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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  The cello (/ˈtʃɛloʊ/ CHEL-oh; plural celli or cellos) or violoncello (/ˌvaɪələnˈtʃɛloʊ/ VY-ə-lən-CHEL-oh; Italian pronunciation: [vjolonˈtʃɛllo]) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C₂, G₂, D₃ and A₃. The viola's four strings are each an octave higher. Music for the cello is generally written in the bass clef, with tenor clef, and treble clef used for higher-range passages.
  
  Played by a cellist or violoncellist, it enjoys a large solo repertoire with and without accompaniment, as well as numerous concerti. As a solo instrument, the cello uses its whole range, from bass to soprano, and in chamber music such as string quartets and the orchestra's string section, it often plays the bass part, where it may be reinforced an octave lower by the double basses. Figured bass music of the Baroque-era typically assumes a cello, viola da gamba or bassoon as part of the basso continuo group alongside chordal instruments such as organ, harpsichord, lute, or theorbo. Cellos are found in many other ensembles, from modern Chinese orchestras to cello rock bands. (Full article...)
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  A performance of Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony in the Kölner Philharmonie by the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal conducted by Heinz Walter Florin

  
  A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts (e.g., Beethoven's Ninth Symphony). (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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  Portrait of Francisco D'Andrade in the title role by Max Slevogt, 1912

  
  Don Giovanni (Italian pronunciation: [dɔn dʒoˈvanni]; K. 527; Vienna (1788) title: Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni, literally The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni) is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanish legend about a libertine as told by playwright Tirso de Molina in his 1630 play El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra. It is a dramma giocoso blending comedy, melodrama and supernatural elements (although the composer entered it into his catalogue simply as opera buffa). It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the National Theater (of Bohemia), now called the Estates Theatre, on 29 October 1787. Don Giovanni is regarded as one of the greatest operas of all time and has proved a fruitful subject for commentary in its own right; critic Fiona Maddocks has described it as one of Mozart's "trio of masterpieces with librettos by Da Ponte". (Full article...)
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  Brahms in 1885

  
  The Piano Concerto No. 2 in B♭ major, Op. 83, by Johannes Brahms is separated by a gap of 22 years from his first piano concerto. Brahms began work on the piece in 1878 and completed it in 1881 while in Pressbaum near Vienna. It took him three years to work on this concerto, which indicates that he was always self-critical. He wrote to Clara Schumann: "I want to tell you that I have written a very small piano concerto with a very small and pretty scherzo." Ironically, he was describing a huge piece. This concerto is dedicated to his teacher, Eduard Marxsen. The public premiere of the concerto was given in Budapest on 9 November 1881, with Brahms as soloist and the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, and was an immediate success. He proceeded to perform the piece in many cities across Europe. (Full article...)
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  Paganini in 1836 by John Whittle

  
  Niccolò (or Nicolò) Paganini (Italian: [ni(k)koˈlɔ ppaɡaˈniːni] (listen); 27 October 1782 – 27 May 1840) was an Italian violinist 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 and have served as an inspiration for many prominent composers. (Full article...)
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  Second page of O dolcezz'amarissime d'amore, showing series of runs among three soprano lines with accompaniment. The music is notated on three soprano clefs (as opposed to treble clefs) and features a preponderance of thirty-second notes.

  
  
  The concerto delle donne (lit. 'consort of ladies'; also concerto di donne or concerto delle (or di) dame) was a group of professional female singers in the late Italian Renaissance, primarily in the court of Ferrara, Italy. Renowned for their technical and artistic virtuosity, the ensemble was founded by Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara, in 1580 and was active until the court was dissolved in 1597. Giacomo Vincenti, a music publisher, praised the women as "virtuose giovani" (young virtuosas), echoing the sentiments of contemporaneous diarists and commentators.
  
  The origins of the ensemble lay in an amateur group of high-placed courtiers who performed for each other within the context of the Duke's informal musica secreta (lit. 'secret music') in the 1570s. The ensemble evolved into an all-female group of professional musicians, the concerto delle donne, who performed formal concerts for members of the inner circle of the court and important visitors. Their signature style of florid, highly ornamented singing brought prestige to Ferrara and inspired composers of the time. (Full article...)
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  Rachmaninoff in 1921

  
  Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff (1 April [O.S. 20 March] 1873 – 28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom notable for its song-like melodicism, expressiveness and rich orchestral colours. The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output and he made a point of using his skills as a performer to fully explore the expressive and technical possibilities of the instrument.
  
