Portal:Classical music

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The Classical Music Portal

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

Classical music is a tradition of art music in the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" can also be applied to non-Western art musics. 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. (Full article...)

Selected articles –

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  The clarinet is a single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell.
  
  Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches. The clarinet family is the largest woodwind family, ranging from the BB♭ contrabass to the A♭ piccolo. The B♭ soprano clarinet is the most common type, and is the instrument usually indicated by the word "clarinet". (Full article...)
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  Cover of a very early vocal score, c. 1872

  
  Aida (or Aïda, Italian: [aˈiːda]) is a tragic opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its première there on 24 December 1871, in a performance conducted by Giovanni Bottesini. Today the work holds a central place in the operatic canon, receiving performances every year around the world. At New York's Metropolitan Opera alone, Aida has been sung more than 1,100 times since 1886. Ghislanzoni's scheme follows a scenario often attributed to the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, but Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz argues that the source is actually Temistocle Solera. (Full article...)
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  Mendelssohn in 1846 by Eduard Magnus

  
  Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, MWV O 14, is his last concerto. It was well received at its premiere and has remained as one of the most prominent and highly regarded violin concertos in history. It holds a central place in violin repertoire and has developed a reputation as an essential concerto for all aspiring concert violinists to master. A typical performance lasts just under half an hour.
  
  Mendelssohn originally proposed the idea of the violin concerto to Ferdinand David, a close friend and concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Although conceived in 1838, the work took another six years to complete and was not premiered until 1845. During this time, Mendelssohn maintained a regular correspondence with David as he gave him many suggestions throughout the creation process. The work itself was one of the foremost violin concertos of the Romantic era and was influential on many other composers. (Full article...)
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  Ida Rubinstein, who commissioned Boléro, in 1922

  
  Boléro is a 1928 work for large orchestra by French composer Maurice Ravel. It is one of Ravel's most famous compositions. It was also one of his last completed works before illness diminished his ability to write music. (Full article...)
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  The horn is a brass instrument in the horn family, made of tubing wrapped into a coil with a large flared bell and rotary valves. The term French horn refers to horns with piston valves, seldom used today; the double horn in F/B♭, a variety of German horn, is the horn most often used by players in professional orchestras and bands, although the descant and triple horn have become increasingly popular. A musician who plays a horn is known as a horn player or hornist.
  
  Pitch is controlled through the combination of the following factors: speed of air through the instrument (controlled by the player's lungs and thoracic diaphragm); diameter and tension of lip aperture (by the player's lip muscles—the embouchure) in the mouthpiece; plus, in a modern horn, the operation of valves by the left hand, which route the air into extra sections of tubing. Most horns have lever-operated rotary valves, but some, especially older horns, use piston valves (similar to a trumpet's) and the Vienna horn uses double-piston valves, or pumpenventil. The backward-facing orientation of the bell relates to the perceived desirability to create a subdued sound in concert situations, in contrast to the more piercing quality of the trumpet. A horn without valves is known as a natural horn, changing pitch along the natural harmonics of the instrument, similar to a bugle. Pitch may also be controlled by the position of the hand in the bell, in effect reducing the bell's diameter. The pitch of any note can easily be raised or lowered by adjusting the hand position in the bell. The key of a natural horn can be changed by adding different crooks of different lengths. (Full article...)
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  "The Blue Danube" (1867)

  
  "The Blue Danube" (German: An der schönen blauen Donau, lit. 'By the Beautiful Blue Danube', Op. 314) is a waltz by the Austrian composer Johann Strauss II, composed in 1866. Originally performed on 15 February 1867 at a concert of the Wiener Männergesang-Verein (Vienna Men's Choral Association), it has been one of the most consistently popular pieces of music in the classical repertoire. Its initial performance was considered only a mild success, however, and Strauss is reputed to have said, "The devil take the waltz, my only regret is for the coda—I wish that had been a success!"
  
