Orchestral Classical Music: A Beginner’s Guide

Goal: accessibility to ages as young as elementary and middle school but not limited to, an
INTERACTIVE experience with pictures and sound clips and videos

(Challenge: on the one hand I want it to be an academic project for me and academic
experience for the reader, but I don’t want to overload young readers with too much
information!)

Good “How to” References:

http://bookstandpublishing.com/the-parts-of-a-book-for-self-published-authors/

https://nonfictionauthorsassociation.com/how-to-cite-sources-in-your-manuscript/

https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html

Contents (in general order):

- Preface
o (introductory essay written by the author that tells how the book came into
being, followed by thanks and acknowledgments to people who were helpful to
the author during the time of writing)
- Introduction (perhaps not necessary, but let’s accommodate for it in case)
o Outline What the book will cover in greater detail

(now would be the actual “table of contents” page)

- The Origins of the Orchestra and Opera, perhaps Ballet as well (since they’re
intertwined)
o What the names mean
o When was the first, why the first, what was the inspiration?
o Crucial figures in the founding stages of both
o Public acceptance, reactions, traditions, performances
o Development of the orchestra over time
 Perhaps a timeline
 An introduction to the different eras (baroque, classical romantic, 20 th
century)
- Most Orchestras Today
o List of what instruments and what they do and their purposed and how they
were built/discovered
o where instruments go in a typical orchestral setting
o types of arrangements typically done?? (not sure but just other relevant info)
- Why is classical music relevant?
o Why is it used in movies, advertisements etc.
o Why is it a cultural unifier
- Composers Bio, Info, Music Clips
o Baroque
o Classical
o Romantic
o 20th century
- Bibliography- citations
- Index
o “essentially a roadmap to the book, listing names, places, and things in
alphabetical order and giving the page numbers associated with each topic”
- About the Author: Arielle Hillock

Title Ideas
- Classical Music: A cultural Unifier
o A focus on the orchestra
- Orchestral Classical Music: A Beginner’s Guide

*use endnotes (https://nonfictionauthorsassociation.com/how-to-cite-sources-in-your-

manuscript/)

Brainstorming List of Composers:

1. Beethoven (1770-1827)

Beethoven studied Bach and other composers so well that at the age of 12 he was permitted
to supervise orchestra rehearsals for the court theater. At 14 he was appointed assistant court
organist. In 1788 while still serving as organist, Beethoven was also playing viola in the
orchestra for operatic performances at the court; this position helped him become familiar
with operas by the leading composers of the day—Mozart, Cimarosa, Paisiello, Gluck, and
others.

In 1798 and 1799 Beethoven became aware of increasing difficulty in hearing. Doctors and
treatments could not help him, and the inexorable progress of his deafness caused that great
spiritual crisis that is reflected in the "Heiligenstadt Testament," a letter Beethoven wrote to
his brothers in 1802.

Beethoven seems to have been extremely careless about his physical appearance
As his hearing grew worse, he became more and more moody and irritable. He appears never
seriously to have lacked money; his compositions, however much they may have been
misunderstood by his contemporaries, were evidently very much appreciated. Beethoven's
income had been derived from playing the piano before his deafness cut off this source of
revenue; he also taught, and derived further income from dedicating works for a fee, and from
the sale of rights to his compositions. In these negotiations he seems often to have been
deplorably unscrupulous, selling the same rights to different persons at the same time. 

Among his compositions are nine symphonies, 11 overtures, various concerti (including five for
piano and one for violin), 16 string quartets and much other chamber music, 30 piano sonatas
and numerous sets of variations for piano, the oratorio Christus am Ölberg (1802), the
opera Fidelio (1804), and two Masses. 

Beethoven in 1803,
painted by Christian Horneman

Titlepage of ms. of the EroicaSymphony, with Napoleon's name scored through by Beethoven

Perhaps, the Most famous classical pieces, or song in general: Beethoven’s 5th.. Also, Eroica
(Napoleon history), Fur Elise, 9th Symphony- Ode to Joy

2. Bach (1685-1750)

Bach's autograph
of the first movement of the Sonata No. 1 in G minor for solo violin (BWV 1001) –  Audio
 He was the culmination of the family's long line of musicians, beginning with his great-
grandfather, Veit Bach, who was a professional violinist in Gotha, and the name Bach was
considered a synonym for musician. The Bach family was extremely loyal to the Lutheran faith.
Throughout the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) the religious turmoil affected four generations of
Bachs, who remained unwaveringly faithful to their Lutheran persuasion.
Bach's first music lessons were on the violin, with his father as instructor. Having a beautiful
soprano voice, he also sang in the choir at St. George's Church. On May 3, 1694, his mother
died; his father remarried 6 months later but died scarcely 2 months after that. The oldest brother,
Johann Christoph, assumed the care of the 10-year-old Johann Sebastian. The boy moved to
Ohrdruf to live with his brother, organist at St. Michael's Church. From him Johann Sebastian
received his first instruction at the harpsichord and perhaps at the organ.

1700 Bach was nearing his fifteenth birthday, an age when Bachs usually began to earn their
own living. When an opening developed at St. Michael's School in Lüneburg, a scholarship was
awarded Bach for his fine voice and his financial need. After his voice changed, he was
transferred to the orchestra and played violin. At Lüneburg, Bach met the composer Georg
Böhm, organist at St. John's Church, who influenced his early organ compositions.

Visited Frederick the Great at Potsdam (1747

In his final years Bach was afflicted with gradual blindness, and he was totally blind the last year
of his life. A few days before his death he dictated a setting of the hymn Vor deinen Thron tret'
ich allhier(Before Thy Throne I Stand) to his son-in-law. The composition was prophetic.
Following a stroke and a raging fever, Bach died on July 28, 1750. Four of his sons carried on
the musical tradition of the Bach family: Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel by his
first marriage, and Johann Christoph and Johann Christian by his second.
For Bach, writing music was an expression of faith. His musical symbolism, his dramatic flair,
even his insistence on no unnecessary notes--all served to profoundly interpret the text. Every
composition, sacred and secular, was "in the name of Jesus" and "to the glory of God alone." His
influence on music is well stated in the words of Johannes Brahms: "Study Bach: there you will
find everythin

Toccata and Fugue in D minor." Some of his best-known compositions are the "Mass in B
Minor," the "Brandenburg Concertos" and "The Well-Tempered Clavier."

3. Mahler (1860-1911)

-  Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer

- Gustav Mahler once said: "Composing a symphony means, to me, building a new world
with every available technical means. The ever-new and changing content determines its
own form."
- n 1880 Mahler took a conducting position in the light-opera theater at the summer resort
of Bad Hall in Upper Austria. This was the first of many opera-conducting posts he was
to hold until 1897: Ljubljana, Olomouc, Kassel, Prague, Leipzig, Budapest, and
Hamburg. Theatrical duties generally kept him fully occupied during these winter
seasons, so that he was forced to be a "summer composer." 
- Mahler became the director of the Vienna Court Opera in 1897. He brought new
standards to that institution and initiated many reforms which are taken for granted today.
He was the first in Vienna to bar latecomers from the opera house till the end of an act.
He performed Richard Wagner's music dramas without cuts, following the stylistic
principles established by Wagner at Bayreuth. In producing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's
operas, too, Mahler strove for stylistic authenticity, restoring the recitatives with
harpsichord accompaniment which had often been cut by his predecessors. He tried to
simplify operatic staging, seeking symbolism rather than excessive realism; the painter
Alfred Roller, who became his stage designer, helped him to achieve this aim.
- Despite his heavy responsibilities at the opera house, Mahler was able to compose five
symphonies during his Vienna years
- he intrigues of Mahler's professional and personal enemies forced him to leave the
Vienna Court Opera in 1907. His final seasons as a conductor were spent in New York
City, where he was very successful at the Metropolitan Opera and the Philharmonic.
- Mahler conducted his last concert in New York on February 21, 1911, and collapsed
immediately thereafter from a severe streptococcal infection. Taken back to Europe, he
seemed to recover briefly, but the infection could not be cured. On May 18 he died in
Vienna.
- The Fourth (1899-1900) is a cheerful work; its finale is a delightful song for soprano
based on a poem from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The youth's magic horn), a collection of
folk poetry which was one of Mahler's favorite text sources. The Fifth, Sixth, and
Seventh Symphonies (1901-1905) are purely instrumental; they show his ever-increasing
mastery of his chosen medium. The Eighth (1906-1907), for eight vocal soloists, double
chorus, and boys' chorus, with a very large orchestra, was nicknamed the Symphony of a
Thousand at the time of its first performance, under the composer's direction, in 1910.
Mahler
's home in Leipzig, where he composed his First Symphony

mahler at the time of his first symphony

First symphony, the Titan

4. Brahms (1833-1897)

The German composer, pianist, and conductor Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was one of the
most significant composers of the 19th century. His works greatly enriched the romantic
repertory.
Brahms infused the traditional forms with romantic melody and harmony, respecting the
inheritance of the past but making it relevant to his own age. His position of moderation effected
a necessary balance in the creative output of the romantic century and led to high critical esteem
by his contemporaries.

At the age of seven Johannes began studying piano. He played a private subscription concert at
the age of 10 to obtain funds for his future education. He also learned theory and composition
and began to improvise compositions at the piano. To help out with family finances, Brahms
played the piano in sailors' haunts and local dance salons. This contact with the seamier side of
life may have conditioned his lifelong revulsion from physical intimacy with the women he
idealized and loved.

Brahms was offered a long recuperative holiday at Winsen-an-der-Luhe, where he conducted a

small male choir for whom he wrote his first choral compositions. On his return to Hamburg he
gave several concerts, but, failing to win recognition, he continued to play at humble places of
amusement, gave inexpensive piano lessons, and began the hackwork of arranging popular music
for piano.

Much of the credit for the universal acceptance of Brahms's orchestral works was due to the
activities of their great interpreter, Hans von Bülow, who had transferred his allegiance from the
Liszt-Wagner camp to Brahms. In the composer's works he felt the logical continuation of the
Beethoven tradition to be manifest, and Bülow lavished tremendous energy in seeing that these
compositions received properly executed performances.
5. Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) is one of the most loved of Russian composers. He
epitomized the ingenuous opening to the emotions of the romantic era in music, but his
product was made durable through sound craftsmanship and rigorous work habits.

Tchaikovsky's gift was melody--sobbing, singing, exalting melody. Yet, one of his favorite
and recurring melodic patterns was a simple five-or six-note minor scale, usually descending,
which he enveloped in orchestral color or lush harmonies often electrifying in their piquancy
and effectiveness.

Original cast of Sleeping beauty ballet

Tchaikovsky as a
student at the Moscow Conservatory. Photo, 1863

Tchaikovsky's last home, in Klin, now the Tchaikovsky State House-Museum

He later recalled growing up in a place "saturated with the miraculous beauty of Russian folk
song" and the effect some music had on him as a child--that of exquisite torture so beautiful that
he begged the music be stopped. He often referred to this in his letters as a mature artist.
Tchaikovsky attended a school of jurisprudence in St. Petersburg, and, while studying law and
government, he also took music lessons, including some composing, from Gabriel Lomakin.
Tchaikovsky graduated at the age of 19 and took a job as a bureau clerk. This was to be the first
step of an official career, but he was already hopelessly enamored of music. He soon met the
Rubinstein brothers, Anton and Nikolai; both were composers, and Anton was a pianist second
only to Franz Liszt in technical brilliance and fame. In 1862 Anton opened Russia's first
conservatory, under the sponsorship of the Imperial Russian Music Society (IRMS), in St.
Petersburg, and Tchaikovsky was its first composition student.

