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Reynaldo Hahn
Reynaldo Hahn (; 9 August 1874 – 28 January 1947) was a Venezuelan-born French composer, conductor, music critic, and singer. He is best known for his songs – '' mélodies'' – of which he wrote more than 100. Hahn was born in Caracas but his family moved to Paris when he was a child, and he lived most of his life there. Following the success of his song "''Si mes vers avaient des ailes''" (If my verses had wings), written when he was aged 14, he became a prominent member of ''fin de siècle'' French society. Among his closest friends were Sarah Bernhardt and Marcel Proust. After the First World War, in which he served in the army, Hahn adapted to new musical and theatrical trends and enjoyed successes with his first opérette, ''Ciboulette'' (1923) and a collaboration with Sacha Guitry, the musical comedy ''Mozart'' (1926). During the Second World War Hahn, who was of Jewish descent, took refuge in Monaco, returning to Paris in 1945 where he was appointed director of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Napoleon I Of France
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. He was the ''de facto'' leader of the French Republic as First Consul from 1799 to 1804, then Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814 and again in 1815. Napoleon's political and cultural legacy endures to this day, as a highly celebrated and controversial leader. He initiated many liberal reforms that have persisted in society, and is considered one of the greatest military commanders in history. His wars and campaigns are studied by militaries all over the world. Between three and six million civilians and soldiers perished in what became known as the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon was born on the island of Corsica, not long aft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Hartmann
Romain-Jean-François "Georges" Hartmann (15 May 1843 – 22 April 1900) was a French music publisher, dramatist and opera librettist (publishing under the pen name Henri Grémont). Born in Paris, he was the son of Jean Hartmann (1804–1880), a German national born in Neustadt, Bavaria, who acted as the French distributor for the music publisher B. Schott's Söhne. In 1868, Georges Hartmann became a music publisher, publishing, among others, works by Georges Bizet, Jules Massenet, Édouard Lalo, Benjamin Godard, César Franck, and Ernest Reyer. In May 1891, his publishing house failed and he was forced to sell it to Henri Heugel, the intermediary being Paul-Émile Chevalier, an employee of Hartmann's who was a nephew of Heugel. Through merger in 1980, Heugel itself became part of Éditions Alphonse Leduc publishing empire. Hartmann's own librettos include those to Massenet's operas ''Hérodiade'' (1881) and ''Werther'' (1892), Charles Silver's ''Château Brillon'' (1892), Andr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the greatest French writers of all time. His most famous works are the novels ''The Hunchback of Notre-Dame'' (1831) and '' Les Misérables'' (1862). In France, Hugo is renowned for his poetry collections, such as (''The Contemplations'') and (''The Legend of the Ages''). Hugo was at the forefront of the Romantic literary movement with his play '' Cromwell'' and drama '' Hernani''. Many of his works have inspired music, both during his lifetime and after his death, including the opera ''Rigoletto'' and the musicals '' Les Misérables'' and '' Notre-Dame de Paris''. He produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime, and campaigned for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment. Though he was a committed royalist when young, H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (; 9 October 183516 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic music, Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Piano Concerto No. 2 (Saint-Saëns), Second Piano Concerto (1868), the Cello Concerto No. 1 (Saint-Saëns), First Cello Concerto (1872), ''Danse macabre (Saint-Saëns), Danse macabre'' (1874), the opera ''Samson and Delilah (opera), Samson and Delilah'' (1877), the Violin Concerto No. 3 (Saint-Saëns), Third Violin Concerto (1880), the Symphony No. 3 (Saint-Saëns), Third ("Organ") Symphony (1886) and ''The Carnival of the Animals'' (1886). Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy; he made his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine, Paris, La Madeleine, the official church of the Second French Empire, Fren ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prix De Rome