  After the original music was written, the words were added by the Choral Association's poet, Joseph Weyl. Strauss later added more music, and Weyl needed to change some of the words. Strauss adapted it into a purely orchestral version for the 1867 Paris World's Fair, and it became a great success in this form. The instrumental version is by far the most commonly performed today. An alternate text was written by Franz von Gernerth, "Donau so blau" (Danube so blue). "The Blue Danube" premiered in the United States in its instrumental version on 1 July 1867 in New York, and in the UK in its choral version on 21 September 1867 in London at the promenade concerts at Covent Garden. (Full article...)
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  Nixon in China is an opera in three acts by John Adams with a libretto by Alice Goodman. Adams's first opera, it was inspired by U.S. president Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China. The work premiered at the Houston Grand Opera on October 22, 1987, in a production by Peter Sellars with choreography by Mark Morris. When Sellars approached Adams with the idea for the opera in 1983, Adams was initially reluctant, but eventually decided that the work could be a study in how myths come to be, and accepted the project. Goodman's libretto was the result of considerable research into Nixon's visit, though she disregarded most sources published after the 1972 trip.
  
  To create the sounds he sought, Adams augmented the orchestra with a large saxophone section, additional percussion, and electronic synthesizer. Although sometimes described as minimalist, the score displays a variety of musical styles, embracing minimalism after the manner of Philip Glass alongside passages echoing 19th-century composers such as Wagner and Johann Strauss. With these ingredients, Adams mixes Stravinskian 20th-century neoclassicism, jazz references, and big band sounds reminiscent of Nixon's youth in the 1930s. The combination of these elements varies frequently, to reflect changes in the onstage action. (Full article...)
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  Paganini in 1836

  
  Niccolò (or Nicolò) Paganini (/pæɡəˈniːni, pɑːɡə-/; Italian: [ni(k)koˈlɔ ppaɡaˈniːni] ^ⓘ; 27 October 1782 – 27 May 1840) was an Italian violinist, guitarist and composer. He was the most celebrated violin virtuoso of his time, and left his mark as one of the pillars of modern violin technique. His 24 Caprices for Solo Violin Op. 1 are among the best known of his compositions.
  
  Son of a ship chandler from Genoa, Paganini showed a gift for music from an early age and studied under Alessandro Rolla, Ferdinando Paer and Gasparo Ghiretti. Accompanied by his father, he toured northern Italy extensively as a teenager. By 1805 he had come into the service of Napoleon's sister, Elisa Bonaparte, who then ruled Lucca where Paganini was first violin. From 1809 on he returned to touring and achieved continental fame in the subsequent two and a half decades, developing a reputation for his technical brilliance and showmanship, as well as his extravagant, philandering lifestyle. Paganini ended his concert career in 1834 amid declining health, and the failure of his Paris casino left him in financial ruin. He retired and died in Nice (at that time still part of the Kingdom of Sardinia) in 1840 at the age of 57. (Full article...)
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  Painting by Evaristo Baschenis of Baroque instruments, including a cittern, viola da gamba, violin, and two lutes

  
  Baroque music (UK: /bəˈrɒk/ or US: /bəˈroʊk/) refers to the period or dominant style of Western classical music composed from about 1600 to 1750. The Baroque style followed the Renaissance period, and was followed in turn by the Classical period after a short transition (the galant style). Baroque music forms a major portion of the "classical music" canon, and continues to be widely studied, performed, and listened to. Key composers of the Baroque era include Jacopo Peri, who wrote the first operas; Alessandro Stradella, who originated the concerto grosso style; and Arcangelo Corelli, who was one of the first composers to publish widely and have his music performed across Europe.
  
  The Baroque period saw the formalization of common-practice tonality, an approach to writing music in which a song or piece is written in a particular key; this type of harmony has continued to be used extensively in Western classical and popular music. Baroque composers experimented with finding a fuller sound for each instrumental part, leading to the creation of the modern orchestra; modernised musical notation, including developing figured bass; and developed new instrumental playing techniques. Baroque music expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established the mixed vocal/instrumental forms of opera, cantata and oratorio and the instrumental forms of the solo concerto and sonata as musical genres. Dense, complex polyphonic music, in which multiple independent melody lines were performed simultaneously, was characteristic of the Baroque period. (Full article...)
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  Various recorders (second from the bottom disassembled into its three parts)

  
  The recorder is a family of woodwind musical instruments and a member of the family of duct flutes that includes tin whistles and flageolets. It is the most prominent duct flute in the western classical tradition. A recorder can be distinguished from other duct flutes by the presence of a thumb-hole for the upper hand and holes for seven fingers: three for the upper hand and four for the lower.
  
