Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin (12 November 1833 – 27 February 1887) was a Russian chemist and Romantic musical composer of Georgian ancestry. He was one of the prominent 19th-century composers known as "The Mighty Handful", a group dedicated to producing a uniquely Russian kind of classical music, rather than imitating earlier Western European models. Borodin is known best for his symphonies, his two string quartets, the symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia and his opera Prince Igor. Music from Prince Igor and his string quartets was later adapted for the US musical Kismet.
A doctor and chemist by profession and training, Borodin made important early contributions to organic chemistry. Although he is presently known better as a composer, during his lifetime, he regarded medicine and science as his primary occupations, only practising music and composition in his spare time or when he was ill. As a chemist, Borodin is known best for his work concerning organic synthesis, including being among the first chemists to demonstrate nucleophilic substitution, as well as being the co-discoverer of the aldol reaction. Borodin was a promoter of education in Russia and founded the School of Medicine for Women in Saint Petersburg, where he taught until 1885.
Alexander Borodin
Prince Igor
For more:
http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com
#MusicHistory
#ClassicalMusic
#Borodin
John Philip Sousa (November 6, 1854 – March 6, 1932) was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era known primarily for American military marches. He is known as "The March King" or the "American March King", to distinguish him from his British counterpart Kenneth J. Alford who is also known as "The March King". Among his best-known marches are "The Stars and Stripes Forever" (National March of the United States of America), "Semper Fidelis" (official march of the United States Marine Corps), "The Liberty Bell", "The Thunderer", and "The Washington Post".
Sousa began his career playing violin and studying music theory and composition under John Esputa and George Felix Benkert. His father enlisted him in the United States Marine Band as an apprentice in 1868. He left the band in 1875 and learned to conduct. From 1880 until his death, he focused exclusively on conducting and writing music. He eventually rejoined the Marine Band and served there for 12 years as director, after which he organized his own band. Sousa aided in the development of the sousaphone, a large brass instrument similar to the helicon and tuba.
Upon the outbreak of World War I, Sousa was awarded a wartime commission of lieutenant commander to lead the Naval Reserve Band in Illinois. He then returned to conduct the Sousa Band until his death in 1932. (In the 1920s, he was promoted to the permanent rank of lieutenant commander in the naval reserve, but he never saw active service again.)
John Philip Sousa
With Pleasure
For more:
http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com
#MusicHistory
#ClassicalMusic
#Sousa
Arvo Pärt - Fur Alina
Arvo Pärt (11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of classical and religious music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-invented compositional technique, tintinnabuli. Pärt's music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. His most performed works include Fratres (1977), Spiegel im Spiegel (1978), and Für Alina (1976). From 2011 to 2018, Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world, then the second most performed. The Arvo Pärt Centre, in Laulasmaa, was opened to the public in 2018.
For more:
http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com
Albert Ketèlbey - In a Monastery Garden
Albert William Ketèlbey (/kəˈtɛlbi/; born Ketelbey; 9 August 1875 – 26 November 1959) was an English composer, conductor and pianist, best known for his short pieces of light orchestral music. He was born in Birmingham and moved to London in 1889 to study at Trinity College of Music. After a brilliant studentship he did not pursue the classical career predicted for him, becoming musical director of the Vaudeville Theatre before gaining fame as a composer of light music and as a conductor of his own works.
For many years Ketèlbey worked for a series of music publishers, including Chappell & Co and the Columbia Graphophone Company, making arrangements for smaller orchestras, a period in which he learned to write fluent and popular music. He also found great success writing music for silent films until the advent of talking films in the late 1920s.
The composer's early works in conventional classical style were well received, but it was for his light orchestral pieces that he became best known. One of his earliest works in the genre, In a Monastery Garden (1915), sold over a million copies and brought him to widespread notice; his later musical depictions of exotic scenes caught the public imagination and established his fortune. Such works as In a Persian Market (1920), In a Chinese Temple Garden (1923), and In the Mystic Land of Egypt (1931) became best-sellers in print and on records; by the late 1920s he was Britain's first millionaire composer. His celebrations of British scenes were equally popular: examples include Cockney Suite (1924) with its scenes of London life, and his ceremonial music for royal events. His works were frequently recorded during his heyday, and a substantial part of his output has been put on CD in more recent years.
