Year 1887 (MDCCCLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar.
Gabriel Urbain Fauré (pronounced: [ɡabʁiɛl yʁbɛ̃ fɔʁe]; 12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, nocturnes for piano, and the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his greatest works in his later years, in a harmonically and melodically much more complex style.
Fauré was born into a cultured but not especially musical family. His talent became clear when he was a small boy. At the age of nine he was sent to a music college in Paris, where he was trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. Among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a lifelong friend. After graduating from the college in 1865 Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition. When he became successful in his middle age, holding the important posts of organist of the Église de la Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still lacked time for composing; he retreated to the countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on composition. By his last years, Fauré was recognised in France as the leading French composer of his day. An unprecedented national musical tribute was held for him in Paris in 1922, headed by the president of the French Republic. Outside France, Fauré's music took decades to become widely accepted, except in Britain, where he had many admirers during his lifetime.
Ivor Bolton (born 17 May 1958, Blackrod, England) is an English conductor and harpsichordist. He studied at Clare College (University of Cambridge) (1976-80) and was conducting scholar at the Royal College of Music (1980-81). He later trained as a répétiteur at the National Opera Studio and was appointed conductor of Schola Cantorum of Oxford.
Bolton made his operatic debut in 1986 conducting The Rake's Progress for Opera 80.
Bolton was Assistant Chorus Master and staff conductor from 1982-84 for Glyndebourne, later becoming music director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera (now Glyndebourne on Tour) from 1992 to 1997, and principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra from 1994 to 1996. He has also held leadership positions with the St James's Baroque Players in London (with whom he recorded the Bach harpsichord concertos BWV 1053, 1054, 1058 in 1987) and the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music. He has enjoyed an extensive relationship with the Munich State Opera and has conducted seventeen new productions for the company, in the course of which he was awarded the Bayerische Theaterpreis. He has also conducted regularly at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Festival of Aix-en-Provence, Vienna State Opera, the Netherlands Opera, the Teatro Real Madrid, the Liceu Barcelona, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Opéra National de Paris.
Robert Fuchs (15 February 1847 – 19 February 1927) was an Austrian composer and music teacher.
As Professor of music theory at the Vienna Conservatory, Fuchs taught many notable composers, while he was himself a highly regarded composer in his lifetime.
He was born in Frauental an der Laßnitz in Styria in 1847 as the youngest of thirteen children. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory with Felix Otto Dessoff and Joseph Hellmesberger among others. He eventually secured a teaching position there and was appointed Professor of music theory in 1875. He retained the position until 1912. He died in Vienna at the age of eighty.
He was the brother of Johann Nepomuk Fuchs, who was also a composer and conductor, primarily of operas.
Robert Fuchs taught many notable composers, including George Enescu, Gustav Mahler, Hugo Wolf, Jean Sibelius, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Erich Korngold, Franz Schmidt, Franz Schreker, Richard Heuberger, Robert Stolz, Leo Fall, Petar Krstic, Erkki Melartin, and Leo Ascher.
"Unfailingly tuneful and enjoyable, Robert Fuchs’s piano trios are an easily accessible way to get to know a composer whom Brahms greatly admired," noted the magazine Gramophone. "In his time Fuchs was very highly regarded, with one critic famously pointing to Fuchsisms in Mahler’s Second Symphony."
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (30 September 1852 – 29 March 1924) was an Irish composer, teacher and conductor. Born to a well-off and highly musical family in Dublin, Stanford was educated at the University of Cambridge before studying music in Leipzig and Berlin. He was instrumental in raising the status of the Cambridge University Musical Society, attracting international stars to perform with it.
While still an undergraduate, Stanford was appointed organist of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1882, aged 29, he was one of the founding professors of the Royal College of Music, where he taught composition for the rest of his life. From 1887 he was also the professor of music at Cambridge. As a teacher, Stanford was sceptical about modernism, and based his instruction chiefly on classical principles as exemplified in the music of Brahms. Among his pupils were rising composers whose fame went on to surpass his own, such as Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. As a conductor, Stanford held posts with the Bach Choir and the Leeds triennial music festival.