  Recorders are made in various sizes and ranges. The sizes most commonly in use today are the soprano (also known as descant, lowest note C₅), alto (also known as treble, lowest note F₄), tenor (lowest note C₄), and bass (lowest note F₃). Recorders were traditionally constructed from wood or ivory. Modern professional instruments are wooden, often boxwood; student and scholastic recorders are commonly made of moulded plastic. The recorders' internal and external proportions vary, but the bore is generally reverse conical (i.e. tapering towards the foot) to cylindrical, and all recorder fingering systems make extensive use of forked fingerings. (Full article...)
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  Cover of a 1921 libretto for Giordano's Andrea Chénier

  
  A libretto (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 story line of a ballet or the texts of major liturgical works, such as the Mass, requiem, or sacred cantata.
  
  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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  Bruckner wearing the badge of the Order of Franz Joseph

  
  Joseph Anton Bruckner (/ˈbrʊknər/; German: [ˈantoːn ˈbʁʊknɐ] ^ⓘ; 4 September 1824 – 11 October 1896) was an Austrian composer and organist best known for his symphonies and sacred music, which includes Masses, Te Deum and motets. The symphonies are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, strongly polyphonic character, and considerable length. Bruckner's compositions helped to define contemporary musical radicalism, owing to their dissonances, unprepared modulations, and roving harmonies.
  
  Unlike other musical radicals such as Richard Wagner and Hugo Wolf, Bruckner showed respect, even humility, before other famous musicians, Wagner in particular. This apparent dichotomy between Bruckner the man and Bruckner the composer hampers efforts to describe his life in a way that gives a straightforward context for his music. The German conductor Hans von Bülow described him as "half genius, half simpleton". Bruckner was critical of his own work and often reworked his compositions. There are several versions of many of his works. (Full article...)

General images –

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

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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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  An example of a guitar from the classical period (from Classical period (music))
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  Richard Wagner in Paris, 1861
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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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  Bizet photographed by Étienne Carjat (1875) (from Romantic music)
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  Haydn portrait by Thomas Hardy, 1792 (from Classical period (music))
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  Jean-Baptiste Lully by Paul Mignard (from Baroque music)
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  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a representative composer of the Classical period, seated at a keyboard (from Classical period (music))
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  Claudio Monteverdi in 1640 (from Baroque music)
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  Ludwig van Beethoven (from Romantic music)
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  George Frideric Handel (from Baroque 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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  Daguerreotype of Chopin, c. 1849 (from Romantic music)
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  Franz Liszt in 1858, by Franz Hanfstaengl (from Romantic music)
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  The iconic Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi (1886) by Giovanni Boldini (from Romantic 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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  Hummel in 1814 (from Classical period (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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  Bernhard Crusell, a Swedish-Finnish composer and clarinetist, in 1826 (from Classical period (music))
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  Fortepiano by Paul McNulty after Walter & Sohn, c. 1805 (from Classical period (music))
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  Portrait of the Mozart Family, dated 1780–81 (from Classical period (music))
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  Portrait of Beethoven, 1820 (from Classical period (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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  Painting by Evaristo Baschenis of Baroque instruments, including a cittern, viola da gamba, violin, and two lutes (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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  Portrait of Mendelssohn by James Warren Childe, 1839 (from Classical period (music))
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  Josef Danhauser's 1840 painting Liszt at the Piano featuring 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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  View of Vienna in 1758, by Bernardo Bellotto (from Classical period (music))
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  Gustav Mahler, photographed in 1907 by Moritz Nähr at the end of his period as director of the Vienna Hofoper (from Romantic music)
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  Gluck, detail of Portrait of Christoph Willibald Gluck by Joseph Duplessis, dated 1775 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) (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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  Robert Schumann in an 1850 daguerreotype (from Romantic music)
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  Selection of Renaissance instruments (from Renaissance music)
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  Gerard van Honthorst, The Concert (1623), National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (from Renaissance music)
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  Balakirev (top), Cui (upper left), Mussorgsky (upper right), Rimsky-Korsakov (lower left), and Borodin (lower right). (from Romantic music)

