A concerto (from the , plural concerti or, often, the anglicised form concertos) as a musical work is a composition usually in three parts or movements, in which (usually) one solo instrument (for instance, a piano or violin) is accompanied by an orchestra. The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have origin from the conjunction of the two Latin words concert (meaning to tie, to join, to weave) and certamen (competition, fight): the idea is that the two parts in a concert, the soloist and the orchestra, alternate episodes of opposition and cooperation in the creation of the music flow.

The concerto, as understood in this modern way, arose in the Baroque period side by side with the concerto grosso, which contrasted a small group of instruments with the rest of the orchestra. While the concerto grosso is confined to the Baroque period, the solo concerto has continued as a vital musical force to this day. playing a flute concerto in Sanssouci, C. P. E. Bach at the piano; by Adolph Menzel, 1852]]

Baroque concertos

The concerto was established as a form of composition in the Baroque period. Starting from a form called Concerto grosso introduced by Arcangelo Corelli, it evolved into the form we understand today as performance of a soloist with/against an orchestra.

The main composers of concerti of the baroque were: Tommaso Albinoni, Antonio Vivaldi, Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Pietro Locatelli, Giuseppe Tartini, Francesco Geminiani and Johann Joachim Quantz. The concerto was intended as a composition typical of the Italian style of the time, and all the composers were studying how to compose in the Italian fashion (all'italiana).

The baroque concerto was mainly for a string instrument (violin, viola, cello, seldom viola d'amore or harp) or a wind instrument (oboe, trumpet, flute, or horn).

During the baroque period, before the invention of the piano, keyboard concertos were comparatively rare, with the exception of the organ and some harpsichord concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach. As the harpsichord evolved into the fortepiano, and in the end to the modern piano, the increased volume and the richer sound of the new instrument allowed the keyboard instrument to better compete with a full orchestra.

Cello concertos have been written since the Baroque era if not earlier. Among the works from that period, those by Antonio Vivaldi and Giuseppe Tartini are still part of the standard repertoire today.

Classical concertos

The concertos of the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach are perhaps the best links between those of the Baroque period and those of Mozart. C.P.E. Bach’s keyboard concertos contain some brilliant soloistic writing. Some of them have movements that run into one another without a break, and there are frequent cross-movement thematic references. Mozart, as a boy, made arrangements for harpsichord and orchestra of three sonata movements by Johann Christian Bach. By the time he was twenty, Mozart was able to write concerto ritornelli that gave the orchestra admirable opportunity for asserting its character in an exposition with some five or six sharply contrasted themes, before the soloist enters to elaborate on the material. He wrote one concerto each for flute, oboe (later rearranged for flute and known as Flute Concerto No. 2), clarinet, and bassoon, four for horn, a Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra, and a Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra. They all exploit and explore the characteristics of the solo instrument. His five violin concertos, written in quick succession, show a number of influences, notably Italian and Austrian. Several passages have leanings towards folk music, as manifested in Austrian serenades. However, it was in his twenty-three original piano concertos that he excelled himself. It is conventional to state that the first movements of concertos from the Classical period onwards follow the structure of sonata form. Mozart, however, treats sonata form in his concerto movements with so much freedom that any broad classification becomes impossible. For example, some of the themes heard in the exposition may not be heard again in subsequent sections. The piano, at its entry, may introduce entirely new material. There may even be new material in the so-called development section, which in effect becomes a free fantasia. Towards the end of the first movement, and sometimes in other movements too, there is a traditional place for an improvised cadenza. The slow movements may be based on sonata form or abridged sonata form, but some of them are romances. The finale is sometimes a rondo, or even a theme with variations. The music of the concerto is fast slow fast.

In the classical era, the cello did not receive nearly as much recognition as a solo instrument as it did later; however, Haydn provided us with two surviving examples, C.P.E. Bach three and Boccherini several.

Romantic concerto

In the romantic era, the concerto largely narrowed to three genres: the violin concerto, the cello concerto and the piano concerto. Virtually no major composer wrote concertos for wind instruments.

Violin concertos

In the 19th century the concerto was a vehicle for virtuosic display flourished as never before. It was the age in which the artist was seen as hero, to be worshipped and adulated with rapture. Early Romantic traits can be found in the violin concertos of Viotti, but it is Spohr’s twelve violin concertos, written between 1802 and 1827, that truly embrace the Romantic spirit with their melodic as well as their dramatic qualities. Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is unique in its scale and melodic qualities. Recitative elements are often incorporated, showing the influence of Italian opera on purely instrumental forms. Mendelssohn opens his violin concerto (1844) with the singing qualities of the violin solo. Even later passage work is dramatic and recitative-like, rather than merely virtuosic. The wind instruments state the lyrical second subject over a low pedal G on the violin – certainly an innovation. The cadenza, placed at the start of the recapitulation, is fully written out and integrated into the structure.

The great violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini was a legendary figure who, as a composer, exploited the technical potential of his instrument to its very limits. Each one exploits rhapsodic ideas but is unique in its own form. The Belgian violinist Henri Vieuxtemps contributed several works to this form. Édouard Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole (1875) displays virtuoso writing with a Spanish flavor. Max Bruch wrote three violin concertos, but it is the first, in G minor, that has remained a firm favorite in the repertoire. The opening movement relates so closely to the two remaining movements that it functions like an operatic prelude. Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto (1878) is a powerful work which succeeds in being lyrical as well as superbly virtuosic. In the same year Brahms wrote his violin concerto for the virtuoso Joseph Joachim. This work makes new demands on the player, so much so that when it was first written it was referred to as a "concerto against the violin". The first movement brings the concerto into the realm of symphonic development. The second movement is traditionally lyrical, and the finale is based on a lively Hungarian theme.

Cello concertos

Since the Romantic era, the cello has received as much attention as the piano and violin as a concerto instrument, and many great Romantic and even more 20th century composers left examples. The concertos of Robert Schumann, Carl Reinecke, David Popper, and Julius Klengel focus on the lyrical qualities of the instrument. Antonín Dvořák’s cello concerto ranks among the supreme examples from the Romantic era. Beethoven contributed to the repertoire with a Triple Concerto for piano, violin, cello and orchestra while later in the century, Brahms wrote a Double Concerto for violin, cello and orchestra. The instrument was also popular with composers of the Franco-Belgian tradition: Saint-Saëns and Vieuxtemps wrote two cello concertos each and Lalo and Jongen one. Tchaikovsky’s contribution to the genre is a series of Variations on a Rococo Theme. He also left very fragmentary sketches of a projected Cello Concerto which was only completed in 2006. Today's 'core' repertoire which is performed the most of any cello concertos are by Elgar, Dvořák, Saint-Saëns, Haydn, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky and Schumann but there are many more concertos which are performed nearly as often (see below: cello concertos in the 20th century).

Piano concertos

Beethoven’s five piano concertos increase the technical demands made on the soloist. The last two are particularly remarkable, integrating the concerto into a large symphonic structure with movements that frequently run into one another. His Piano Concerto no 4 starts, against tradition, with a statement by the piano, after which the orchestra magically enters in a foreign key, to present what would normally have been the opening tutti. The work has an essentially lyrical character. The slow movement is a dramatic dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra. Concerto no 5 has the basic rhythm of a Viennese military march. There is no lyrical second subject, but in its place a continuous development of the opening material. He also wrote a Triple Concerto for piano, violin, cello, and orchestra.

The piano concertos of Mendelssohn, Field, and Hummel provide a link from the Classical concerto to the Romantic concerto. Chopin wrote two piano concertos in which the orchestra is very much relegated to an accompanying role. Schumann, despite being a pianist-composer, wrote a piano concerto in which virtuosity is never allowed to eclipse the essential lyrical quality of the work. The gentle, expressive melody heard at the beginning on woodwind and horns (after the piano’s heralding introductory chords) bears the material for most of the argument in the first movement. In fact, argument in the traditional developmental sense is replaced by a kind of variation technique in which soloist and orchestra interweave their ideas.

Liszt's mastery of piano technique matched that of Paganini for the violin. His concertos No. 1 and No. 2 left a deep impression on the style of piano concerto writing, influencing Rubinstein, and especially Tchaikovsky, whose first piano concerto's rich chordal opening is justly famous. Grieg’s concerto likewise begins in a striking manner after which it continues in a lyrical vein.

Brahms's First Piano Concerto in D minor (pub 1861) was the result of an immense amount of work on a mass of material originally intended for a symphony. His Second Piano Concerto in B major (1881) has four movements and is written on a larger scale than any earlier concerto. Like his violin concerto, it is symphonic in proportions.

Fewer piano concertos were written in the late Romantic Period. But Grieg-inspired Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote 4 piano concertos between 1891 and 1926. His 2nd and 3rd, being the most popular of the 4, went on to become among the most famous in piano repertoire and shining examples of Russian musicianship.

Small-scale works

Besides the usual three-movement works with the title "concerto", many 19th-century composers wrote shorter pieces for solo instrument and orchestra, often bearing descriptive titles. From around 1800 such pieces were often called Konzertstück or Phantasie by German composers. Liszt wrote the Totentanz for piano and orchestra, a paraphrase of the Dies Irae. Max Bruch wrote a popular Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra, César Franck wrote Les Djinns and Variations symphoniques, and Gabriel Fauré wrote a Ballade for piano and orchestra. Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme for cello and orchestra have an important place in the instrument's repertoire. Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is widely considered to be structured similarly to a piano concerto.

20th century

Many of the concertos written in the early 20th century belong more to the late Romantic school than to any modernistic movement. Masterpieces were written by Edward Elgar (a violin concerto and a cello concerto), Sergei Rachmaninoff and Nikolai Medtner (four and three piano concertos, respectively), Jean Sibelius (a violin concerto), Frederick Delius (a violin concerto, a cello concerto, a piano concerto and a double concerto for violin and cello), Karol Szymanowski (two violin concertos and a "Symphonie Concertante" for piano), and Richard Strauss (two horn concertos, a violin concerto, Don Quixote —a tone poem which features the cello as a soloist— and among later works, an oboe concerto).

However, in the first decades of the 20th century, several composers such as Debussy, Schoenberg, Berg, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Bartók started experimenting with ideas that were to have far-reaching consequences for the way music is written and, in some cases, performed. Some of these innovations include a more frequent use of modality, the exploration of non-western scales, the development of atonality, the wider acceptance of dissonances, the invention of the twelve-tone technique of composition and the use of polyrhythms and complex time signatures.

These changes also affected the concerto as a musical form. Beside more or less radical effects on musical language, they led to a redefinition of the concept of virtuosity in order to include new and extended instrumental techniques as well as a focus on aspects of sound that had been neglected or even ignored before such as pitch, timbre and dynamics. In some cases, they also brought about a new approach to the role of the soloist and its relation to the orchestra.

Violin concertos

Two great innovators of early 20th-century music, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, both wrote violin concertos. The material in Schoenberg’s concerto, like that in Berg’s, is linked by the twelve-tone serial method. Bartók, another major 20th century composer, wrote two important concertos for violin. Russian composers Prokofiev and Shostakovich both wrote two concertos while Khachaturian wrote a concerto and a Concerto-Rhapsody for the instrument. Hindemith’s concertos hark back to the forms of the 19th century, even if the harmonic language which he used was different.

Three violin concertos from David Diamond show the form in neoclassical style.

More recently, Dutilleux's L'Arbre des Songes has proved an important addition to the repertoire and a fine example of the composer's atonal yet melodic style.

Other composers of major violin concertos include Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Walton, Benjamin Britten, Frank Martin, Carl Nielsen, Paul Hindemith, György Ligeti, Philip Glass, John Adams, and Kan-no.

Cello concertos

In the 20th century, particularly after the Second World War, the cello enjoyed an unprecedented popularity. As a result, its concertante repertoire caught up with those of the piano and the violin both in terms of quantity and quality.