Nutcracker March and Waltz of the Flowers, Sleeping Beauty

6. Mozart (1756-1791)

Johannes Chrystostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart (1756–1791) was arguably the most
gifted musician in the history of classical music. His inspiration is often described as 'divine', but
he worked assiduously, not only to become the great composer he was, but also a conductor,
virtuoso pianist, organist and violinist. Mozart's music embraces opera, symphony, concerto,
chamber, choral, instrumental and vocal music, revealing an astonishing number of imperishable
masterpieces.

Mozart was born in Salzburg, in 1756. Mozart's father, Leopold, was an ambitious composer and
violinist. 

Though he was and still is considered a genius, he was also tactless, arrogant and had a
scatological sense of humour. 
Mozart composed his first opera, Apollo et Hyacinthus when he was only 11. A year later the
Emperor Joseph II commissioned him to write La finta semplice. 

In August 1782 he married Constanze Weber. The Mozarts' marriage seemed to be a happy one.
Constanze was easy-going, free-spending and usually pregnant. Only two of their six children
survived. 

Post-marriage, some of Mozart's best started to appear -the Haffner and Linz symphonies and
five string quartets, for example. 

Between 1784 and 1786, he composed nine piano concertos and three of these concurrently with
The Marriage of Figaro. 

The year 1787 saw the premiere of Mozart's second opera, Don Giovanni. 

Mozart had a great run of successes in his final years - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and the Clarinet
Quintet in A, three of his 41 symphonies; Cosí fan Tutte, three piano trios, the Coronation piano
concerto, two piano sonatas and three string quartets. 

His health began to fail and his work rate slowed in 1790. He got better, though, and in 1791
alone composed the most famous The Magic Flute, the Requiem (unfinished), and the Clarinet
Concerto. 

Mozart did not live long enough to complete his Requiem. He died in Vienna, in 1791, before his
36th birthday.

Symphony 40, Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute

7. Bizet (1838-1875)
- Georges Bizet was born in Paris. He showed precocious ability in music and at the age of
ten was admitted to the conservatory.
- studied piano, organ, and theory. His progress was so outstanding that he won several
prizes, culminating in 1857 with the Prix de Rome for composition, which enabled him to
live in Italy for three years.
- Bizet's operatic career began less spectacularly with the composition at the age of 18 of a
one-act comic opera entitled Le Docteur Miracle. After arriving in Rome, he wrote a
second comedy, Don Procupio (1858-1859). Both pieces are rather Italianate in style,
mildly attractive, but of no great consequence except as giving an early indication of
theatrical talent.
- After Bizet returned to Paris, he earned a living by giving private lessons and doing
hackwork for publishers. It is possible that he might have had a career as a pianist, for he
was by all accounts a remarkably fine player, applauded by Franz Liszt himself. Bizet
had no desire, however, to perform publicly, choosing rather to devote himself to
composition. The world of music was ultimately the better for that, although his efforts in
the 1860s did not produce a single major success. A second symphony, known as
the Roma, occupied him off and on from 1860 until its final revision in 1871, but it was a
failure.
- The following year, he wrote incidental music for Alphonse Daudet's
play L'Arlésienne, consisting of 27 numbers rich in melodic quality, with imaginative use
of a 16-piece orchestra. The symphonic overture Patrie (1873) was less successful. Then
came Carmen (1875), an opera as close to perfect as any ever written. Here Bizet was not
innovative in his musical resources or form, but he created a faultless drama of real
people and their passions (based on a story by Prosper Mérimée) expressed through
music that is uniformly direct, relevant, colorful, and stamped with a personal accent.
- Bizet brooded a good deal over the roles of intuition and reason in artistic creation and
how they affected his own work. This may indicate some lack of self-confidence, and it
perhaps accounts for the fact that he began and then put aside an extraordinary number of
compositions. He left relatively few completed works and even fewer important ones. He
was no advanced thinker in music, but at his best he commanded an unusual wealth of
original melody linked to a fine sense for orchestral sonorities and impeccable
craftsmanship.
-
Bizet then began composing Don Rodrigue, an adaptation of the El Cid story by Louis Gallet and Édouard
Blau. He played a piano version to a select audience that included the
- Opéra's principal baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure, hoping that the singer's approval might influence the
directors of the Opéra to stage the work.[88] However, on the night of 28–29 October, the Opéra burned
to the ground; the directors, amid other pressing concerns, set Don Rodrigue aside.[89] It was never
completed; Bizet later adapted a theme from its final act as the basis of his 1875 overture, Patrie.[11]
Carmen Toreadors, Carmen habanera, Larlsienne Pastorale, Larlsienne 4th Movement

8. Verdi (1813-1901)

Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) was one of the few composers whose genius was recognised while
he was alive. Verdi's reputation as the greatest of all Italian opera composers is beyond dispute.
Life and Music 
Giuseppe Verdi was born October 10th 1813 near Busseto. 

By the age of seven he was organist at San Michele Arcangelo, the local church, and by 13,
assistant conductor of the Busseto Orchestra. 

The young Verdi failed the Milan Conservatory entrance exams in 1832. Private tuition and an
appointment as a municipal music master in Busseto kept things bubbling along, but just as La
Scala in Milan accepted his first surviving opera from 1839, Oberto, personal and professional
disaster struck. 

In less than two years he lost both of his young children and then his wife, Margherita, to illness.
Then his second opera, Un Giorno di Regno (1840), bombed and all future performances were
cancelled. 

Choruses from Nabucco (1842) and the later I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata (1843) were
adopted as anthems of Italian freedom-fighters. 
In 1847 he fell in love with Giuseppina Strepponi, a soprano, who would remain his devoted
companion until her death 50 years later. 

At the height of his fame, despite having successfully produced only two operas during the 1860s
- La Forza del Destino and Don Carlo - Verdi was commissioned to write an opera to mark the
opening of Egyptian ruler Khedive Ismail's new opera house in Cairo. Verdi missed the deadline
(Rigoletto was used instead), but a year later Aida was finished. 

In February 1887 he triumphantly re-emerged with one of his very finest works, Otello. 

His death on January 21st 1901 from a stroke was marked by the kind of national grief
associated with the passing of royalty. 

Did you know? 

Verdi's relationship with Giuseppina Strepponi caused a scandal by their living together outside
wedlock until they f

inally married in 1859.

Aida Opening Act, Rigoletto

9. Chopin (1810-1849)
Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of French-Polish
parentage. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music.

Life and Music 

Frederic Chopin was born in Poland, west of Warsaw, on either February 22nd or March 1st
1810 - local records differ with when Chopin's parents claimed he was born.

Chopin was composing and writing poetry at six, and gave his first public concerto performance
at the age of eight. 

In 1822 Chopin came under the personal supervision of Jozef Elsner, the founder-director of the
Warsaw Conservatory. 

He became a leading advocate of 'absolute music', producing some of the earliest Romantic
pieces and arguably the finest body of solo music for the piano. 

Chopin dedicated his second piano concerto (1830) to Delfina Potocka, with whom he hit the
headlines during the 1940s when a sensational series of highly erotic (forged) love letters were
discovered. 

In 1836 Chopin met the novelist George Sand (alias Aurore Dudevant), and so began one of the
most famous love affairs in the history of music. The pair split up in 1847. 

Chopin's Funeral March, one of the piano repertoire's most famous works, was composed in
1837. 

By 1841, both sets of Chopin's Etudes had been published. They went on to become
indispensable tomes for piano students everywhere. 

Among the most famous of his works was composed late in his life - The Minute Waltz was
finished in 1847. 

Chopin's health began to deteriorate rapidly and he left for England at the invitation of his
Scottish piano pupil, Jane Stirling. 
He returned to Paris, where, despite gifts of money and many kind attempts to comfort him, he
died on 17 October 1849. 

Did you know? 

Chopin paid for his expensive lifestyle by giving piano lessons to rich people in Paris. He never
liked the idea of asking them for money, so would look away while they left the fee on his
mantelpiece.

10. John Williams

(1932-present) is the most prolific and widely honoured living composer of film music
and the most Oscar-nominated man alive.

Life and Music 

He was born in New York but moved to Los Angeles with his family when he was 16. He
attended UCLA and studied composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. 

After service in the Air Force, Williams returned to New York to attend Juilliard where he
studied piano with Rosina Lhevinne. He also worked as a jazz pianist in both clubs and on
recordings. 

Williams moved back to Los Angeles and began his career in film studios working with such
composers as Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, and Franz Waxman. 

He went on to write music for many television programmes in the 1960s, winning two
Emmys for his work. 

Beginning with his first screen credit, for Because They're Young, Williams' career as a
composer of film scores gathered steady momentum. 

In 1974 Steven Spielberg came to John Williams after being moved by his score to The
Reivers to score Sugarland Express. It was the beginning of one of the greatest film
composer/director collaborations ever. 

His first Oscar was for his adaption of the music for the screen version of Fiddler on the
Roof. In 1976 he received his second for Jaws. In 1978, an Oscar for Star Wars followed in a
competition that included his score for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Oscars were also
awarded for E.T. and the haunting Schindler's List soundtrack. 

Williams has composed the music and served as music director for more than seventy-five
films. 

In addition to his film music, Williams has written many concert pieces including two
symphonies, a bassoon concerto, a cello concerto, concertos for flute and violin, a trumpet
concerto, and concertos for clarinet and tuba. 

Did you know? 

Williams has received 50 Academy Award nominations.
Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones

11. Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

12. Haydn (1732-1809)

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and
prominent composers of the Classical period. Haydn wrote 107 symphonies in total, as well as
83 string quartets, 45 piano trios, 62 piano sonatas, 14 masses and 26 operas, amongst countless
other scores.

Life and Music 

The son of a wheelwright and a local landowner's cook, Haydn had such a fine voice that at the
age of five he entered the Choir School of St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna.

His ethereal treble tones lasted until he was 16, a fact noticed by the Habsburg Empress, Maria
Theresa, who uttered her famous criticism: "That boy doesn't sing, he crows!". Haydn left the
choir in memorable fashion - snipping off the pigtail of one his fellow choirboys - and was
publicly caned. 

By the 1770s, Haydn's music had become more distinctive and boldly individual, inspired by a
form of heightened emotionalism known as 'Sturm and Drang' (storm and stress). The
composer's reputation spread rapidly throughout Austria, and commissions began arriving from
abroad. 
1790 saw the death of Prince Nicholas Esterházy, Haydn's employer since 1762, and the
musically indifferent Anton became the new Crown Prince. Haydn moved to Vienna and
accepted an invitation from the great German-born violinist and impresario, Johann Peter
Salomon, to visit England (1791-1792), where he found himself adored. 

Prince Anton Esterházy died in 1795, and his successor, Nicholas II, requested Haydn's return to
Esterháza. A lover of church music, Nicholas set Haydn the task of composing a new setting of
the mass every year. 

In 1804, Haydn retired from Esterháza, and illness effectively prevented him from any further
composition. During May 1809, Napoleon reached Vienna, but Haydn stayed there, guarded
respectfully by two of the invader's sentries. 

On 31 May 1809 Haydn died peacefully in his sleep. 

Did you know? 

The choirmaster at St Stephen's Cathedral suggested Haydn become a castrato, but his father
objected and the operation never went ahead, Haydn's voice broke the following year.

13. Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) was a German composer, conductor and theatre director who was
primarily known for his operas. The greatest musical visionary of the 19th century, or an
insatiable megalomaniac who didn't know when to stop?

Life and Music 

Richard Wagner was born on May 22nd 1813 in the Jewish quarter of Leipzig. 

As a boy, he showed so little aptitude for music that he was the only child in his family not to
receive piano lessons - he taught himself to play through Weber's Der Freischutz. 