Quotes –

“ Music, moody food of us that trade in love. ” — William Shakespeare

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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  Lutosławski in 1992

  
  Witold Roman Lutosławski (Polish: [ˈvitɔlt lutɔˈswafskʲi] ^ⓘ; 25 January 1913 – 7 February 1994) was a Polish composer and conductor. Among the major composers of 20th-century classical music, he is "generally regarded as the most significant Polish composer since Szymanowski, and possibly the greatest Polish composer since Chopin". His compositions—of which he was a notable conductor—include representatives of most traditional genres, aside from opera: symphonies, concertos, orchestral song cycles, other orchestral works, and chamber works. Among his best known works are his four symphonies, the Variations on a Theme by Paganini (1941), the Concerto for Orchestra (1954), and his cello concerto (1970).
  
  During his youth, Lutosławski studied piano and composition in Warsaw. His early works were influenced by Polish folk music and demonstrated a wide range of rich atmospheric textures. His folk-inspired music includes the Concerto for Orchestra (1954)—which first brought him international renown—and Dance Preludes (1955), which he described as a "farewell to folklore". From the late 1950s he began developing new, characteristic composition techniques. He introduced limited aleatoric elements, while retaining tight control of his music's material, architecture, and performance. He also evolved his practice of building harmonies from small groups of musical intervals. (Full article...)
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  Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera Peter Grimes (1945), the War Requiem (1962) and the orchestral showpiece The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1945).
  
  Britten was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the son of a dentist. He showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. Britten first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-scale operas for Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden, he wrote chamber operas for small forces; among the best known of these is The Turn of the Screw (1954). Recurring themes in his operas include the struggle of an outsider against a hostile society and the corruption of innocence. (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 sharakan (canonical hymn) 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 sharakan liturgy, Sahakdukht's oeuvre as a whole is thought to have exerted considerable influence on subsequent sharakans; 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...)
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  Poulenc in 1922

  
  Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (French: [fʁɑ̃sis ʒɑ̃ maʁsɛl pulɛ̃k]; 7 January 1899 – 30 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-known are the piano suite Mouvements perpétuels (1919), the ballet Les Biches (1923), the Concert champêtre (1928) for harpsichord and orchestra, the Organ Concerto (1938), the opera Dialogues des Carmélites (1957), and the Gloria (1959) for soprano, choir, and orchestra.
  
  As the only son of a prosperous manufacturer, Poulenc was expected to follow his father into the family firm, and he was not allowed to enrol at a conservatoire. He studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc also made the acquaintance of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as "Les Six". In his early works Poulenc became known for his high spirits and irreverence. During the 1930s a much more serious side to his nature emerged, particularly in the religious music he composed from 1936 onwards, which he alternated with his more light-hearted works. (Full article...)
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  Alan Dudley Bush (22 December 1900 – 31 October 1995) was a British composer, pianist, conductor, teacher and political activist. A committed communist, his uncompromising political beliefs were often reflected in his music. He composed prolifically across a range of genres but struggled through his lifetime for recognition from the British musical establishment, which largely ignored his works.
  
  From a prosperous middle-class background, Bush enjoyed considerable success as a student at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in the early 1920s and spent much of the decade furthering his compositional and piano-playing skills under distinguished tutors. A two-year period in Berlin from 1929 to 1931, early in the Nazi Party's rise to power, cemented Bush's political convictions and moved him from the mainstream Labour Party to the Communist Party of Great Britain, which he joined in 1935. He wrote several large-scale works in the 1930s and was heavily involved with workers' choirs, for whom he composed pageants, choruses and songs. His pro-Soviet stance led to the BBC temporarily banning his music in the early years of the Second World War, and his refusal to modify his position in the postwar Cold War era led to a more prolonged semi-ostracism of his music. As a result, the four major operas he wrote between 1950 and 1970 were all premiered in East Germany. (Full article...)
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  Tōru Takemitsu (武満 徹; pronounced [takeꜜmitsɯ̥ toːɾɯ]; 8 October 1930 – 20 February 1996) was a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music and writer on music. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu was admired for his subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre.
  
