MusiLLection

Recording techniques were, unfortunately, not yet invented when Franz Liszt conquered Europe with his mesmerizing pianistic performances. As a result, his dazzling interpretations were fleeting, and we are left only with written testimonies that describe him as a pianist of unconventional virtuosity. His recitals were events that provoked overwhelming excitement and almost religious admiration. Liszt’s focus on virtuosic display, along with his dedication to pianistic “showpieces” and transcriptions of works by other composers, initially prevented his recognition as a truly inspired composer. Nevertheless, no careful observer of musical evolution can doubt the impact he had on the expression of his time. His symphonic poems anticipated new forms of musical art, while his instrumental works paved the way for the innovations of Wagner , Mahler, and Richard Strauss. The daring harmonies of his mature piano compositions even foreshadow elements of Debussy’s impressionism. Liszt loved m...

Portrait of Maurice Ravel Maurice Ravel was born on 7 March 1875 in the small fishing village of Ciboure, in the Basque region near the Franco-Spanish border. This cultural crossroads—half French, half Spanish—would quietly shape his artistic imagination for the rest of his life. His father, Pierre-Joseph Ravel, was a French engineer of Swiss descent: a man of precision, mechanics, and invention. His mother, Marie Delouart, was Basque, warm and expressive, deeply rooted in Spanish culture and song. Their meeting—during her work on the Spanish railways—brought together two contrasting worlds: discipline and lyricism, structure and instinct. In many ways, Maurice Ravel would spend his life reconciling these same opposites in music. The parents of Maurice Ravel, Pierre-Joseph Ravel and Marie Delouart. Only a few months after his birth, the family moved to Paris. Ravel’s childhood was happy and intellectually nurturing. His parents encouraged both their sons—Maurice and his younger broth...

In the summer of 1853, twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms was desperate. He had just had a fight with his best friend, the Hungarian violonist Eduard Remènyi, who had mediated for a meeting with the great pianist Liszt , whom he hoped to impress. But Brahms failed to praise Liszt's latest work, thereby undermining any hope of progress from that direction. Faced with failure, Brahms wrote to violonist Joseph Joachim, who had supported him along the way, asking for his help. Joachim recommended him to visit Dusseldorf in order to meet the distinguished composer Robert Schumann and his pianist wife Clara. On September 30th, thronging with excitement, Brahms sat down to play in front of the woman who was destined to steal his heart forever. A brilliant young pianist The sketch of 20-year-old Brahms. It was done on Robert Schumann's behalf. Robert Schumann , middle-aged and afflicted by various nervous disorders, distinguished Brahm's face as the billiant young pianist he once had...

He renounced the glory, confidence and adventure guaranteed by the career of the naval officer, Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov , and was thrown into the adventure of music without hesitation. As an amateur and self-taught musician, the aristocrat started from Tikhvin to settle down as a conscientious professional. He enjoyed every honor that any of his peers would dream of, becoming the most popular, after Tchaikovsky , composer of 19th century Russia. A member of the famous group of "Five", Rimsky-Korsakov, after his first transcendence and the change of his professional course, had to fight with the academicism and lack of self-confidence that were alive nourished by the sense of non-existent musical education. When he overcame any inhibitions - his love for music helped him a lot - and gained the confidence of musical discourse, he was easily able to exploit his innate gifts. A master of orchestration and an imaginative creator, he produced a rich musical work in whic...

The optimism and serenity of Mozart's music is in stark contrast to a life of debt-chewing and an incurable anxiety.   Mozart was a child prodigy. Born on January 27, 1756, he played without difficulty any melody he heard on the piano at the age of three, violin at four and composed music at the time he gave his first public concerto, that is, when he was five and a half years old. A painting of the time, presents the Mozart  playing with his father and his sister Maria-Anna in  the garden of the house of his children’s years in Salzburg.  His life was full of music. Even in his games, young Wolfgang used to move from room to room, to the lively melody of a march. In the age of 12 years he had written three operas, six symphonies and hundreds of other works. European tours Mozart's father, Leopold, was a composer and a virtuoso violinist in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg. He understood that Wolfgang's extraordinary talent could bring significant economic ...

Josef Anton Bruckner A "poor man of god" was Anton Bruckner , who worshipped just as much as the divine and the human, whether it is found in music, in nature, or in the view of the supreme being. Meek, thoughtful, modest and incomparably sincere, he expressed his introversion and insecurity by leaning more and more into his musical writings and constantly revising his already masterful inspirations.  If he had been bolder, more determined, perhaps he would have occupied Wagner 's place in the history of music - he has been his idol since he met him - since Bruckner composed music of "Wagnerian" quality before... Wagner himself. An amazing virtuoso in the performance of the organ, he crushed the faithful audiences both in Leeds and Vienna, as well as in Paris - in 1869 he performed at Notre Dame - and in London. If he had recorded his astonishing - according to written testimonies - improvisations on the organ, he would have submitted work for this instrument pe...

Despite all the desolation and poverty that marked his childhood, Haydn struggled and became the greatest and most productive composer of his generation. Franz Joseph Haydn or "Little Joseph", as he was known, was born on March 31, 1732 in the small Austrian village of Rohrau, near the border with Hungary.  The future of little Josepf appeared uncertain. His father, Mathias, a poor wheelwright unable to afford to educate his son, watched with sadness his obvious musical talent go to waste. Fortunately, a relative of theirs, Johann Matthias Frankh, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg, offered to take over little Joseph, and in 1738 the six-year-old boy abandoned his family for good. He was taught the principles of music and learned to sing in the choir.  This good fortune, of course, he paid for with the misery of his childhood which was marked with "more beating than eating", as he later remembered. A happy getaway Haydn's misery came to an end when in ...