At the age of 20, Wagner took a choirmaster position in Würzberg and composed his first opera,
Die Feen, in 1833. 

His opera career soon picked up speed - he completed Rienzi in 1840, The Flying Dutchman in
1843 and Tannhauser in 1845. 

Wagner's most enduring work, Der Rin des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), consists of
four separate operas and took 26 years to complete. He finally reached the conclusion,
Götterdämmerung, in 1876. 

Written in 1859, Tristan und Isolde is another example of Wagner's operatic ideal of what he
called the Gesamtkunstwerk ('Complete Art-Work'). 

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg from 1868 might not match The Ring Cycle for length, but it's
still a hefty four-and-a-half hours long. 

Wagner's last completed opera was Parsifal from 1882, a typically epic work that told the story
an Arthurian knight on the hunt for the holy grail. 

Even though Wagner's music was controversial it was not as extreme as his anti-Semitic
declarations, found most famously in his article Das Judenthum in der Musik (Judaism in
Music), which notoriously led directly to Hitler's passionate espousal of his music. 

Wagner died on February 13th 1883 after suffering a heart attack on holiday in Venice. 
Did you know? 
Wagner's masterpiece remains The Ring Cycle, which is made up of four different operas and
takes more than fifteen hours to perform.

14. Schubert (1797-1828)

Franz Schubert (1797–1828) was an Austrian romantic composer and although he died at the age
of 31, he was a prolific composer, having written some 600 lieder and nine symphonies.

Life and Music 

Aged 10, the young Schubert won a place in the Vienna Imperial Court chapel choir and quickly
gained a reputation as a budding composer with a set of facile string quartets. 

After leaving chapel school and having completed the year's mandatory training, Schubert
followed his father into the teaching profession. This was at once a calamitous move and a
blessing, for it was Schubert's deep loathing of the school environment that finally lit the
touchpaper of his creative genius. The same year he began teaching - 1814 - he produced his first
indisputable masterpiece, 'Gretchen am Spinnrade' ('Gretchen at her spinning wheel'). 

While Schubert was still struggling to hold down his full-time teaching post, he not only
composed 145 lieder (songs), the Second and Third Symphonies, two sonatas and a series of
miniatures for solo piano, two mass settings and other shorter choral works, four stage works,
and a string quartet, in addition to various other projects. This period of intense creative activity
remains one of the most inexplicable feats of productivity in musical history. 

Musical soirees known as Schubertiads became all the rage, during which Schubert might sing
some of his own songs while accompanying himself at the piano. 

With little money and nothing much more than his 'groupies' to support him, Schubert began to
produce a seemingly endless stream of masterpieces that for the most part were left to prosperity
to discover, including the two great song cycles, Die Schone Mullerin and Winterreise, the
Eighth ('Unfinished') and Ninth ('Great') Symphonies, the Octet for Wind, the last three string
quartets, the two piano trios, the String Quintet, the 'Wanderer' Fantasy and the last six sonatas
for solo piano. 

Did you know? 

During 1815 alone, Schubert composed over 140 masterly song settings - including the
unforgettable 'Erlkonig' - although he was still only 18 at the time.

15. Schumann (1810-1856)

Robert Schumann (1810–1856) was a German romantic composer and influential music critic.
Although Schumann was no child prodigy, he went on to become one of the most important
composers of the 19th century and is recognised as such 200 years after his birth.

Life and Music 

Schumann's early musical progress was unremarkable. He was 10 before he began piano lessons
and, despite his increasing enthusiasm for composition and a passion for Romantic literature, he
toed the family line by enrolling as a law student at Leipzig University. 

After an ailment in his right hand proved incurable, Schumann was forced to concentrate solely
on composition. 

Schumann co-founded one of the most influential musical publications, the Neue Zeitschrift für
Musik. He wrote many of the articles himself, using the pseudonyms Florestan and Eusebius. 

Schumann married Clara Wieck despite her father's blistering opposition. Between March and
July, Schumann composed five of the most treasured of all song cycles - the two Liederkreis
collections (Opp. 23 and 39), Dichterliebe, Myrthen and Frauenliebe und-Lieben - as part of a
remarkable outpouring of more than 140 songs. 

Schumann then turned his attention to multi-instrumental composition, producing the Piano
Concerto, Piano Quintet and Symphonies Nos. 1, 2 and 4. 

Following the Cello Concerto and Rhenish Symphony (both 1850), there was a marked decline
in Schumann's creative powers and his ability to keep a hold on reality. 

He met the young Brahms and predicted a successful future for him, but time was slipping away.
Following a paralytic attack, which left his speech impaired, his hallucinatory periods increased
in intensity and he attempted to drown himself in the Rhine. 

He spent the last two years of his life in an asylum where his condition gradually worsened. He
finally succumbed on 29 July 1856. 

Did you know? 

When Schumann developed an ailment in his right hand that proved incurable, the story was that
he devised a finger-strengthening contraption which collapsed, leaving him crippled. It's more
likely that he was receiving mercury treatment for syphilis!

16. Handel (1685-1759)

George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) was a German-British baroque composer, famous for
his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Most music lovers have encountered
George Frideric Handel through holiday-time renditions of the Messiah's 'Hallelujah' chorus
or his Music for the Royal Fireworks.

Life and Music 

Handel was born in the German city of Halle on February 23, 1685. 

As a child he studied music with Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, organist at the

Liebfrauenkirche, and for a time he seemed destined for a career as a church organist
himself. 

In 1703 he took a post as violinist in the Hamburg opera orchestra, he fought a duel the
following year with the composer Mattheson over the accompaniment to one of Mattheson's
operas. 

In 1706 Handel returned to Germany to become court composer in Hannover. 

English audiences took to his 1711 opera Rinaldo, and several years later Handel moved to
England permanently. He impressed King George early on with the Water Music of 1716,
written as entertainment for a royal boat outing. 

Through the 1720s Handel composed Italian operatic masterpieces for London stages:
Ottone, Serse (Xerxes), and other works often based on classical stories. 

In the 1730s and 1740s Handel turned to the oratorio which displayed to maximum effect
Handel's melodic gift and the sense of timing he brought to big choral numbers.

In 1737 Handel suffered a stroke, which caused both temporary paralysis in his right arm and
some loss of his mental faculties. 

Blind in old age, Handel continued to compose. He died in London on April 14, 1759.
Beethoven thought Handel the greatest of all his predecessors; he once said, "I would bare
my head and kneel at his grave". 

Did you know? 

Handel's father did not approve of his son's love of music. His mother had to smuggle a small
keyboard into the attic of their house. The young boy would play the instrument up there, in
secret on his own, when his father was not around.

17. Vivaldi (1678-1741)

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) was one of the most productive composers of the Baroque era.
His vast output included substantial quantities of chamber and vocal music, some 46 operas
and a remarkable 500 concertos...

Life and Music 

A colourful character with an eye for the ladies, Vivaldi defied a lifetime of ill-health by
regularly absenting himself from his home base of Venice in a desperate attempt to establish
an international reputation. 

The exact date of Vivaldi's birth (4th March 1678) confounded scholars for many years,
although it was known that following his delivery the midwife performed an emergency
baptism. The reason for his emergency baptism is not known for certain but is likely due to
his poor health or to an earthquake that shook Venice on that day. 

Vivaldi's father, Giovanni Battista, was a violinist at St Mark's Cathedral, and although he
taught the prodigiously gifted Antonio to play from early childhood, a musical career seemed
unlikely, especially when, aged 15, he was shunted off to join the priesthood. 
He studied for 10 years, received Holy Orders in 1703 and earned the nickname "il prete
rosso" (the red priest) from the distinctive colour of his hair. 

By September 1703 Vivaldi had already secured his first professional appointment as
maestro di violino at the Pio Ospedale della Pieta, one of four orphanages for girls in Venice.
Remarkably, this was to remain his base for the greater part of his life, from 1703 to 1740,
though with several prolonged 'leaves of absence'. 

Throughout the 1730s Vivaldi continued to travel widely - to Bohemia, Austria and
throughout Italy - despite the fact that his worsening health meant taking an expensive
entourage of carers. 

Destitute and alone, he passed away in Vienna in 1741 and was buried cheaply the same day
in a hospital cemetery which sadly no longer exists. 

Did you know? 

Because Vivaldi was a priest, he was not allowed to marry or have a girlfriend, but it was
largely believed that both Anna and Paolina Giro were Vivaldi's girlfriends at the same time!

18. Stravinsky (1882-1971)

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was a Russian composer who revolutionised 20th-century music,
and provoked riots with The Rite of Spring.

Life and Music 

Stravinsky composed masterpieces in almost every genre, most notably an incomparable series
of ballet scores. 

He discovered a way of rethinking the creative ideals of the 17th and 18th centuries in a
thoroughly contemporary idiom and, in doing so, hit upon one of the most vital and far-reaching
movements of the last 100 years: Neo-Classicism. 

Without Stravinsky the history of 20th-century music would have turned out quite differently. 

Although his father was a distinguished bass singer and the young Stravinsky was given every
opportunity as a child, Stravinsky hardly showed the kind of unblinkered passion for music
which one normally associates with a great composer. Indeed, he looked set for a career in
jurisprudence until he met Rimsky-Korsakov, who immediately recognised he had a talent for
composition and offered to teach him. 

Stravinsky’s big break, the ballet The Firebird, came out of the blue. He was commissioned to
compose the music only because Anatoly Lyadov let down the impresario Serge Diaghilev at the
last minute. 

The premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, in Paris in June 1913, caused a sensation, and
Stravinsky was catapulted from obscurity to stardom literally overnight. The notorious
performance, interrupted throughout by a hail of farmyard noises from the gallery, ended in
chaos with rival factions shouting abuse at each other, and the conductor and musicians fleeing
in disarray. 

It is one of the miracles of Stravinsky’s output that while each and every piece could be by no
one else, no two works sound remotely the same. 

Did you know? 

In 1942, the great ballet dancer-choreographer George Ballanchine commissioned Stravinsky to

write a short piece of music for a ballet with elephants, during which one would lift
Ballanchine’s then wife, Vera Zorina, up on to its back.

19. Liszt (1811-1886)

Franz Liszt (1811–1886) was one of the most important composers of the Romantic period.
His compositions inspired a whole generation of keyboard virtuosi.

Life and Music 

Liszt’s output for solo piano was prodigious, centered on a core of more than 100 original
titles, many of which subdivide into sets of half-a-dozen pieces or more. 

Liszt’s early progress was so astounding that by the age of nine he had already mastered
Ferdinand Ries’s excruciatingly difficult E flat major Piano Concerto. 

Liszt developed a morbid obsession with death in the 1830s. Some particularly horrific
scenes during the Paris cholera epidemic of 1832 so moved him that he once spent all night
thrashing out the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) chant on the piano. 

Between 1839 and 1847 Liszt gave well over a thousand concerts throughout most of western
Europe, Turkey, Poland and Russia, stunning audiences wherever he went with his blend of
pianistic devilry and showbiz razzmatazz. 

He started every performance by ceremoniously removing a pair of white gloves and he

invariably employed a second piano on stage so that onlookers could admire his prowess
from every conceivable angle. 

In 1848, Liszt accepted a full-time professional post in Weimar where he increasingly turned
his attention towards composing. 

In 1861 he moved to Rome. Such was his devotion to the church that Pope Pius IX conferred
on him the title of ‘Abbé’ four years later. The rest of his life was dominated by a series of
inspired sacred compositions, while his piano music became more calmly reflective and
meditative in tone. 

Active to the end, even in 1886 (the year of his death) Liszt was on a tour which embraced
his first visit to London in more than 40 years. 