An important factor in this phenomenon was the rise of virtuoso cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. His outstanding technique and passionate playing prompted dozens of composers to write pieces for him, first in his native Soviet Union and then abroad. His creations include such masterpieces as Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto, Dmitri Shostakovich's two cello concertos, Benjamin Britten's Cello-Symphony (which emphasizes, as its title suggests, the equal importance of soloist and orchestra), Henri Dutilleux' Tout un monde lointain, Witold Lutosławski's cello concerto, Dmitri Kabalevsky's two cello concertos, Aram Khachaturian's Concerto-Rhapsody, Arvo Pärt's Pro et Contra, Alfred Schnittke, André Jolivet and Krzysztof Penderecki second cello concertos, Sofia Gubaidulina's Canticles of the Sun, Luciano Berio's Ritorno degli Snovidenia, Leonard Bernstein's Three Meditations, James MacMillan's cello concerto and Olivier Messiaen's Concert à quatre (a concerto for cello, piano, oboe, flute and orchestra which was almost finished at the time of his death and completed by Yvonne Loriod and George Benjamin).

In addition, it must be noted that several important composers who were not directly influenced by Rostropovich wrote cello concertos: György Ligeti, Alexander Glazunov, Paul Hindemith, Toru Takemitsu, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Samuel Barber, Joaquín Rodrigo, Elliot Carter, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, William Walton, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Hans Werner Henze, Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Einojuhani Rautavaara for instance.

Piano concertos

Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto is a well known example of piano concerti. In addition, Stravinsky wrote three works for solo piano and orchestra: Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, and Movements for Piano and Orchestra. Prokofiev, another Russian composer, wrote no less than five piano concertos which he himself performed. Shostakovich composed two. Fellow soviet composer Khachaturian contributed to the repertoire with a piano concerto and a Concerto-Rhapsody.

Bartók also wrote three piano concertos. Like their violin counterparts, they show the various stages in his musical development.

Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote concertos for piano and for two pianos while Britten's concerto for piano (1938) is a fine work from his early period.

György Ligeti's concerto is a good example of a more recent piece (1985) that uses complex rhythms. Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin has written six piano concertos.

Concertos for other instruments

The 20th century also witnessed a growth of the concertante repertoire of instruments, some of which had seldom or never been used in this capacity. As a result, almost all the instruments of the classical orchestra now have a concertante repertoire. Examples include:

Alto Saxophone Concerto: Dahl, Denisov, Finney, Glazunov.

Bandoneón Concerto: Piazzolla

Bassoon Concerto: Aho, Eckhardt-Gramatté, Gubaidulina, Hétu, Jolivet, Davies, J. Williams.

Bass Clarinet Concerto: Bouliane.

Bass Oboe Concerto: Bryars.

Celesta Concerto: Kurek

Clarinet Concerto: Aho, Arnold, Copland, Denisov, Dusapin, Françaix, Hétu, Hindemith, Kan-no, Nielsen, Penderecki, Rautavaara, Stravinsky, Takemitsu, Tomasi, J. Williams.

Contrabassoon Concerto: Aho.

Cornet Concerto: Wright.

Double Bass Concerto: Aho, Bottesini, Dragonetti, Henze, Koussevitsky, Davies, Rautavaara.

Drum Set Concerto : Beck.

Euphonium Concerto: Cosma, Ewazen, Gillingham, Golland, Graham, Horovitz, Lindberg, Linkola, Sparke, Wilby.

Flute Concerto: Aho, Arnold, Denisov, Dusapin, Harman, Hétu, Jolivet, Nielsen, Penderecki, Rautavaara, Rodrigo, Takemitsu, Theaker, J. Williams.

Free bass accordion Concerto: Serry, Sr.

Guitar Concerto: Arnold, Brouwer, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Carulli, Giuliani, Hovhaness, Malmsteen, Ohana, Rodrigo, Villa-Lobos.

Harmonica Concerto: Arnold, Vaughan Williams, Villa-Lobos.

Harp Concerto: Ginastera, Glière, Jongen, Milhaud, Jolivet, Rautavaara, Rodrigo, Villa-Lobos.

Harpsichord Concerto: de Falla, Glass, Górecki, Martinů, Poulenc.

Horn Concerto: Arnold, Arutiunian, Bowen, Carter, Davies, Glière, Gipps, Hindemith, Hovhaness, Jacob, Knussen, Ligeti, Murail, Penderecki, Strauss, Tomasi, J. Williams.

Mandolin Concerto: Thile.

Marimba Concerto: Larsen, Milhaud, Rosauro, Svoboda, Viñao .

Oboe Concerto: Aho, Arnold, Bouliane, Denisov, Harman, Maderna, Martinů, Penderecki, Strauss, Vaughan Williams, Zimmermann.

Organ Concerto: Arnold, Hanson, Harrison, Hétu, Hindemith, Jongen, Kan-no, Peeters, Poulenc, Rorem, Sowerby.

Percussion Concerto: Glass, Jolivet, MacMillan, Milhaud, Rautavaara, Sarcich, Susman.

Rock band Concerto: Lord.

Sheng Concerto : Kan-no, Unsuk Chin.

Timpani Concerto : Druschetzky, Glass, Kraft, Rosauro.

Trombone Concerto: Aho, Dusapin, Holmboe, Milhaud, Rota, Rouse, Tomasi, Rimsky-Korsakov, Grondahl.

Trumpet Concerto: Arnold, Arutiunian, Jolivet, Perry, G. Williams, J. Williams, Zimmermann.

Tuba Concerto: Aho, Arutiunian, Holmboe, Vaughan Williams, J. Williams.

Viola Concerto: Aho, Arnold, Bartók, Denisov, Gubaidulina, Hindemith, Kan-no, Martinů, Milhaud, Murail, Penderecki, Schnittke, Takemitsu, Walton.

Amongst the works of the prolific composer Alan Hovhaness may be noted Prayer of St. Gregory for trumpet and strings.

Today the concerto tradition has been continued by composers such as Maxwell Davies, whose series of Strathclyde Concertos exploit some of the instruments less familiar as soloists.

Concertos for orchestra

In the 20th century, several important composers wrote concertos for orchestra. In these works, different sections and/or instruments of the orchestra are treated at one point or another as soloists with emphasis on solo sections and/or instruments changing during the piece. Famous examples include those written by:

Bartók

Kodály

Lutoslawski

Hindemith

Carter

Lindberg

Rodion Shchedrin

Dutilleux has also described his Métaboles as a concerto for orchestra.

Concertos for two or more instruments

Many composers also wrote concertos for two or more soloists.

In the Baroque era:

Vivaldi's concerti for 2, 3 or 4 violins, for 2 cellos, for 2 mandolins, for 2 trumpets, for 2 flutes, for oboe and bassoon, for cello and bassoon... etc.

Bach's concerti for 2 violins, for 2, 3, or 4 harpsichords as well as several of his Brandenburg concertos.

In the Classical era:

Mozart's concerti for 2 pianos and 3 pianos, as well as his concerto for flute and harp.

Salieri's Triple Concerto for oboe, violin and cello, and his double concerto for flute and oboe.

In the Romantic era:

Beethoven's triple concerto for piano, violin, and cello.

Brahms's double concerto for violin and cello.

Bruch's double concerto for viola and clarinet.

In the 20th century:

Béla Bartók's concerto for two pianos and percussion

Samuel Barber's Capricorn Concerto for flute, oboe and trumpet.

Benjamin Britten's double concerto for violin and viola.

Elliott Carter's double concerto for piano and harpsichord.

Frederick Delius's double concerto for violin and cello.

Philip Glass's concerto for saxophone quartet.

Hans Werner Henze's double concerto for oboe and harp.

Paul Hindemith's concerto for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, harp, and orchestra as well as his concerto for trumpet, bassoon, and strings

György Kurtág's double concerto for piano and cello.

György Ligeti's double concerto for flute and oboe.

Witold Lutosławski's concerto for oboe and harp.

Bohuslav Martinu's concerto for flute and violin and his concerto for two pianos.

Olivier Messiaen's Concert à quatre for piano, cello, oboe and flute.

Francis Poulenc's concerto for two pianos.

Alfred Schnittke's double concerto for oboe, harp, and strings as well as his Konzert zu Dritt, for violin, viola, violoncello and strings

Michael Tippett's triple concerto for violin, viola, and cello.

In the 21st century:

William P. Perry's Gemini Concerto for violin and piano

Karl Jenkins' Over the Stone for two harps

See also

Bass oboe concerto

Bassoon concerto

Clarinet concerto

Double bass concerto

English horn concerto

Flute concerto

Harmonica concerto

Harpsichord concerto

Mandolin Concerto

Oboe concerto

Organ concerto

Piano concerto

Timpani Concerto

Viola concerto

Violin concerto

Cello concerto

Concerto for Orchestra

Concertino

Chorale concerto

Concerto grosso

Double concerto for violin and cello

References

Berry, W. (1986). Form in Music (2nd ed.). NJ, Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians; ed. Stanley Sadie; 1980; ISBN 1-56159-174-2

The concerto; ed. Ralph Hill, Pelican 1952

External links

Anthology of 20th century violin concertos

Category:Musical terminology Category:Italian loanwords Category:Concertos

Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (8 June 1671 – 17 January 1751) was a Venetian Baroque composer. While famous in his day as an opera composer, he is mainly remembered today for his instrumental music, some of which is regularly recorded such as the concertos.

Biography

Born in Venice, Republic of Venice, to Antonio Albinoni, a wealthy paper merchant in Venice, he studied violin and singing. Relatively little is known about his life, especially considering his contemporary stature as a composer, and the comparatively well-documented period in which he lived. In 1694 he dedicated his Opus 1 to the fellow-Venetian, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (grand-nephew of Pope Alexander VIII); Ottoboni was an important patron in Rome of other composers, such as Arcangelo Corelli. Albinoni was possibly employed in 1700 as a violinist to Charles IV, Duke of Mantua, to whom he dedicated his Opus 2 collection of instrumental pieces. In 1701 he wrote his hugely popular suites Opus 3, and dedicated that collection to Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

In 1705, he was married; Antonino Biffi, the maestro di cappella of San Marco was a witness, and evidently was a friend of Albinoni's. Albinoni seems to have no other connection with that primary musical establishment in Venice, however, and achieved his early fame as an opera composer at many cities in Italy, including Venice, Genoa, Bologna, Mantua, Udine, Piacenza, and Naples. During this time he was also composing instrumental music in abundance: prior to 1705, he mostly wrote trio sonatas and violin concertos, but between then and 1719 he wrote solo sonatas and concertos for oboe.

Unlike most composers of his time, he appears never to have sought a post at either a church or noble court, but then he was a man of independent means and had the option to compose music independently. In 1722, Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, to whom Albinoni had dedicated a set of twelve concertos, invited him to direct two of his operas in Munich.

Around 1740, a collection of Albinoni's violin sonatas was published in France as a posthumous work, and scholars long presumed that meant that Albinoni had died by that time. However it appears he lived on in Venice in obscurity; a record from the parish of San Barnaba indicates Tomaso Albinoni died in Venice in 1751, of diabetes.

Music and influence

He wrote some fifty operas of which twenty-eight were produced in Venice between 1723 and 1740, while there are modern sources attributing - possibly exaggeratedly and inaccurately - 81 operas to the composer. Today he is most noted for his instrumental music, especially his oboe concertos. He is the first Italian known to employ the oboe as a solo instrument in concerti (c. 1715, in his masterful 12 concerti a cinque, op. 7) and publish such works, while it is likely that the first existing concerti featuring a solo oboe came from German composers such as Telemann or Händel, although probably unpublished. In Italy, Alessandro Marcello published his well known oboe concerto in D minor a little later, in 1717. Albinoni also employed the instrument often in his chamber works.

His instrumental music greatly attracted the attention of Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote at least two fugues on Albinoni's themes (Fugue on a Theme by Albinoni in A, BWV 950, Fugue on a Theme by Albinoni in B minor, BWV951) and constantly used his basses for harmony exercises for his pupils.

Part of Albinoni's work was lost in World War II with the destruction of the Dresden State Library. As a result, little is known of his life and music after the mid-1720s.