  In his early years, Takemitsu was also a founding member of the Jikken Kōbō (実験工房, experimental workshop) in Japan, a group of avant-garde artists who distanced themselves from academia and whose collaborative work is often regarded among the most influential of the 20th century. (Full article...)
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  Percy Aldridge Grainger (born George Percy Grainger; 8 July 1882 – 20 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist who moved to the United States in 1914 and became an American citizen in 1918. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. Although much of his work was experimental and unusual, the piece with which he is most generally associated is his piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune "Country Gardens".
  
  Grainger left Australia at the age of 13 to attend the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. Between 1901 and 1914 he was based in London, where he established himself first as a society pianist and later as a concert performer, composer, and collector of original folk melodies. As his reputation grew he met many of the significant figures in European music, forming important friendships with Frederick Delius and Edvard Grieg. He became a champion of Nordic music and culture, his enthusiasm for which he often expressed in private letters, sometimes in crudely racist or antisemitic terms. (Full article...)
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  Rebecca Helferich Clarke (27 August 1886 – 13 October 1979) was a British classical composer and violist. Internationally renowned as a viola virtuoso, she also became one of the first female professional orchestral players in London.
  
  Clarke had a German mother and an American father, and spent substantial periods of her life in the United States, where she permanently settled after World War II. She was born in Harrow and studied at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music in London. Stranded in the United States at the outbreak of World War II, she married composer and pianist James Friskin in 1944. Clarke died at her home in New York at the age of 93. (Full article...)
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  Walton in 1976

  
  Sir William Turner Walton (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 Lancashire, the son of a classical 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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  Berlioz by August Prinzhofer, 1845

  
  Louis-Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer, conductor and critic. His output includes orchestral works such as the Symphonie fantastique and Harold in Italy, choral pieces including the Requiem and L'Enfance du Christ, his three operas Benvenuto Cellini, Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict, and works of hybrid genres such as the "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette and the "dramatic legend" La Damnation de Faust.
  
  The elder son of a provincial physician, Berlioz was expected to follow his father into medicine, and he attended a Parisian medical college before defying his family by taking up music as a profession. His independence of mind and refusal to follow traditional rules and formulas put him at odds with the conservative musical establishment of Paris. He briefly moderated his style sufficiently to win France's premier music prize – the Prix de Rome – in 1830, but he learned little from the academics of the Paris Conservatoire. Opinion was divided for many years between those who thought him an original genius and those who viewed his music as lacking in form and coherence. (Full article...)
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  First page of The Pilgrim: Grand Overture by Douglass

  
  
  John Thomas Douglass (1847–1886) was an American composer, virtuoso violinist, conductor and teacher. He is best known for composing Virginia's Ball (1868), which is generally regarded as the first opera written by an African-American composer. The work is now lost, and his only extant composition is The Pilgrim: Grand Overture (1878) for piano. His biography from James Monroe Trotter's Music and Some Highly Musical People (1878)—in which The Pilgrim survives—reports that he wrote many now lost pieces for piano, orchestra and particularly guitar, which he was known to play.
  
  A highly regarded violinist, Douglass's violin playing received high praise during his lifetime. In addition to his solo career, he traveled with various groups throughout the 1870s, including the Hyers Sisters. He settled in New York by the 1880s and conducted both a music studio and string ensemble. Later in life he led a teaching studio, and among his students was David Mannes who became the concertmaster of the New York Symphony Orchestra. Nearly 30 years after Douglass's death at age 38–39, Mannes founded the Colored Music Settlement School in the memory of his teacher. (Full article...)
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  1898 portrait

  
  Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (18 March 1844 – 21 June 1908) was a Russian composer, a member of the group of composers known as The Five. His best-known orchestral compositions—Capriccio Espagnol, the Russian Easter Festival Overture, and the symphonic suite Scheherazade—are staples of the classical music repertoire, along with suites and excerpts from some of his fifteen operas. Scheherazade is an example of his frequent use of fairy-tale and folk subjects. He was the husband of the composer Nadezhda Rimskaya-Korsakova.
  
