Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet was born in Paris on October 25th, 1838. He was trained by his parents, who were musical, and admitted to the Paris Conservatoire just before his tenth birthday. There he studied counterpoint with Zimmerman and Gounod and composition with Halévy, and under Marmontel's tuition he became a brilliant pianist. Bizet's exceptional powers as a composer are already apparent in the products of his Conservatoire years, notably the Symphony in C, a work of precocious genius dating from 1855 (but not performed until 1935). In 1857 Bizet shared with Lecocq a prize offered by Offenbach for a setting of the one-act operetta Le Docteur Miracle; later that year he set out for Italy as holder of the coveted Prix de Rome.
During his three years in Rome Bizet began or projected many compositions; only four survive, including the opera buffa, Don Procopio (not performed until 1906). Shortly after his return to Paris, in September 1861, his mother died; the composer consoled himself with his parents' maid, by whom he had a son in June 1862. He rejected teaching at the Conservatoire and the temptation to become a concert pianist, and completed his obligations under the terms of the Prix de Rome. The last of these, a one-act opéra comique, La guzla de l'emir, was rehearsed at the Opéra-Comique in 1863 but withdrawn when the Théâtre-Lyrique director, who had been offered 100 000 francs to produce annually an opera by a Prix de Rome winner who had not had a work staged, invited Bizet to compose Les pêcheurs de perles.
Bizet completed it in four months. It was produced in September 1863, but met with a generally cool reception: an uneven work, with stiff characterization, it is notable for the skilful scoring of its exotic numbers. In the ensuing years Bizet earned a living arranging other composers' music and giving piano lessons. Not until December 1867 was another opera staged - La jolie fille de Perth, which shows a surer dramatic mastery than Les pêcheurs despite an inept libretto. It received a good press but had only 18 performances.
1868 was a year of crisis for Bizet, with more abortive works, attacks of quinsy and a reexamination of his religious stance; and his attitude to music grew deeper. In June 1869 he married Geneviève, daughter of his former teacher, Halévy, and the next year they suffered the privations caused by the Franco-Prussian war (Bizet enlisted in the National Guard).
Under Giulio Strozzi’s guidance, Barbara studied music with singer and opera composer Francesco Cavalli and developed an outstanding singing voice. By the age of 16, she sang at concerts in the Strozzi house, accompanying herself on one of the many instruments in the home. In 1635, the composer, Nicolò Fontei published his first volume of Bizzarrie Poetiche in Venice,
Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz was a “righteous gentile” who had a relatively normal life before World War II. He was born in 1904 (jfr.org). He worked with the international coffee trade (jfr.org), established a deep connection with the Danish people (forces-war-records.co.uk), and became friends with Werner Best (jfr.org). "Duckwitz was drawn to the Nazis’ ultranationalist propaganda and joined the party. However, as Hitler’s violent intentions came to light, he became disillusioned with the party (facinghistory.org)." He felt sorry for the Danish Jews and was disappointed that he had joined the Nazi party (facinghistory.org). Little did he know, his friend, Best, had overseen the murder of French and Polish Jews and well as requested (through
During the turbulent storm in the story, Kate Chopin depicts that the marriage of Calixta and Bobinôt is going downhill. Both Bobinôt and Calixta are trapped in different locations during the storm. Bobinôt is in a general store and Calixta is at home. Not only are they in different places during the physical storm but they are also in different places on where their marriage stands. Calixta exposes the reader to see that her husband, Bobinôt, does not understand her because during the storm she is buried in the arms of another man. Calixta makes it apparent that she needs more from her husband and if he is not going to give her what she needs, she will find it in another man. The story depicts that Bobinôt did not give his wife the attention she needs when Bibi asked, “Mama’ll be ’fraid, yes” and Bobinôt responds by saying, “She’ll shut the house. Maybe she got Sylvie helpin’ her this evenin’” but Bibi corrects him by saying, “No; she ent got Sylvie. Sylvie was helpin’ her yistiday” (Chopin 96). Bobinôt shows that he is not attentive to what is happening around the home with his wife during this part of the story. Bobinôt’s inattentiveness must cause him to not unders...
Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany in 1770 to Johann van Beethoven and his wife, Maria Magdalena. He took his first music lessons from his father, who was tenor in the choir of the archbishop-elector of Cologne. His father was an unstable, yet ambitious man whose excessive drinking, rough temper and anxiety surprisingly did not diminish Beethoven's love for music. He studied and performed with great success, despite becoming the breadwinner of his household by the time he was 18 years old. His father's increasingly serious alcohol problem and the earlier death of his grandfather in 1773 sent his family into deepening poverty. At first, Beethoven made little impact on the musical society, despite his father's hopes. When he turned 11, he left school and became an assistant organist to Christian Gottlob Neefe at the court of Bonn, learning from him and other musicians. In 1783 he became the continuo player for the Bonn opera and accompanied their rehearsals on keyboard. In 1787, he was sent to Vienna to take further lessons from Mozart. Two months later, however, he was called back to Bonn by the death of his mother. He started to play the viola in the Opera Orchestra in 1789, while also teaching in composing. He met Haydn in 1790, who agreed to teach him in Vienna, and Beethoven then moved to Vienna permanently. He received financial support from Prince Karl Lichnowsky, to whom he dedicated his Piano Sonata in C minor, better known as The Pathétique .
On September 21, 1874 Gustav Holst was born in Cheltenham, England. As the son of accomplished pianist, Adolph Holst, he began playing the piano from a young age and also practiced the violin. Despite the joy he had when playing music, he was a miserable child who was weak and suffered from asthma and anemia. At age 11 his father sent him to Cheltenham Grammar School in the hopes of having Gustav follow in his footsteps and become a proficient pianist. During this time he learned how to play the trombone. When he was older he found an interest in composing and in 1892 composed the two-act operetta, Lansdown Castle. Shortly after, in 1895, Holst won a scholarship to attend the Royal College of Music to further study composition. It was here that he wrote his first opera under the guidance of his professor, Charles Stanford, titled The Revoke. In 1898 Holst left the Royal College of Music for the Carl Rosa Opera Company where he was later appointed as first trombone. Throughout his experience at Carl Rosa, Holst was able to learn how an orchestra worked which would later assist him in his future compositions.
Verdi spent his last years in Milan, wealthy, authoritarian, but charitable and also frequently visited by friends, and admirers who both revered and honored him. Verdi died on January 27, 1901 in Milan, Italy from a stroke. Verdi’s funeral is still the largest funeral ever in Italian history and it was attended by 28,000 people.
Claude Debussy (born Achille-Claude Debussy) was born August 22, 1862, in St-Germain-en-Laye France. He showed a knack for the piano at the age of 9. Debussy was one of 5 children. Debussy did not come from a wealthy family. His parents owned a small shop. At age 11 he entered the Pairs Conservatory. At the Conservatory Debussy study piano and composition. While there he also studied theory with Alfred Lavignac, piano with Antoine Marmontel, harmony with Émile Durand, and harmony composition with Ernest Guiraud. Around 1880 a wealthy woman named Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck, who was a pupil of Frédéric Chopin, and supported Pyotr llyich Tchaikovsky hired Debussy to teach her children. During summer vacations at the Conservatory he traveled with Nadezhda. He learned more about the Russian music and cultural which later would be reflected in his work. During his time in Paris he fell in love with Blanche Vasnier, who was an inspiration to his works in the early years. In 1884, Debussy won the Grand Prix de Rome with his cantata L’Enfant prodigue. Debussy became a cautious and difficult man who preferred cats to people. He did not really have many friends or confidants. In 1887 Debussy li...