The Albinoni Adagio in G minor for violin, strings and organ, T. Mi 26, the subject of many modern recordings, was likely not written by him at all. The 20th century musicologist Remo Giazotto, author of a biography of Albinoni, claimed to have discovered a tiny manuscript fragment (consisting of a few measures of the melody line and basso continuo portion) from a slow movement of an Albinoni trio sonata. According to Giazotto's account, the document had been sent to him by the Dresden State Library from among the relics of its collection, shortly after the end of World War II. Giazotto concluded it was a portion of a church sonata (sonata da chiesa) composed by Albinoni, possibly as part of the Op. 4 set, around 1708. Giazotto himself then constructed the balance of the complete single-movement work around the fragmentary theme he ascribed to Albinoni, copyrighted it, and published it in 1958. The Adagio is featured in the AFI award winning picture, Gallipoli, and was recorded by Jim Morrison and The Doors and used in their song "The Severed Garden".

Works

See List of compositions by Tomaso Albinoni and List of operas by Albinoni.

Media

Footnotes

References

Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Venetian Instrumental Music, from Gabrieli to Vivaldi. New York, Dover Publications, 1994. ISBN 0-486-28151-5

Michael Talbot: "Tomaso Albinoni", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed June 25, 2005), (subscription access)

External links

Category:1671 births Category:1751 deaths Category:Italian classical violinists Category:Italian composers Category:Baroque composers Category:Opera composers Category:People from Venice (city)

Arcangelo Corelli (17 February 1653 – 8 January 1713) was an Italian violinist and composer of Baroque music.

Biography

Corelli was born at Fusignano, in the current-day province of Ravenna, although at the time it was in the province of Ferrara. Little is known about his early life. His master on the violin was Giovanni Battista Bassani. Matteo Simonelli, the well-known singer of the pope’s chapel, taught him composition. He gained his first major success in Paris at the age of nineteen, and to this he owed his European reputation. From Paris, Corelli went to Germany. In 1681 he was in the service of the electoral prince of Bavaria; between 1680 and 1685 he spent a considerable time in the house of his friend and fellow violinist-composer Cristiano Farinelli (believed to be the uncle of the celebrated castrato Farinelli).

In 1685 Corelli was in Rome, where he led the festival performances of music for Queen Christina of Sweden, and he was also a favorite of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, grandnephew of another Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, who in 1689 became Pope Alexander VIII. From 1689 to 1690 he was in Modena; the Duke of Modena was generous to him. In 1708 he returned to Rome, living in the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni. His visit to Naples, at the invitation of the king, took place in the same year.

The style of execution introduced by Corelli and preserved by his pupils, such as Francesco Geminiani, Pietro Locatelli, and many others, was of vital importance for the development of violin playing. It has been said that the paths of all of the famous violinist-composers of 18th-century Italy led to Arcangelo Corelli who was their "iconic point of reference." (Toussaint Loviko, in the program notes to Italian Violin Concertos, Veritas, 2003) However, Corelli used only a limited portion of his instrument's capabilities. This may be seen from his writings; the parts for violin very rarely proceed above D on the highest string, sometimes reaching the E in fourth position on the highest string. The story has been told and retold that Corelli refused to play a passage that extended to A in altissimo in the overture to Handel’s oratorio il Trionfo del Tempo e Disinganno (premiered in Rome, 1708), and felt seriously offended when the composer (32 years his junior) played the note.

Nevertheless, his compositions for the instrument mark an epoch in the history of chamber music. His influence was not confined to his own country. Johann Sebastian Bach studied the works of Corelli and based an organ fugue (BWV 579) on Corelli's Opus 3 of 1689.

Musical society in Rome also owed much to Corelli. He was received in the highest circles of the aristocracy, and for a long time presided at the celebrated Monday concerts in the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni.

Corelli died in possession of a fortune of 120,000 marks and a valuable collection of pictures, the only luxury in which he had indulged. He left both to his benefactor and friend, who generously made over the money to Corelli's relatives. Corelli is buried in the Pantheon at Rome. One can still trace back many generations of violinists from student to teacher to Corelli (the Corelli school).

His compositions are distinguished by a beautiful flow of melody and by a mannerly treatment of the accompanying parts, which he is justly said to have liberated from the strict rules of counterpoint.

His concerti grossi have often been popular in Western culture. For example, a portion of the Christmas Concerto, Op.6 No.8, is in the soundtrack of the film . He is also referred to frequently in the novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

Works

Corelli composed 48 trio sonatas, 12 violin and continuo sonatas, and 12 Concerti grossi.

Six opuses are authentically ascribed to Corelli, together with a few other works.

Opus 1: 12 sonatas da chiesa (trio sonatas for 2 violins and continuo) (Rome 1681)

Opus 2: 12 sonatas da camera (trio sonatas for 2 violins and continuo) (Rome 1685)

Opus 3: 12 sonatas da chiesa (trio sonatas for 2 violins and continuo) (Rome 1689)

Opus 4: 12 sonatas da camera (trio sonatas for 2 violins and continuo) (Rome 1694)

Opus 5: 12 Suonati a violino e violone o cimbalo (6 sonatas da chiesa and 6 sonatas da camera for violin and continuo) (Rome 1700) The last sonata is a set of variations on La Folia.

Opus 6: 12 concerti grossi (8 concerti da chiesa and 4 concerti da camera for concertino of 2 violins and cello, string ripieno, and continuo) (Amsterdam 1714)

op. post.: Sinfonia in D minor, WoO 1

op. post.: Sonata a Quattro, WoO 2

op. post.: Sonata a Quattro for Trumpet, 2 Violins & B.C, WoO 4

op. post.: 6 Sonate a tre, WoO 5–10 (Amsterdam 1714)

Music files

See also

Publications by Friedrich Chrysander

References

External links

Corelli, Arcangelo by HOASM

Adagio from op.5 played by Jennifer Bennett on baroque violin and Yair Avidor on theorbo

Video of excerpts from the Corelli Christmas Concerto performed on original instruments by the ensemble Voices of Music using baroque instruments, ornamentation and playing techniques.

;Free sheet music

http://corelli.ccarh.org Scores for complete Opp. 1-6

Category:1653 births Category:1713 deaths Category:People from the Province of Ravenna Category:People from the Province of Ferrara Category:Italian composers Category:Baroque composers Category:Composers for violin Category:Italian classical violinists Category:17th-century Italian people Category:18th-century Italian people

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (, English see fn.), baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of Mozart's death. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.

Mozart learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate. His influence on subsequent Western art music is profound. Beethoven wrote his own early compositions in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years."

Biography

Family and early years

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born to Leopold and Anna Maria Pertl Mozart at 9 Getreidegasse in Salzburg, capital of the sovereign Archbishopric of Salzburg, in what is now Austria but, at the time, was part of the Bavarian Circle in the Holy Roman Empire. His only sibling to survive past birth was Maria Anna (1751–1829), called "Nannerl". Wolfgang was baptized the day after his birth at St. Rupert's Cathedral. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinized form as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. He generally called himself "Wolfgang Amadè Mozart" as an adult, but there were many variants.

His father Leopold (1719–1787) was from Augsburg. He was deputy Kapellmeister to the court orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg, a minor composer, and an experienced teacher. In the year of Mozart's birth, his father published a violin textbook, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, which achieved success.

; painted in 1763 on commission from Leopold]]When Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father; and her three-year-old brother would look on, evidently fascinated. Years later, after his death, she reminisced:

He often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was always striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good. [...] In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier. [...] He could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time. [...] At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.

These early pieces, K. 1–5, were recorded in the Nannerl Notenbuch.

Biographer Maynard Solomon notes that, while Leopold was a devoted teacher to his children, there is evidence that Wolfgang was keen to make progress beyond what he was being taught. His first ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were on his own initiative and came as a great surprise to Leopold. Leopold eventually gave up composing when his son's outstanding musical talents became evident. He was Wolfgang's only teacher in his earliest years and taught his children languages and academic subjects as well as music.]]

1762–1773: Years of travel

During Mozart's youth, his family made several European journeys in which he and Nannerl performed as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition, in 1762, at the court of the Prince-elector Maximilian III of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Court in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour spanning three and a half years followed, taking the family to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, The Hague, again to Paris, and back home via Zurich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip, Mozart met a great number of musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other composers. A particularly important influence was Johann Christian Bach, whom Mozart visited in London in 1764 and 1765. The family again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768.

These trips were often arduous. Travel conditions were primitive; the family had to wait for invitations and reimbursement from the nobility. They endured long, near-fatal illnesses far from home: first Leopold (London, summer 1764) then both children (The Hague, autumn 1765).

After one year in Salzburg, father and son set off for Italy, leaving Wolfgang's mother and his sister at home. This travel lasted from December 1769 to March 1771. As with earlier journeys, Leopold wanted to display his son's abilities as a performer and a rapidly maturing composer. Wolfgang met G. B. Martini, in Bologna, and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. In Rome, he heard Gregorio Allegri's Miserere once in performance in the Sistine Chapel. He wrote it out in its entirety from memory, only returning to correct minor errors—thus producing the first illegal copy of this closely guarded property of the Vatican.

In Milan, Mozart wrote the opera Mitridate, re di Ponto (1770), which was performed with success. This led to further opera commissions. He returned with his father later twice to Milan (August–December 1771; October 1772 – March 1773) for the composition and premieres of Ascanio in Alba (1771) and Lucio Silla (1772). Leopold hoped these visits would result in a professional appointment for his son in Italy, but these hopes were never fulfilled.

Toward the end of the final Italian journey, Mozart wrote the first of his works to be still widely performed today, the solo cantata Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165.

1773–1777: The Salzburg court

After finally returning with his father from Italy on 13 March 1773, Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. The composer had a great number of friends and admirers in Salzburg and had the opportunity to work in many genres, composing symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, serenades, and a few minor operas. Several of these early works are still performed today. Between April and December 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), which steadily increased in their musical sophistication. The last three—K. 216, K. 218, K. 219—are now staples of the repertoire. In 1776 he turned his efforts to piano concertos, culminating in the E-flat concerto K. 271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work.

Despite these artistic successes, Mozart grew increasingly discontent with Salzburg and redoubled his efforts to find a position elsewhere. One reason was his low salary, 150 florins a year; Mozart also longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided only rare occasions for these. The situation worsened in 1775 when the court theater was closed, especially since the other theater in Salzburg was largely reserved for visiting troupes.

Two long expeditions in search of work (both Leopold and Wolfgang were looking) interrupted this long Salzburg stay: they visited Vienna, from 14 July to 26 September 1773, and Munich, from 6 December 1774 to March 1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with the premiere of Mozart's opera La finta giardiniera.

1777–1778: The Paris journey

In August 1777, Mozart resigned his Salzburg position and, on 23 September, ventured out once more in search of employment, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich. Since Archbishop Colloredo would not give Leopold leave to travel, Mozart's mother Anna Maria accompanied him.

Mozart became acquainted with members of the famous orchestra in Mannheim, the best in Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters in a musical family. There were prospects of employment in Mannheim, but they came to nothing, and Mozart left for Paris on 14 March 1778 to continue his search. One of his letters from Paris hints at a possible post as an organist at Versailles, but Mozart was not interested in such an appointment. He fell into debt and took to pawning valuables. The nadir of the visit occurred when Mozart's mother took ill and died on 3 July 1778. There had been delays in calling a doctor—probably, according to Halliwell, because of a lack of funds.

While Wolfgang was in Paris, Leopold was pursuing opportunities for him back in Salzburg, and, with the support of local nobility, secured him a post as court organist and concertmaster. The yearly salary was 450 florins, but Wolfgang was reluctant to accept. After leaving Paris on 26 September 1778, he tarried in Mannheim and Munich, still hoping to obtain an appointment outside Salzburg. In Munich, he again encountered Aloysia, now a very successful singer, but she made it plain that she was no longer interested in him. Mozart finally reached home on 15 January 1779 and took up the new position, but his discontent with Salzburg was undiminished.

Among the better known works that Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the A minor piano sonata K. 310/300d and the "Paris" Symphony (no. 31); these were performed in Paris on 12 June and 18 June 1778. for his gallery; Mozart with the Order of the Golden Spur which he received in 1770 as a 14-year old from Pope Clement XIV in Rome.]]

