Portal:Classical music

The Classical Music Portal

The Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra performing Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also applies to non-Western art music. Classical music is often characterized by formality and complexity in its musical form and harmonic organization, particularly with the use of polyphony. Since at least the ninth century it has been primarily a written tradition, spawning a sophisticated notational system, as well as accompanying literature in analytical, critical, historiographical, musicological and philosophical practices. A foundational component of Western culture, classical music is frequently seen from the perspective of individual or groups of composers, whose compositions, personalities and beliefs have fundamentally shaped its history. (Full article...)

Selected articles -

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  Mussorgsky, c. 1870
  

  
  Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (Russian: Модест Петрович Мусоргский, tr. Modest Petrovich Musorgsky, IPA: [mɐˈdɛst pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈmusərkskʲɪj] ^ⓘ; 21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five". He was an innovator of Russian music in the Romantic period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music.
  
  Many of his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other national themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem A Night on the Bare Mountain and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. (Full article...)
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  A medieval depiction of Comtessa de Diá

  
  The trobairitz (Occitan pronunciation: [tɾuβajˈɾits]) were Occitan female troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries, active from around 1170 to approximately 1260. Trobairitz is both singular and plural.
  
  The word trobairitz is first attested in the 13th-century romance Flamenca. It comes from the Provençal word trobar, the literal meaning of which is "to find", and the technical meaning of which is "to compose". The word trobairitz is used very rarely in medieval Occitan, as it does not occur in lyrical poetry, grammatical treatises or in the biographies (vidas) of the trobairitz or troubadours. It does occur in the treatise Doctrina d'acort by Terramagnino da Pisa, written between 1282 and 1296. He uses it as an example of a word the plural and singular of which are the same. (Full article...)
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  The Nutcracker (Russian: Щелкунчик, tr. Shchelkunchik, IPA: [ɕːɪlˈkunʲtɕɪk] ^ⓘ), Op. 71, is an 1892 two-act classical ballet (Russian: балет-феерия, tr. balet-feyeriya) by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, set on Christmas Eve at the foot of a Christmas tree in a child's imagination. The plot is an adaptation of E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 short story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. The ballet's first choreographer was Marius Petipa, with whom Tchaikovsky had worked three years earlier on The Sleeping Beauty, assisted by Lev Ivanov. Although the complete and staged The Nutcracker ballet was not as successful as had been the 20-minute Nutcracker Suite that Tchaikovsky had premiered nine months earlier, The Nutcracker soon became popular.
  
  Since the late 1960s, it has been danced by countless ballet companies, especially in North America. Major American ballet companies generate around 40% of their annual ticket revenues from performances of The Nutcracker. The ballet's score has been used in several film adaptations of Hoffmann's story. (Full article...)
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  The xylophone (from Ancient Greek ξύλον (xúlon) 'wood', and φωνή (phōnḗ) 'sound, voice'; lit. 'sound of wood') is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children's instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use.
  
  The term xylophone may be used generally, to include all such instruments such as the marimba, balafon and even the semantron. However, in the orchestra, the term xylophone refers specifically to a chromatic instrument of somewhat higher pitch range and drier timbre than the marimba, and these two instruments should not be confused. A person who plays the xylophone is known as a xylophonist or simply a xylophone player. (Full article...)
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  La Scala of Milan

  
  Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor. Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another.
  
  Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition. Originally understood as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include, including some that include spoken dialogue such as Singspiel and Opéra comique. In traditional number opera, singers employ two styles of singing: recitative, a speech-inflected style, and self-contained arias. The 19th century saw the rise of the continuous music drama. (Full article...)
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  Anne Vallayer-Coster, Attributes of Music, 1770. This still life painting depicts a variety of French Baroque musical instruments, such as a natural horn, transverse flute, musette, pardessus de viole, and lute.

  
  A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who plays a musical instrument is known as an instrumentalist. The history of musical instruments dates to the beginnings of human culture. Early musical instruments may have been used for rituals, such as a horn to signal success on the hunt, or a drum in a religious ceremony. Cultures eventually developed composition and performance of melodies for entertainment. Musical instruments evolved in step with changing applications and technologies.
  