July 1886 he died from dropsy complicated by pneumonia. 

Did you know? 

Legend has it that Beethoven kissed Liszt on the brow after the young boy played him his
Archduke Piano Trio from memory with the missing violin and cello parts incorporated as he
went along.

20. Dvorak (1841-1904)

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) was a Czech composer of Romantic music, who employed the
idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák's most well known work is
his Symphony No.9, 'From the New World'.

Life and Music 

Antonin Dvorak was born the eldest of eight children in a small village north of Prague. Folk
music accompanied every occasion, and Dvorak soon joined his father in the local band. He
studied organ, violin, piano and, less successfully, German. 

In 1871, still with none of his music publicly performed or published, he left the orchestra to
concentrate on composing, scratching a living by giving piano lessons. 

Antonin and Anna were wed on 17 November 1873 and enjoyed a long and fruitful marriage. 

In 1877, on recommendation by Brahms, the publisher Simrock commissioned Dvorak to write

some Slavonic Dances for piano duet, aimed at the lucrative domestic market. Dvorak fast
became an international celebrity, in some places almost overnight. In Berlin the sheet music
sold out in one day. 

In 1891 Dvorak got an offer from Mrs Jeannette Thurber, the wife of a millionaire businessman,
who wanted him as Director of the New Conservatory of Music in New York. For a little
teaching and conducting, with four month's vacation, he would receive the unimaginable salary
of $15, 000 - 25 times what he was paid in Prague, and worth about £500,000 in today's terms. 

The Dvoraks sailed to New York in autumn 1892, and their time in America produced three of
his most famous works, the String Quartet No.12, 'American', the Cello Concerto in B minor;
and the 'New World' Symphony. 

The last years of his life, Dvorak was content. He composed some short orchestral works and
wrote his operatic masterpiece, Rusalka. 

When he died of a heart attack after a short illness, he was mourned as a national hero, and his
music has remained popular ever since. 

Did you know? 

Dvorak was absolutely mad about trains and everything to do with them. When he was a teacher,
he would always ask his pupils to describe in detail any train journeys that they had recently
made!

21. Mendelsohn

Beethoven heard him play in 1821 and made a prophetic entry in one of his conversation
books: "Mendelssohn - 12 years old- promises much."

Mendelssohn was born into a prosperous middle-class family that played host to many
distinguished guests. 

By the time Felix was 12, he had already produced four operas, 12 string symphonies and
a large quantity of chamber and piano music. 

If Mendelssohn's early progress had been nothing short of phenomenal, no one could
have predicted what was shortly to follow: an astonishingly accomplished String Octet in
1825 and, only a year later, the magical overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream,
arguably two of the most stunning displays of youthful talent in western music. 

During the summer of 1834 Mendelssohn was appointed music director of the Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra. 

In 1837 he married Cecile Jeanrenaud. It was an inspired partnership, one which - to

Felix's great relief - gained the approval of Fanny and produced no fewer than five
children. 

In 1842 Felix enjoyed his first personal contact with the young Queen Victoria and her
consort, Prince Albert. In gratitude, he dedicated his ‘Scottish’ Symphony to the Queen. 

British people quickly took Felix Mendelssohn into their hearts. Indeed, such was the 37-
year-old Mendelssohn's impact in England that in 1846 he directed the first performance
of his new oratorio, Elijah, as the chief attraction of the Birmingham Festival. 

In March 1847 Mendelssohn's sister Fanny died, prematurely dealing an incalculable

emotional blow to the composer. He never fully recovered, and following a slight stroke
died in November of the same year. Queen Victoria was distraught: "We were horrified,
astounded and distressed to read in the papers of the death of Mendelssohn, the greatest
musical genius since Mozart and the most amiable man." 

Did you know? 

Mendelssohn was one of the first conductors to use a baton to beat time when he stood in
front of the orchestra.

22. Grieg (1843-1907)

Edvard Grieg (1843 – 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his
Piano Concerto in A minor and Peer Gynt (which includes Morning Mood and In the Hall of the
Mountain King). Edvard Grieg is to Norway what George Washington is to America and
William Shakespeare to England: his country's most celebrated human icon.

Life and Music 

Writing to his American biographer, Henry Finck once explained: "The traditional way of life of
the Norwegian people, together with Norway's legends, Norway’s history, Norway’s natural
scenery, stamped itself on my creative imagination from my earliest years." 

Grieg appears to have dedicated himself to establishing single-handedly a national identity for
classical music in Norway. 

Grieg was desperately unhappy at school, regularly suffering torment and abuse from his fellow
students. 
During a visit to Copenhagen in 1862 Grieg met the young composer Rikard Nordraak, whose
passionate interest in the sagas, landscape and music of his homeland inspired Grieg to take up
the musical cudgels on behalf of Norway. 

In 1866 - the year of Nordraak's premature death - Grieg gave a concert of his own music,
including some piano miniatures and the First Violin Sonata, which proved something of a
sensation. 

Following his marriage to Nina Hagerup and the birth of their baby daughter, Alexandra, he
composed his first and most enduring masterpiece, the A minor Piano Concerto, in a flurry of
inspiration. 

In 1885 the essentially shy composer took up residence in Troldhaugen (near Bergen) where he
was to stay for the next 20 years. 

In the summer of 1906 he penned his final composition - the Four Psalms - and then, seriously
weakened, left for the comparative warmth of a hotel in Christiana. He was on the verge of
undertaking a journey to Britain in the autumn of 1907 when he suffered a massive heart attack,
dying in hospital shortly after arrival. 

Did you know? 

A fortuitous encounter with the violin virtuoso Ole Bull resulted in the 15-year-old Grieg's
immediate transfer to the Leipzig Conservatory. Yet in his own words, he left the Conservatory
"as stupid as when I entered it".

23. Puccini (1858-1924)

Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) was an Italian composer whose operas, including La Bohème,
Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot are among the most frequently performed.

Life and Music 

Judged by contemporary standards, Puccini was something of a conservative. He described
Stravinsky's Rite of Spring as "the creation of a madman". 

Puccini could hardly have wished for a better start then with his first opera Le Villi which was
premiered in May 1884. Even the critics loved it, one journalist excitedly referring to Puccini as
the "next Bizet or Massenet". 

La Boheme, premiered by Toscanini in 1896 and arguably Puccini's finest opera, caused the
critics all sorts of problems, both in terms of the 'Oriental' harmonies of the third act and its
generally fast-moving, almost conversational styles. 

The premiere of Madam Butterfly in 1904 was greeted by an uproar of jeers, whistles and
farmyard noises, largely engineered by Puccini's enemies who were by this time understandably
worried about his rapid rise to fame. 

In 1908 alone, Tosca was heard in 53 French opera houses, 12 in Spain, eight in both Austria and
Germany and three in Switzerland. 

Puccini's final opera Turandot was left incomplete at the time of his death from heart failure, and
was completed from his sketches by Franco Alfano in time for its 1926 premiere. Nonetheless it
scored a resounding success and remains one of the few 20th-century operas to have sustained a
firm foothold in opera houses throughout the world. 

The last word should go to Puccini himself who, when working on his final opera Turandot,
commented: "Almighty God touched me with his little finger and said: "Write for the theatre -
mind, only for the theatre. And I have obeyed his supreme command". 

Did you know? 

Puccini composed Turandot, which includes one of the most famous arias ever written, Nessun
Dorma. You might have heard it being sung at football matches, where it has become very
popular due to The Three Tenors.

24. Rossini (1792-1868)

Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred
music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces.

Life and Music 

Having produced a whirlwind series of 38 operas, following the premiere of William Tell in
August 1829, and with close on 40 years of life still remaining, he laid down his operatic pen for
ever. Perhaps Rossini had finally had enough, as he was once reputed to have remarked: "How
wonderful opera would be if there were no singers!" 
Rossini was born in Pesaro in 1793, the son of a town trumpeter-cum-inspector of
slaughterhouses, whose questionable political sympathies once resulted in a short jail sentence.
The family was otherwise constantly on the move, Rossini's mother appearing as a principal
singer in a series of comic opera productions, while the budding young composer learned his
craft, based in Bologna. 

He composed his first opera, Demetrio e Polibio, while still a student at the Liceo Musicale in
Bologna, where his love of Mozart led to his being nicknamed, "the German". Such was its
success that it led to a series of operatic ventures which initially culminated in the Barber of
Seville. When Donizetti heard that Rossini had composed it in a matter of just three weeks, he
remarked sardonically: "Rossini always was a lazy fellow." 

Rossini's stage output culminated in the premiere of William Tell in Paris in 1829, after which he
virtually stopped composing, save for a few songs, piano pieces and two famous large-scale
choral works - the Stabat Mater and the Petite Messe Solennelle . 

Rossini died at his villa in Passy on 13 November 1868 following a short illness. Having initially
been buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, his remains were subsequently moved to Santa
Croce in Florence in 1887. 

Did you know? 

For Rossini's 70th birthday celebrations in 1862, a number of his friends clubbed together in
order to have a statue built in his honour. His reaction was typically boisterous: "Why not give
the money to me and I'll stand on the pedestal myself!"

25. Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) was a Russian composer and pianist and was one of the most
celebrated composers of the 20th century.

Life and Music 

Despite Shostakovich's exceptional talent, it was not until he was nine that he received his first
formal piano lessons from his mother, a professional pianist. 

In 1919, composer Alexander Glazunov considered the young Shostakovich ready to begin his
studies at the Petrograd Conservatory, where he was director. 

The 19-year-old Shostakovich produced a First Symphony that is an astonishing act of creative
prodigy. 

In 1936, Stalin attended a performance of Shostakovich's operatic grotesquerie, Lady Macbeth of

the Mtensk District. Dismayed by its lack of positivist flag-saving, the state newspaper, Pravda,
slated this "bedlam of noise". 
With the gun of the Soviet regime pointed at his head - and Stalin's finger effectively on the
trigger - Shostakovich knew he had to produce a surefire winner. 

The Fifth Symphony, with its universal message of triumph achieved out of adversity, was
exactly what the State wanted, and it made him a public hero. 

In 1948, several composers, including Shostakovich and Prokofiev, were hauled over the coals
by Pravda for "decadent formalism". 

In 1953 Shostakovich also composed his masterly Tenth Symphony, written - although no one
was aware of it at the time - as a reaction against the Stalinist regime, and in the case of the
vitriolic Scherzo, a sardonic portrait of Stalin. 

The constant psychological torture had taken its toll, and it seems that in 1960, following the
completion of his Eighth String Quartet, Shostakovich contemplated suicide. In 1966 he suffered
a heart attack from which he never fully recovered, and which hastened a preoccupation with
death which is tangibly realised in his angst-ridden Fourteenth Symphony. 

Shostakovich died a broken man. 

Did you know? 

One of Shostakovich's songs was sung by the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin over the radio from his
spacecraft to Mission Control down on earth.

26. Ravel (1875-1937)

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) was a 20th century French composer. Ravel was one of the
most complex of all composers. He was anti-Wagnerian, Impressionist and Neoclassicist
all rolled into one.

Life and Music 

His Basque roots gave him a special affinity with Spanish colours and rhythms. 

His acute ability to re-engage sensations and memories from childhood resulted in music
of playful innocence and unalloyed purity. 

Although Ravel was by no means a prodigy in the Mendelssohn mould, by the time he
was 14 he had won a place at the Paris Conservatoire. 

It was not until 1895 that his first work hit the printing presses: the indelible Menuet
Antique. 

Two years later he began studying with Gabriel Faure, yet although the latter was a most
sympathetic teacher, Ravel's unorthodox style soon put him on a collision course with the
notoriously conservative Director, Théodore Dubois. 