1781: Departure to Vienna

In January 1781, Mozart's opera Idomeneo premiered with "considerable success" in Munich. The following March the composer was summoned to Vienna, where his employer, Archbishop Colloredo, was attending the celebrations for the accession of Joseph II to the Austrian throne. Mozart, fresh from the adulation he had earned in Munich, was offended when Colloredo treated him as a mere servant and particularly when the archbishop forbade him to perform before the Emperor at Countess Thun's for a fee equal to half of his yearly Salzburg salary. The resulting quarrel came to a head in May: Mozart attempted to resign and was refused. The following month, permission was granted but in a grossly insulting way: the composer was dismissed literally "with a kick in the ass", administered by the archbishop's steward, Count Arco. Mozart decided to settle in Vienna as a freelance performer and composer.

Early Vienna years

Mozart's new career in Vienna began well. He performed often as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi on 24 December 1781, and he soon "had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna". Aloysia, who had earlier rejected Mozart's suit, was now married to the actor Joseph Lange, and Mozart's interest shifted to the third daughter, Constanze. The courtship did not go entirely smoothly; surviving correspondence indicates that Mozart and Constanze briefly broke up in April 1782. Mozart also faced a very difficult task in getting his father's permission for the marriage. The couple were finally married on 4 August 1782, in St. Stephen's Cathedral, the day before Leopold's consent arrived in the mail.

In 1783, Wolfgang and Constanze visited his family in Salzburg. Leopold and Nannerl were, at best, only polite to Constanze, but the visit prompted the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C minor. Though not completed, it was premiered in Salzburg, with Constanze singing a solo part.

Mozart met Joseph Haydn in Vienna, and the two composers became friends (see Haydn and Mozart). When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K. 387, K. 421, K. 428, K. 458, K. 464, and K. 465) date from the period 1782 to 1785, and are judged to be a response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn in 1785 told the visiting Leopold: "I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute, he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition."

From 1782 to 1785 Mozart mounted concerts with himself as soloist, presenting three or four new piano concertos in each season. Since space in the theaters was scarce, he booked unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof (an apartment building), and the ballroom of the Mehlgrube (a restaurant). The concerts were very popular, and the concertos he premiered at them are still firm fixtures in the repertoire. Solomon writes that during this period Mozart created "a harmonious connection between an eager composer-performer and a delighted audience, which was given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection of a major musical genre". Mozart also bought a fine fortepiano from Anton Walter for about 900 florins, and a billiard table for about 300. and kept servants. Saving was therefore impossible, and the short period of financial success did nothing to soften the hardship the Mozarts were later to experience.

On 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge Zur Wohltätigkeit ("Beneficence"). Freemasonry played an important role in the remainder of Mozart's life: he attended meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions he composed Masonic music. (See Mozart and Freemasonry.)

1786–1787: Return to opera

Despite the great success of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Mozart did little operatic writing for the next four years, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act Der Schauspieldirektor. He focused instead on his career as a piano soloist and writer of concertos. However, around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing and began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. 1786 saw the successful premiere of The Marriage of Figaro in Vienna. Its reception in Prague later in the year was even warmer, and this led to a second collaboration with Da Ponte: the opera Don Giovanni, which premiered in October 1787 to acclaim in Prague, and also met with success in Vienna in 1788. The two are among Mozart's most important works and are mainstays of the operatic repertoire today, though at their premieres their musical complexity caused difficulty for both listeners and performers. These developments were not witnessed by the composer's father, as Leopold had died on 28 May 1787.

In December 1787 Mozart finally obtained a steady post under aristocratic patronage. Emperor Joseph II appointed him as his "chamber composer", a post that had fallen vacant the previous month on the death of Gluck. It was a part-time appointment, paying just 800 florins per year, and only required Mozart to compose dances for the annual balls in the Redoutensaal. However, even this modest income became important to Mozart when hard times arrived. Court records show that Joseph's aim was to keep the esteemed composer from leaving Vienna in pursuit of better prospects.

In 1787 the young Ludwig van Beethoven spent several weeks in Vienna, hoping to study with Mozart. No reliable records survive to indicate whether the two composers ever met. (See Mozart and Beethoven.)

1788–1790

, made by Dora Stock during Mozart's visit to Dresden, April 1789]] Toward the end of the decade, Mozart's circumstances worsened. Around 1786 he had ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income shrank. This was a difficult time for musicians in Vienna because Austria was at war, and both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined.

By mid-1788, Mozart and his family had moved from central Vienna to the suburb of Alsergrund. Mozart began to borrow money, most often from his friend and fellow Mason Michael Puchberg; "a pitiful sequence of letters pleading for loans" survives. Maynard Solomon and others have suggested that Mozart was suffering from depression, and it seems that his output slowed. Major works of the period include the last three symphonies (Nos. 39, 40, and 41, all from 1788), and the last of the three Da Ponte operas, Così fan tutte, premiered in 1790.

Around this time Mozart made long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes: to Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin in the spring of 1789 (see Mozart's Berlin journey), and to Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities in 1790. The trips produced only isolated success and did not relieve the family's financial distress.

1791

Mozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of great productivity—and by some accounts a time of personal recovery. He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera The Magic Flute, the final piano concerto (K. 595 in B-flat), the Clarinet Concerto K. 622, the last in his great series of string quintets (K. 614 in E-flat), the motet Ave verum corpus K. 618, and the unfinished Requiem K. 626.

Mozart's financial situation, a source of extreme anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve. Although the evidence is inconclusive, it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart in return for the occasional composition. He probably also benefited from the sale of dance music written in his role as Imperial chamber composer. and the Little Masonic Cantata K. 623, premiered on 15 November 1791.

Final illness and death

in 1819]] Mozart fell ill while in Prague for the premiere on 6 September of his opera La clemenza di Tito, written in 1791 on commission for the Emperor's coronation festivities. He was able to continue his professional functions for some time, and conducted the premiere of The Magic Flute on 30 September. The illness intensified on 20 November, at which point Mozart became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.

Mozart was nursed in his final illness by Constanze and her youngest sister Sophie, and attended by the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. It is clear that he was mentally occupied with the task of finishing his Requiem. However, the evidence that he actually dictated passages to his student Süssmayr is very slim.

Mozart died at 1 a.m. on 5 December 1791 at the age of 35. The New Grove gives a matter-of-fact description of his funeral:

The cause of Mozart's death cannot be known with certainty. The official record has it as "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. Researchers have posited at least 118 causes of death, including trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment. The most widely accepted hypothesis is that Mozart died of acute rheumatic fever.

Mozart's sparse funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer: memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death, Mozart's reputation rose substantially: Solomon describes an "unprecedented wave of enthusiasm" for his work; biographies were written (first by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Nissen; see Biographies of Mozart); and publishers vied to produce complete editions of his works.

Mozart usually worked long and hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. He often made sketches and drafts; unlike Beethoven's these are mostly not preserved, as Constanze sought to destroy them after his death. (See: Mozart's compositional method.) He was raised a Roman Catholic and remained a member of the Church throughout his life. (See Mozart and Roman Catholicism.)

Mozart lived at the center of the Viennese musical world, and knew a great number and variety of people: fellow musicians, theatrical performers, fellow Salzburgers, and aristocrats, including some acquaintance with the Emperor Joseph II. Solomon considers his three closest friends to have been Gottfried von Jacquin, Count August Hatzfeld, and Sigmund Barisani; others included his older colleague Joseph Haydn, singers Franz Xaver Gerl and Benedikt Schack, and the horn player Joseph Leutgeb. Leutgeb and Mozart carried on a curious kind of friendly mockery, often with Leutgeb as the butt of Mozart's practical jokes.

He enjoyed billiards and dancing (see Mozart and dance), and kept pets: a canary, a starling, a dog, and also a horse for recreational riding. He had a fondness for scatological humor, which is preserved in his surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777–1778, but also in his correspondence with his sister and parents. Mozart even wrote scatological music, a series of canons that he sang with his friends. See: Mozart and scatology.

Works, musical style, and innovations

Style

" (K. 626) in Mozart's own handwriting. It is located at the Mozarthaus in Vienna.]] Mozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetype of the Classical style. At the time he began composing, European music was dominated by the style galant, a reaction against the highly evolved intricacy of the Baroque. Progressively, and in large part at the hands of Mozart himself, the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque emerged once more, moderated and disciplined by new forms, and adapted to a new aesthetic and social milieu. Mozart was a versatile composer, and wrote in every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. These forms were not new, but Mozart advanced their technical sophistication and emotional reach. He almost single-handedly developed and popularized the Classical piano concerto. He wrote a great deal of religious music, including large-scale masses, but also dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment.

The central traits of the Classical style are all present in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are the hallmarks of his work, but simplistic notions of its delicacy mask the exceptional power of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, the Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, and the opera Don Giovanni. Charles Rosen makes the point forcefully:

It is only through recognizing the violence and sensuality at the center of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterization of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous.

Especially during his last decade, Mozart exploited chromatic harmony to a degree rare at the time, with remarkable assurance and to great artistic effect.

Mozart always had a gift for absorbing and adapting valuable features of others' music. His travels helped in the forging of a unique compositional language. In London as a child, he met J.C. Bach and heard his music. In Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna he met with other compositional influences, as well as the avant-garde capabilities of the Mannheim orchestra. In Italy he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which deeply affected the evolution of his own practice. In London and Italy, the galant style was in the ascendent: simple, light music with a mania for cadencing; an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other harmonies; symmetrical phrases; and clearly articulated partitions in the overall form of movements. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are homotonal (all three movements having the same key signature, with the slow middle movement being in the relative minor). Others mimic the works of J.C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms turned out by Viennese composers.

As Mozart matured, he progressively incorporated more features adapted from the Baroque. For example, the Symphony No. 29 in A Major K. 201 has a contrapuntal main theme in its first movement, and experimentation with irregular phrase lengths. Some of his quartets from 1773 have fugal finales, probably influenced by Haydn, who had included three such finales in his recently published Opus 20 set. The influence of the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") period in music, with its brief foreshadowing of the Romantic era, is evident in the music of both composers at that time. Mozart's Symphony No. 25 in G minor K. 183 is another excellent example.

Mozart would sometimes switch his focus between operas and instrumental music. He produced operas in each of the prevailing styles: opera buffa, such as The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte; opera seria, such as Idomeneo; and Singspiel, of which Die Zauberflöte is the most famous example by any composer. In his later operas he employed subtle changes in instrumentation, orchestral texture, and tone color, for emotional depth and to mark dramatic shifts. Here his advances in opera and instrumental composing interacted: his increasingly sophisticated use of the orchestra in the symphonies and concertos influenced his operatic orchestration, and his developing subtlety in using the orchestra to psychological effect in his operas was in turn reflected in his later non-operatic compositions.

Influence

Mozart's most famous pupil, whom the Mozarts took into their Vienna home for two years as a child, was probably Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a transitional figure between Classical and Romantic eras. More important is the influence Mozart had on composers of later generations. Ever since the surge in his reputation after his death, studying his scores has been a standard part of the training of classical musicians.

Ludwig van Beethoven, Mozart's junior by fifteen years, was deeply influenced by his work, with which he was acquainted as a teenager. He is thought to have performed Mozart's operas while playing in the court orchestra at Bonn, and he traveled to Vienna in 1787 hoping to study the older composer. Some of Beethoven's works have direct models in comparable works by Mozart, and he wrote (WoO 58) to Mozart's D minor piano concerto K. 466.

A number of composers have paid homage to Mozart by writing sets of variations on his themes. Beethoven wrote four such sets (Op. 66, WoO 28, WoO 40, WoO 46). Others include Frédéric Chopin's Variations on "Là ci darem la mano" from Don Giovanni (1827) and Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart (1914), based on the variation theme in the piano sonata K. 331. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote his Orchestral Suite No. 4 in G, "Mozartiana" (1887), as a tribute to Mozart.