  The exact date and specific origin of the first device considered a musical instrument, is widely disputed. The oldest object identified by scholars as a musical instrument, is a simple flute, dated back 50,000–60,000 years. Many scholars date early flutes to about 40,000 years ago. Many historians believe that determining the specific date of musical instrument invention is impossible, as the majority of early musical instruments were constructed of animal skins, bone, wood, and other non-durable, bio-degradable materials. (Full article...)
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  Machaut (right) receiving Nature and three of her children. From an illuminated Parisian manuscript of the 1350s

  
  Guillaume de Machaut (French: [ɡijom də maʃo], Old French: [ɡiˈʎawmə də maˈtʃaw(θ)]; also Machau and Machault; c. 1300 – April 1377) was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the ars nova style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to separate the ars nova from the subsequent ars subtilior movement. Regarded as the most significant French composer and poet of the 14th century, he is often seen as the century's leading European composer.
  
  Machaut, one of the earliest European composers on whom considerable biographical information is available, has an unprecedented amount of surviving music, in part due to his own involvement in his manuscripts' creation and preservation. Machaut embodies the culmination of the poet-composer tradition stretching back to the traditions of troubadour and trouvère. His poetry was greatly admired and imitated by other poets, including Geoffrey Chaucer and Eustache Deschamps, well into the 15th century. (Full article...)
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  The viola (/viˈoʊlə/ vee-OH-lə, Italian: [ˈvjɔːla, viˈɔːla]) is a string instrument that is bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of the violin family, between the violin (which is tuned a perfect fifth above) and the cello (which is tuned an octave below). The strings from low to high are typically tuned to C₃, G₃, D₄, and A₄.
  
  In the past, the viola varied in size and style, as did its names. The word viola originates from the Italian language. The Italians often used the term viola da braccio meaning literally: 'of the arm'. "Brazzo" was another Italian word for the viola, which the Germans adopted as Bratsche. The French had their own names: cinquiesme was a small viola, haute contre was a large viola, and taile was a tenor. Today, the French use the term alto, a reference to its range. (Full article...)
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  Cover of a 1921 libretto for Giordano's Andrea Chénier

  
  A libretto (an English word derived from the Italian word libretto, lit. 'booklet') is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term libretto is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as the Mass, requiem and sacred cantata, or the story line of a ballet.
  
  The Italian word libretto (pronounced [liˈbretto], plural libretti [liˈbretti]) is the diminutive of the word libro ("book"). Sometimes other-language equivalents are used for libretti in that language, livret for French works, Textbuch for German and libreto for Spanish. A libretto is distinct from a synopsis or scenario of the plot, in that the libretto contains all the words and stage directions, while a synopsis summarizes the plot. Some ballet historians also use the word libretto to refer to the 15- to 40-page books which were on sale to 19th century ballet audiences in Paris and contained a very detailed description of the ballet's story, scene by scene. (Full article...)
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  Portrait of Bach, 1748

  
  Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schubler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.
  
  The Bach family already counted several composers when Johann Sebastian was born as the last child of a city musician, Johann Ambrosius, in Eisenach. After being orphaned at the age of 10, he lived for five years with his eldest brother Johann Christoph, after which he continued his musical education in Lüneburg. From 1703 he was back in Thuringia, working as a musician for Protestant churches in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen and, for longer stretches of time, at courts in Weimar, where he expanded his organ repertory, and Köthen, where he was mostly engaged with chamber music. From 1723, he was employed as Thomaskantor (cantor at St Thomas's) in Leipzig. There he composed music for the principal Lutheran churches of the city, and for its university's student ensemble Collegium Musicum. From 1726, he published some of his keyboard and organ music. In Leipzig, as had happened during some of his earlier positions, he had difficult relations with his employer, a situation that was little remedied when he was granted the title of court composer by his sovereign, Augustus III of Poland, in 1736. In the last decades of his life, he reworked and extended many of his earlier compositions. He died of complications after eye surgery in 1750 at the age of 65. (Full article...)
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  Antonio Stradivari (/ˌstrædɪˈvɑːri/, also US: /-ˈvɛəri/, Italian: [anˈtɔːnjo stradiˈvaːri]; c. 1644 – 18 December 1737) was an Italian luthier and a craftsman of string instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars, violas and harps. The Latinized form of his surname, Stradivarius, as well as the colloquial Strad are terms often used to refer to his instruments. It is estimated that Stradivari produced 1,116 instruments, of which 960 were violins. Around 650 instruments survive, including 450 to 512 violins. His instruments are considered some of the finest ever made, and are extremely valuable collector's items. (Full article...)
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  Violetta's costume, premiere 1853