Just as Ravel was at the height of his powers and popularity, the outbreak of the First
World War caused him such deep distress that a number of important projects never came
to fruition. 

Following a successful American tour in 1928 and an honorary doctorate from Oxford
University, Ravel emerged in a final blaze of glory with the two piano concertos and his
final completed work, Don Quichotte a Dulcinee. 

The remainder of his life was plagued by a malfunction of the brain caused by Pick's
disease which increasingly affected his speech and motoric impulses. 

After a final, unsuccessful operation in 1937, Maurice Ravel, France's most celebrated
contemporary composer, passed away. 

Did you know? 

Ravel is probably most famous for his Boléro, which was used by skaters Torvill and
Dean as the piece of music for their gold-medal winning ice dance at the Olympic Games
in 1984.
27. Holst (1874-1934)

Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was one of the great originals of English music. He enjoys a
reputation that rests almost entirely on one masterpiece: The Planets.

Life and Music 

There is little about Holst’s early life that suggests a great master in the making. Piano lessons
with his father seemed to point the way forward for a while, but intermittent neuritis in Gustav’s
right arm soon ruled out thoughts of a virtuoso career. 
Holst turned his hand to composition in his spare time, teaching himself as he went along from
Berlioz’s famous treatise on orchestration. 

The Planets hit the British music scene like a thunderbolt, despite having to wait until 1920 to
receive its first complete public performance, turning Holst into a national celebrity.. 

While in Reading conducting a student orchestra in February 1923, he lost his footing on the
podium and fell, hitting the back of his head. At first it seemed all was reasonably well, despite
spells of insomnia and recurring headaches, but as the year went on Holst came close to nervous
collapse. He took the whole of 1924 off under doctor's orders and from 1925 reduced his
teaching to the occasional lesson. 

Holst's reputation remained undiminished, as evidenced by the large number of commemorative

awards he received, including the Royal Philharmonic Society's gold medal in 1930 and a
celebratory Holst Festival held in Cheltenham in 1927. 

In 1932, a duodenal ulcer caused a painful attack of gastritis from which he never fully
recovered. An attempt to save him with an operation on 23 May 1934 failed and he passed away
two days later. His ashes, as he had requested, were buried in Chichester Cathedral. 

Did you know? 

Each movement of Holst's The Planets tells the story of each of the planets' astrological
characteristics: 
Mars - the bringer of war 
Venus - the bringer of peace 
Mercury - the winged messenger of the gods 
Jupiter - the bringer of jollity 
Saturn - the bringer of old age 
Uranus - the magician 
Neptune - the mystic

28. Paganini (1782-1840)

Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840) is known as the greatest virtuoso of all time, but what of the
composer? There are those who still dismiss his music as nothing more than a series of
lightweight vehicles for his own diabolical antics.

Life and Music 

Niccolò Paganini was born into a relatively humble Genoese family. 

His father taught him the mandolin and violin, and then spent what little spare money he had on
private violin lessons for him, ensuring a strict regime of 12 hours-a-day practice. 

In 1801 Paganini journeyed to Lucca in Tuscany. Throughout this period he toured Italy, leaving
audiences quivering in the wake of his prodigious talent. 

It was not until March 1828 that the 45-year-old composer made his first professional appearance
outside Italy. The Viennese audience on that memorable night was so awe-struck that he was
promptly awarded the medal of St Salvator, and the title of 'court virtuoso'. 

In 1831 Paganini moved on to Paris, where the audience was so roused by his superhuman
abilities and unearthly, pale appearance that pandemonium broke out in the concert hall. 

Fuelled by constant unfounded rumours that he had murdered a mistress, Paganini enjoyed a
wave of popstar-style adulation for a period of four years, during which he toured Europe. 

By the mid-1830s Paganini's technical ability had begun to fail him. This was largely brought
about by failing health, including a breathing disorder and cancer of the larynx, which left him
unable to speak during his last three years. 
Paganini began planning a new violin method which he claimed would go beyond anything he
had so far accomplished, but it was not to be. Having constantly refused the ministrations of a
local priest, Paganini died on 27 May 1840. 

Did you know? 

Paganini made and spent a fortune, mostly on gambling, so that at one point he was forced to
pawn his violin.

29. Gershwin (1898-1937)

George Gershwin (1898-1937) was an American composer and pianist. Among his best
known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris,
as well as the opera, Porgy and Bess.

Life and Music 

Born Jacob Gershvin on 26 September 1898 to poor Jewish immigrants, he grew up in

Manhattan and Brooklyn. He frequently skipped school and felt inadequate beside his smarter,
better-behaved older brother Ira – except when it came to girls. 

There was no music in Gershwin’s family, but when he was 12, they bought a piano and
immediately it was clear that he had a remarkable natural talent. 

In 1914, Gershwin got a job as a song-plugger in Tin Pan Alley. With no radios or gramophones,
sheet music publishers pushed their popular songs by having someone play them in shops, over
and over again. 

By his early 20s, Gershwin was much in demand. Having formed a permanent song-writing team
with his lyricist brother Ira, he was writing two shows a year for Broadway, and his fame spread
to London. 

By the early 1930s, Gershwin could do no wrong. He was established as a popular composer,
and as a conductor and performer of his works to packed houses. He mixed with composers
including Prokofiev, Poulenc and Ravel. Arnold Schoenberg became a close friend and hailed
Gershwin’s distinctive melodic and harmonic idiom as ‘something entirely new’. 

In his mid-30s, Gershwin was plagued by headaches, and puzzled by the smell of burning
rubbish that only he seemed to notice. His problem, dismissed as ‘hysteria’ by family and
colleagues, who sent him to the psychiatrist rather than the doctor, proved more physical: a brain
tumour. He died aged 38. 

Did you know? 

It seems to be an almost legal requirement for TV and movie producers to use Rhapsody in Blue
over all and any footage of New York. Gershwin’s songs have been used in countless films,
including Four Weddings and a Funeral, When Harry Met Sally and Love’s Labour’s Lost.
Summertime, probably one of the most recorded songs of all time, has appeared in TV ads for
Pimms and Galaxy chocolate.

30. Saint-Saëns
31. Vaughn Williams
32. Andrew Lloyd Weber
33. Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was one of five Russian composers known as the
'Mighty Handful' for their nationalist tendencies.

Life and Music 

Mussorgsky was one of music’s great originals. Everything he composed was conceived in terms
of natural rhythms, melodies and harmonies of Slavonic folk music. He constantly railed against
tradition, honing his music in order to make it, in his words, "an artistic reproduction of human
speech in all its finest shades". 

Mussorgsky’s natural talent was obvious from the start. Initially taught by his mother he became
a pianist prodigy, making his debut at nine years old. Four years later, in 1852, he enrolled at the
Imperial Guard’s cadet school and composed the Porte-en-seigne polka, a surprisingly cheery
piano miniature. 

In 1863, a shortage of funds forced Mussorgsky to take a job as a clerk in the civil service.
Though brimful of startlingly original ideas, the pieces he composed in his spare time often
lacked any musical logic and he abandoned many works out of sheer frustration. Indeed, if it
hadn’t been for Rimsky-Korsakov’s later kindness and support, Mussorgsky, and his music,
might have fallen by the wayside. 

Throughout the 1870s, Mussorgsky became increasingly prone to epileptic seizures, and his
predilection for alcohol quickly developed into full-blown dependency. 

Mussorgsky's most famous work is Pictures at an Exhibition. It departs from convention at

almost every turn. By way of a series of interludes, the composer himself regularly appears in the
form of a recurring ‘Promenade’ theme. As he strolls around the gallery, stopping at each new
stage design or watercolour by his friend Viktor Hartmann, the ‘Promenade’ transforms;
sometimes settling us down for the next picture, occasionally creating a startling change of
atmosphere. 

Did you know? 

Mussorgsky began composing six operas, but completed only one, Boris Godunov.

34. Pachelbel
35. Ives (?)
36. Korsakov
37. Von Weber
38. Satie

Erik Satie (1866–1925) was a French composer and pianist. Today he is best known to us
through his well-loved Gymnopédies, the small melancholic piano pieces from 1890, but at the
time of his death in 1925, Satie was barely known beyond the city limits of Paris.

Life and Music 

Erik Satie, the well-loved yet eccentric composer of piano miniatures, was born on May 17th
1866 in Honfleur, Normandy, the son of a French music publisher. 

Aged 18, Satie moved to Paris where he studied briefly at the Paris Conservatory and found his
first musical voice as the official composer of the Rosicrucian movement. 

Only a select few from music circles of the time knew that he was an influence on the composer
group Les Six, which included Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc. Following Satie’s lead, they
tried to write simple and clear music. Satie was also an influence on the Impressionist composer
Debussy, a life-long friend. 

Besides the influence he had on his contemporaries, he was best known for his eccentric
behaviour. Some of his odd antics included never allowing anyone to enter his apartment, and
some of the instructions he asked performers to follow during a performance of a work would be,
playing a piece of music as ‘light as an egg’. 

He finally achieved a degree of success that had long eluded him with ‘Parade’, a collaboration
with Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and the director of Les Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo, Serge
Diaghilev. The score was compelling, and the inclusion of guns, car horns, sirens, and
typewriters was so innovative and raucous as to cause an opening night riot that brought Satie to
the public's attention. 

Satie died in 1925, his music faded into obscurity for almost 50 years until the 1960s when it was
rediscovered by the modern minimalist composer John Cage, who found Satie an inspiration and
influence on his own music. 
Did you know? 

Satie wrote a piece for piano with one hundred and eighty notes, which had to be repeated eight
hundred and forty times. When it was presented in New York in 1963, five different pianists had
to play in relays all night long to give it a full performance.

39. Barber
40. Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar (1857–1934) was an English composer, among whose best-known
compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance
Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies.

Life and Music 

Elgar's father owned a music shop and was a church organist who taught his son piano, organ,
and violin; apart from this instruction, Elgar was basically self-taught as a musician. 

At the age of 16, the composer became a freelance musician and for the remainder of his life
never took a permanent job. He conducted locally, performed, taught, and composed, scraping by
until his marriage to Caroline Alice Roberts, a published novelist of some wealth, in 1889. 

In 1899, Elgar composed one of his best-known works, the "Enigma" Variations, Op. 36, which
catapulted him to fame. The work is a cryptic tribute to Alice and to the many friends who stood
behind the composer in the shaky early days of his career. 

Elgar's most fruitful period was the first decade of the twentieth century, during which he wrote
some of his noblest, most expressive music, including the first four of his Pomp and
Circumstance Marches; the first of these, subtitled "Land of Hope and Glory", became an
unofficial second national anthem for the British Empire. 

Elgar suffered a blow when Jaeger (the "Nimrod" of the "Enigma" Variations) died in 1909. The
composer's productivity dropped, and the horrors of World War I deepened his melancholic
outlook. 

In 1919 Elgar wrote the masterly Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, whose deep feeling of
sadness and impending loss surely relates to the final illness of his faithful Alice, who died in
1920. 

In the early 1930s, Elgar set to work on a third symphony, left unfinished at his death in 1934.

41. Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) was an Italian composer, musician and singer, who stood at
the crossroads of one of the most crucial periods in musical history.

Life and Music 

Born the son of a Cremonese barber-surgeon, Monteverdi began composing at a very early age
and had his first book of three-part motets published in Venice when he was 15. 

In 1587, he published the first of nine books of madrigals. This remarkable run was capped by
his appointment at the Court of Mantua in 1592, initially as a viol player. 

Monteverdi married one of the court singers, Claudia de Cataneis, by whom he had two sons and
a daughter. 