In 1767 the family went to Vienna for five months, where Mozart wrote an opera buffa (comic opera) for the Emperor, La finta semplice (trans, the Pretend Simpleton); and a Singspiel (a German-language opera with some spoken dialogue), Bastien und Bastienne (1769), commissioned by Dr Franz Anton Mesmer. However, in Vienna, the Italian musicians at court, including the composer Antonio Salieri, made it difficult for him to produce his operas. He returned to Salzburg, and was appointed honorary Konzertmeister to Archbishop Sigismund von Schrattenbach.
Mozart then wrote the entire musical score completely from memory. He only had to correct minor errors to correct when he heard it again. When Mozart was in Italy, he wrote his famous operas Mitridate, re di Ponto, Ascanio in Alba in 177, and Lucio Silla in 1772.
Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg in 1809. His father Abraham Mendelssohn was a banker, while his mum Lea Mendelssohn was a highly educated artist and musician. Mendelssohn first had his piano lesson from his mum, but soon he was sent to study with the best teachers at that time such as Marie Bigot and Ludwig Burger. He also took composition lessons with Karl Zelter, who was the professor of the University of Berlin. Under their proper guidance, he completely showed his music talent- he first appeared as pianist at nine and as a composer at ten. At his age of twelve, he already composed nine fugues, five symphonies for strings, two operas and a huge number of smaller pieces. When he was sixteen, the publication of his Octet in E-flat Major for strings and Overture to A Mid Summer Night’s Dream marked his full maturity.
Debussy was born in 1862 in the town of St. Germain-en-Laye , a town near Paris. When he was eleven, he entered the Paris Conservatory. Instead of following music ideas and structure that done by his predecessors, he started to compose and play harmonies that defied the rules. These strange, peculiar sounding harmonies shocked his lecturers. By that time, he already started trying on new harmonies that was something different.
In 1681, Georg Philipp Telemann was born into a family connected to the Lutheran Church. He had exceptional musical abilities, mastering the keyboard, violin, zither, and flute by the age of ten. He composed an opera “Sigismundus” at the age of twelve as well. Telemann was determined to excel in music especially with the disapproval from his parents. After finishing grade school at Hildesheim Gymnasium, he began college at Leipzig University studying language and science. That eventually changed when he created the student Colle...
Claude Debussy is a French classical music composer. Debussy was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France in 1862. Debussy’s music was considered to fall under the impressionism study as he veered away from the traditional musical composition methods of key and pitch and worried about the different intervals in a piece. Debussy started playing the piano at the young age of seven, by age ten it was apparent that Debussy was very gifted in what he did as he was selected to attend a prestigious school for talented musicians, dancers and artists. Debussy stayed at the Conservatoire for eleven years where he perfected his talents with the help of some famous composers such as I...
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) Berlioz (bear-lee-ohz) was a French composer whose father was a doctor; to please his father, he went to medical school, but he spent more time going to concerts and to the theatre than studying medicine. Berlioz played flute and guitar, but is best known as a composer and orchestrator. As a student at the Paris Conservatory, he tried several times to earn the prestigious Prix de Rome, finally winning in 1830. During his medical school days, Berlioz attended performances of an English theatrical troupe.
Ludwig van Beethoven, a German composer and a pianist, He remains one of the most famous and influential of all time. Beethoven had 9 best-known symphonies, 5 concertos for piano, 32 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets; Beethoven also composed other music, choral works, and songs too. Beethoven was born in Bonn. Beethoven had musical talents at an early age and his first music teacher was his father. Beethoven lived in Vienna until he died. Around the by the last years of his life he was almost totally deaf, so he gave up conducting and performing but still composed music. Beethoven was also marriage in Bonn. Although there is no authentic record of the date of his birth, the registry of his baptism, in a Roman Catholic Parish of St. Regius was on December 17, 1770. Beethoven’s parents had seven kids, but Beethoven was only the second-born. Beethoven began his studies with Christian Gottlob Neefe in 1779. Neefe taught Beethoven composition, and by March 1783 helped him write his first published composition.