  
  La traviata (Italian pronunciation: [la traˈvjaːta]; The Fallen Woman) is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La Dame aux camélias (1852), a play by Alexandre Dumas fils adapted from his own 1848 novel. The opera was originally titled Violetta, after the main character. It was first performed on 6 March 1853 at La Fenice opera house in Venice.
  
  Piave and Verdi wanted to follow Dumas in giving the opera a contemporary setting, but the authorities at La Fenice insisted that it be set in the past, "c. 1700". It was not until the 1880s that the composer's and librettist's original wishes were carried out and "realistic" productions were staged. La traviata has become immensely popular and is among the most frequently performed of all operas. (Full article...)

General images -

The following are images from various classical music-related articles on Wikipedia.

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  Marc-Antoine Charpentier (from Baroque music)

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  Fortepiano by Paul McNulty after Walter & Sohn, c. 1805 (from Classical period (music))

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  A young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a representative composer of the Classical period, seated at a keyboard. (from Classical period (music))

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  View of Vienna in 1758, by Bernardo Bellotto (from Classical period (music))

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  Claudio Monteverdi in 1640 (from Baroque music)

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  George Frideric Handel (from Baroque music)

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  A group of Renaissance musicians in The Concert (1623) by Gerard van Honthorst (from Renaissance music)

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  Gluck, detail of a portrait by Joseph Duplessis, dated 1775 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) (from Classical period (music))

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  Individual sheet music for a seventeenth-century harp. (from Baroque music)

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  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, posthumous painting by Barbara Krafft in 1819 (from Classical period (music))

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  Hummel in 1814 (from Classical period (music))

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  Josef Danhauser's 1840 painting of Franz Liszt at the piano surrounded by (from left to right) Alexandre Dumas, Hector Berlioz, George Sand, Niccolò Paganini, Gioachino Rossini and Marie d'Agoult, with a bust of Ludwig van Beethoven on the piano (from Romantic music)

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  Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, by Caspar David Friedrich, is an example of Romantic painting. (from Romantic music)

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  The opening bars of the Commendatore's aria in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. The orchestra starts with a dissonant diminished seventh chord (G# dim7 with a B in the bass) moving to a dominant seventh chord (A7 with a C# in the bass) before resolving to the tonic chord (D minor) at the singer's entrance. (from Classical period (music))

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  Portion of Du Fay's setting of Ave maris stella, in fauxbourdon. The top line is a paraphrase of the chant; the middle line, designated "fauxbourdon", (not written) follows the top line but exactly a perfect fourth below. The bottom line is often, but not always, a sixth below the top line; it is embellished, and reaches cadences on the octave.Play (from Renaissance music)

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  Bernhard Crusell, a Swedish-Finnish composer and clarinetist, in 1826 (from Classical period (music))

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  Double-manual harpsichord by Vital Julian Frey, after Jean-Claude Goujon (1749) (from Baroque music)

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  The Mozart family c. 1780. The portrait on the wall is of Mozart's mother. (from Classical period (music))

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  A large instrumental ensemble's performance in the lavish Teatro Argentina, as depicted by Panini (1747) (from Baroque music)

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  1875 oil painting of Franz Schubert by Wilhelm August Rieder, after his own 1825 watercolor portrait (from Classical period (music))

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  Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820 (from Classical period (music))

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  Haydn portrait by Thomas Hardy, 1792 (from Classical period (music))

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  A modern string quartet. In the 2000s, string quartets from the Classical era are the core of the chamber music literature. From left to right: violin 1, violin 2, cello, viola (from Classical period (music))

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  Portrait of Mendelssohn by James Warren Childe, 1839 (from Classical period (music))

