the large-scale works of Bach and the major tenor roles in most of the operas of Lully, Rameau, Haydn and Mozart. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lyric Tenor
A tenor is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The low extreme for tenors is widely defined to be B2, though some roles include an A2 (two As below middle C). At the highest extreme, some tenors can sing up to the second F above middle C (F5). The tenor voice type is generally divided into the ''leggero'' tenor, lyric tenor, spinto tenor, dramatic tenor, heldentenor, and tenor buffo or . History The name "tenor" derives from the Latin word '' tenere'', which means "to hold". As Fallows, Jander, Forbes, Steane, Harris and Waldman note in the "Tenor" article at ''Grove Music Online'': In polyphony between about 1250 and 1500, the enor was thestructurally fundamental (or 'holding') voice, vocal or instrumental; by the 15th century it came to signify the male voice that sang such parts. All other voices were normally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Eliot Gardiner
Sir John Eliot Gardiner (born 20 April 1943) is an English conductor, particularly known for his performances of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Life and career Born in Fontmell Magna, Dorset, son of Rolf Gardiner and Marabel Hodgkin, Gardiner's early musical experience came largely through singing with his family and in a local church choir. As a child he grew up with the celebrated Haussmann portrait of J. S. Bach, which had been lent to his parents for safe keeping during the Second World War. A self-taught musician who also played the violin, he began to study conducting at the age of 15. He was educated at Bryanston School, then studied history at King's College, Cambridge, where his tutor was the social anthropologist Edmund Leach."John Eliot Gardiner", in ''Contemporary Musicians'' (1999), Detroit: Gale While an undergraduate at Cambridge he launched his career as a conductor with a performance of Vespro della Beata Vergine by Monteverdi, in King's College Chapel on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Christie (musician)
William Lincoln Christie (born December 19, 1944) is an American-born French conductor and harpsichordist. He is a specialist in baroque and classical repertoire and is the founder of the ensemble Les Arts Florissants. Biography Christie studied art history at Harvard University, where he was briefly assistant conductor of the Harvard Glee Club. From 1966, he began studies at Yale University in music, where he was a student of harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick. He was opposed to the Vietnam War, and served in a reserve officers course to avoid the draft. He subsequently taught at Dartmouth College. When his Dartmouth post was not renewed, Christie moved first to the United Kingdom (1970), and in 1971 to France. He was one of a number of young men who left the United States at this time because of disagreement with the Vietnam War, and in order to avoid the draft. In France, he became known for his interpretations of Baroque music, particularly French Baroque music, workin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atys (Lully)
''Atys'' ('' Attis'') is a 1675 ''tragédie en musique'' — described in a 1708 revival as a ''tragédie mise en musique'' and today considered a ''tragédie lyrique'', a French form of opera — in a prologue and five acts by Jean-Baptiste Lully to a libretto by Philippe Quinault after Ovid's '' Fasti''. It was premiered for the royal court on 10 January the following year by Lully's Académie Royale de Musique (Paris Opera) at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The first public performance took place in April 1676 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. Although ''Atys'' was met with indifference by Paris audiences, it became known as "the king's opera" because of Louis XIV's fondness for it; it was repeated for him in 1678, 1682 and 1708. Roles Plot and music outline The French style of opera, established in the 1670s by Lully, was in five acts with a prologue. Prologue Lully's prologues normally served to comment on current events at the court of Louis XIV in a way tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Marc-Antoine Charpentier (; 1643 – 24 February 1704) was a French Baroque composer during the reign of Louis XIV. One of his most famous works is the main theme from the prelude of his ''Te Deum'', ''Marche en rondeau''. This theme is still used today as a fanfare during television broadcasts of the Eurovision Network, the European Broadcasting Union. Marc-Antoine Charpentier dominated the Baroque musical scene in seventeenth century France because of the quality of his prolific output. He mastered all genres, and his skill in writing sacred vocal music was especially hailed by his contemporaries. He began his career by going to Italy, there he fell under the influence of Giacomo Carissimi as well as other Italian composers, perhaps Domenico Mazzocchi. He would remain marked by the Italian style and become the only one with Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville in France to approach the oratorio. In 1670, he became a master of music (composer and singer) in the service of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition resulted in more than 800 works of virtually every genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as among the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture". Born in Salzburg, in the Holy Roman Empire, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. His father took him on a grand tour of Europe and then three trips to Italy. At 17, he was a musician at the Salzburg court b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn ( , ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions to musical form have led him to be called "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String quartet, String Quartet". Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their Eszterháza Castle. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original". Yet his music circulated widely, and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe. He was Haydn and Mozart, a friend and mentor of Mozart, Beethoven and his contemporaries#Joseph Haydn, a tutor of Beethoven, and the elder brother of composer Michael Haydn. Biography Early life Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, Rohrau, Habsburg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau (; – ) was a French composer and music theory, music theorist. Regarded as one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century, he replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer of his time for the harpsichord, alongside François Couperin. Little is known about Rameau's early years. It was not until the 1720s that he won fame as a major theorist of music with his ''Treatise on Harmony'' (1722) and also in the following years as a composer of masterpieces for the harpsichord, which circulated throughout Europe. He was almost 50 before he embarked on the operatic career on which his reputation chiefly rests today. His debut, ''Hippolyte et Aricie'' (1733), caused a great stir and was fiercely attacked by the supporters of Lully's style of music for its revolutionary use of harmony. Nevertheless, Rameau's pre-eminence in the field of French opera was soon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully ( , , ; born Giovanni Battista Lulli, ; – 22 March 1687) was an Italian-born French composer, guitarist, violinist, and dancer who is considered a master of the French Baroque music style. Best known for his operas, he spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France and became a French subject in 1661. He was a close friend of the playwright Molière, with whom he collaborated on numerous ''comédie-ballets'', including ''L'Amour médecin'', ''George Dandin ou le Mari confondu'', ''Monsieur de Pourceaugnac'', ''Psyché'' and his best known work, ''Le Bourgeois gentilhomme''. Biography Lully was born on November 28, 1632, in Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, to Lorenzo Lulli and Caterina Del Sera, a Tuscan family of millers. His general education and his musical training during his youth in Florence remain uncertain, but his adult handwriting suggests that he manipulated a quill pen with ease. He used to say that a Franciscan friar ga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Fairy-Queen
''The Fairy-Queen'' (1692; Purcell catalogue number Z.629) is a semi-opera by Henry Purcell; a "Restoration spectacular". The libretto is an anonymous adaptation of William Shakespeare's comedy '' A Midsummer Night's Dream''. First performed in 1692, ''The Fairy-Queen'' was composed three years before Purcell's death at the age of 35. Following his death, the score was lost and only rediscovered early in the twentieth century. Purcell did not set any of Shakespeare's text to music; instead he composed music for short masques in every act but the first. The play itself was also slightly modernised in keeping with seventeenth-century dramatic conventions, but in the main the spoken text is as Shakespeare wrote it. The masques are related to the play metaphorically, rather than literally. Many critics have stated that they bear no relationship to the play. Recent scholarship has shown that the opera, which ends with a masque featuring Hymen, the God of Marriage, was composed for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell (, rare: September 1659 – 21 November 1695) was an English composer. Purcell's style of Baroque music was uniquely English, although it incorporated Italian and French elements. Generally considered among the greatest English opera composers, Purcell is often linked with John Dunstaple and William Byrd as England's most important early music composers. No later native-born English composer approached his fame until Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, William Walton and Benjamin Britten in the 20th century. Life and work Early life Purcell was born in St Ann's Lane, Old Pye Street, Westminster – the area of London later known as Devil's Acre, a notorious slum – in 1659. Henry Purcell Senior, whose older brother Thomas Purcell was a musician, was a gentleman of the Chapel Royal and sang at the coronation of King Charles II of England. Henry the elder had three sons: Edward, Henry and Daniel. Daniel Purcell, the youngest of the b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Norrington
Sir Roger Arthur Carver Norrington (born 16 March 1934) is an English conductor. He is known for historically informed performances of Baroque, Classical and Romantic music. In November 2021 Norrington announced his retirement. Life Norrington is the son of Sir Arthur Norrington, and his brother is Humphrey Thomas Norrington. He studied at The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Dragon School, Oxford, Westminster School, Clare College, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music under Adrian Boult among others. Norrington played the violin, and worked as a tenor through the 1960s. In 1962 he founded the Schütz Choir (later the Schütz Choir of London). Conductor in Britain and US From 1969 to 1984, Norrington was music director of Kent Opera. In 1978, he founded the London Classical Players and remained their musical director until 1997. From 1985 to 1989, he was principal conductor of the Bournemouth Sinfonietta. He is also president of the Oxford Bach Choir. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_-_001.jpg "Click for more on -> Jean-Philippe Rameau")