Köchel catalogue

For unambiguous identification of works by Mozart, a Köchel catalogue number is used. This is a unique number assigned, in regular chronological order, to every one of his known works. A work is referenced by the abbreviation "K." followed by this number. The first edition of the catalogue was completed in 1862 by Ludwig von Köchel. It has since been repeatedly updated, as scholarly research improves our knowledge of the dates and authenticity of individual works.

See also

The Complete Mozart Edition, 180 compact discs arranged into 45 themed volumes released by Philips Classics Records in 2000.

Mozart effect

Mozart family

Mozart in fiction

Mozartkugel

Mozarteum

Mozarthaus Vienna

Notes

References

Fradkin, Robert A. (1996) The well-tempered announcer: a pronunciation guide to classical music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 025321064X.

Further reading

External links

Mozarthaus Salzburg

Salzburg Tourist Office – Salzburg City Tourist Board website.

Digitized, scanned Material (Books, Sheet music)

"Mozart" Titles; Mozart as author from archive.org

"Mozart" Titles; Mozart as author from books.google.com

Digital Mozart Edition (Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum)

"Mozart" titles from Gallica

From the British Library

*Mozart's Thematic Catalogue (view with "Turning the Pages")

*Mozart's Musical Diary

*Background information on Mozart and the Thematic Catalogue

Letters of Leopold Mozart und Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Badische Landesbibliothek)

Sheet music (Scores)

Complete sheetmusic (scores) from the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum)

"Mozart" Titles from the Munich Digitisation Centre (MDZ)

"Mozart" Titles from the University of Rochester

Free typeset sheet music of Mozart's works from Cantorion.org

Mozart as author from archive.org

Mozart as author from books.google.com

* Category:Classical era composers Category:German composers Category:Opera composers Category:Organ improvisers Category:Viennese composers Category:Austrian classical pianists Category:Child classical musicians Category:People from Salzburg Category:Austrian Roman Catholics Category:Knights of the Golden Spur Category:1756 births Category:1791 deaths

Name	Vasco Rossi
Background	solo_singer
Born	February 07, 1952
Origin	Zocca, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
Genre	Pop Rock
Years active	1977–present
Url	VascoRossi.net

Vasco Rossi (born February 7, 1952), also known as Vasco or with the nickname Il Blasco, is an Italian singer-songwriter. During his career, he has published 24 albums (not including unofficial releases) and has written over 130 songs, as well as lyrics for other artists. He calls himself a "provoca(u)tore" (an Italian portmanteau for "provoking author") as throughout his career he has been regularly criticized over his choice of lifestyle and the lyrics in his songs.

Biography

Rossi was born in Zocca, in the province of Modena (Emilia-Romagna). His father, Carlo Rossi, was a truck-driver, and his mother, Novella, a housewife. It was his mother herself who decided to enroll him in singing school when he was a little boy, a choice that must have seemed rather peculiar within the mentality of a small village in the Apennines like Zocca. Nonetheless, Rossi fell in love with music and at the age of 14 began playing with his first band.

Rossi and his family moved to Bologna, Italy, where he studied accounting in high school. Upon graduating he opened a music club, Punto Club, and enrolled in university at the faculty of Economics and Commerce. In the meantime he supported himself by working as a DJ and founding, along with friends, one of the first private radio stations in Italy, "Punto Radio", with which he began slowly and timidly showcasing his own songs.

Encouraged by his friend Gaetano Curreri (now leading member of Italian rock band Stadio), Rossi released his first EP on June 13, 1977, which included the songs "Jenny è pazza" (Jenny is mad) and “Silvia", and a full-length album in 1978, Ma cosa vuoi che sia una canzone. In 1979, he released a second album, Non siamo mica gli americani ("We are not the Americans"), which included, "Albachiara" ("Whitedawn"), one of his biggest hits, and a ballad considered emblematic of Rossi’s poetic style. His most controversial album, Colpa d'Alfredo ("Alfredo's fault") followed in 1980; its title-track was censored from the radio and let loose bitter criticism because it contained some lyrics referring to women considered too explicit at that time. The controversy actually increased Rossi’s popularity, and he quickly saw himself famous on a national level, particularly after performing live on Domenica In, a popular Italian television program. The performance did not particularly please journalist Nantas Salvalaggio, who published a scathing article against Rossi calling him drug-addict. Rossi argued that Salvalaggio evidently did not understand his music and remarked how easy it is to criticize a still unknown artist who cannot defend himself.

In 1981, the album Siamo solo noi ("It's just us") was released. The title track, another signature song of his, would become commonly recognized as a generational hymn.

In 1982, Rossi took part for the first time in the Sanremo Music Festival, performing the song "Vado al massimo" ("I go to the max"). Here, he once again found himself under the harsh criticism, and came in last place in the festival. In April of the same year the album Vado al Massimo was released. The following year, he reappeared at the Sanremo Music Festival, this time performing “Vita spericolata" (Daredevil Life), probably his most popular song, and finishing in second-to-last place due to his apparent state of intoxication. The following album, Bollicine ("Bubbles"), published in 1983, was his sixth in seven years, and was the album that consecrated him definitively an idol of the new generation and an icon of Italian rock. The title track, whose lyrics are about Coke (but also demonstrate a clear assonance with cocaine), won the Festivalbar ‘83, and his tour that year was an enormous success.

To celebrate this positive period in his career, Rossi released his first live recording in 1984, Va bene, va bene così ("It’s alright, it’s this way"). In April, however, he was arrested on charges of drug possession. He was immediately granted provisional release from jail, but subsequently sentenced to 2 years and 8 months of probation. Shortly thereafter he released his next album, Cosa succede in città ("What’s going on in the city"), which became one of his weakest critically and did not reach past sales.

In 1987 Vasco Rossi’s ninth album, C'è chi dice no ("There Are Those Who Say ‘No’"), was released; the ever-increasing numbers of fans showing up to his concerts forced him to quit performing in clubs and normal-sized venues and begin the era of something for which he is known to this day—playing in and selling out big arenas and stadiums.

His tenth studio album, Liberi liberi ("Free free"), followed in 1989. The success of his 1989 tour brought the release of the live album Fronte del palco (a pun of the Italian title of Marlon Brando's film "Waterfront" which was "Fronte del porto") and the organization of two concerts in 1990, one at the San Siro stadium in Milan and the other at the Flaminio in Rome.

Rossi's next album, Gli spari sopra ("The shots above"), released in 1993, went platinum ten times. The title track, which was a major hit, is a cover version of Celebrate by the Irish band An Emotional Fish. In 1994 he gave the unreleased "Senza Parole" ("Wordless") as a gift to members of his official fan-club.

In 1995, Rossi was again the star at San Siro with a double concert, Rock sotto l'assedio ("Rock under siege"), which protested the war in Yugoslavia. Rossi invited a few Serbian and Croatian bands to perform but was heavily criticized by the press because the proceeds weren't given to charity, despite the fact they were never meant to.

In 1996, Rossi recorded a new studio album, Nessun Pericolo... Per Te ("No Danger... For You"), featured songs “Sally” and "Gli angeli", (the video of the latter was directed by Roman Polanski).

In 1998 Rossi rediscovered his singer-songwriter side, recording and releasing the album Canzoni per me ("Songs for me") with a softer and less “rock” sound, even remaking never-published songs written at the beginning of his career. The nature of the songs, however, did not impede Rossi from winning his second Festivalbar with the song, "Luna per te" ("Moon for you"). Given the low propensity of these songs to fit in his live show with the songs his fans had up to that time become accustomed, he decided to hold just one concert in 1998, accepting the proposal to be a guest star on the first evening of the new Heineken Jammin' Festival in Imola, Italy. The evening is immortalized in both video and in the 1999 live album Rewind. A few days into the tour, Rossi’s inseparable friend, as well as guitarist and writer/cowriter of many songs and lyrics, Massimo Riva, died unexpectedly. He would be remembered and celebrated by Rossi and fans in nearly every concert that followed.

In 2001, Stupido Hotel ("Stupid Hotel"), was released, and Rossi won his third Festivalbar, this time with the song “Siamo Soli” ("We are alone"). In 2002 Rossi released his first official recording of remastered songs in their original version, Tracks, which was followed by three sold-out gigs at San Siro Stadium in Milan. His album Buoni o cattivi ("Good or Bad") was the most successful album in Italy in 2004.

On May 12, 2005, Milan’s IULM conferred an honorary degree in Communication Sciences to Vasco Rossi.

On September 9, 2005, Rossi released the double DVD È solo un Rock'n'Roll show ("It’s Only a Rock’n’Roll Show"), launching the concept of the ‘movieclip,’ in which all the songs from Buoni o cattivi’ are used in a 2-hour long music video. Three months later, Buoni o cattivi live anthology 04.05 was released, a comprehensive box-set comprising a double CD and a triple DVD, recorded live from the record-setting Buoni o cattivi tour of 2004 and 2005. In December 2005 he returned to Zocca, the town of his birth, where his childhood friends and the rest of the community organized a tribute in his honor, including a photo display and other celebrations.

In 2007, he released the "Vasco Extended Play", that contains the hit single "Basta Poco". The EP topped the Italian FIMI Charts for 21 Weeks, making that the Italian best-selling single of 2007 thus far.

In late 2009, SingStar Vasco Rossi was released.

Vasco Rossi's fans considered him a God: they very often say: "God in the sky, Vasco on the earth".

On 4 May 2010 the "Corriere della Sera" reported Vasco Rossi as saying the Americans and British governments had been responsible for preventing him and other Italian musicians from becoming known in those countries. “Just as Bob Dylan was banned from playing in China, for 20 years I was barred from London. … It’s one of the many ‘presents’ that America left us after World War II. To favour the importation of American and British music to Italy and discourage the export of our talents abroad.”

Official discography

LPs

Ma cosa vuoi che sia una canzone (1978)

Non siamo mica gli americani (1979)

Colpa d'Alfredo (1980)

Siamo solo noi (1981)

Vado al massimo (1982)

Bollicine (1983)

Va bene, Va bene così (1984)

Cosa succede in città (1985)

C'è chi dice no (1987)

Liberi... Liberi (1989)

10.7.90 San Siro (1990)

Fronte del palco (1990)

Gli spari sopra (1993)

Nessun pericolo... Per te (1996)

Rock (1997)

Canzoni per me (1998)

Rewind (1999)

Stupido Hotel (2001)

Vasco Rossi Tracks (2002)

Buoni o Cattivi (2004)

Buoni o cattivi - Live Anthology 04.05 (2005)

Il mondo che vorrei (2008)

Vasco Rossi Tracks 2 (inediti & rarità) (2009)

Vasco London Instant Live (2010)

EPs & Singles

"Jenny / Silvia" (1977)

"La nostra relazione / ... E poi mi parli di una vita insieme" (1978)

"Albachiara / Fegato, fegato spappolato" (1979)

"Non l'hai mica capito / Asilo repubblic" (1980)

"Voglio andare al mare / Brava" (1981)

"Splendida giornata Remix" (1982)

"Vado al massimo / Ogni volta" (1982)

"Vita spericolata / Mi piaci perchè" (1983)

"Brava Giulia / Blasco Rossi" (1987)

"Non mi va Remix" (1987)

"Gli spari sopra (Hard Attack Mix) / Delusa (Mode Mix) / Delusa (Club Mix)" (1993)

"Gli spari sopra (Celebrate)/Delusa (Rock Party Mix) /Se è vero o no/ L'uomo che hai di fronte (B. Mix)" (1993)

"Senza Parole Remix" (1994)

"Senza Parole" (1994)

"Vasco Remixed" (1996)

"Gli angeli" (1996)

"Praticamente perfetto Remix / Io Perderò Remix" (1996)

"Quanti anni hai" (1998)

"L'una per te" (1998)

"Io no" (1998)

"Rewind (single)" (1998)

"La fine del millennio" (1999)

"Buoni o Cattivi (single)" (2004)

"Come Stai (single)" (2004)

"Buoni o Cattivi Remix" (2004)

"Un senso (single)" (2004)

"Anymore (single)" (2004)

"E... (single)" (2005)

"Cosa vuoi da me remix" (2005)

"Vasco Extended Play" (2007)

"Basta poco" (2007)

"Il mondo che vorrei (single)" (2008)

"Gioca con me Remix" (2008)

"Colpa del Whisky Remix" (2009)

"Sto pensando a te" (2009)

"Ad ogni costo" (2009)

"Ho fatto un sogno" (2010)

DVDs

Rewind (1999)

Vasco Rossi Tracks (2002)

Vasco Rossi @ S. Siro 03 (2003)

E' Solo Un Rock'N' Roll Show (2005)

Buoni O Cattivi Live Anthology (2005)

Fronte Del Palco - Live 90 (2006)

Gli Spari Sopra Tour (2006)

Vasco@Olimpico.07 27.28 giugno sold out (2007)

Vasco Rossi. Il mondo che vorrei. Live (2008)

External links

Official website

Vasco Rossi Music Videos

Category:1952 births Category:1970s singers Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Living people Category:People from the Province of Modena Category:Italian male singers Category:Italian singer-songwriters

Janine Jansen (born January 7, 1978 in Soest in the Netherlands) is a violinist. She began to study the violin at age 6. Her father and both her brothers are also musicians. Her mother is a classical singer. Jansen studied with Coosje Wijzenbeek, Philippe Hirschhorn, and Boris Belkin.