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  Painting by Evaristo Baschenis of Baroque instruments, including a cittern, viola da gamba, violin, and two lutes. (from Baroque music)

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  Johann Sebastian Bach, 1748 (from Baroque music)

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  Musicians from 'Procession in honour of Our Lady of Sablon in Brussels.' Early 17th-century Flemish alta cappella. From left to right: bass dulcian, alto shawm, treble cornett, soprano shawm, alto shawm, tenor sackbut. (from Renaissance music)

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  Jean-Baptiste Lully by Paul Mignard (from Baroque music)

Quotes -

“ Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend. ” — Ludwig van Beethoven

Related portals

WikiProjects

WikiProject Classical music	WikiProject Composers	WikiProject Contemporary music
WikiProject Opera	WikiProject Richard Wagner	WikiProject Gilbert and Sullivan

Selected composers -

Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

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  Anthony Edward Payne (2 August 1936 – 30 April 2021) was an English composer, music critic and musicologist. He is best known for his acclaimed completion of Edward Elgar's third symphony, which subsequently gained wide acceptance into Elgar's oeuvre. Apart from opera, his own works include representatives of most traditional genres, and although he made substantial contributions to orchestral and choral repertoire, he is particularly noted for his chamber music. Many of these chamber works were written for his wife, the soprano Jane Manning, and the new music ensemble Jane's Minstrels, which he founded with Manning in 1988. Initially an unrelenting proponent of modernist music, by the 1980s his compositions had embraced aspects of the late romanticism of England, described by his colleague Susan Bradshaw as "modernized nostalgia". His mature style is thus characterised by a highly individualised combination of modernism and English romanticism, as well as numerology, wide-spaced harmonies, specific intervallic characterisations, and the frequent alternation between strict and fluid rhythmic frameworks.
  
  Born in London, Payne first seriously studied music at Durham University. Though a composer since childhood, his professional career began around 1969 with his first major work, the Phoenix Mass for choir and brass band, which was firmly rooted in the modernist tradition. He continued to write choral and vocal works, almost exclusively to British poets, particularly Thomas Hardy, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Edward Thomas. From his 1981 chamber work A Day in the Life of a Mayfly on, he synthesised aspects of English romanticism from his primary influences, Elgar, Delius and Vaughan Williams. Two orchestral commissions for The Proms, The Spirit's Harvest (1985) and Time's Arrow (1990) were well received. After several years, Payne created a completed version of Elgar's unfinished third symphony, which brought him international attention and future commissions for completions and orchestrations of works by Delius, Elgar and Finzi. Unsure of his musical identity, Payne found difficulty in subsequent composition until the 2002 orchestral Proms commission, Visions and Journeys (2002). Further major works include The Period of Cosmographie (2010) and Of Land, Sea and Sky (2016) for The Proms. He died in April 2021, a month after the death of his wife. (Full article...)
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  Ellis Gibbons (bapt. 30 November 1573 – 14? May 1603) was an English composer of the late Renaissance who was associated with the English Madrigal School. Born in Cambridge to a musical family, Gibbons was the second surviving son of William Gibbons, a town wait. By 1598 he was known to be living in Cambridge's High ward, and later the Market ward. He owned property in Cambridge and London and probably spent much time there, presumably as a musician of some kind (although this has never been verified). At the age of 28 he became one of only two composers to contribute two pieces to The Triumphs of Oriana, a collection of 25 madrigals published in 1601. These madrigals were Long live faire Oriana and Round about her Charret; modern commentators generally favor the latter. No other compositions by Gibbons survive, and some scholars have doubted his authorship of these works, ascribing them to his brothers. Two months after his mother's death, his career was cut short by his early death in May 1603, leaving behind his brothers Edward, Ferdinando and Orlando, who would become the most famous musician of the family. Orlando's son, Christopher, was also a noted composer. (Full article...)
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  Bradley Joseph (born 1965) is an American composer, arranger, and producer of contemporary instrumental music. His compositions include works for orchestra, quartet, and solo piano, while his musical style ranges from "quietly pensive mood music to a rich orchestration of classical depth and breadth".
  