By the time he was appointed maestro di cappella at Mantua in 1601, Monteverdi was widely
recognised as a distinguished composer, a reputation further enhanced by the publication of his
Fourth and Fifth Book of Madrigals in 1603 and 1605. 

Monteverdi’s period in Venice proved a fitting climax to his career. In 1619 he published his
Seventh Book of Madrigals, which further developed the harmonic audacity of his previous
volumes, while in 1624 his hybrid entertainment, Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda,
created a sensation at its premiere. 

Sadly, not all of Monteverdi’s finest music survived. Only one trio of his 1630 opera Proserpina
Rapita is extant, and the Gloria is all that remains of a 1631 Mass of Thanksgiving written
specifically for St Mark’s. 

He might well have laid his operatic pen down for ever had it not been for the opening of the first
public opera houses in Venice in 1637 for which he wrote three final masterpieces: Il Ritorno
d’Ulisse in patria (1640), Le Nozze d’Enea con Lavinia (1641, lost) and L’Incoronazione di
Poppea (1642). 

Monteverdi died the following year and was laid to rest in the church of the Frari in Venice. 

Did you know? 

Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo told the mythical tale of Orpheus - a musician who, when his wife
Euridice died, went down to Hades, the land of the dead, to try to get her back. It was a tale to
which composers would return time and time again.

42. Christoph Willibald Gluck

Christoph Gluck (1714–1787) was an opera composer of the early classical period his most
famous work was Orfeo ed Euridice. Gluck's radical credentials go back to his youth. He ran
away to Prague at about 14, living by his wits, getting musical work where he could.
Life and Music 
Gluck found patronage and musical training in Milan, where he probably learnt much from the
symphonist Sammartini. 

Milan saw his debut as an opera composer in 1741 with the first of several works he wrote for
the city. 

In 1761, Gluck set to work on the first of his three so-called 'reform' operas, Orfeo ed Euridice. 

Through the reformation, Baroque opera which was full of undramatic conventions,
opportunities for vocal display, and lengthy set pieces, became cleansed of much of its fat. Italian
opera now breathed the spirit of French opera, idealised through the genius of Gluck and
Calzabigi. 

For his next reform opera, Alceste, Gluck decided to follow the example of some illustrious
predecessors and explain himself: "I have striven to restrict music to its true office of serving
poetry by means of expression and by following the situations of the story, without interrupting
the action or stifling it with a useless superfluity of ornaments". 

Gluck wanted music to be the servant of poetry; he wanted drama to lead and the music to
follow. Inevitably, Gluck's passionate interest in French opera led him to France, where he
became a key player in the revival of French opera. He wrote new operas in French and radically
overhauled some of his best Italian works. 

In Vienna, Gluck became deeply involved in French productions, to such an extent that he
behaved to the French public and monarchy in a way that would have lost him his head. 

His final act of defiance was when his doctor ordered him to stay off the demon drink. But Gluck
enjoyed his indulgent lifestyle far too much to comply and he died in 1787. 

Did you know? 

Gluck, unhappy with the way rehearsals were going for Iphigénie en Aulide (1774), simply
postponed the performance, in spite of the fact that King Louis XVI and his queen were due to
attend.

43. Strauss
Richard Strauss (1864–1949) was one of the most gifted composers of the twentieth century,
Richard Strauss's position in music's hall of fame nevertheless continues to be hotly debated.

Life and Music 

Strauss began composing seriously at the age of six. 

Strauss demonstrated his mastery of miniature forms with his first published set of a remarkable
output of some 200 songs. 

A move to the court opera at Munich in 1886 broadened Strauss's conducting experience and
allowed sufficient 'spare' time for him to compose the first of his spectacular series of tone
poems: Tod und Verklärung ('Death and Transfiguration'), Don Juan and Macbeth. 

In 1889, Strauss was appointed principal conductor of the Weimar Court Orchestra. 

In 1894 he produced his first opera, Guntram, and fell in love with the leading soprano, Pauline
de Ahna, who stayed with him to the end, outliving him by just a few months. 

Some of his hits include: Till Eulenspiegels Lustige Streiche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Don
Quixote, the semi-autobiographical Ein Heldenleben ('A Hero's Life') and the less inspired and
indulgently autobiographical Symphonia Domestica. 

Strauss's musical activities during the inter-war years were dominated by conducting and a series
of operas - including Intermezzo, Arabella and Daphne - which embrace an easily assimilated
lyricism and charm. 
Strauss got a bumpy ride from the Nazis. In 1933, Goebbels appointed him, without prior
consultation, head of the Reichsmusikkammer (Hitler's commission for music) but Strauss was
removed in 1935 because of his collaboration with Jewish librettist Stefan Zweig on the opera
Die Schweigsame Frau. 

Did you know? 

Strauss's ten golden rules for budding young conductors contained the gem: "Never look at the
brass, it only encourages them - if you can hear them at all, they are too loud".

44. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist; and one of the
central figures of Twentieth century music. His most famous piece was the epic War Requiem.

Life and Music 

Britten's father was a prosperous oral surgeon in the town of Lowestoft, Suffolk; his mother was
a leader in the local choral society. 

Britten found in the human voice a special source of inspiration, an affinity that resulted in a
remarkable body of work, ranging from operas like Peter Grimes and Death in Venice to song
cycles like the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings to the massive choral work War Requiem. 

He also produced much music for orchestra and chamber ensembles, including symphonies,
concerti, and chamber and solo works. 
When Benjamin's musical aptitude became evident, the family engaged composer Frank Bridge
to supervise his musical education. 

Britten paid tribute to his teacher in his Op. 10, the Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge. 

Britten left England in 1939 as war loomed over Europe. He spent four years in the United States
and Canada, his compositional pace barely slackening, evidenced by the production of works
such as the Sinfonia da Requiem (1940), the song cycle Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (1940),
and his first effort for the stage, Paul Bunyan (1940-1941). 

The tenor Peter Pears was Britten's closest intimate, both personally and professionally, from the
late '30s to the composer's death. 

With a Koussevitzky Commission backing him, the composer wrote the enormously successful
opera Peter Grimes. 

Over the next several decades Britten wrote a dozen more operas, several of which became
instant and permanent fixtures of the repertoire. 

Britten suffered a stroke during heart surgery in 1971, which resulted in something of a
slowdown in his creative activities. Yet he continued to compose until his death in 1976. 

Did you know? 

His most famous piece, which some would say is the crowning pinnacle of his entire career - is
the War Requiem, premiered in 1962 to celebrate the opening of the new Coventry Cathedral.

45. Aaron Copeland (1900-1990)

Aaron Copland (1900–1990) was one of the few 'serious' 20th-century composers whose music
touched the heart of the 'common man'.

Life and Music 

Copland's musical gifts were obvious from the start. By the age of five he was inseparable from
the family piano, while childhood visits to see Walter Damrosch conduct the New York
Symphony and Isadora Duncan as a member of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company sparked his
imagination. 

Copland started composing seriously after he began piano studies with Rubin Goldmark in 1917.
His first published piece was The Cat and the Mouse, a Debussyian miniature for solo piano. 

Copland spent three years in Paris between 1921 and 1924, studying with Nadia Boulanger. 

His return to New York was marked not only by such exuberant orchestral pieces as Music for
the Theatre and the jazz-orientated Piano Concerto, but also a new enthusiasm for a whole range
of other musical disciplines, including lecturing, concertising (as pianist), and lending
enthusiastic support to the work of local music societies. 

By the late 1930s Copland had developed a magical sound-world that seemed to encapsulate the
North American pioneering spirit. His impact on American musical culture was on a par with his
friend and supporter Leonard Bernstein. 

The extraordinary success of El Salon Mexico ushered in a decade of intense activity which
embraced many of Copland's most celebrated pieces, including Fanfare for the Common Man
and three popular ballets, Billy the Kid, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring. 
His many awards included an Oscar for his 1948 film score to The Heiress, honorary doctorates
from several universities (including our own York), and a Pulitzer Prize in 1945 for Appalachian
Spring. 

By the time of his death in 1990, Copland was widely acknowledged to be one of the world's
finest composers and musical educators. 

Did you know? 

Copland's best known work is called Fanfare for the Common Man, and it is now used at
American presidential inaugurations.

46. Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer
and pianist. His most well known pieces include the spectacular West Side Story, Candide and
the Chichester Psalms.

Life and Music 

At Harvard, his tutors included Walter Piston, and at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute the great Fritz
Reiner for conducting and composition with Randall Thompson. 

His meteoric rise to stardom continued the following year when he was appointed deputy to
Artur Rodzinski at the New York Philharmonic, and subsequently made his sensational debut in
1943, standing in for an indisposed Bruno Walter. 

In 1943 Bernstein made his debut as a performer-composer on disc with his Clarinet Sonata. 

As a composer he won critical acclaim for his ballet Fancy Free (1944), the filmed musical On
the Town (1944), and his first two symphonies Jeremiah and The Age of Anxiety. 

In 1946 he gave his first performance of Ravel’s G major Concerto, directing the orchestra from
the piano. 

In 1953, Bernstein became the first American to conduct the orchestra of La Scala opera house in
Milan - with Maria Callas in the lead role. 

In 1954 he was nominated for an Oscar for On the Waterfront, and then scored two consecutive
hits with Candide (1956) and West Side Story (1957). 

From 1958 to 1969, as principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein gave nearly
1000 concerts and made innumerable fine recordings, many of which remain definitive. 

Between 1958 and 1972 he devised and presented a remarkable series of 53 televised Young
People's Concerts which introduced a generation of Americans to the 'classics' - and picked up
four Emmy awards. 
Bernstein's punishing workload and a lifetime of heavy smoking finally took their toll and he
died of pneumonia in 1990. 

Did you know? 

Bernstein was the first composer to become a television and radio star.

47. Phillip Glass

Philip Glass (1937-present) an American composer, who became familiar with Beethoven
quartets, Schubert sonatas, Shostakovich symphonies and other music through his father’s radio
repair and record shop.

Life and Music 

At the University of Chicago, Glass played piano and concentrated on such composers as Ives
and Webern while studying a major in mathematics and philosophy. 

Determined to become a composer, he went on to attend the Julliard School, New York, where
he abandoned the 12-tone techniques he had been using in Chicago for preferred American
composers like Copland and Schuman. 

Glass studied with Vincent Persichetti, Darius Milhaud and William Bergsma, yet had still not
found his own voice and moved to Paris, where he did two years of intensive study under Nadia
Boulanger. 

In Paris, Glass began researching music in North Africa, India and the Himalayas with an aim to
applying Eastern techniques to his own work. 

In 1976, the Philip Glass Ensemble reached its apogee with the Philip Glass/Robert Wilson opera
'Einstein on the Beach', a 4-1/2 hour epic now seen as a landmark in 20th-century music-theatre. 

Did you know? 

Glass has collaborated with a variety of artists, including David Bowie and Woody Allen, in the
composition of music for theatre, opera, dance and film.
48. Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
49. Carl Orff

Carl Orff (1895-1982) was a German composer best known for Carmina Burana.

Life and Music 

Orff’s family were army officers by profession but they loved music. 

Carl began to learn the piano, organ and 'cello aged five. 

His musical influences were as diverse as Debussy, Schoenberg and Renaissance period music. 

He was conscripted into the army in 1917 and nearly died when a trench caved in. He was
declared unfit for active service and spent the rest of the war at the Nationaltheater in Mannheim
and then the Hoftheater in Darmstadt. 

In 1924, Orff founded the Günther School of gymnastics, dance, and music with Dorothee
Günther. He also published the Orff-Schulwerk and developed various percussion instruments,
which have been widely used in education. 

Carmina Burana, premiered in Frankfurt in June 1937, was Orff’s first composition success. He
ordered his publisher to destroy all his previous works. 