Biography

She appeared as soloist with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland in 2001, where she performed the Brahms Violin Concerto. She opened the BBC Proms in 2005. When performing live, she is sometimes rather adventurous with her performance, with emphasis on emotional accents more than on precision or adherence to the scores.

She has eschewed tradition by recording with only 5 solo strings rather than an orchestra, including her brother as cellist and father playing continuo. In live concerts, she has received standing ovations from enthusiastic audiences, such as in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra 2006 concert in Berlin's Waldbühne Amphitheater, with a full attendance of 25,000, and in Los Angeles at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 2008 to a sold out audience.

Jansen currently uses the 1727 Stradivari "Barrere" violin, on extended loan by the Stradivari Society of Chicago. She has begun her own chamber music festival in Utrecht. She has been a member of Spectrum Concerts Berlin since 1998.

Jansen and her former boyfriend, the violinist Julian Rachlin, have collaborated in chamber music performances.

Recordings

As of January 2006, she had recorded two mainstream CDs (one also a hybrid SACD). The first is a collection of encore pieces, conducted by Barry Wordsworth, the second a chamber ensemble rendition of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. In particular, her Vivaldi recording has seen great success in terms of download sales.

In October 2006, she released her third album. This CD features the Mendelssohn and Bruch Violin Concertos, along with the Bruch Romance for Viola, with conductor Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

In 2007 she released her fourth album, Bach: Inventions & Partita.

In 2008, she recorded a live session for the iTunes music store consisting of Bach's Trio Sonata in G Major and Sonata for Violin and Harpsichord No. 6 In G Major.

In 2009 Jansen released her recording of the Beethoven and Britten Violin Concertos. The Beethoven was recorded with Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, and the Britten with the London Symphony Orchestra. Both orchestras were conducted by Paavo Järvi. Jansen said that recording these concertos together was a long-standing desire of hers, as she sees these two works as among the greatest concertos in the current repertoire.

Janine Jansen has been a member of the chamber music series [Spectrum Concerts Berlin] since 1998. Various CDs with Spectrum have been released on the NAXOS label: Ernő Dohnányi - Serenade for String Trio and the Sextet (Nr. 8.557153) Robert Helps - Piano Quartet, Postlude and Nocturne (Nr. 8.559199) John Harbison - Four Songs of Solitude, Variations and Twilight Music (Nr. 8.559173)

References

External links

Spectrum Concerts Berlin

Category:Dutch classical violinists Category:1978 births Category:Living people Category:People from Utrecht (province)

Name	Glenn Gould
Caption	Statue of Glenn Gould, Toronto
Birthdate	September 25, 1932
Birthplace	Toronto, Ontario
Deathdate	October 04, 1982
Deathplace	Toronto, Ontario
Occupation	Pianist, writer, broadcaster
Influenced	}}

Glenn Herbert Gould (September 25, 1932 October 4, 1982) was a Canadian pianist who became one of the best-known and most celebrated classical pianists of the 20th century. He was particularly renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach. His playing was distinguished by a remarkable technical proficiency and a capacity to articulate the polyphonic texture of Bach’s music.

Gould rejected most of the standard Romantic piano literature and shunned the performance of several of its composers such as Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, and Frédéric Chopin. Although his recordings were dominated by Bach, Gould's oeuvre was diverse, including works by Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Brahms, pre-Baroque composers such as Jan Sweelinck, and 20th-century composers such as Paul Hindemith and Arnold Schoenberg. Gould was well-known for various eccentricities, ranging from his unorthodox musical interpretations and mannerisms at the keyboard, to aspects of his lifestyle and personal behavior. He abandoned the concert platform at the age of 31 to concentrate on studio recording and other projects.

Gould was also known as a writer, composer, conductor, and broadcaster. He was a prolific contributor to musical journals, in which he discussed musical theory and outlined his musical philosophy. His career as a composer was less distinguished; his output was minimal and many projects were left unfinished. There is evidence that, if he had lived beyond the age of 50, he intended to abandon the piano, and devote the remainder of his career to conducting and other projects. As a broadcaster, Gould was prolific. His output ranged from television and radio broadcasts of studio performances to musique concrète radio documentaries about life in the Canadian wilderness.

Life

Glenn Herbert Gould was born at home in Toronto on September 25, 1932, to Russell Herbert ("Bert") Gold and Florence ("Flora") Emma Gold (née Greig), Presbyterians of Scottish and English ancestry. His maternal grandfather was a cousin of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. The family's surname was changed to Gould informally around 1939 in order to avoid being mistaken as Jewish, because of a series of reasons centering on the prevailing anti-Semitism of prewar Toronto and the Gold surname's Jewish association. Gould had no Jewish ancestry, though he sometimes made jokes on the subject, like "When people ask me if I'm Jewish, I always tell them that I was Jewish during the war."

Gould's interest in music and his talent as a pianist became evident very early on. Both his parents were musical, and his mother, especially, encouraged the infant Gould's early musical development. Prior to his birth, his mother planned for Glenn to become a successful musician, especially a pianist, and thus exposed him to music during her pregnancy. As a baby, he reportedly hummed instead of crying and wiggled his fingers as if playing chords, leading his doctor to predict that Glenn would "be either a physician or a pianist". By the age of three, Glenn's perfect pitch was noticed and Glenn learned to read music before he could read words. When presented with a piano, young Glenn was reported to strike single notes and listen to their long decay, a practice his father Bert noted was different from typical children. When he was six, Glenn was taken for the first time to hear a live musical performance by a celebrated soloist; this had a tremendous effect on him. He later described the experience:

It was Hofmann. It was, I think, his last performance in Toronto, and it was a staggering impression. The only thing I can really remember is that, when I was being brought home in a car, I was in that wonderful state of half-awakeness in which you hear all sorts of incredible sounds going through your mind. They were all orchestral sounds, but I was playing them all, and suddenly I was Hofmann. I was enchanted.

As a young child, Glenn was taught by his mother. He began attending The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, where he studied piano with Alberto Guerrero, organ with Frederick C. Silvester, and music theory with Leo Smith, at the age of 10. Gould passed his final Conservatory examination in piano at the age of 12 (achieving the "highest marks of any candidate"), thus attaining "professional standing as a pianist" at that age. One year later he passed the written theory exams, qualifying for the ATCM diploma (Associate, Toronto Conservatory of Music). and the following year, he made his first appearance with an orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, in a performance of the first movement of Beethoven's 4th piano concerto. His first solo recital followed in 1947, and his first recital on radio was with the CBC in 1950. This was the beginning of his long association with radio and recording. He founded the Festival Trio chamber group in 1953 with the cellist Isaac Mamott and the violinist Albert Pratz.

In 1957 Gould embarked on a tour of the Soviet Union, becoming the first North American to play there since World War II. His concerts featured Bach, Beethoven, and the serial music of Schoenberg and Berg, which had been suppressed in the Soviet Union during the era of Socialist Realism. Gould made his Boston debut in 1958, playing for the Peabody Mason Concert Series. One audience member was so moved that she wrote a letter to the editor of the Boston Herald commenting, "If I never hear Bach's Goldberg Variations again, I feel with all my heart that I have heard the ultimate, and am grateful".

On April 10, 1964, Gould gave his last public performance, playing in Los Angeles, at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. Among the pieces he performed that night were Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 30, selections from Bach's The Art of Fugue, and Paul Hindemith's Piano Sonata No. 3. Gould performed fewer than two hundred concerts over the course of his career, of which fewer than 40 were overseas. For pianists such as Van Cliburn, 200 concerts would have amounted to about two year's touring. For the rest of his life, Gould eschewed live performance, focusing instead on recording, writing, and broadcasting.

Later years

Towards the end of his life, he began conducting; he had earlier directed Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 and the cantata Widerstehe doch der Sünde from the harpsipiano (a piano with metal hammers to simulate a harpsichord's sound), and Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 (Urlicht part) in the 1960s. His last recording was as a conductor, conducting Wagner's Siegfried Idyll in its original chamber music scoring. He had intended to give up the piano at the age of 50, spending later years conducting, writing about music, and composing.

Death

On September 27, 1982, after experiencing a severe headache, he suffered a stroke, which paralyzed the left side of his body. He was admitted to the Toronto General Hospital, and his condition rapidly deteriorated. By October 4, there was evidence of brain damage, and Gould's father decided that his son should be taken off life support. He is buried in Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery, next to his parents. The first few measures of the Goldberg Variations are carved on his marker.

Gould as a pianist

Gould was known for his vivid musical imagination, and listeners regarded his interpretations as ranging from brilliantly creative to, on occasion, outright eccentric. His piano playing had great clarity, particularly in contrapuntal passages, and extraordinary control. He was considered a child prodigy, and in adulthood was also described as a musical phenomenon. As he played, he often swayed his torso in a clockwise motion.

, demonstrating Guerrero's technical idea that Gould should pull down at keys instead of striking them from above. The photo was taken in 1945 before Gould fully developed this technique.]] When Gould was around ten years old, he injured his back as a result of a fall from a boat ramp on the shore of Lake Simcoe. This incident is almost certainly related to his father's subsequent construction for him of an adjustable-height chair, which he used for the rest of his life. This famous chair was designed so that Gould could sit very low at the keyboard, with the object of pulling down on the keys rather than striking them from above – a central technical idea of his teacher, Alberto Guerrero. Gould's mother urged the young Gould to sit up straight at the keyboard.

Gould developed a formidable technique. It enabled him to choose very fast tempos whilst retaining the separateness and clarity of each note. His extremely low position at the instrument arguably permitted more control over the keyboard. Gould showed considerable technical skill in performing and recording a wide repertoire including virtuosic and romantic works, such as his own arrangement of Ravel's La valse and Liszt's transcriptions of Beethoven's fifth and sixth symphonies. Gould worked from a young age with his teacher Alberto Guerrero on a technique known as finger-tapping: a method of training the fingers to act more independently from the arm.

Gould claimed he almost never practiced on the piano, preferring to study music by reading it rather than playing it|group=N}} another technique he had learned from Guerrero. His manual practicing focused on articulation, rather than basic facility. He may have spoken ironically about his practicing, but there is evidence that on occasion, he did practice quite hard, sometimes using his own drills and techniques.

He stated that he didn't understand the requirement of other pianists to continuously reinforce their relationship with the instrument by practicing many hours a day. It seems that Gould was able to practice mentally without access to an instrument, and even took this so far as to prepare for a recording of Brahms piano works without ever playing them until a few weeks before the recording sessions. This is all the more staggering considering the absolute accuracy and phenomenal dexterity exhibited in his playing. Gould's large repertoire also demonstrated this natural mnemonic gift.

The piano, Gould said, "is not an instrument for which I have any great love as such... [but] I have played it all my life, and it is the best vehicle I have to express my ideas." In the case of Bach, Gould admitted, "[I] fixed the action in some of the instruments I play on—and the piano I use for all recordings is now so fixed—so that it is a shallower and more responsive action than the standard. It tends to have a mechanism which is rather like an automobile without power steering: you are in control and not it; it doesn't drive you, you drive it. This is the secret of doing Bach on the piano at all. You must have that immediacy of response, that control over fine definitions of things."

