|
Sylvia Gähwiller
Sylvia Gähwiller (5 July 1909 – 19 March 1999) was a Swiss operatic soprano and a voice teacher. She was most successful as a concert and recital singer, who also performed works by contemporary composers. Life and career Born in Zürich, Gähwiller studied piano at the Breslau conservatory from 1926 to 1928, then at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin from 1927 to 1928. She studied further in Vienna from 1928 to 1930, piano with Friedrich Wührer and composition with Karl Weigl. In 1932 she received the diploma to teach voice. From 1936 to 1941, she studied voice with Ria Ginster at the Zürich Conservatory. Gähwiller was engaged at the Theater St. Gallen from 1941 to 1942 where she continued to appear as a guest until 1947. She appeared there as Pamina in Mozart's '' Die Zauberflöte'', Konstanze in his '' Die Entführung aus dem Serail'', Countess Almaviva in his '' Le nozze di Figaro'', Baroness Freimann in Lortzing's ''Der Wildschütz'', Mimì in Puccini's '' La bohèm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soprano
A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880 Hz in choral music, or to "soprano C" (C6, two octaves above middle C) = 1046 Hz or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which often encompasses the melody. The soprano voice type is generally divided into the coloratura, soubrette, lyric, spinto, and dramatic soprano. Etymology The word "soprano" comes from the Italian word '' sopra'' (above, over, on top of),"Soprano" '' |
Mignon
''Mignon'' is an 1866 ''opéra comique'' (or opera in its second version) in three acts by Ambroise Thomas. The original French libretto was by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on Goethe's 1795-96 novel '' Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre''. The Italian version was translated by Giuseppe Zaffira. The opera is mentioned in James Joyce's " The Dead" (''Dubliners'') and Willa Cather's '' The Professor's House''. Thomas's goddaughter Mignon Nevada was named after the main character. Performance history The first performance was at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 17 November 1866. The piece proved popular: more than 100 performances took place by the following July, the 1,000th was given there on 13 May 1894, and the 1,500th on 25 May 1919. The opera was also adapted and translated into German for performance in Berlin with Madame Lucca as Mignon. Lucca was well received, but the German critics were unhappy with the opera's alterations to the Goethe original, so Thomas composed a shor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the ''Neue Sachlichkeit'' (new objectivity) style of music in the 1920s, with compositions such as '' Kammermusik'', including works with viola and viola d'amore as solo instruments in a neo-Bachian spirit. Other notable compositions include his song cycle ''Das Marienleben'' (1923), ''Der Schwanendreher'' for viola and orchestra (1935), the opera ''Mathis der Maler'' (1938), the '' Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber'' (1943), and the oratorio ''When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'', a requiem based on Walt Whitman's poem (1946). Life and career Hindemith was born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, the eldest child of the painter and decorator Robert Hindemith from Lower Silesia and his wife Marie Hindemith, née Warnecke. H ... [...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] |
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel (; baptised , ; 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-British Baroque music, Baroque composer well known for his opera#Baroque era, operas, oratorios, anthems, concerto grosso, concerti grossi, and organ concertos. Handel received his training in Halle (Saale), Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712, where he spent the bulk of his career and Handel's Naturalisation Act 1727, became a naturalised British subject in 1727. He was strongly influenced both by the middle-German polyphony, polyphonic choral tradition and by composers of the Italian Baroque. In turn, Handel's music forms one of the peaks of the "high baroque" style, bringing Italian opera to its highest development, creating the genres of English oratorio and organ concerto, and introducing a new style into English church music. He is consistently recognized as one of the greatest composers of his age. Handel started three c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard works such as the ''Goldberg Variations'' and ''The Well-Tempered Clavier''; organ works such as the '' Schubler Chorales'' and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and vocal music such as the ''St Matthew Passion'' and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. The Bach family already counted several composers when Johann Sebastian was born as the last child of a city musician in Eisenach. After being orphaned at the age of 10, he lived for five years with his eldest brother Johann Christoph, after which he continued his musical education in Lüneburg. From 1703 he was back in Thuringia, working as a musician for Protestant c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lied
In Western classical music tradition, (, plural ; , plural , ) is a term for setting poetry to classical music to create a piece of polyphonic music. The term is used for any kind of song in contemporary German, but among English and French speakers, is often used interchangeably with " art song" to encompass works that the tradition has inspired in other languages as well. The poems that have been made into lieder often center on pastoral themes or themes of romantic love. The earliest lied date from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries, and can even refer to from as early as the 12th and 13th centuries. It later came especially to refer to settings of Romantic poetry during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and into the early twentieth century. Examples include settings by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Gustav Mahler or Richard Strauss. History For Ger ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L'incoronazione Di Poppea
''L'incoronazione di Poppea'' ( SV 308, ''The Coronation of Poppaea'') is an Italian opera by Claudio Monteverdi. It was Monteverdi's last opera, with a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, and was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1643 carnival season. One of the first operas to use historical events and people, it describes how Poppaea, mistress of the Roman emperor Nero, is able to achieve her ambition and be crowned empress. The opera was revived in Naples in 1651, but was then neglected until the rediscovery of the score in 1888, after which it became the subject of scholarly attention in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the 1960s, the opera has been performed and recorded many times. The original manuscript of the score does not exist; two surviving copies from the 1650s show significant differences from each other, and each differs to some extent from the libretto. How much of the music is actually Monteverdi's, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and Brazilian music and make extensive use of polytonality. Milhaud is considered one of the key modernist composers.Reinhold Brinkmann & Christoph Wolff, ''Driven into Paradise: The Musical Migr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mavra
''Mavra'' is a one-act comic opera composed by Igor Stravinsky, and one of the earliest works of Stravinsky's neo-classical period. The libretto, by Boris Kochno, is based on Alexander Pushkin's ''The Little House in Kolomna''. Mavra is about 25 minutes long, and features two arias, a duet, and a quartet performed by its cast of four characters. The opera has been characterised as both an homage to Russian writers, and a satire of bourgeois manners and the ''Romeo and Juliet'' subgenre of romance. Philip Truman has also described the music as satirising 19th-century comic opera. The dedication on the score is to the memory of Pushkin, Glinka and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.This information is from the Boosey & Hawkes 1947 reprint (copyright assigned to Boosey & Hawkes) of the 1925 Édition Russe de Musique vocal score of this work (based on a copy of this vocal score in the library of the State University of New York @ Fredonia.) B&H plate 16304. ''Mavra'' premiered at the Théatre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dido And Aeneas
''Dido and Aeneas'' (Z. 626) is an opera in a prologue and three acts, written by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell with a libretto by Nahum Tate. The dates of the composition and first performance of the opera are uncertain. It was composed no later than July 1688, and had been performed at Josias Priest's girls' school in London by the end of 1689.White, Bryan, 'Letter from Aleppo: dating the Chelsea School performance of Dido and Aeneas', 417 Some scholars argue for a date of composition as early as 1683.Pinnock, Andrew, 'Which Genial Day? More on the court origin of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, with a shortlist of dates for its possible performance before King Charles II’, Early Music 43 (2015), 199–212Bruce Wood and Andrew Pinnock, Unscared by turning times'? The dating of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas," The story is based on Book IV of Virgil's ''Aeneid''. It recounts the love of Dido, Queen of Carthage, for the Trojan hero Aeneas, and her despair when he abandons he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