The Carmina Burana is an important collection of Latin and German 11th-, 12th- and 13th-
century poems, which were discovered in a Benedictine monastery in Bavaria in 1803. Orff
selected some of the poems to set to music in his scenic cantata. 

Orff has been accused for cooperating with the Nazis. Carmina Burana was hugely popular in
Nazi Germany. 

The Nazis banned Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream because Mendelssohn was a
Jew. Orff was the only composer to answer their call for Germans to write new incidental music
for the play. 

However, Orff was not a member of the Nazi party, nor is there evidence to suggest that he had
close friends within the regime. 

Increasingly, Orff drew on fables and ancient Latin texts in his works. 

Did you know? 

Carmina Burana has been used in films, adverts and television programmes, including Natural
Born Killers, the advertising campaign for Old Spice aftershave and The X-Factor.

50. Debussy
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) was a 20th-century French composer and one of the most
prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music.

Life and Music 

Claude Debussy was born on the 22nd August 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France.

In 1880, Tchaikovsky commented on one of Debussy's early pieces: "It is a very pretty piece, but
it is much too short. Not a single idea is expressed fully, the form is terribly shriveled, and it
lacks unity." 

It was not until 1894, aged 32, that Debussy completed the first piece to truly declare his
independence of thought: Prelude a l'Apres-midi d'un Faune, a highly innovative piece inspired
by a poem of Stephane Mallarmé. 

After his first successes, Debussy began serious work on his opera Pelleas et Melisande
(completed in 1902) and the three orchestral Nocturnes (completed in 1899). 

Debussy entered a new creative phase in 1903 with La Mer, completed while staying in
Eastbourne, where he observed that "the sea behaves with British politeness". 

The success of Pelleas et Melisande's long-delayed premiere in 1902 made Debussy a celebrity.
He subsequently began a passionate affair with Emma Bardac, one-time mistress of Gabriel
Faure, whereupon his wife unsuccessfully attempted to shoot herself. 

In 1914, just as he was at the height of his powers, Debussy discovered he had cancer. An
operation left him so debilitated that he composed nothing for over a year. 

Before his death on March 25th 1918 in Paris, he completed one final masterwork, the Violin
Sonata. 
Did you know? 
Debussy's obvious talent for the piano led to his winning a place at the junior department of the
Paris Conservatoire in 1872 when he was only 10 years old.

A Beginner’s Guide to Classical Music: Orchestras,

Operas, and All Things In Between

Contents (in general order):

- Preface
o (introductory essay written by the author that tells how the book came into being,
followed by thanks and acknowledgments to people who were helpful to the
author during the time of writing)

This book is made in conjunction with the Fellows program at Severn School in Severna
park Maryland. Since the 2008-2009 school year, Severn School has invited a select group of
seniors to transcend the academic program and develop a year-long intellectual pursuit
that reflects their growing passions as part of the Severn Fellows program, now known as The
Van Eney ′09 Fellows Program.
As a junior at Severn, I came up with the idea of a classical music guide that not only
provided information about classical music but also played the songs in the pages so that readers
could have a uniquely interactive experience. I recognize that classical music is not a commonly
liked art form among the youth, and I believe that the ability to hear classical songs alongside
learning about their creation is a crucial aspect to gaining an appreciation for the art form.
I would like to thank the Severn School Fellows program for their support and guidance
during my writing process, namely my faculty mentor Rob Redei, program advisor Mary Ellen
Carsely, and Mary Carrington, who assisted me with the logistics of my bibliography and Fair
Use rules.

- Introduction (perhaps not necessary, but let’s accommodate for it in case)

o Outline What the book will cover in greater detail
(now would be the actual “table of contents” page)

- The Origins of the Orchestra and Opera

o What the names mean
- early 17th century: via Latin from Greek orkhēstra, from orkheisthai ‘to dance’.
- The word orchestra comes from the actual space in which an orchestra plays; the
Greek orkhestra means "a space where a chorus of dancers performs," from orkheisthai, "to
dance."
- the term orchestra simply means a group of instrumental musicians. That’s it! It
can be used in any music genre
- In classical music, the term “orchestra”, refers specifically to a group of musicians
involving strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion and (sometimes) choir. But again,
it is important to understand that “orchestra”,  as a term, has no bearing on specific
ensemble size or genre.

o When was the first, why the first, what was the inspiration?

o Crucial figures in the founding stages of both

o Public acceptance, reactions, traditions, performances

o Development of the orchestra over time

 Perhaps a timeline
 An introduction to the different eras (baroque, classical romantic, 20th
century)

While all historians and scholars can agree that classical music has been played for thousands
of years, the exact origins of classical music are still debated upon today.

- Most Orchestras Today

o List of what instruments and what they do and their purposed and how they were
built/discovered

chamber orchestra: instrumental music played by a small ensemble, with one player to a part, the
most important form being the string quartet which developed in the 18th century
- The term “chamber”, like orchestra, is basically an adjective that denotes the space
in which the music was to be performed.  It comes from the French term chambre,
meaning room.
- In context, a chamber orchestra refers to an orchestra (a group of musicians) who
play in rooms rather than full-sized concert halls. The acoustic limitations mean
that chamber orchestras are smaller (up to 50 musicians) as opposed to a full
orchestra (around 100). Of course, chamber orchestras can play in a concert hall,
but a full orchestra would not be able to fit in a small room. The music between a
chamber and full orchestra sounds very different due to the smaller number of
instruments, orchestration, and acoustics of the performance space.
o string orchestra: an orchestra playing only stringed instruments
o common for chamber music groups not to have a conductor
philharmonic, symphony, symphony orchestra

- a large orchestra; can perform symphonies

- “symphony” also refers to a special kind of orchestral composition that is formally
structured in four movements
o Symphony comes from Greek roots that literally meaning “sounding
together, harmony of sound.” It was borrowed into English as early as
the 1200s.In classical music, a symphony is a type of elaborate, multipart
composition in classical music.
- The word  philharmonic literally means “music-loving.” The English word is
modeled on French or Italian forms ultimately based on the Greek
roots phílos (“loving, dear”) and harmonía (“music, agreement,
joint”).Philharmonic is found in English by the 1740s, used of largely of
organizations dedicated to their love of music, e.g., philharmonic society.
- Cities around the world often have their own symphony orchestras. When cities contain more than one
large orchestra, naming one a philharmonic and the other a symphony can help differentiate between the
groups. Examples of popular modern orchestras include the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the London
Philharmonic Orchestra, or the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. * INSERT IMAGES OF EACH

o What instruments and where they go: GOING TO WANT A SEATING CHART
AND IMAGES OF EACH INSTRUMENT

 Woodwinds: Piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet,

2 bassoons, contrabassoon
 The Woodwinds
 Instruments in the woodwind family used to all be made of wood, hence the name, but now
they can be made of wood, metal, plastic or some combination of materials. They are all tubes
with an opening at one end and a mouthpiece at the other end. They each have rows of holes
that are covered by metal caps called keys. Pressing on different keys produces different
musical notes – the sound changes depending on where the air leaves the instrument (through
one of the key holes or out the far end). There are three ways in which the woodwind family
creates sound: by blowing air across the edge of or into the mouthpiece (flute or piccolo), by
blowing air between a single reed and a fixed surface (clarinet and bass clarinet), or by
blowing air between two reeds (oboe, English horn, bassoon, and contrabassoon).

The flute is a narrow metal tube about two feet long, with a row of holes covered by keys. (Early flutes were
often made of wood.) The player blows air across the small hole in the mouthpiece to produce a sound that can
be either soft and mellow or high and piercing. Like the violin, the flute may often carry the melody line as it is
easy to hear above the other instruments.

The piccolo,usually made from metal or wood, is like a small flute. Because the length of the instrument is
shorter than the flute, the pitch is higher, but it operates the same way. It is more of a specialty instrument,
used when the part to be played is especially high.

he oboe does not have a mouthpiece like the flute and the piccolo. It is a double-reed instrument, with two
reeds tied together for the mouthpiece. When the player places the reeds between her or his lips and blows air
through them into the oboe, the reeds vibrate and produce the sound. Many oboists make their own reeds, or at
least tailor them to suit their specific playing style. The oboe is made of wood. It has a more mellow sound
than the flute, but still has a bright treble sound and is often expected to carry the melody in an orchestral
work.
The English horn (cor anglais) is a perfect fifth below the oboe, which requires it to be one and one-half
times as long! It also has a curved metal neck for the reed and a bulbous bell. The fingering and playing
techniques are very similar to the oboe, and many performers play both instruments. It is thought to have a
more mellow sound than the oboe.

Another wooden instrument, the clarinet, produces a fluid sound when air is blown between a single reed and
the mouthpiece. As air passes through, the reed vibrates and creates sound. It has a large range of nearly four
octaves so is a very versatile instrument. The tone quality can vary greatly depending on the musician, the
instrument, the mouthpiece, and the reed.

The bass clarinet is a larger, lower relative of the clarinet. Most bass clarinets today are straight instruments
like a clarinet but with a small upturned silver-colored metal bell and a curved metal neck. The bass clarinet
has a usable range of over four octaves, quite close to the range of the bassoon, and many bass clarinetists
perform works originally intended for bassoon or even cello.

The bassoon is a large double-reed instrument with a sound that is deeper than the other woodwind
instruments. When the player blows air between the reeds, the vibrating column of air inside the instrument
travels over nine feet to the bottom of the instrument, then up to the top where the sound comes out! Luckily,
the bassoon comes apart into pieces for easy transport. There is a complex key work system to allow this large
instrument to utilize its three-octave range with considerable agility.

The contrabassoon is twice as long as the standard bassoon, curves around on itself twice, and, due to its
weight and shape, is supported by an end pin. Sometimes a strap around the player’s neck gives additional
support. It is a very deep-sounding woodwind instrument. The contrabassoon is mainly a supplementary rather
than a core orchestral instrument, and is most frequently found in larger symphonic works.

The saxophone, while made of brass, is actually a woodwind instrument! It uses a single-reed mouthpiece
much like the clarinet. The saxophone (“sax” for short) was invented in 1846 by Adolphe Sax to try to bridge
the gap between brass and woodwind instruments. It is more powerful than most woodwinds, and more
versatile than most brass instruments. The saxophone is used extensively in jazz, as well as in military,
marching, and concert bands. There is also chamber and symphonic music written for sax, though it is less
common. Still, there are some wonderful orchestral works that use the sax, so you will probably find a sax in
our midst at some point every season!
 Brass: 2 to 8 French horns, 2 to 5 trumpets, 2 to 3 trombones, 1 to 2 bass trombones, tuba
 The Brass
 Brass instruments are essentially very long pipes that widen at their ends into a bell-like
shape. The pipes have been curved and twisted into different shapes to make them easier to
hold and play. Instruments in the brass family produce their sound when the player “buzzes”
her or his lips while blowing air through the mouthpiece, kind of like making a “raspberry,”
creating a vibrating column of air within the instrument. Most brass instruments have valves
attached to their long pipes. When the player presses down on the valves, they open and close
different parts of the pipe, increasing the length of the pipe when played and creating a lower
sound. In addition to the valves, the player can select the pitch from a range of overtones or
harmonics by changing his or her lip aperture and tension (known as the embouchure). The
mouthpiece can also make a big difference in tone. Brass musicians can also insert mutes into
the bell of their instrument to change the timbre of its sound.

The trumpet has been around since about 1500 years BCE! It is the highest-sounding member of the brass
family, and was often used for signaling/sending messages and religious purposes in the early days as the
sound is very bright and clear. Air travels through six and a half feet of tubing bent into an oblong shape. The
modern trumpet has three valves to change pitches, added in the early 19th century.

