Hailey Marley
February
7th Grade
Paganini
Iccolò Paganini was born on October 27, 1782 in Genoa, Italy. He was a violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. He was highly skilled in playing the violin (The most celebrated of his time), and left his mark as one of the columns of modern violin technique.
When Paganini was 5 he learned how to play the mandolin from his father, and when he was 7, moved on to violin. Paganini studied under various violinists, including Giovanni Servetto and Giacomo Costa, but his talent and progress outpaced their abilities. Paganini traveled to Parma to seek further guidance from Alessandro Rolla, but upon listening to Paganini's playing, Rolla immediately referred him to his own teacher, Ferdinando Paer
It is a long-with-standing stereotype that Italians love to gamble. This is true. My great grandfather, Pasquale Giovannone, played the riskiest hand of cards when he immigrated to the United States as an illegal stowaway at the age of thirteen. He forged a life for himself amidst the ever-changing social and political shifts of the early nineteenth century. The legacy he left would later lead to the birth of my father, John Giovannone, in Northern New Jersey in 1962.
Enrico Caruso was born February 25, 1873 in Naples, Italy. He was one of the most talented and admired Italian operatic tenors in the early 20th century. He was also one of the first people to have his music recorded using a gramophone. He recorded 260 recordings and made millions of dollars from the sale of is 78rpm records.
Giuseppe Garibaldi, b. Nice, France; July 4, 1807, d. Caprera, Italy; June 2, 1882. He was known as Italy's most brilliant soldier of the Risorgimento (the Italian Unification), and one of the greatest guerrilla fighters of all time. While serving (1833-34) in the navy of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, he came under the influence of Giuseppe Mazzini, the prophet of Italian nationalism. He took part in an abortive republican uprising in Piedmont in 1834.
No one knows exactly when the Italian artist, Tiziano Vecellio, was born. Over the centuries, there has been a great deal of confusion concerning the date, due to a misprint in his biography by sixteenth century art historian, Girgio Vasari. Vasari recorded the date as 1480, but the progress of Tiziano Vecellio’s work, as well as other documented sources, announce his date of birth to be sometime between 1488 and 1490. (Magill 2310) The place of his birth was Pieve de Cadore, in the Alps north of Venice. Tiziano Vecellio, also known as Titian, was a great master of religious art, a portraitist, and the creator of mythological compositions, which have been so decorative and inventive that no other artist has yet surpassed them. People such as his wife, Cecilia, Giovanni Bellini, and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, influenced Titian. (Magill 2311) Titian is considered to be one of the greatest artists of the Italian High Renaissance. Titian developed an oil-painting technique during his time as an artist of successive glazes and broad paint application that influenced many generations of artists to follow along with his other various important accomplishments.
Michelangelo was born at Rome, in March 6, 1475. He was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance. He was considered the greatest artist of his time. When he was introduced to art, he basically worked with marble his whole life and worked in other arts during specific time periods. His two best-known works are the Pieta and the David. (Gilbert,1)
He was born in Palmero Italy in 1660. He was the music director of the court of Naples. He also served as the court composer for Queen Christina of Sweden. He was a great conductor and was later named the most prolific composer of Italian opera of his time. He is known as the greatest of the composers to carry Italian Opera into its second period, as number opera. He is also known as the creator of the Italian Overture and a major figure in the development of classical harmony. He made many modifications of the current operatic style of his time, some of which include the increased use of instruments to accompany the voices in his operas, and introducing horns to the ensemble. The Italian overture that he developed is a form which moves from fast to slow, to fast. It was the forerunner of the classical symphony. He wrote approximately 114 operas one of which being Mitridate Eupatore in 1707. He died in 1725, in Naples.
Although the foundation of his career is as a virtuoso violinist and composer of string chamber works, his involvement at S. Petronio led him to contributing immensely to the development of trumpet repertoire. While it is not known whether he studied under Leonardo Brugnoli or Bartolomeo Laurenti while building his career as a performer, they were both S. Petronio players and ultimately led to his involvement
Traditional African art is devoted to dealings with a spirit world that is known to control success or failure in life. It is believed that spirits can live in fields that produce crops, the rivers that provide fish, the forests that are home, or the land that must be cleared to be able to build villages. Often times, families also believe that spirits may represent their ancestral spirits. Therefore, in order to communicate with them, specialists also known as diviners, are responsible for opening the lines of communication between the human world and the supernatural world. Some of the techniques used to open those lines are prayer, sacrifice, offerings, rituals, divination, and images that represents the visual identity and personality of such spirit. One of the most powerful and potent images of spiritual power is the nkisi.
Giacomo Puccini was born in Lucca, Italy on December 22, 1858. He came from a long line of organists and composers. He came from five generations of composers and organists to the Cathedral of San Martin; also, he was supposed to succeed his father, holding a position that his great-great grandfather held, but unfortunately his father died. By the age of 14 he had become the church organist and was beginning to write his first musical compositions as well. Puccini realized what he really wanted to do in 1876, when in Pisa, he and his brother attended a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida.
Antonio Vivaldi was born on March 4th, 1678, in Venice, Italy, and died on July 28, 1741, in Vienna, Austria. His father, a barber and a talented violinist at Saint Mark's Cathedral himself, had helped him in trying a career in music and made him enter the Cappella di San Marco orchestra, where he was an appreciated violinist.
Vivaldi had humble beginnings in Venice, Italy, late in the seventeenth century. At the time, Venice was a center of art and culture. As a center of commerce and culture, Venice attracted many prominent musicians. This prosperous Italian city was even the home of notable violin makers, such
Born on March 3, 1475 in Caprese, Italy. Though Michelangelo considered himself a Florentine, he lived most of his life in Rome. At a young age Michelangelo’s father knew that he wasn’t going to carry on their banking business instead he was going to pursue art. At
Most of Mozart and Beethoven’s childhoods were spent around adults. Beethoven’s first piano teacher was his father. When Mozart was around six years old, his father, Leopold, took him to Electoral Court at Munich, Germany. He also traveled around Vienna with his father. Another teacher that ludwig had was Christian Gottlob Neefe, who, after teaching Beethoven at age eight, helped him to start performing. Beethoven also spent time practicing piano under Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer and he learned to play the violin under his Uncle Franz
Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice, Italy on the date of March 4th, 1878. Antonio Vivaldi was taught music from an early age. His father, Giovanni Battista Vivaldi, taught him how to play many different kinds of instruments. Giovanni Vivaldi was a violinist himself. Learning from his father helped him greatly, but he also received lessons from some of the other musicians and composers in Venice. Antonio learned to play the violin well quite quick. But wind instruments played a toll on him because he soon to find out that he gets shortness of breath quickly. Vivaldi went through religious training to become a priest. It gave him a free education to become something more. This is where he got his nicked name. It is one of the most famous nick names in classical history. The nick name was “il Prete Rosso,” in Italian, or “the Red Priest.” He received his fellow colleagues. Although he became a priest, this career was shortened because of his health problems. He had problems with saying mass, which made him leave priesthood. This is when he turned back to his music. He stared writing a whole variety of different pieces and different styles. This is what really took his music career to a different le...
Paganini was born in Genoa, Italy in the year 1782. This performer is known as one of the finest violin players of all times. He first took the violin when he was a young boy of less than six years old, and composed his first violin sonata in th...