Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst; 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite The Planets, he composed a large number of other works across a range of genres, although none achieved comparable success. His distinctive compositional style was the product of many influences, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss being most crucial early in his development. The subsequent inspiration of the English folksong revival of the early 20th century, and the example of such rising modern composers as Maurice Ravel, led Holst to develop and refine an individual style. There were professional musicians in the previous three generations of Holst's family and it was clear from his early years that he would follow the same calling. He hoped to become a pianist, but was prevented by neuritis in his right arm. Despite his father's reservations, he pursued a career as a composer, studying at the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford. Unable to support himself by his compositions, he played the trombone professionally and later became a teacher—a great one, according to his colleague Ralph Vaughan Williams. Among other teaching activities he built up a strong tradition of performance at Morley College, where he served as musical director from 1907 until 1924, and pioneered music education for women at St Paul's Girls' School, where he taught from 1905 until his death in 1934. He was the founder of a series of Whitsun music festivals, which ran from 1916 for the remainder of his life. Holst's works were played frequently in the early years of the 20th century, but it was not until the international success of The Planets in the years immediately after the First World War that he became a well-known figure. A shy man, he did not welcome this fame, and preferred to be left in peace to compose and teach. In his later years his uncompromising, personal style of composition struck many music lovers as too austere, and his brief popularity declined. Nevertheless, he was a significant influence on a number of younger English composers, including Edmund Rubbra, Michael Tippett and Benjamin Britten. Apart from The Planets and a handful of other works, his music was generally neglected until the 1980s, when recordings of much of his output became available. Gustav Holst Tracklist: 1. Marte, O Mensageiro Da Guerra 2. Vênus, A Mensageira Da Paz 3. Mercúrio, O Mensageiro Alado 4. Júpiter, O Mensageiro Da Alegria 5. Saturno, O Mensageiro Da Velhice 6. Urano, O Mágico 7. Netuno, O Místico 8. Egdon Heath, Opus 47* 9. Hammersmith, Opus 52* For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Holst
Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger and organist of the Romantic era. He was also a writer, a philanthropist, a Hungarian nationalist and a Franciscan tertiary. Liszt gained renown in Europe during the early nineteenth century for his prodigious virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was a friend, musical promoter and benefactor to many composers of his time, including Frédéric Chopin, Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg, Ole Bull, Joachim Raff, Mikhail Glinka, and Alexander Borodin. A prolific composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the New German School (Neudeutsche Schule). He left behind an extensive and diverse body of work which influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated 20th-century ideas and trends. Among Liszt's musical contributions were the symphonic poem, developing thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form, and radical innovations in harmony.[2] Franz Liszt Tracklist: 1. Hungarian Rhapsody (Héroïde-élégiaque), for piano No. 5 in E minor, 2. Piano Concerto No. 2, for piano & orchestra in A major, S. 125 (LW H6) 3. Piano Concerto No. 2, for piano & orchestra in A major, S. 125 (LW H6) 4. Piano Concerto No. 2, for piano & orchestra in A major, S. 125 (LW H6) 5. Piano Concerto No. 2, for piano & orchestra in A major, S. 125 (LW H6) 6. Piano Concerto No. 2, for piano & orchestra in A major, S. 125 (LW H6) 7. Piano Concerto No. 2, for piano & orchestra in A major, S. 125 (LW H6) 8. Orpheus, symphonic poem for orchestra, S. 98 (LW G9) 9. Les Préludes, symphonic poem for orchestra, S. 97 (LW G3) For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Liszt
Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887 – November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer, conductor, cellist, pianist, and guitarist described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known South American composer of all time. A prolific composer, he wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works, totaling over 2000 works by his death in 1959. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and by stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, as exemplified by his Bachianas Brasileiras (Brazilian Bachian-pieces). His Etudes for guitar (1929) were dedicated to Andrés Segovia, while his 5 Preludes (1940) were dedicated to his spouse Arminda Neves d’Almeida, a.k.a. "Mindinha." Both are important works in the guitar repertory. Heitor Villa-Lobos For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.b... #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Villa-Lobos