  Born into a musical family, Rachmaninoff took up the piano at the age of four. He studied with Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev at the Moscow Conservatory and graduated in 1892, having already composed several piano and orchestral pieces. In 1897, following the disastrous premiere of his Symphony No. 1, Rachmaninoff entered a four-year depression and composed little until successful supportive therapy allowed him to complete his enthusiastically received Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1901. In the course of the next sixteen years, Rachmaninoff conducted at the Bolshoi Theatre, relocated to Dresden, Germany, and toured the United States for the first time. (Full article...)
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  Final rehearsal for the world premiere in the Neue Musik-Festhalle in Munich

  
  The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. As it requires huge instrumental and vocal forces it is frequently called the "Symphony of a Thousand", although the work is normally presented with far fewer than a thousand performers and the composer did not sanction that name – actually, he disapproved of it. The work was composed in a single inspired burst at his Maiernigg villa in southern Austria in the summer of 1906. The last of Mahler's works that was premiered in his lifetime, the symphony was a critical and popular success when he conducted the Munich Philharmonic in its first performance, in Munich, on 12 September 1910.
  
  The fusion of song and symphony had been a characteristic of Mahler's early works. In his "middle" compositional period after 1901, a change of style led him to produce three purely instrumental symphonies. The Eighth, marking the end of the middle period, returns to a combination of orchestra and voice in a symphonic context. The structure of the work is unconventional: instead of the normal framework of several movements, the piece is in two parts ("1." and "2. Teil"). Part I is based on the Latin text of Veni creator spiritus ("Come, Creator Spirit"), a ninth-century Christian hymn for Pentecost, and Part II is a setting of the words from the closing scene of Goethe's Faust. The two parts are unified by a common idea, that of redemption through the power of love, a unity conveyed through shared musical themes. (Full article...)
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  Mahler in 1892

  
  The Symphony No. 2 in C minor by Gustav Mahler, known as the Resurrection Symphony, was written between 1888 and 1894, and first performed in 1895. This symphony was one of Mahler's most popular and successful works during his lifetime. It was his first major work that established his lifelong view of the beauty of afterlife and resurrection. In this large work, the composer further developed the creativity of "sound of the distance" and creating a "world of its own", aspects already seen in his First Symphony. The work has a duration of 80 to 90 minutes, and is conventionally labelled as being in the key of C minor; the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians labels the work's tonality as C minor–E♭ major. It was voted the fifth-greatest symphony of all time in a survey of conductors carried out by the BBC Music Magazine. (Full article...)
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  Aaron Copland as subject of a Young People's Concert, 1970
  

  
  Aaron Copland (/ˈkoʊplənd/, KOHP-lənd; November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Composers". The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his music are typical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. He is best known for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as "populist" and which the composer labeled his "vernacular" style. Works in this vein include the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid and Rodeo, his Fanfare for the Common Man and Third Symphony. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres, including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores.
  
  After some initial studies with composer Rubin Goldmark, Copland traveled to Paris, where he first studied with Isidor Philipp and Paul Vidal, then with noted pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. He studied three years with Boulanger, whose eclectic approach to music inspired his own broad taste. Determined upon his return to the U.S. to make his way as a full-time composer, Copland gave lecture-recitals, wrote works on commission and did some teaching and writing. However, he found that composing orchestral music in the modernist style, which he had adopted while studying abroad, was a financially contradictory approach, particularly in light of the Great Depression. He shifted in the mid-1930s to a more accessible musical style which mirrored the German idea of Gebrauchsmusik ("music for use"), music that could serve utilitarian and artistic purposes. During the Depression years, he traveled extensively to Europe, Africa, and Mexico, formed an important friendship with Mexican composer Carlos Chávez and began composing his signature works. (Full article...)
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  Cover of a very early vocal score, c. 1872

  
  Aida (or Aïda, Italian: [aˈiːda]) is an 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...)

