Music

1577 Florentine Camerata: The Beginnings of Opera

The Florentine Camerata, also known as the Camerata de’ Bardi, were a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de’ Bardi to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama.  They met at the house of Giovanni de’ Bardi, and their gatherings had the reputation of having all the most famous men of Florence as frequent guests. After first meeting in 1573, the activity of the Camerata reached its height between 1577 and 1582.  While propounding a revival of the Greek dramatic style, the Camerata’s musical experiments […]

Read More

†915 The music of Tuotilo

Tuotilo Renaissance maestro in 9th century Tuotilo was a Frankish monk at the Abbey of Saint Gall. He was a composer, and according to Ekkehard IV a century later, also a poet, musician, painter and sculptor. Various trope melodies can be assigned to Tuotilo, but works of other mediums are attributed with less certainty. He was a student of Iso of St. Gallen [de] and friends with the fellow monk Notker the Stammerer. Tuotilo played several instruments, including the harp. The history of the ecclesiastical drama begins with the trope sung as Introit of the Mass on Easter Sunday. It has come down to us in a St. Gallen manuscript dating from the time of Tuotilo. According to […]

Read More

†865 The music of Kassia

Hymn of Kassia  Kassia, Cassia or Kassiani was a Byzantine-Greek composer, hymnographer and poet. She holds a unique place in Byzantine music as the only known woman whose music appears in the Byzantine liturgy.  Approximately fifty of her hymns are extant, most of which are stichera, though at least 26 have uncertain attribution.The authenticity issues are due to many hymns being anonymous, and others ascribed to different authors in different manuscripts. She was an abbess of a convent in the west of Constantinople. Additionally, many epigrams and gnomic verses are attributed to her, at least 261. Kassia is notable as one of at least two women in the middle Byzantine period known to have written in their own names, the other being Anna Comnena. Like […]

Read More

†930 – the music of Hucbald

Hucbald was a Benedictine monk active as a music theorist, poet, composer, teacher, and hagiographer.   He was long associated with Saint-Amand Abbey, so is often known as Hucbald of St Amand. Deeply influenced by Boethius‘ De Institutione Musica, Hucbald’s (De) Musica, formerly known as De harmonica institutione, aims to reconcile ancient Greek music theory and the contemporary practice of Gregorian chant with the use of many notated examples. Among the leading music theorists of the Carolingian era, he was likely a near contemporary of Aurelian of Réôme, the unknown author of the Musica enchiriadis, and the anonymous authors of other music theory texts Commemoratio brevis, Alia musica, and De modis.

Read More

†1759 George Frederick Handel

George Frederick Handel was a German-British Baroque composer well-known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concertos. The Great Mr Handel Full Movie (1942)  Handel received his training in Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712, where he spent the bulk of his career and became a naturalised British subject in 1727.  He was strongly influenced both by the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition and by composers of the Italian Baroque. In turn, Handel’s music forms one of the peaks of the “high baroque” style, bringing Italian opera to its highest development, creating the genres of English oratorio and organ concerto, and introducing a […]

Read More

1967 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released on 26 May 1967,Sgt. Pepper is regarded by musicologists as an early concept album that advanced the roles of sound composition, extended form, psychedelic imagery, record sleeves, and the producer in popular music. The album had an immediate cross-generational impact and was associated with numerous touchstones of the era’s youth culture, such as fashion, drugs, mysticism, and a sense of optimism and empowerment. Critics lauded the album for its innovations in songwriting, production and graphic design, for bridging a cultural divide between popular music and high art, and for reflecting the interests of contemporary youth and the counterculture.

Read More

1689 Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas

December 30, 1689: English Baroque composer Henry Purcell’s beloved opera ‘Dido and Aeneas’ was first said to have premiered at Josias Priest’s girls’ school in London. Remembered as one of Purcell’s foremost theatrical works, it was also Purcell’s only true opera as well as his only all-sung dramatic work.   English Baroque composer Henry Purcell wrote his first opera based on the story of Dido, Queen of Carthage, and the Prince of Troy, Aeneas, based on a libretto by Nahum Tate. It was first performed in 1689. Based on book IV of Virgil’s epic poem, The Aeneid, Henry Purcell may […]

Read More

1709 First piano is built

The invention of the piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Ferdinando de’ Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, as the Keeper of the Instruments. Cristofori was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. This knowledge of keyboard mechanisms and actions helped him to develop the first pianos. It is not known when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by 1700.  The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s (see picture above). Cristofori named […]

Read More

John Dunstable (1390 – 1453)

John Dunstaple (c.1390-1453), once more often spelled Dunstable, was one of the most influential composers of the early fifteenth century. Dunstaple’s persona took on such a mythological character among later authors that it is this awe which is most discernible today, rather than any underlying facts. Indeed, few details of his life are known, and much of his most significant music is not securely attributed. Based on comments from Tinctoris and other contemporary authors, Dunstaple was mistakenly believed by later Renaissance writers to have invented counterpoint! Although these fanciful aspects of his reputation can be received with some humor today, […]

Read More
Moonpub Times - English © 2022 Frontier Theme
Click to listen highlighted text!