Robert Schumann (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. His teacher, Friedrich Wieck, a German pianist, had assured him that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing. In 1840, after a long and acrimonious legal battle with Wieck, who opposed the marriage, Schumann married Wieck's daughter Clara. Before their marriage, Clara—also a composer—had substantially supported her father through her considerable career as a pianist. Together, Clara and Robert encouraged, and maintained a close relationship with, German composer Johannes Brahms. Until 1840, Schumann wrote exclusively for the piano. Later, he composed piano and orchestral works, many Lieder (songs for voice and piano). He composed four symphonies, one opera, and other orchestral, choral, and chamber works. His best-known works include Carnaval, Symphonic Studies, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, and the Fantasie in C. His writings about music appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), a Leipzig-based publication that he co-founded. Schumann suffered from a mental disorder that first manifested in 1833 as a severe melancholic depressive episode—which recurred several times alternating with phases of "exaltation" and increasingly also delusional ideas of being poisoned or threatened with metallic items. After a suicide attempt in 1854, Schumann was admitted at his own request to a mental asylum in Endenich near Bonn. Diagnosed with psychotic melancholia, he died two years later at the age of 46 without recovering from his mental illness. Robert Schumann For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Schumann
Johannes Brahms (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer are such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow. Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, and voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. An uncompromising perfectionist, Brahms destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished. Brahms has been considered, by his contemporaries and by later writers, as both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Embedded within his meticulous structures, however, are deeply romantic motifs. Johannes Brahms Tracklist: Sinfonia n. 2 em ré maior op. 73 1. Allegro non troppo 2. Adagio non troppo 3. Allegretto grazioso (Quasi andantino) 4. Allegro con spirito 5. Abertura para uma festa acadêmica op. 80 Royal Philharmonic Orchestra For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Brahms
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924) was an Italian opera composer who has been called "the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi". Puccini's early work was rooted in traditional late-19th-century romantic Italian opera. Later, he successfully developed his work in the realistic verismo style, of which he became one of the leading exponents. Puccini's most renowned works are La bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), and Turandot (1924), all of which are among the important operas played as standards. Giacomo Puccini Tracklist: LA BOHÈME ATO I 1. Introdução 2. Dueto: "Non sono in vena" 3. Ária: "Che gelida manina!" 4. Ária: "Si. Mi chiamano Mimí" 5. Dueto de amor: "O soave fanciulla" ATO III 6. Dueto: "Mimí" 7. Trio: "Marcello, finalmente!" 8. Ária: "D'onde lieta uscí" ATO IV 9. Dueto "Sono andati?" 10. Final: "Mimí" MADAME BUTTERFLY ATO I 11. Introdução 12. Dueto: "Dovunque al mondo" 13. Dueto: "Amore o grillo"Arrivèe de Madame Butterfly 14. "Quanto cielo, quanto mar!" 15. Dueto de amor: "Bimba dagli occhi pieni di malia" ATO II 16. Ária: "Un bel di vedremo"Scene de la carte 17. "Amico, cercherete quel bel fior di fanciulla" 18. Ária e Final: "Con onor muore" Royal Philharmonic Orchestra For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Puccini
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck (10 December 1822 – 8 November 1890) was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life. He was born at Liège, in what is now Belgium (though at the time of his birth it was part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands). He gave his first concerts there in 1834 and studied privately in Paris from 1835, where his teachers included Anton Reicha. After a brief return to Belgium, and a disastrous reception for an early oratorio Ruth, he moved to Paris, where he married and embarked on a career as teacher and organist. He gained a reputation as a formidable musical improviser, and travelled widely within France to demonstrate new instruments built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. In 1858, he became organist at the Basilica of St. Clotilde, Paris, a position he retained for the rest of his life. He became professor at the Paris Conservatoire in 1872; he took French nationality, a requirement of the appointment. His pupils included Vincent d'Indy, Ernest Chausson, Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, Guillaume Lekeu and Henri Duparc. After acquiring the professorship, Franck wrote several pieces that have entered the standard classical repertoire, including symphonic, chamber, and keyboard works. César Franck Tracklist: SINFONIA EM RÉ MENOR 1. Lento -- Allegro Non Troppo 2. Allegretto 3. Allegro Non Troppo 4. LES EOLIDES 5. LE CHASSEUR MAUDIT Royal Philharmonic Orchestra For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Franck