  Active since 1983, Joseph has performed in front of millions of people around the world. He played various instruments in rock bands throughout the Midwest until 1989 when Greek composer Yanni hired him for his core band after hearing a tape of his original compositions. He was a featured concert keyboardist with Yanni through six major tours, most recently in 2003 for the 60-city Ethnicity tour. He appears in the multi-platinum album and concert film, Live at the Acropolis. Joseph also spent five years as musical director and lead keyboardist for Sheena Easton, including a 1995 performance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. (Full article...)
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  Stanford in 1921

  
  Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (30 September 1852 – 29 March 1924) was an Anglo-Irish composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Romantic era. 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 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. (Full article...)
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  Edward Elgar, c. 1900

  
  Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO (/ˈɛlɡɑːr/ ^ⓘ; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.
  
  Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British Army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory. (Full article...)
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  Janáček with his wife Zdenka, in 1881

  

  
  Leoš Janáček (Czech pronunciation: [ˈlɛoʃ ˈjanaːtʃɛk] ^ⓘ, 3 July 1854 – 12 August 1928) was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist, and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and other Slavic music, including Eastern European folk music, to create an original, modern musical style.
  
  Born in Hukvaldy, Janáček demonstrated musical talent at an early age and was educated in Brno, Prague, Leipzig, and Vienna. He then returned to live in Brno, where he married his pupil Zdenka Schulzová and devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research. His earlier musical output was influenced by contemporaries such as Antonín Dvořák, but around the turn of the century he began to incorporate his earlier studies of national folk music, as well as his transcriptions of "speech melodies" of spoken language, to create a modern, highly original synthesis. The death of his daughter Olga in 1903 had a profound effect on his musical output; these notable transformations were first evident in the opera Jenůfa (often called the "Moravian national opera"), which premiered in 1904 in Brno. (Full article...)
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  Portrait of Mozart, aged 13, in Verona, 1770, attributed to Giambettino Cignaroli

  
  
  Between 1769 and 1773, the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his father Leopold Mozart made three Italian journeys. The first, an extended tour of 15 months, was financed by performances for the nobility and by public concerts, and took in the most important Italian cities. The second and third journeys were to Milan, for Wolfgang to complete operas that had been commissioned there on the first visit. From the perspective of Wolfgang's musical development the journeys were a considerable success, and his talents were recognised by honours which included a papal knighthood and memberships in leading philharmonic societies.
  
  Leopold Mozart had been employed since 1747 as a musician in the Archbishop of Salzburg's court, becoming deputy Kapellmeister in 1763, but he had also devoted much time to Wolfgang's and sister Nannerl's musical education. He took them on a European tour between 1763 and 1766, and spent some of 1767 and most of 1768 with them in the imperial capital, Vienna. The children's performances had captivated audiences, and the pair had made a considerable impression on European society. By 1769, Nannerl had reached adulthood, but Leopold was anxious to continue 13-year-old Wolfgang's education in Italy, a crucially important destination for any rising composer of the 18th century. (Full article...)
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  Mitsuda in 2019

  Yasunori Mitsuda (光田 康典, Mitsuda Yasunori, born January 21, 1972) is a Japanese composer and musician. He is best known for his work in video games, primarily for the Chrono, Xeno, Shadow Hearts, and Inazuma Eleven franchises, among various others. Mitsuda began composing music for his own games in high school, later attending a music college in Tokyo. While still a student, he was granted an intern position at the game development studio Wolf Team.
  
  Mitsuda joined Square upon graduation in 1992 and worked there as a sound effects designer for two years before telling Square's vice president Hironobu Sakaguchi he would quit unless he could write music for their games. Shortly after, Sakaguchi assigned him to work on the soundtrack for Chrono Trigger (1995), whose music has since been cited as among the best in video games. (Full article...)
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  Carl August Nielsen (Danish: [ˈkʰɑˀl ˈne̝lsn̩]; 9 June 1865 – 3 October 1931) was a Danish composer, conductor and violinist, widely recognized as his country's most prominent composer.
  