General images -

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

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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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  Marc-Antoine Charpentier (from Baroque 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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  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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  Portrait of Mendelssohn by James Warren Childe, 1839 (from Classical period (music))

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

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  Claudio Monteverdi in 1640 (from Baroque music)

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

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

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  Fortepiano by Paul McNulty after Walter & Sohn, c. 1805 (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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  George Frideric Handel (from Baroque music)

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  Johann Sebastian Bach, 1748 (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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  Haydn portrait by Thomas Hardy, 1792 (from Classical period (music))

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  Hummel in 1814 (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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  Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820 (from Classical period (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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  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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  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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  1875 oil painting of Franz Schubert by Wilhelm August Rieder, after his own 1825 watercolor portrait (from Classical period (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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  View of Vienna in 1758, by Bernardo Bellotto (from Classical period (music))

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  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (seated at the keyboard) (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)

Quotes -

“ If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. ” — Gustav Mahler

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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  Schyman at Gamescom 2018

  
  Garry Schyman is an American film, television, and video game music composer. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in music composition in 1978, and began work in the television industry, writing music for such television series as Magnum, P.I. and The A-Team. By 1986, he was composing for movies such as Judgement and Hit List. At the request of a friend in 1993, he composed the music for the video game Voyeur, but after creating the music for two more games he left the industry, citing the low budgets and poor quality of video game music at the time. He continued to compose for film and television, only to return to video games for 2005's Destroy All Humans!. Finding that in his absence the quality and perceived importance of video game music had risen substantially, he has since composed for several games, writing the scores to BioShock and Dante's Inferno among others. He still composes for film however, his latest being Brush with Danger directed by young Indonesian director Livi Zheng. He has won numerous awards for his video game scores, including several "soundtrack of the year" awards. During his career, he has worked on over 25 television shows, 10 films, and 13 video games. (Full article...)
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  Soule in 2010

  
  Jeremy Soule (/ˈsoʊl/; born December 19, 1975) is an American composer of soundtracks for film, television, and video games. He has composed soundtracks for over 60 games and over a dozen other works during his career, including The Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars, Icewind Dale, and the Harry Potter series.
  
  He became an employee of Square in 1994 after several years of private composition studies. After finishing the soundtrack to Secret of Evermore in 1995, he left to join Humongous Entertainment, where he composed for several children's games as well as Total Annihilation, his first award-winning score. In 2000, he left to form his own music production company, Soule Media, now called Artistry Entertainment. In 2005, he founded DirectSong, a record label that published digital versions of his soundtracks as well as those of classical composers. DirectSong was subject to a class action lawsuit in 2015 but remained active until the late 2010s. (Full article...)
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  Portrait c. 1888 by Émile Reutlinger

  
  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (/tʃaɪˈkɒfski/ chy-KOF-skee; Russian: Пётр Ильич Чайковский, romanized: Pyotr Il'ich Chaykovskiy; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, his First Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, the Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, several symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin.
  
  Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant as there was little opportunity for a musical career in Russia at the time and no system of public music education. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1865. The formal Western-oriented teaching that he received there set him apart from composers of the contemporary nationalist movement embodied by the Russian composers of The Five with whom his professional relationship was mixed. (Full article...)
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  Fauré in 1907

  
  
  Gabriel Urbain Fauré (French: [ɡabʁi.ɛl yʁbɛ̃ foʁe]; 12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style.
  
  Fauré was born into a cultured but not especially musical family. His talent became clear when he was a young boy. At the age of nine, he was sent to the École Niedermeyer music college in Paris, where he was trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. Among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a lifelong friend. After graduating from the college in 1865, Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition. When he became successful in his middle age, holding the important posts of organist of the Église de la Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he still lacked time for composing; he retreated to the countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on composition. By his last years, he was recognised in France as the leading French composer of his day. An unprecedented national musical tribute was held for him in Paris in 1922, headed by the president of the French Republic. Outside France, Fauré's music took decades to become widely accepted, except in Britain, where he had many admirers during his lifetime. (Full article...)
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  Sir John Stainer

  
  Sir John Stainer (6 June 1840 – 31 March 1901) was an English composer and organist whose music, though seldom performed today (with the exception of The Crucifixion, still heard at Passiontide in some churches of the Anglican Communion), was very popular during his lifetime. His work as choir trainer and organist set standards for Anglican church music that are still influential. He was also active as an academic, becoming Heather Professor of Music at Oxford.
  