  Rimsky-Korsakov believed in developing a nationalistic style of classical music, employing Russian folk song and lore along with exotic harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements in a practice known as musical orientalism, and eschewing traditional Western compositional methods. Rimsky-Korsakov appreciated Western musical techniques after he became a professor of musical composition, harmony, and orchestration at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871. He undertook a rigorous three-year program of self-education and became a master of Western methods, incorporating them alongside the influences of Mikhail Glinka and fellow members of The Five. Rimsky-Korsakov's techniques of composition and orchestration were further enriched by his exposure to the works of Richard Wagner. (Full article...)
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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 gained wide acceptance into Elgar's oeuvre. Payne is particularly noted for his chamber music, much of which was written for his wife, the soprano Jane Manning, and the couple's new music ensemble Jane's Minstrels. Initially an unrelenting proponent of modernist music, by the 1980s his compositions had embraced aspects of the late English romanticism, described by his colleague Susan Bradshaw as "modernized nostalgia".
  
  Born in London, Payne first seriously studied music at Durham University. His professional career began around 1969 with his first major work, the staunchly modernist Phoenix Mass for choir and brass band. He continued to write choral and vocal works, almost exclusively to British poets. From his 1981 chamber work A Day in the Life of a Mayfly on, he synthesised modernism with the English romanticism of 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 his successful completion of Elgar's unfinished third symphony, Payne became unsure of his musical identity. He found difficulty in subsequent composition until a series of orchestral works for the Proms, Visions and Journeys (2002), The Period of Cosmographie (2010) and Of Land, Sea and Sky (2016). (Full article...)
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  Jane Marian Joseph (31 May 1894 – 9 March 1929) was an English composer, arranger, and music teacher. She was a pupil and later associate of the composer Gustav Holst, and was instrumental in the organisation and management of various of the music festivals which Holst sponsored. Many of her works were composed for performance at these festivals and similar occasions. Her early death at age 34, which prevented the full realisation of her talents, was considered by her contemporaries as a considerable loss to English music.
  
  Holst first observed Joseph's potential when he was teaching her composition at St Paul's Girls' School. She began to act as his amanuensis in 1914, when he was composing The Planets, her special responsibility being the preparation of the score for the "Neptune" movement. She continued to assist Holst with transcriptions, arrangements and translations, and was his librettist for the choral ballet The Golden Goose. (Full article...)
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  Valerie Muriel Rodway (February 12, 1919 – August 1970) was a Guyanese composer of cultural and patriotic songs, inspired by the events leading up to Guyana's independence in 1966. She is best known for composing music to accompany Guyana national poetry, like Arise, Guyana, Kanaïma, and the Martin Carter's Guyanese Independence poem Let Freedom Awaken. For the next two decades, school children were taught the songs she and others composed to inspire patriotism and cultural affinity. She selected the poetry for her compositions based upon her principles and values, first developed among her parents and siblings.
  
  She has been considered Guyana's greatest composer of patriotic and national music, and among the best composers from Guyana of the 20th century, generally and among composers of classical music. She was awarded the Wordsworth McAndrew Award posthumously in 2002. In 2019, she was awarded the Cacique Crown of Honor, one of the highest honors of Guyana. The National Trust of Guyana building in Cummingsburg, Georgetown, has been renamed the Valerie Rodway House in her honor. (Full article...)

Did you know (auto-generated) –

• ... that opera singer Charles Holland spent much of his career in Europe as opportunities in classical music for African Americans were limited?
• ... that WFMT classical music radio host Don Tait owned such a large collection of recordings that he had to buy a house and have its floor reinforced to accommodate the weight?

Selected image

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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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  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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  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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  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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  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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  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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  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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  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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  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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  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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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
• Franz Liszt
• 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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Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Article requests: Requested compositions articles  • Requested music articles Cleanup: Classical music articles needing attention More: WikiProject Classical music to do list

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