Ketèlbey's popularity began to wane during the Second World War and his originality also declined; many of his post-war works were re-workings of older pieces and he increasingly found his music ignored by the BBC. In 1949 he moved to the Isle of Wight, where he spent his retirement, and he died at home in obscurity. His work has been reappraised since his death; in a 2003 poll by the BBC radio programme Your Hundred Best Tunes, Bells Across the Meadows was voted the 36th most popular tune of all time and the last night of the 2009 Proms season marked the fiftieth anniversary of Ketèlbey's death—the first time his music had been included in the festival's finale.
For more:
http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com
Johann Gottfried Walther
Lobe den Herren
For more:
http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com
Kaiser-Walzer, Op. 437 (Emperor Waltz) is a waltz composed by Johann Strauss II in 1889. The waltz was originally titled Hand in Hand and was intended as a toast made in August of that year by Emperor of Austria Franz Joseph I on the occasion of his visit to the German Emperor Wilhelm II where it was symbolic as a 'toast of friendship' extended by Austria-Hungary to the German Empire.
Strauss' publisher, Fritz Simrock, suggested the title Kaiser-Walzer since the title could allude to either monarch, and thus satisfy the vanity of both rulers. The waltz was first performed in Berlin on 21 October 1889. The original cover of the piano edition bore the illustration of the Austrian Imperial Crown.
Johann Strauss
Emperor Waltz Op. 437
For more:
http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com
#MusicHistory
#ClassicalMusic
#Strauss
Giovanni Croce - Cantate Domino
Giovanni Croce (also Ioanne a Cruce Clodiensis, Zuanne Chiozotto; 1557 – 15 May 1609) was an Italian composer of the late Renaissance, of the Venetian School. He was particularly prominent as a madrigalist, one of the few among the Venetians other than Monteverdi and Andrea Gabrieli.
He was born in Chioggia, a fishing town on the Adriatic coast south of Venice, the same town as Gioseffo Zarlino, and he came to Venice early, becoming a member of the boy's choir at St. Mark's under Zarlino's direction by the time he was eight years old. Zarlino evidently found him in a choir in Chioggia Cathedral, and recruited him for St. Mark's.[1] Croce may have been a parish priest at the church of Santa Maria Formosa, and he took holy orders in 1585; during this period he also served as a singer at St. Mark's. He evidently maintained some connection, probably as a director of music, with Santa Maria Formosa alongside his duties at St. Mark's.
After the death of Zarlino, he became assistant maestro di cappella; this was during the tenure of Baldassare Donato. When Donato died in 1603 Croce took over the principal job as maestro di cappella but the singing standards of the famous St. Mark's cathedral declined under his direction, most likely due more to his declining health than his lack of musicianship. He died in 1609; the position of maestro di cappella went to Giulio Cesare Martinengo until 1613, at which time Monteverdi took the job.
For more:
http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com
Antonio Vivaldi
Nulla in mundo pax sincera, RV 630, is a sacred motet composed by Antonio Vivaldi in 1735 to an anonymous Latin text, the title of which may be translated as "In this world there is no honest peace" or "There is no true peace in this world without bitterness". Written in the key of E major and in the typical lyrical Italian Baroque style, it is scored for solo soprano, two violins, viola and basso continuo, this would normally be a cello and keyboard instrument, in Vivaldi's case often the organ. The text dwells on the imperfections of a world full of evil and sin, and praises Jesus for the salvation he offers from it. It is considered to be one of Vivaldi's most beautiful solo motets.
The motet consists of three parts (Aria; Recitative; Aria), followed by a concluding Alleluia. A full performance of the piece takes approximately 13 minutes.
Nulla in mundo pax sincera RV 630
1. I Nulla in mundo pax sincera 6:43
2. II Blando colore oculos mundus decipit 4:44
III Spirat anguis inter flores
3. Alleluia 2:02
For more:
http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com
#MusicHistory
#ClassicalMusic
#Vivaldi
Johann Strauss - Polka Champagne Op. 211
Johann Strauss I (German: Johann Baptist Strauß, Johann Strauss (Vater); also Johann Baptist Strauss, Johann Strauss Sr., the Elder, the Father; March 14, 1804 – September 25, 1849) was an Austrian Romantic composer. He was famous for his waltzes, and he popularized them alongside Joseph Lanner, thereby setting the foundations for his sons to carry on his musical dynasty. He is perhaps best known for his composition of the Radetzky March (named after Joseph Radetzky von Radetz).