  Stainer was born in Southwark, London, in 1840, the son of a schoolmaster. He became a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral when aged ten and was appointed to the position of organist at St Michael's College, Tenbury at the age of sixteen. He later became organist at Magdalen College, Oxford, and subsequently organist at St Paul's Cathedral. When he retired owing to his poor eyesight and deteriorating health, he returned to Oxford to become Professor of Music at the university. He died unexpectedly while on holiday in Italy in 1901. (Full article...)
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  Egardus (fl. 1400; also Engardus or Johannes Echgaerd) was a European Medieval composer of ars subtilior. Almost no information survives about his life, and only three of his works are known. A certain "Johannes Ecghaerd", who held chaplaincies in Bruges and Diksmuide, may be a possible match for Egardus. The extant works—a canon and two Glorias—appear to be less complex than music by mid-century composers, possibly because they date from either very early or very late in Egardus' career. (Full article...)
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  Arthur Sullivan in 1888

  
  Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO (13 May 1842 – 22 November 1900) was an English composer. He is best known for 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. His works include 24 operas, 11 major orchestral works, ten choral works and oratorios, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous church pieces, songs, and piano and chamber pieces. His hymns and songs include "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "The Lost Chord".
  
  The son of a military bandmaster, Sullivan composed his first anthem at the age of eight and was later a soloist in the boys' choir of the Chapel Royal. In 1856, at 14, he was awarded the first Mendelssohn Scholarship by the Royal Academy of Music, which allowed him to study at the academy and then at the Leipzig Conservatoire in Germany. His graduation piece, incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest (1861), was received with acclaim on its first performance in London. Among his early major works were a ballet, L'Île Enchantée (1864), a symphony, a cello concerto (both 1866), and his Overture di Ballo (1870). To supplement the income from his concert works he wrote hymns, parlour ballads and other light pieces, and worked as a church organist and music teacher. (Full article...)
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  Lutosławski in 1992

  
  Witold Roman Lutosławski (Polish: [ˈvitɔld lutɔsˈwafski] (listen); 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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  Grainger in 1919

  
  Percy Aldridge Grainger (born George Percy Grainger; 8 July 1882 – 20 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist who lived in the United States from 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 racial or anti-Semitic terms. (Full article...)
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  Erik William Chisholm (4 January 1904 – 8 June 1965) was a Scottish composer, pianist, organist and conductor sometimes known as "Scotland's forgotten composer". According to his biographer, Chisholm "was the first composer to absorb Celtic idioms into his music in form as well as content, his achievement paralleling that of Bartók in its depth of understanding and its daring", which led some to give him the nickname "MacBartók". As composer, performer and impresario, he played an important role in the musical life of Glasgow between the two World Wars and was a founder of the Celtic Ballet and, together with Margaret Morris, created the first full-length Scottish ballet, The Forsaken Mermaid. After World War II he was Professor and Head of the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town for 19 years until his death. Chisholm founded the South African College of Music opera company in Cape Town and was a vital force in bringing new operas to Scotland, England and South Africa. By the time of his death in 1965, he had composed over a hundred works. (Full article...)
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  Debussy in 1908

  
  
  (Achille) Claude Debussy (French: [aʃil klod dəbysi]; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
  
  Born to a family of modest means and little cultural involvement, Debussy showed enough musical talent to be admitted at the age of ten to France's leading music college, the Conservatoire de Paris. He originally studied the piano, but found his vocation in innovative composition, despite the disapproval of the Conservatoire's conservative professors. He took many years to develop his mature style, and was nearly 40 when he achieved international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completed, Pelléas et Mélisande. (Full article...)
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  Clarke with a viola in 1919

  
  
  Rebecca Helferich Clarke (27 August 1886 – 13 October 1979) was a British-American classical composer and violist. Internationally renowned as a viola virtuoso, she also became one of the first female professional orchestral players. Rebecca Clarke claimed both British and American nationalities 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.
  
  Although Clarke's output was not large, her work was recognised for its compositional skill and artistic power. Some of her works have yet to be published (and many were only recently published); those that were published in her lifetime were largely forgotten after she stopped composing. Scholarship and interest in her compositions revived in 1976. The Rebecca Clarke Society was established in 2000 to promote the study and performance of her music. (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 35, 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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  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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  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...)

Did you know (auto-generated) -

• ... 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 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?
• ... that the manager of WVSS at the University of Wisconsin–Stout spent about $6,000 of his own money to buy more than 500 classical music CDs to program the station?
• ... that Jasraj, a Hindustani classical musician, is still teaching music at age 90, including via Skype?
• ... that the conductor Im Won-sik is considered the "father of Korea's classical music world"?

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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  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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  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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  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.
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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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  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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  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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  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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  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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  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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  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.

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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