A little the weak-mindedness of those who do not want to admit the exceptional, unusual abilities of others, a little his "mephistofelic" appearance, favored the development of the myth that the violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini "Faust" of music wanted. His virtuosity on the violin was truly transcendent, as no one listed collaboration with the devil. Paganini's insurmountable technique had its morphological characteristics and exhibitionism at the time of public interpretation. Thus, the myth was well preserved. All the music centres in Europe enjoyed this theatrical artist, but he was unreal only on stage. In his daily life he was an ordinary man, a kind man, a man of virtues and weaknesses. He not only developed the technique bequeathed to him by the virtuosos violonists of the 18th century, but he developed it unexpectedly by inventing tricks that gave him the right to be called a pioneer. The techniques of "staccato", "pizzicato", ...

Georges Bizet was born on October 25, 1838, in a simple family home, in the Parisian apartment of Montmart. Aimée, his mother, an amateur pianist, recognized early his musical talent in her only son and taught him notes and alphabets when he was four years old. Adolphe, his father, a tour maker who became a singing teacher, also encouraged Georges and gave him the little musical knowledge he possessed.     The enthusiasm for Georges' music education had its price. His growing love of literature was suppressed by his mother, who hid his books so Georges to concentrate on music. However, his parents' monomania was rewarded when Georges won a place at the Paris Conservatory on October 9, 1848, just before his tenth birthday. In a few months he began to prize his wonderful playing on the piano and eminent musicians were eager to teach him. The Conservatoire's retired music teacher remained at the Conservatory for his sake, while the brilliant French opera composer Charles Go...

The announcement of Anton Bruckner's death. 1824:  Josef Anton Bruckner  was born on September 4th in Ansfelden, Austria. 1834: Begins to replace his father in the organ. 1835:  C ompletes his school education  in Hörsching, where  Johann Baptist Weiß was schoolmaster. 1837: In June his father dies. He is sent to the Augustinian monastery in Sankt Florian to become a choirboy. 1841: Trained in Linz as a teacher. 1845: Assistant teacher in  Sankt Florian . He falls in love with Louise Bogner. 1851: Permanent organist in  Sankt Florian . His first visit to Vienna. 1855:  B ecomes a student of the famous Vienna music theorist Simon Sechter. 1863: Listens to Wagner 's Tannhäuser  opera. 1866: Completes Symphony No. 1 in C minor . 1868: Professor of music theory at the Vienna Conservatory. 1871: Visits England and  impresses audience  at Royal Albert Hall. 1872: The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra rejects Symphony No. 2 . 1893: ...

The evolution of the art of sounds would certainly have been different if the Austrian land had not welcomed Franz Joseph Haydn in the 18th century. This modest, pure, benevolent and unsyming music worker, was at the same time innovative as well as the legislator of a great chapter of art which he was ordered to serve. No one else, perhaps in the history of music, has benefited orchestral music as much as Haydn. Although he was not the inventor of the form of the symphony, as many like to profess, he was the one who recognized its definitive form, drew up the rules governing its development and perfected it morphologically and substantially, to the supreme extent that the means at his disposal allowed him. His deposits were received by all the next composers, first Mozart and Beethoven , who used them as capital and enjoyed their profits at the rate of their own imagination. If the symphony owes him his precious interventions, the string quartet, the ultimate form of pure music, owes ...

Although the founder of the Czech national music school was Bedřich Smetana , it was Antonín Leopold Dvořák who tossed the inexhaustible wealth of the musical tradition of bohemian land throughout the Western world. His compositions are dominated by a happy combination of academic rules, instinctive technique and folk sound colors. An excellent recipient of every useful influence, the composer effectively assimilated and exploited creatively all the musical stimuli he received, either as a diligent student or as a nostalgic traveler. Following the orders of emotion rather than logic, Dvořák composed music that is sincere, spontaneous that often reflects the smile of ordinary people, without, however, disregarding the sensitivity and needs of genuine and demanding friend. A bridgemaker between folk and scholar, skillful in the application of the teachings of classical education, he completed work miraculous in variety, quality and purity. His peaceful life and emotionally balanced, all...

At a time when every artist's concern was the proposal of the new, Johannes Brahms dared to turn his gaze to the old. He was more interested in the past than in the future.  Romantic lyricism didn't miss from the music he signed. But each of his musical phrases was subject to the rules of classicism, in a way that symbolized the rewriting of romance and indicated the support of pure form. Both in the aesthetics and in the form of his works, Brahms proclaims his opposition to the pompous lyrical dramas of his compatriot and contemporary Richard Wagner. His refusal to deal with opera, a musical genre extremely well-benefited and popular in the 19th century, can also be seen as a manifestation of his opposition. He possessed well, however, both the technique of symphonic writing and the methods of using the voice. Johannes Brahms served with merit every form of music, except of course opera. His music stands out for its total tranquility, for its earthly and human fervor, for the...

A caricature of Berlioz, whose music was considered modern and unusual. 1803   Hector Berlioz was born in 11 October in the commune of La Côte-Saint-André, France. 1815  He falls in love with his neighbor's 18-year-old daughter, Estelle Dubœuf. 1820  He's going to Paris for medical studies. 1826  He is admitted to the Paris Conservatory. 1830  First performance of the "Symphonie fantastique" , wins the "Rome Prize" and goes to Italy. 1833  He's marrying Irish actress Harriet Smithson. 1834  His only son Louis is born. 1846  First visit to London. 1854  Harriet dies, marries his long-time mistress Marie Recio. 1863  First performance of the opera "Les Troyens" . 1864  Marie dies, renews contact with Estelle, who is now 67 years old. 1869  Dies March 8 in Paris. When Berlioz learned that Camille was marrying someone else, he vowed to go back to Paris and kill Camille and her mother, who had written him the news. He procured a ma...