For more:
http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com
#MusicHistory
#ClassicalMusic
#Strauss
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Draghi (4 January 1710 – 16 or 17 March 1736), often referred to as Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (Italian: [perɡoˈleːzi; -eːsi]), was an Italian composer, violinist and organist. His best-known works include his Stabat Mater and the opera La serva padrona (The Maid Turned Mistress). His compositions include operas and sacred music. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 26.
Born in Jesi in what is now the Province of Ancona (but was then part of the Papal States), he was commonly given the nickname "Pergolesi", a demonym indicating in Italian the residents of Pergola, Marche, the birthplace of his ancestors. He studied music in Jesi under a local musician, Francesco Santi, before going to Naples in 1725, where he studied under Gaetano Greco and Francesco Feo among others. On leaving the conservatory in 1731, he won some renown by performing the oratorio in two parts La fenice sul rogo, o vero La morte di San Giuseppe [it] ("The Phoenix on the Pyre, or The Death of Saint Joseph"), and the dramma sacro in three acts, Li prodigi della divina grazia nella conversione e morte di san Guglielmo duca d’Aquitania ("The Miracles of Divine Grace in the Conversion and Death of Saint William, Duke of Aquitaine"). He spent most of his brief life working for aristocratic patrons like Ferdinando Colonna, Prince of Stigliano, and Domenico Marzio Carafa, Duke of Maddaloni.
Pergolesi was one of the most important early composers of opera buffa (comic opera). His opera seria, Il prigionier superbo, contained the two-act buffa intermezzo, La serva padrona (The Servant Mistress, 28 August 1733), which became a very popular work in its own right. When it was performed in Paris in 1752, it prompted the so-called Querelle des Bouffons ("quarrel of the comic actors") between supporters of serious French opera by the likes of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Jean-Philippe Rameau and supporters of new Italian comic opera. Pergolesi was held up as a model of the Italian style during this quarrel, which divided Paris's musical community for two years.
Among Pergolesi's other operatic works are his first opera La Salustia (1732), Lo frate 'nnamorato (The brother in love, 1732, to a text in the Neapolitan language), L'Olimpiade (January 1735) and Il Flaminio (1735, to a text in the Neapolitan language). All his operas were premiered in Naples, apart from L'Olimpiade, which was first given in Rome.
Pergolesi also wrote sacred music, including a Mass in F and three Salve Regina settings. The Lenten Hymn ‘God of Mercy and Compassion’ by Redemptorist priest Edmund Vaughan is most commonly set to a tune adapted by Pergolesi. It is his Stabat Mater (1736), however, for soprano, alto, string orchestra and basso continuo, which is his best-known sacred work. It was commissioned by the Confraternita dei Cavalieri di San Luigi di Palazzo, which presented an annual Good Friday meditation in honor of the Virgin Mary. Pergolesi's work replaced one composed by Alessandro Scarlatti only nine years before, but which was already perceived as "old-fashioned," so rapidly had public tastes changed.
While classical in scope, the opening section of the setting demonstrates Pergolesi's mastery of the Italian baroque durezze e ligature style, characterized by numerous suspensions over a faster, conjunct bassline. The work remained popular, becoming the most frequently printed musical work of the 18th century, and being arranged by a number of other composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach, who reorchestrated and adapted it for a non-Marian text in his cantata Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden (Root out my sins, Highest One), BWV 1083.
Pergolesi wrote a number of secular instrumental works, including a violin sonata and a violin concerto. A considerable number of instrumental and sacred works once attributed to Pergolesi have since been shown to be misattributed. Much of Igor Stravinsky's ballet Pulcinella, which ostensibly reworks pieces by Pergolesi, is actually based on works by other composers, especially Domenico Gallo. The Concerti Armonici are now known to have been composed by Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer. Many colorful anecdotes related by Pergolesi's 19th-century biographer, Francesco Florimo, were later revealed as hoaxes.
Magnificat in C major
1. Magnificat 2:49
2. Et misericordia 1:44
3. Deposuit 1:47
4. Suscepit Israel 1:51
5. Sicut locutus est... Gloria 3:34
For more:
http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com