The Prix de Rome () or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them to stay in Rome for three to five years at the expense of the state. The prize was extended to architecture in 1720, music in 1803 and engraving in 1804. The prestigious award was abolished in 1968 by André Malraux, then Minister of Culture, following the May 68 riots that called for cultural change. History The Prix de Rome was initially created for painters and sculptors in 1663 in France, during the reign of Louis XIV. It was an annual bursary for promising artists having proved their talents by completing a very difficult elimination contest. To succeed, a student had to create a sketch on an assigned topic while isolated in a closed booth with no reference material to draw on. The prize, organised by the Académie Royale de Peinture ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are '' Manon'' (1884) and '' Werther'' (1892). He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music. While still a schoolboy, Massenet was admitted to France's principal music college, the Paris Conservatoire. There he studied under Ambroise Thomas, whom he greatly admired. After winning the country's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome, in 1863, he composed prolifically in many genres, but quickly became best known for his operas. Between 1867 and his death forty-five years later he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets. Massenet had a good sense o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod (; ; 17 June 181818 October 1893), usually known as Charles Gounod, was a French composer. He wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been ''Faust (opera), Faust'' (1859); his ''Roméo et Juliette'' (1867) also remains in the international repertory. He composed a large amount of church music, many songs, and popular short pieces including his Ave Maria (Bach/Gounod), Ave Maria (an elaboration of a Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach piece), and ''Funeral March of a Marionette''. Born in Paris into an artistic and musical family Gounod was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris and won France's most prestigious musical prize, the Prix de Rome. His studies took him to Italy, Austria and then Prussia, where he met Felix Mendelssohn, whose advocacy of the music of Bach was an early influence on him. He was deeply religious, and after his return to Paris, he briefly considered becoming a priest. He composed prolifically, writing church music, songs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Théodore Dubois
Clément François Théodore Dubois (24 August 1837 – 11 June 1924) was a French Romantic composer, organist, and music teacher. After study at the Paris Conservatoire, Dubois won France's premier musical prize, the Prix de Rome in 1861. He became an organist and choirmaster at several well-known churches in Paris, and at the same time was a professor in the Conservatoire, teaching harmony from 1871 to 1891 and composition from 1891 to 1896, when he succeeded Ambroise Thomas as the Conservatoire's director. He continued his predecessor's strictly conservative curriculum and was forced to retire early after a scandal erupted over the faculty's attempt to rig the Prix de Rome competition to prevent the modernist Maurice Ravel from winning. As a composer, Dubois was seen as capable and tasteful, but not strikingly original or inspired. He hoped for a career as an opera composer, but became better known for his church compositions. His books on music theory were influential, and rem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Lavignac
Alexandre Jean Albert Lavignac (21 January 1846 – 28 May 1916) was a French music scholar, known for his essays on theory, and a minor composer. Biography Lavignac was born in Paris and studied with Antoine François Marmontel, François Benoist and Ambroise Thomas at the Conservatoire de Paris, where later he taught harmony. Among his pupils were Henri Casadesus, Claude Debussy, Vincent d'Indy, Amédée Gastoué, Philipp Jarnach, Henri O'Kelly, Gabriel Pierné, Wadia Sabra, Florent Schmitt. In March 1864, at the age of eighteen, he conducted from the harmonium The pump organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the reed organ, harmonium, and melodeon. Th ... the private premiere of Gioachino Rossini's ''Petite messe solennelle''. His condensed work, ''La Musique et les Musiciens'', an overview of musical grammar and mater ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Cortot
Alfred Denis Cortot (; 26 September 187715 June 1962) was a French pianist, conductor, and teacher who was one of the most renowned classical musicians of the 20th century. A pianist of massive repertory, he was especially valued for his poetic insight into Romantic piano works, particularly those of Chopin, Franck, Saint-Saëns and Schumann. For Éditions Durand, he edited editions of almost all piano music by Chopin, Liszt and Schumann. A central figure of the French musical culture in his time, he was well known for his piano trio with violinist Jacques Thibaud and cellist Pablo Casals. Biography Early life Cortot was born in Nyon, Vaud, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, to a French father and a Swiss mother. His first cousin was the composer Edgard Varèse. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Émile Decombes (a student of Frédéric Chopin), and with Louis Diémer, taking a ''premier prix'' in 1896. He made his debut at the Concerts Colonne in 1897, pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maurice Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer. Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the conservatoire, Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity and incorporating elements of modernism, baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, ''Boléro'' (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. Renowned for his abilities in orchestration, Ravel made some orchestral arrangements of other compose ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