  Brought up by poor yet musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age. He initially played in a military band before attending the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen from 1884 until December 1886. He premiered his Op. 1, Suite for Strings, in 1888, at the age of 23. The following year, Nielsen began a 16-year stint as a second violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra under the conductor Johan Svendsen, during which he played in Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff and Otello at their Danish premieres. In 1916, he took a post teaching at the Royal Danish Academy and continued to work there until his death. (Full article...)
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  Guto Pryderi Puw (2018)

  
  Guto Pryderi Puw (born 1971) is a Welsh composer, university lecturer and conductor. He is considered to be one of the most prominent Welsh composers of his generation and a key figure in current Welsh music. Puw's music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and been featured on television programmes for the BBC and S4C. He has twice been awarded the Composer's Medal at the National Eisteddfod.
  
  Puw's works include pieces for unusual combinations of instruments, such as a tuba quartet or a trio consisting of harp, cello and double-bass, as well as more traditional forces such as solo baritone and piano, choir or orchestra. He was associated with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales as its Resident Composer, the first holder of this title, from 2006 to 2010. Puw's own Welsh identity is a recurrent theme in his music: some of his pieces set Welsh-language poetry to music and one of his pieces, Reservoirs, is written about the flooding of Welsh valleys to provide water for England. (Full article...)
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  Map showing the Grand Tour, 1763–66. Black line shows outward journey to London, 1763–64. Red line shows homeward journey to Salzburg, 1765–66. Occluded line shows travel in each direction.

  
  
  The Mozart family grand tour was a journey through western Europe, undertaken by Leopold Mozart, his wife Anna Maria, and their musically gifted children Maria Anna (Nannerl) and Wolfgang Theophilus (Wolferl) from 1763 to 1766. At the start of the tour the children were aged eleven and seven respectively. Their extraordinary skills had been demonstrated during a visit to Vienna in 1762, when they had played before the Empress Maria Theresa at the Imperial Court. Sensing the social and pecuniary opportunities that might accrue from a prolonged trip embracing the capitals and main cultural centres of Europe, Leopold obtained an extended leave of absence from his post as deputy Kapellmeister to the Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg. Throughout the subsequent tour, the children's Wunderkind status was confirmed as their precocious performances consistently amazed and gratified their audiences.
  
  The first stage of the tour's itinerary took the family, via Munich and Frankfurt, to Brussels and then on to Paris where they stayed for five months. They then departed for London, where during a stay of more than a year Wolfgang made the acquaintance of some of the leading musicians of the day, heard much music, and composed his first symphonies. The family then moved on to the Netherlands, where the schedule of performances was interrupted by the illnesses of both children, although Wolfgang continued to compose prolifically. The homeward phase incorporated a second stop in Paris and a trip through Switzerland, before the family's return to Salzburg in November 1766. (Full article...)
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  Zhou Bangyan (Chinese: 周邦彥; 1056–1121) was a Chinese musician, poet, and politician of the Northern Song Dynasty. He was from Qiantang (in modern Hangzhou). His courtesy name was Meicheng (Chinese: 美成; pinyin: Měichéng), and his art name was Qingzhen Jushi (Chinese: 清真居士; pinyin: Qīngzhēn Jūshì). He left a two-volume poetry anthology called either the Qingzhen-ji or the Pianyu-ci. (Full article...)
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  Walton in 1937

  
  
  Sir William Turner Walton OM (29 March 1902 – 8 March 1983) was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera. His best-known works include Façade, the cantata Belshazzar's Feast, the Viola Concerto, the First Symphony, and the British coronation marches Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre.
  
  Born in Oldham, Lancashire, the son of a musician, Walton was a chorister and then an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. On leaving the university, he was taken up by the literary Sitwell siblings, who provided him with a home and a cultural education. His earliest work of note was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell, Façade, which at first brought him notoriety as a modernist, but later became a popular ballet score. (Full article...)
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  Bax in 1922 by Herbert Lambert

  
  Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax, KCVO (8 November 1883 – 3 October 1953) was an English composer, poet, and author. His prolific output includes songs, choral music, chamber pieces, and solo piano works, but he is best known for his orchestral music. In addition to a series of symphonic poems, he wrote seven symphonies and was for a time widely regarded as the leading British symphonist.
  