Of significant influence upon the teenage Gould were Artur Schnabel (Gould: "The piano was a means to an end for him, and the end was to approach Beethoven."); Rosalyn Tureck's recordings of Bach ("upright, with a sense of repose and positiveness"); and Leopold Stokowski.

Gould had a pronounced aversion to what he termed a "hedonistic" approach to the piano repertoire, performance, and music generally. For Gould, "hedonism" in this sense denoted a superficial theatricality, something to which he felt Mozart, for example, became increasingly susceptible later in his career. He associated this drift towards hedonism with the emergence of a cult of showmanship and gratuitous virtuosity on the concert platform in the nineteenth century and later. The institution of the public concert, he felt, degenerated into the "blood sport" with which he struggled, and which he ultimately rejected.

Recordings and compositions

In creating music, Gould much preferred the control and intimacy provided by the recording studio; he disliked the concert hall, which he compared to a competitive sporting arena. After his final public performance in 1964, he devoted his career solely to the studio, recording albums and several radio documentaries. He was attracted to the technical aspects of recording, and considered the manipulation of tape to be another part of the creative process. Although Gould's recording studio producers have testified that 'he needed splicing, less than most performers', Gould used the process to give him total artistic control over the recording process. He recounted his recording of the A minor fugue from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier and how it was spliced together from two takes, with the fugue's expositions from one take and its episodes from another.

The pianist's first recording, Bach: The Goldberg Variations, came in 1955, at Columbia Records 30th Street Studios in New York City. Although there was initially some controversy at CBS as to whether this was the most appropriate piece to record, the finished product received phenomenal praise and was among the best-selling classical music albums of its time. Gould became closely associated with the piece, playing it in full or in part at many of his recitals. Another version of the Goldberg Variations, recorded in 1981, would be among his last recordings, and one of only a few pieces he recorded twice in the studio. The 1981 recording was one of CBS Masterworks' first digital recordings. The two recordings are very different: the first, highly energetic and often frenetic; the second, slower and more introspective. In the latter, Gould treats the aria and its 30 variations as one cohesive piece.

Gould revered Bach: "[he was] first and last an architect, a constructor of sound, and what makes him so inestimably valuable to us is that he was beyond a doubt the greatest architect of sound who ever lived". He recorded most of Bach's other keyboard works, including the complete Well-Tempered Clavier, Partitas, French Suites, English Suites, and keyboard concertos. For his only recording at the organ, he recorded about half of The Art of Fugue. He also recorded all five of Beethoven's piano concertos and 23 of the 32 piano sonatas.

Gould also recorded works by Brahms, Mozart, and many other prominent piano composers, though he was outspoken in his criticism of some of them. He was extremely critical of Frédéric Chopin. In a radio interview, when asked if he didn't find himself wanting to play Chopin, he replied: "No, I don't. I play it in a weak moment – maybe once a year or twice a year for myself. But it doesn't convince me." Although Gould recorded all of Mozart's sonatas and admitted enjoying the "actual playing" of them, he claimed to dislike Mozart's later works, to the extent of arguing (perhaps facetiously) that Mozart died too late rather than too early. He was fond of many lesser-known composers, such as Orlando Gibbons, whose Anthems he had heard as a teenager, and for whose music he felt a "spiritual attachment". He recorded a number of Gibbons's keyboard works and nominated him as his all-time favourite composer, despite his better-known admiration for the technical mastery of Bach. He made recordings of piano music little-known in North America, including music by Jean Sibelius (the Sonatines and Kyllikki); Georges Bizet (the Variations Chromatiques de Concert and the Premier nocturne); Richard Strauss (the Piano Sonata, the Five Pieces, and Enoch Arden with Claude Rains); and Paul Hindemith (the three piano sonatas and the sonatas for brass and piano). He also made recordings of the complete piano works and Lieder of Arnold Schoenberg.

One of Gould's performances of the Prelude and Fugue in C major from Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier was chosen for inclusion on the NASA Voyager Golden Record by a committee headed by Carl Sagan. The disc of recordings was placed on the spacecraft Voyager 1, which is now approaching interstellar space and is the farthest human-made object from Earth.

Arrangements and compositions

Gould was not only a composer, but also a prolific arranger of orchestral repertoire for piano. His arrangements include his recorded Wagner and Ravel transcriptions, as well as the operas of Richard Strauss and the symphonies of Schubert and Bruckner, which he played privately for own pleasure.

As a teenager, Gould wrote chamber music and piano works in the style of the Second Viennese school of composition. His only significant work was the String Quartet, Op. 1, which he finished when he was in his 20s, and perhaps his cadenzas to Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1. Later works include the Lieberson Madrigal (SATB and piano), and So You Want to Write a Fugue? (SATB with piano or string quartet accompaniment). The majority of his work is published by Schott Music. The recording Glenn Gould: The Composer contains his original works.

The String Quartet Op. 1 (published in 1956 and recorded in 1960) had a mixed reception from critics. For example, the notices from the Christian Science Monitor and The Saturday Review were quite laudatory, while the response from the Montreal Star was less so. There is little critical commentary on Gould's compositional work for the simple reason that there are few compositions; he did not proceed beyond Opus 1. Gould left many compositions unfinished; he ultimately failed in his ambition to become a composer because, as he admitted himself, he lacked a 'personal voice'.

Collaborations

The success of Gould's collaborations with other artists was to a degree dependent upon their receptiveness to his sometimes unconventional readings of the music. His television collaboration with Yehudi Menuhin in 1965, recording works by Bach, Beethoven and Schoenberg, was deemed a success because "Menuhin was ready to embrace the new perspective opened up by an unorthodox view."

Radio documentaries

Less well-known is Gould's work in radio. This work was, in part, the result of Gould's long association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, for which he produced numerous television and radio programs. Notable recordings include his music-concrète Solitude Trilogy, which consists of The Idea of North, a meditation on Northern Canada and its people; The Latecomers, about Newfoundland; and The Quiet in the Land, on Mennonites in Manitoba. All three use a radiophonic electronic-music technique that Gould called contrapuntal radio, in which several people are heard speaking at once—much like the voices in a fugue—manipulated through the use of tape.

Character and personal life

Eccentricities

Gould is widely known for his unusual habits. He usually hummed while he played the piano, and his recording engineers had mixed results in how successfully they were able to exclude his voice from recordings. Gould claimed that his singing was subconscious and increased proportionately with the inability of the piano in question to realize the music as he intended. It is likely that this habit originated in Gould's having been taught by his mother to "sing everything that he played", as Kevin Bazzana puts it. This became "an unbreakable (and notorious) habit". Some of Gould's recordings were severely criticised because of the background "vocalise". For example, a reviewer of his 1981 re-recording of the Goldberg Variations opined that many listeners would "find the groans and croons intolerable".

Gould was renowned for his peculiar body movements while playing and for his insistence on absolute control over every aspect of his playing environment. The temperature of the recording studio had to be exactly regulated; he invariably insisted that it be extremely warm. According to Friedrich, the air conditioning engineer had to work just as hard as the recording engineers. The piano had to be set at a certain height and would be raised on wooden blocks if necessary. A small rug would sometimes be required for his feet underneath the piano. He had to sit fourteen inches above the floor and would only play concerts while sitting on the old chair his father had made. He continued to use this chair even when the seat was completely worn through. His chair is so closely identified with him that it is shown in a place of honor in a glass case at the National Library of Canada.

Conductors responded diversely to Gould and his playing habits. George Szell, who led Gould in 1957 with the Cleveland Orchestra, remarked to his assistant, "That nut's a genius." Leonard Bernstein said, "There is nobody quite like him, and I just love playing with him." He also disliked social functions. He hated being touched, and in later life he limited personal contact, relying on the telephone and letters for communication. Upon one visit to historic Steinway Hall in New York City in 1959, the chief piano technician at the time, William Hupfer, greeted Gould by giving him a slap on the back. Gould was shocked by this, and complained of aching, lack of coordination, and fatigue because of the incident; he even went on to explore the possibility of litigation against Steinway & Sons if his apparent injuries were permanent. He was known for cancelling performances at the last minute, which is why Bernstein's above-mentioned public disclaimer opens with, "Don't be frightened, Mr. Gould is here; will appear in a moment."

In his liner notes and broadcasts, Gould created more than two dozen alter egos for satirical, humorous, or didactic purposes, permitting him to write hostile reviews or incomprehensible commentaries on his own performances. Probably the best-known are the German musicologist "Karlheinz Klopweisser", the English conductor "Sir Nigel Twitt-Thornwaite", and the American critic "Theodore Slutz". These facets of Gould, whether interpreted as neurosis or "play", have provided ample material for psychobiography.

Fran's Restaurant in Toronto was a regular haunt of Gould's. A CBC profile noted, "sometime between two and three every morning, Gould would go to Fran's, a 24-hour diner a block away from his Toronto apartment, sit in the same booth, and order the same meal of scrambled eggs."

Gould is one of many historical figures sometimes considered autistic, or, more accurately, to have been on the autism spectrum. The diagnosis was first suggested by the psychiatrist Peter Ostwald, a friend of Gould's, in a 1998 book, Glenn Gould: The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius. It has been disputed by, among others, Kevin Bazzana.

Health

Gould suffered many pains and ailments, though he was something of a hypochondriac (admitting it himself on at least one occasion), and his autopsy revealed few underlying problems in areas that often troubled him. Early in his life, Gould suffered a spine injury. His physicians prescribed, usually independently, an assortment of analgesics, anxiolytics, and other drugs. Some speculate that his extensive use of prescription medications throughout his career had a deleterious effect on his health.

He was highly concerned about his health throughout his life, worrying about everything from high blood pressure (which in his later years he recorded in diary form) to the safety of his hands. Gould rarely shook hands with anyone and usually wore gloves.

Relationships

Gould lived a private life: Bruno Monsaingeon said of him, "No supreme pianist has ever given of his heart and mind so overwhelmingly while showing himself so sparingly."

In 2007, Cornelia Foss, wife of composer and conductor Lukas Foss, publicly claimed that she and Gould had had a love affair lasting several years. Cornelia left Lukas in 1967 for Gould, taking her two children with her to Toronto, where she purchased a house near Gould's apartment, at 110 St. Clair Avenue West. According to Cornelia, "There were a lot of misconceptions about Glenn, and it was partly because he was so very private. But I assure you, he was an extremely heterosexual man. Our relationship was, among other things, quite sexual." Their affair lasted until 1972, when she returned to Lukas. As early as two weeks after leaving her husband, she had noticed disturbing signs in Gould. She describes a serious paranoid episode:

Philosophical and aesthetic views

Gould said that if he had not been a musician, he would have been a writer. He expounded his criticism and philosophy of music and art in lectures, convocation speeches, periodicals, and radio and television documentaries for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Gould participated in many interviews, and had a predilection for scripting them to the extent that they may be seen as much as "works" as off-the-cuff discussions. His writing style was highly articulate but sometimes florid, indulgent, or rhetorical. This is especially evident in those works in which he attempts humour or irony, which he did often.

In these he praised certain composers and rejected what he deemed banal in music composition and its consumption by the public, and also gave insightful analyses of the music of Richard Strauss, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Despite certain modernist sympathies, Gould's attitude to popular music was ambivalent or negative. He enjoyed a jazz concert with his friends as a youth, mentioned jazz in his writings, and once criticized The Beatles for "bad voice leading"—while praising Petula Clark and Barbra Streisand. He shared a mutual admiration with jazz pianist Bill Evans, who made his seminal record Conversations with Myself using Gould's celebrated Steinway CD 318 piano. Gould believed that the keyboard is fulfilled as an instrument primarily through counterpoint, a musical style that reached its zenith during the Baroque era. Much of the homophony that followed, he felt, belongs to a less serious and less spiritual period of art.