The trombone has a more mellow sound than the trumpet. Instead of valves or keys, the trombone uses a slide
with seven positions to change the length of its approximately nine feet of tubing in order to reach different
pitches. The longer the column of air, the lower the pitch. It also has a short tuning slide to adjust intonation.

The bass trombone is identical in length to the tenor trombone, but has a wider bore and a larger bell to create
a fuller tone in the low register. It also has one or two valves which can lower the key of the instrument. There
is usually at least one bass trombone in a symphony orchestra.

The horn (often called the French horn but it really isn’t French at all!) consists of about twenty feet of narrow
tubing wound into a circle with a large flared bell at the end. It has a clear, mellow sound, and is played with
the bell pointing away from the audience, providing contrast to the other brass instruments. The player
produces different notes on the horn by pressing valves with the left hand and by moving the right hand inside
of the bell.

Made of about sixteen feet of tubing, the tuba is the lowest-sounding member of the brass family. It is one of
the newest instruments in the orchestra, having first appeared in the mid-19th century. The concert tuba
generally has four or five valves and is held upright in the player’s lap. While tubas are common in a marching
band, in the classical orchestra there is generally only a part for one tuba.

 Percussion: Timpani, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, celesta, piano, etc.

 The Percussion Family
 The percussion section provides a variety of rhythms, textures and tone colors to orchestral
music. Instruments in the percussion family make sound in one of three ways, by striking,
shaking, or scraping. Percussion instruments can also be tuned or untuned. Tuned instruments
play specific pitches or notes, just like the woodwind, brass and string instruments. Untuned
instruments produce a sound with no definite pitch, like the sound of hitting two pieces of
wood or metal together. Percussion instruments are an international family, representing
musical styles from many different cultures. There are numerous kinds of percussion
instruments, such as rattles, castanets, or tambourines, that are not shown here as they are
used less frequently in orchestral compositions.
 Keyboard instruments are a special class of percussion instrument.
Timpani, also known as kettle drums, are large copper bowls covered with calfskin or plastic stretched over
the top. Timpani are pitched instruments, tuned to a specific pitch that fits into the key of the composition
being played. The performer strikes the top of the instrument with wooden sticks or mallets to produce the
note. The larger the drum, the lower or deeper the sound.

The snare drum is a widely used unpitched percussion instrument, though the sound can be changed slightly
by tightening the drum head. Snare drums may be made from various wood, metal, or acrylic materials, and
come in a variety of sizes. Most modern drum heads are made of mylar (plastic). A typical orchestral snare
drum might be 14” in diameter and 6” deep. The snare drum is almost always double-headed, with rattles
(called snares) of gut, metal wire or synthetics stretched across one or both heads. The snare drum is played by
hitting with drum sticks.

The bass drum (pronounced “base” as in first base) is a large tuned percussion instrument with a calfskin or
plastic drum head that covers both sides of the hollow, wooden cylinder. The bass drum has a deep or low
sound. The bass drum is mounted on a stand because of its size, and the player strikes either side with felt-
covered mallets.

The triangle, named because of its shape, is made from a small cylindrical piece of steel that is suspended
from a loop and played by striking with a steel beater. While it looks easy to play, getting the volume and
rhythm correct can be challenging!

The gong is a brass disc-shaped instrument that is hit with a large, soft mallet. Gongs can range in size from
very small, producing a high-pitched sound, to larger than a person (!), producing a low or deep reverberating
sound.

Cymbals are made of thin, round plates of metal alloys. Most cymbals are of indefinite pitch. The size of the
cymbal affects its sound – larger cymbals are louder and can sustain their note longer. The unique sound of the
cymbals allows them to project above a full orchestra, but they can also be played very softly, and offer a wide
variety of options for making different sounds. Orchestral cymbals are traditionally used in pairs, each one
having a strap by which they are held. Sound is created by rubbing their edges together in a sliding movement,
striking them against each other, and several other techniques. Cymbal pairs are usually damped when the
sound is supposed to end by pressing them against the player’s body. Another use of cymbals is to hang a
cymbal by its strap, which allows the cymbal to vibrate freely when struck by mallets or drum sticks, making a
very different sound than two cymbals hitting each other.

The vibraphone is an instrument that has a keyboard made from aluminum bars, similar to a xylophone or
marimba. The player strikes the keys with mallets, and may make the notes hold a couple of seconds longer
using a pedal similar to that on a piano.Vibraphone keys are of graduated widths. Lower bars are wider and
higher notes are narrower, to help balance volume and tone of the instrument. The player plays the vibraphone
while standing up

The piano is probably one of the most familiar musical instruments. Not only is it used for solo performances,
but it often appears in ensembles and chamber music, and is frequently used to accompany, rehearse, and
compose. The piano has figured prominently in all kinds of music from classical to music halls to ragtime to
jazz to rock and roll. It is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when the player presses the keys with her
or his fingers, causing small padded hammers to strike the strings. The sound is stopped by a damper when the
key is released, though pedals can sustain the note a bit longer. The piano can produce a great variety of
dynamics (soft to loud), based on how hard or softly the pianist hits the keys. There are 88 keys (52 white and
36 black) on a standard piano!

 Strings: Harp(s), 16 to 30 violins, 8 to 12 violas, 8 to 12 violoncellos, and 5 to 8 double

basses.
 The Strings
 The four most commonly used instruments in the string family are the violin, the viola,
the cello and the double (string) bass. They are all made by gluing pieces of wood together
to form a hollow “sound box.” The quality of sound of one of these instruments depends on
its shape, the wood it is made from, the thickness of both the top and back, and the varnish
that coats its outside surface.
 Four strings made of gut, synthetics, or steel are wrapped around pegs at one end of the
instrument, tightly stretched across a “bridge,” and attached to a tailpiece at the other end.
The pegs are used to tune the instrument (change the length of the string until it makes
exactly the right sound). The strings are tuned in perfect “fifths” from each other – 5 notes
apart.
 The player makes the strings vibrate by plucking them, striking them, strumming them, or,
most frequently, by drawing a bow across them. The bow is made of wood and horsehair. The
instrument sounds different notes when the performer presses a finger down on the strings on
the instrument’s neck, changing the length of the portion of the string that vibrates. The
shorter the vibrating part of the string,the higher the sound produced. (https://www.arapahoe-
phil.org/learn/resources-instruments-orchestra/ )

The violin is the smallest and highest-pitched member of the string family. It is held under the chin and rests
on the player’s left shoulder. It can be played standing or sitting. Usually a soloist will stand, and violinists in
an orchestra will sit. The violin often carries the melody in an orchestral work as its brilliant sound carries
easily over many of the other instruments. There are usually two sections of violins, first violins and second
violins, and they play different “parts” (different music has been written for each group).
A little larger than the violin but played in the same manner, the viola is the next lower member of the string
family. The viola duplicates the violin’s three lower strings, but its fourth string is tuned another fifth lower
than the lowest violin string. It has a warmer tone quality than the violin and often plays harmony to support
the violin’s melody.

The cello plays notes that are only an octave (8 notes) lower than the viola, but it is much larger. Due to its
size, the cellist sits in a chair and rests the cello between his or her knees. The cello has an end pin that rests on
the floor to help support the instrument’s weight. The cello can play the part of a supportive, reliable bass
instrument at one moment, and rise to reproduce the notes of a lovely tenor voice at other times.

The double bass, also called the string bass (pronounced “base” as in first base) or just “bass” for short, is the
largest and lowest-pitched bowed stringed instrument, an octave lower than the cello. While it looks similar to
the other members of the string family, it has more sloping “shoulders” so that the player can reach and move
around on the strings more easily despite its large size. It may also have 5 strings rather than 4 with the
addition of a lower string. Because of its size (taller than the performer), the bassist stands or sits on a tall stool
to play the instrument, which rests on the floor.

The harp, another stringed instrument, is nothing like the rest of the string family. It is a tall, triangular-shaped
instrument with about 45 vertical strings. The strings are plucked or strummed with the player’s fingers while
seven pedals at the bottom of the harp adjust the length of the strings to produce additional notes.The harpist
sits in a chair with the back of the harp between his or her knees, in order to be able to reach the strings and use
the foot pedals that can change the pitch of the harp by one or two half-steps.

The Hierarchy
- “Between the instrument groups and within each group of instruments, there is a
generally accepted hierarchy. Every instrumental group (or section) has a principal (or
soloist) who is generally responsible for leading the group and playing solos. The violins
are divided into two groups, first violin and second violin, and therefore have two
principals. The principal first violin is called the concertmaster (or leader) and is
considered the leader of not only the string section, but of the entire orchestra,
subordinate only to the conductor.”
- The principal trombone is considered the leader of the low brass section, while the
principal trumpet is generally considered the leader of the entire brass section. Similarly,
the principal oboe (or sometimes the principal flute) is considered the leader of the entire
woodwind section. The horn, while technically a brass instrument, often acts in the role
of both woodwind and brass.
-

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Orchestra ) got the numbers for each instrument)

- Why is classical music relevant?

o Why is it used in movies, advertisements etc.

JSTOR ARTICLE
- in multimedia contexts, music has, among other things, the ability to set mood, estab- lish location,
moderate tempo, and convey information, all of which can aid in the com- munication of an advertiser’s
message.
- On the most basic level, Strauss’s waltz invokes the idea of “classical music,” which, because of certain
stereotypical associations, might lend (at least for some viewers) an
air of sophistication and high quality to the commercial.3
- 3
But for viewers who remember the waltz from its use in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968),
in which it famously accompanies the balletic docking of two spaceships, its presence in the com- mercial
might underscore not only a sense of sophistication but also a balancing of art and technology.
- For those viewers who know a little more about this specific type of waltz— a nineteenth-century Viennese
dance in- tended to give the impression of great “ease” and “leisureliness,” though achieved through
extreme accuracy of footwork and careful work with a partner—its use in the com- mercial might
especially emphasize ideas
of precision and close partnership in the service of ease of use.
- Synthesis
- to evoke qual ity and sophistication
- What about the viewer for whom classical music has little or no cultural relevance? A piece
- of “old” music might conflict with his or her
- Since the 1980s there has been a shift in television commercials away from touting
the benefits of a particular good or service (“informational” ads) toward emphasizing the “end-benefit” or
experience provided by using or owning that good or service (“transfor- mational” ads). 17 These end-
benefits usually have little to do with the factual or functional features of the product and have everything
to do with the emotional, psychological, and/ or value benefits associated with purchasing that product
- In other words, in an age when consumers are generally familiar with the range of products available to
them and when they have already developed brand loyalties, the goal of much advertising is to resonate
with the consumer’s values, feelings, identity, or lifestyle aspirations.

- Movies:  oftentimes, filmmakers are specifically looking to evoke a sense of

familiarity or nostalgia. 
- Express emotions like grief or happiness without covering up the dialogue.

o Why is it a cultural unifier

- Composers Bio, Info, Music Clips
o Baroque
o Classical
o Romantic
o 20th century
- Bibliography- citations
- Index
o “essentially a roadmap to the book, listing names, places, and things in
alphabetical order and giving the page numbers associated with each topic”
- About the Author: Arielle Hillock

Arielle Hillock, born in 2003, grew up in Annapolis, MD with a passion for

classical music starting in middle school when she joined the Chesapeake Youth
Symphony Orchestra. She began playing the trumpet in her school band and taking
private lessons at age 9. In high school, she furthered her study on the trumpet by joining
the Peabody Advanced Wind Ensemble and playing in the Severn School Chamber
Music Ensemble. While she was writing this book, she was a senior at Severn School.
Arielle plans to continue her study of the trumpet in college, with a music minor or
double major.

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