  Bax was born in the London suburb of Streatham to a prosperous family. He was encouraged by his parents to pursue a career in music, and his private income enabled him to follow his own path as a composer without regard for fashion or orthodoxy. Consequently, he came to be regarded in musical circles as an important but isolated figure. While still a student at the Royal Academy of Music Bax became fascinated with Ireland and Celtic culture, which became a strong influence on his early development. In the years before the First World War he lived in Ireland and became a member of Dublin literary circles, writing fiction and verse under the pseudonym Dermot O'Byrne. Later, he developed an affinity with Nordic culture, which for a time superseded his Celtic influences in the years after the First World War. (Full article...)
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  The Garni valley, where Sahakdukht spent much of her life as an ascetic living in a cave.

  
  
  Sahakdukht (Armenian: Սահակադուխտ, lit. 'daughter of Sahak'; fl. early 8th century) was an Armenian hymnographer, poet and pedagogue who lived during the early 8th century. She is the first known woman of Armenian literature and music. Along with her slightly later contemporary Khosrovidukht, she is among the earliest woman composers in history. Sahakdukht and her brother Stepanos Siunetsi, who became a noted composer and music theorist, were educated in Dvin. She then spent her life as an ascetic, living in a cave (a grotto) of the Garni valley where she wrote and taught music. Though she is said to have written much Christian music, particularly for the Virgin Mary, only a single šarakan survives, the acrostic "Srbuhi Mariam" ("Saint Mary"). The work shows considerable stylistic connections to contemporaneous Byzantine theotokions and kanons. Though her piece did not join the general šarakan liturgy, Sahakdukht's oeuvre as a whole is thought to have exerted considerable influence on subsequent šarakans; they introduced certain phrases into popular use and according to ethnomusicologist Şahan Arzruni they "helped to shape the development of the genre during subsequent centuries". (Full article...)

Did you know (auto-generated) -

• ... that the choral music of Artemy Vedel, who is regarded as one of the Golden Three composers of 18th-century Ukrainian classical music, was censored but performed from handwritten copies?
• ... that the conductor Im Won-sik is considered the "father of Korea's classical music world"?
• ... that the Stadthalle Hannover, the largest classical music concert hall in Germany by capacity, was modelled after the Pantheon in Rome and completed by 1914?
• ... that in 1994, Anthony Pople created two computer programs to analyse classical music?
• ... that gas lighting inspired Stephen Gunzenhauser to start a classical music festival?
• ... that, according to its owner, KLEF in Anchorage, Alaska, was one of just three remaining commercially operated classical-music radio stations in the United States, as of 2013?

Selected image

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  Piston valve

  Photo: Guillaume Piolle

  The anatomy of a Périnet piston valve, this one taken from a B♭ trumpet. When depressed, the valve diverts the air stream through additional tubing, thus lengthening the instrument and lowering the harmonic series on which the instrument is vibrating (i.e., it lowers the pitch). Trumpets generally use three valves, with some variations, such as a piccolo trumpet, having four. When used singly or in combination, the valves make the instrument fully chromatic, or capable of playing all twelve pitches of classical music. Trumpets may also use rotary valves instead.
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  The Teatro alla Scala (or La Scala, as it is known), in Milan, Italy, is one of the world's most famous opera houses. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778, under the name Nuovo Regio Ducal Teatro alla Scala with Salieri's Europa riconosciuta.

  
  

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  Johann Christian Bach

  Painting: Thomas Gainsborough

  Johann Christian Bach (5 September 1735 – 1 January 1782) was a composer of the Classical era, the eighteenth child of Johann Sebastian Bach, and the youngest of his eleven sons. Bach was taught by his father and then, after the latter's death, by his half-brother C. P. E. Bach. Bach moved to Italy in 1754, and then to London in 1762, where he became known as the "London Bach". Bach's compositions include eleven operas, as well as chamber music, orchestral music and compositions for keyboard music. In 1764 Bach met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was eight at the time, and spent five months teaching him composition. He had considerable influence on Mozart, and was later described by scholars as his "only, true teacher".
  