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 [O.S. 25 April] – 6 November [O.S. 25 October] 1893) was a Russian composer of the romantic period, whose works are among the most popular music in the classical repertoire. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conductor in Europe and the United States. He was honored in 1884 by Emperor Alexander III, and awarded a lifetime pension. Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant. There was scant opportunity for a musical career in Russia at that 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 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. Tchaikovsky's training set him on a path to reconcile what he had learned with the native musical practices to which he had been exposed from childhood. From this reconciliation he forged a personal but unmistakably Russian style—a task that did not prove easy. The principles that governed melody, harmony and other fundamentals of Russian music ran completely counter to those that governed Western European music; this seemed to defeat the potential for using Russian music in large-scale Western composition or for forming a composite style, and it caused personal antipathies that dented Tchaikovsky's self-confidence. Russian culture exhibited a split personality, with its native and adopted elements having drifted apart increasingly since the time of Peter the Great. This resulted in uncertainty among the intelligentsia about the country's national identity—an ambiguity mirrored in Tchaikovsky's career. Despite his many popular successes, Tchaikovsky's life was punctuated by personal crises and depression. Contributory factors included his early separation from his mother for boarding school followed by his mother's early death, the death of his close friend and colleague Nikolai Rubinstein, and the collapse of the one enduring relationship of his adult life, which was his 13-year association with the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck who was his patron even though they never actually met each other. His homosexuality, which he kept private, has traditionally also been considered a major factor, though some musicologists now downplay its importance. Tchaikovsky's sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera; there is an ongoing debate as to whether cholera was indeed the cause of death, and whether his death was accidental or self-inflicted. While his music has remained popular among audiences, critical opinions were initially mixed. Some Russians did not feel it was sufficiently representative of native musical values and expressed suspicion that Europeans accepted the music for its Western elements. In an apparent reinforcement of the latter claim, some Europeans lauded Tchaikovsky for offering music more substantive than base exoticism and said he transcended stereotypes of Russian classical music. Others dismissed Tchaikovsky's music as "lacking in elevated thought," according to longtime New York Times music critic Harold C. Schonberg, and derided its formal workings as deficient because they did not stringently follow Western principles. Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovsky Tracklist: O Quebra-Nozes, Suíte Op. 71A 1. Abertura 2. Marcha 3. O Chocolate 4. O Café 5. O Chá 6. Trepak 7. Dança dos Mirlitões 8. A Mãe Cegonha e os Polichinelos 9. Dança da Fada do Açúcar 10. Valsa das Flores 11. Pas-de-Deux 12. Valsa Final e Apoteose O Lago dos Cisnes, Suíte Op. 66A 13. Cena 14. Valsa 15. Dança dos Cisnes 16. Cena 17. Dança Húngara (Czardas) SERENATA PARA CORDAS EM DÓ MAIOR OP.48 1. Pezzo In Forma Di Sonatina 2. Valsa 3. Elegia 4. Final: Tema Russo Royal Philharmonic Orchestra For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Tchaikovsky
Clément Philibert Léo Delibes (21 February 1836 – 16 January 1891) was a French composer of the Romantic era (1815–1910), who specialised in ballets, operas, and other works for the stage. His most notable works include the ballets Coppélia (1870) and Sylvia (1876), as well as the operas Le roi l'a dit (1873) and Lakmé (1883). Léo Delibes Tracklist: SYLVIA: SUÍTE DE BALLET PARA ORQUESTRA 1. Prelúdio : "Les Chasseresses" 2. Intermezzo: Valse Lente 3. Pizzicato 4. Cortège De Bacchus LAKMÉ 5. "Viens, Malliká": Duo Das Flores (*) 6. "Où Va La Jeune Hindoue": Ária Das Campainhas(**) LE ROI S'AMUSE 7. Gaillarde 8. Pavane 9. Madrigal 10. Passepied COPPÉLIA, SUÍTE DE BALLET PARA ORQUESTRA 11. Prelúdio E Mazurca 12. Festival Dos Relógios E Dança Das Horas 13. Noturno 14. Música Da Boneca E Valsa 15. Czardas Royal Philharmonic Orchestra For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Delibes
Claude Debussy (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. Debussy's orchestral works include Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894), Nocturnes (1897–1899) and Images (1905–1912). His music was to a considerable extent a reaction against Wagner and the German musical tradition. He regarded the classical symphony as obsolete and sought an alternative in his "symphonic sketches", La mer (1903–1905). His piano works include two books of Préludes and two of Études. Throughout his career he wrote mélodies based on a wide variety of poetry, including his own. He was greatly influenced by the Symbolist poetic movement of the later 19th century. A small number of works, including the early La Damoiselle élue and the late Le Martyre de saint Sébastien have important parts for chorus. In his final years, he focused on chamber music, completing three of six planned sonatas for different combinations of instruments. With early influences including Russian and far-eastern music, Debussy developed his own style of harmony and orchestral colouring, derided – and unsuccessfully resisted – by much of the musical establishment of the day. His works have strongly influenced a wide range of composers including Béla Bartók, Olivier Messiaen, George Benjamin, and the jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans. Debussy died from cancer at his home in Paris at the age of 55 after a composing career of a little more than 30 years. Claude Debussy Tracklist OBRAS PARA PIANO 1. Arabesque Nº1 2. Arabesque Nº2 3. Clair De Lune 4. Passepied 5. Rêverie 6. Hommage A Rameau 7. Voiles 8. Les Sons Et Les Parfums Tournent Dans L'air Du Soir 9. La Fille Aux Cheveux De Lin 10. La Cathédral Engloutie 11. Musiciens 12. Le Petit Berger 13. Golliwogg's Cakewalk 14. L'isle Joyeuse 15. Prelúdio para a tarde de um fauno For more: http://www.melhoresmusicasclassicas.blogspot.com #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusic #Debussy