On performance

Gould was convinced that the institution of the public concert was not only an anachronism, but also a "force of evil", leading to his retirement from concert performance. He argued that public performance devolved into a sort of competition, with a non-empathetic audience (musically and otherwise) mostly attendant to the possibility of the performer erring or not meeting critical expectation. This doctrine he set forth, only half in jest, in "GPAADAK", the Gould Plan for the Abolition of Applause and Demonstrations of All Kinds.

One of Gould's reasons for abandoning live performance was his aesthetic preference for the recording studio, where, in his words, he developed a "love affair with the microphone". There, he could control every aspect of the final musical "product" by selecting parts of various takes. He felt that he could realize a musical score more fully this way. Thus, the act of musical composition, to Gould, did not entirely end with the original score; the performer had to make creative choices, and Gould felt strongly that there was little point in re-recording centuries-old pieces if the performer had no new perspective to bring to the work.

Technology and authenticity

The issue of "authenticity" in relation to an approach like Gould's has been a topic of great debate, although diminished by the end of the 20th century—a development that Gould seems to have anticipated. It asks whether a recording is less authentic or "direct" for having been highly refined by technical means in the studio. Gould likened his process to that of a film director—one does not perceive that a two-hour film was made in two hours—and implicitly asks why the act of listening to music should be any different. He went so far as to conduct an "experiment" with musicians, sound engineers, and laypeople in which they were to listen to a recording and determine where the splices occurred. Each group chose different points based on their relationship to music, but none successfully. While the conclusion was hardly scientific, Gould remarked, "The tape does lie, and nearly always gets away with it".

In a lecture and essay titled "Forgery and Imitation in the Creative Process", one of Gould's most significant texts, he makes explicit his views on authenticity and creativity. Gould asks why the epoch in which a work is received influences its reception as "art", postulating a sonata he composes that sounds so much like Haydn that it is received as such. If, instead, the same sonata had been attributed to a somewhat earlier or later composer, it becomes more or less interesting as a piece of music. Yet it is not the work that has changed but its relation within the accepted narrative of music history. Similarly, Gould notes the "pathetic duplicity" in the reception of high-quality forgeries by Hans van Meegeren of new paintings attributed to Dutch Golden Age master Vermeer, before and after the forgery was known.

Gould, therefore, prefers an ahistorical, or at least pre-Renaissance, view of art, minimizing the identity of the artist and the attendant historical context in evaluating the artwork: "What gives us the right to assume that in the work of art we must receive a direct communication with the historical attitudes of another period? ... moreover, what makes us assume that the situation of the man who wrote it accurately or faithfully reflects the situation of his time? ... What if the composer, as historian, is faulty?"

"The Last Puritan"

A 1962 quote is often used to summarize Gould's perspective on art: "The justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity."

Gould referred to himself repeatedly as "the last puritan", a reference to philosopher George Santayana's novel of the same name.Weighing this statement against Gould's highly individualistic lifestyle and artistic vision leads to an apparent contradiction. He was progressive in many ways, promulgating the controversial atonal composers, and anticipating, through his deep involvement with the recording process, the vast changes that technology would have on the production and distribution of music. Mark Kingwell summarizes the paradox, never resolved by Gould nor his biographers:

He was progressive and anti-progressive at once, and likewise at once both a critic of the Zeitgeist and its most interesting expression. He was, in effect, stranded on a beachhead of his own thinking between past and future. That he was not able, by himself, to fashion a bridge between them is neither surprising, nor, in the end, disappointing. We should see this failure, rather, as an aspect of his genius. He both was and was not a man of his time.

Legacy

Gould is one of the most acclaimed 20th-century classical musicians. His unique pianistic method, insight into the architecture of compositions, and relatively free interpretation of scores created performances and recordings that were revelatory to many listeners while highly objectionable to others. Philosopher Mark Kingwell writes that "his influence is made inescapable; no performer after him can avoid the example he sets... Now, everyone must perform through him: he can be emulated or rejected, but he cannot be ignored."

Gould left an extensive body of work beyond the keyboard. After his retirement from concert performance, he was increasingly interested in other media, including audio and film documentary and writing, through which he mused on aesthetics, composition, music history, and the effect of the electronic age on the consumption of media. (Gould grew up in Toronto at the same time that Canadian theorists Marshall McLuhan, Northrop Frye, and Harold Innis were making their mark on communications studies.) Anthologies of his writing and letters have been published. The National Library of Canada retains an archive called the Glenn Gould Fonds.

Gould is a popular subject of biography and even critical analysis. Philosophers such as Giorgio Agamben and Mark Kingwell have interpreted Gould's life and ideas. References to Gould and his work are plentiful in the visual arts, fiction, and poetry.

Awards and recognition

Glenn Gould received many honors before and after his death, although he personally claimed to despise competition in music. In 1983, he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

The Glenn Gould Foundation was established in Toronto in 1983 to honour Gould and preserve his memory. Among other activities, the foundation awards the Glenn Gould Prize every three years to "an individual who has earned international recognition as the result of a highly exceptional contribution to music and its communication, through the use of any communications technologies." The prize consists of CAD$50,000 and an original work by a Canadian artist.

The Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory of Music was founded and named after him in 1997.

The Glenn Gould Studio at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre in Toronto was named after him.

Gould won four Grammy Awards:

1974 – Grammy Award for Best Album Notes – Classical: Glenn Gould (notes writer), for Hindemith: Sonatas for Piano (Complete) performed by Glenn Gould;

1983 – Grammy Award for Best Classical Album: Samuel H. Carter (producer) & Glenn Gould, for Bach: The Goldberg Variations;

1983 – Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra), for Bach: The Goldberg Variations;

1984 – Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra), for Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 12 & 13.

See also

Music of Canada

Canadian Music Hall of Fame

List of Canadian composers

Notes

;Footnotes

;Citations

Bibliography

External links

The Glenn Gould Foundation

The Glenn Gould Archive at the National Library of Canada – Contains sound clips, articles and pictures.

Glenn Gould Website (Sony Music Entertainment of Canada)

Text and pictures from Glenn Gould by french film director Bruno Monsaingeon

GlennGould Magazine

CBC Digital Archives: Glenn Gould: Variations on an Artist

Writings and Works, etc. by and about Glenn Gould

Throwing Down the Baton: A Look at How Audiences Ruin Concerts

;Sound

Glenn Gould Broadcasts from UbuWeb.

;Video

Bach & Friends: Glenn Gould (2010)

Genius Within: The inner life of Glenn Gould (2010) http://glenngouldmovie.com/

Glenn Gould Category:Canadian classical pianists Category:Canadian composers Category:20th-century classical composers Category:Canadian Music Hall of Fame inductees Category:Grammy Award winners Category:People from Toronto Category:Deaths from stroke Category:1932 births Category:Sony Classical artists Category:Electronic musicians Category:1982 deaths Category:The Royal Conservatory of Music alumni

Claudio Abbado, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (; born June 26, 1933), is an Italian conductor. He has served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Vienna State Opera, and principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra from 1989 to 2002, when he retired from the position for health reasons.

Biography

Born in Milan, Italy, Abbado is the son of the violinist and composer Michelangelo Abbado, who was his first piano teacher, and the brother of musician Marcello Abbado. After studies at the Milan Conservatory, in 1955 Claudio Abbado studied conducting with Hans Swarowsky at the Vienna Academy of Music. In 1958 he won the international Koussevitsky Competition for conductors, which resulted in a number of operatic conducting engagements in Italy, and in 1963 he won the Dimitri Mitropoulos Prize for conductors, allowing him to work for five months with the New York Philharmonic.

Abbado recalls desiring to become a conductor for the first time as a child when he heard a performance of the Nocturnes by Claude Debussy. He had the opportunity to attend many orchestral rehearsals in Milan led by such conductors as Arturo Toscanini and Wilhelm Furtwängler and has told interviewers that Toscanini's tyrannical and sometimes abusive manner towards musicians in rehearsal repelled him, and that he resolved to behave in the gentler manner of Bruno Walter. Abbado is known to exhibit a friendly, understated, and non-confrontational manner in rehearsal.

He made his début at La Scala in his hometown of Milan in 1960 and served as its music director from 1968 to 1986, conducting not only the traditional Italian repertoire but also presenting a contemporary opera each year, as well as a concert series devoted to the works of Alban Berg and Modest Mussorgsky. Abbado also founded the Filarmonica della Scala in 1982, for the performance of orchestral repertoire in concert.

Abbado conducted the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time in 1965 in a concert at the Salzburg Festival. He served as music director for the Vienna State Opera from 1986 to 1991, with notable productions such as Mussorgsky's original Boris Godunov and his seldom-heard Khovanshchina, Franz Schubert's Fierrabras, and Gioacchino Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims.

From 1979 to 1987 he was principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and from 1982 to 1986 he was principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. With both orchestras, Abbado made a number of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon.

In 1989, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra elected him as their chief conductor, to succeed Herbert von Karajan, a post he held until 2002. In 2004 he returned to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic and performed Mahler's Symphony No. 6 in a series of recorded live concerts. The resulting CD won Best Orchestral Recording and Record of the Year in Gramophone Magazine's 2006 awards.

The Orchestra Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic established the Claudio Abbado Composition Prize in 2006 in his honour.

Claudio Abbado has performed and recorded a wide range of Romantic works, in particular Gustav Mahler whose symphonies he has recorded several times. He is also noted for his interpretations of modern works by composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Giacomo Manzoni, Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Thomas Adler, Giovanni Sollima, Roberto Carnevale, Franco Donatoni and George Benjamin.

In 1988, he founded the music festival Wien Modern, which has since expanded to include all aspects of contemporary art. This interdisciplinary festival takes place each year under his direction.

Abbado is also well-known for his work with young musicians. He is founder and music director of the European Union Youth Orchestra (1978) and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester (1986). He is also a frequent guest conductor with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe with whom he recorded a cycle of Franz Schubert symphonies to considerable acclaim. More recently, he has worked with the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar of Venezuela.

He was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2000 and the treatment led to the removal of a portion of his digestive system. After recovery he formed the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2003 and their concerts have been highly acclaimed. Abbado is scheduled to remain as the orchestra's music director and chief conductor through 2010. He also serves as music director of the Mozart Orchestra of Bologna, Italy.

In September 2007 he announced that he was cancelling all of his forthcoming conducting engagements for the "near future" on the advice of his physicians but two months later he resumed conducting concerts with an engagement in Bologna.

Abbado's son is the opera-director Daniele Abbado. From his relationship with the violinist Viktoria Mullova, he is the father of her oldest child, Misha. His nephew, Roberto Abbado, (the son of his brother Marcello, born 1926, who is a composer and pianist) is also a conductor.

Awards

Claudio Abbado has received many awards and recognitions among which the Grand cross of the Légion d'honneur, Bundesverdienstkreuz, Imperial Prize of Japan, Mahler Medal, Khytera Prize, and honorary doctorates from the universities of Ferrara, Cambridge, Aberdeen, and Havana.

In 1973, he won the Mozart Medal awarded by Mozartgemeinde Wien, and the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 1994.

He has won 1997 Grammy Award in the Best Small Ensemble Performance (with or without conductor) category for "Hindemith: Kammermusik No. 1 With Finale 1921, Op. 24 No. 1" and 2005 Grammy Award in the Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with Orchestra) category for "Beethoven: Piano Cons. Nos. 2 & 3" performed by Martha Argerich.

See also

Berlin Philharmonic

Vienna Philharmonic

La Scala

References

External links

Claudio Abbado at Deutsche Grammophon

Claudio Abbado at Sony BMG Masterworks

Claudio Abbado discography

Category:Italian conductors (music) Category:Music directors (opera) Category:Music directors of the Vienna State Opera Category:London Symphony Orchestra principal conductors Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Category:Sony BMG artists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Recipients of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Category:Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Category:Alumni of the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna Category:Alumni of the Accademia Musicale Chigiana Category:Milan Conservatory alumni Category:Cancer survivors Category:Italian expatriates in Austria Category:Italian expatriates in the United Kingdom Category:Italian expatriates in Germany Category:People from Milan Category:1933 births Category:Living people