  This portrait of Bach was painted in 1776 by Thomas Gainsborough, as part of a collection started by Bach's former teacher Padre Martini. It now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
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  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Photo: W. J. Mayer; Restoration: Lise Broer

  A bust of the German composer and pianist Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), made from his death mask. He was a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music, and remains one of the most acclaimed and influential composers of all time. Born in Bonn, of the Electorate of Cologne and a part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in present-day Germany, he moved to Vienna in his early twenties and settled there, studying with Joseph Haydn and quickly gaining a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. His hearing began to deteriorate in the late 1790s, yet he continued to compose, conduct, and perform, even after becoming completely deaf.
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  Royal Albert Hall

  Photograph: David Iliff

  The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall, seating a maximum of 5,272, on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. Constructed beginning in 1867, the hall was inaugurated on 29 March 1871. Since 1941 it has held The Proms, an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events.
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  Jules Massenet

  Photograph credit: Eugène Pirou; restored by Adam Cuerden

  Jules Massenet (12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era, best known for his operas. Between 1867 and his death, he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra comique to grand depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies and lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets. Massenet had a good sense of the theatre and of what would succeed with the Parisian public. Despite some miscalculations, he produced a series of successes that made him the leading opera composer in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the time of his death, he was regarded as old-fashioned; his works, however, began to be favourably reassessed during the mid-20th century, and many have since been staged and recorded. This photograph of Massenet was taken by French photographer Eugène Pirou in 1875.
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  Stradivarius is one of the violins, violas, cellos and other string instruments built by members of the Italian Stradivari family, particularly Antonio Stradivari.

  
  

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  Ballet is a formalized form of dance with its origins in the French court, further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form.

  
  

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  Billy Strayhorn

  Photograph credit: William P. Gottlieb; restored by Adam Cuerden

  Billy Strayhorn (November 29, 1915 – May 31, 1967) was an American jazz composer, pianist, lyricist, and arranger, best remembered for his long-time collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington that lasted nearly three decades. Though classical music was Strayhorn's first love, his ambition to become a classical composer went unrealized because of the harsh reality of a black man trying to make his way in the world of classical music, which at that time was almost completely white. He was introduced to the music of pianists like Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson at age 19, and the artistic influence of these musicians guided him into the realm of jazz, where he remained for the rest of his life. This photograph of Strayhorn was taken by William P. Gottlieb in the 1940s.
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  A picture of the first theatre drawn shortly before it burned down in 1808.

  
  The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in the London district of Covent Garden. The large building, often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.
  

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  Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53 (Chopin)

  Sheet music for the Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53, a solo piano piece written by Frédéric Chopin in 1842. This work is one of Chopin's most admired compositions and has long been a favorite of the classical piano repertoire. The piece, which is very difficult, requires exceptional pianistic skills and great virtuosity to be interpreted. A typical performance of the polonaise lasts seven minutes.
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  Kuchipudi

  Photograph: Augustus Binu; edit: Chris Woodrich

  Kuchipudi is a Classical Indian dance from Andhra Pradesh, India. According to legend, an orphan named Siddhendra Yogi established the Kuchipudi dance-drama tradition in the seventh century. The performance usually begins with stage rites, after which each character comes onto the stage and introduces herself with a small composition of both song and dance. The drama then begins, and the dance is typically accompanied by Carnatic music.

Topics

Major periods overview: Early: Medieval (500 – 1400) Renaissance (1400–1600) Common practice: Baroque (1600–1750) Classical (1750–1830) Romantic (1830–1920) Modern and contemporary: 20th century classical (1900–2000) Contemporary classical (1975–present) Music theory Rhythm Harmony Melody Musical form Texture

Notable composers: Guillaume de Machaut Johannes Ockeghem Josquin des Prez Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Claudio Monteverdi Johann Sebastian Bach George Frideric Handel Antonio Vivaldi Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Joseph Haydn Ludwig van Beethoven Franz Schubert Frédéric Chopin Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Johannes Brahms Antonín Dvořák Richard Wagner Giuseppe Verdi Claude Debussy Maurice Ravel Gustav Mahler Jean Sibelius Richard Strauss Giacomo Puccini Arnold Schoenberg Béla Bartók Dmitri Shostakovich Igor Stravinsky Benjamin Britten

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