Here is a great composer that had a really difficult life. Although he was quite a great musician and an accomplished composer, he never really received the recognition he deserved. Originally from the city of Naples, Italy, he started at the conservatory (Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella) at the age of 9 and studied for a period of ten years before moving on to the University of Bologna to broaden his education. This is where he spent two years to get a degree in literature.

At the age of 19, Leocavallo held his very first opera, Chatterton. The work was intended to be of great financial gain for him. It certainly would have been, if the person organising the event had not run off with the money. For a period of five years, Ruggero Leoncavallo lived in poverty, making his living by playing piano in cafés and travelling all over Europe.

Despite his lack of money and his travels, it did not stop him from writing another opera, known as I Pagliacci (The Clowns). After writing it, Leoncavallo took it directly to a publisher who arranged for its performance to be held at the Teatro del Verme in Milan on May 21^st, 1892. It remains a success to this very day.

Born in Magdeburg, Germany, this composer managed to learn to play four instruments(flute, keyboard, zither and violin) by the time he was ten and wrote his first opera at ten years old. Nonetheless, his family, not coming from a musical background at all, were not at all impressed. In fact, his mother took away all of his instruments away and sent him to school. Luckily for Georg Telemann, the superintendant of that very school was a music theorist and supported Telemann's passion for music. The young boy was able to learn composition for an entire four years along with studying his normal subjects to please his family.

After entering high school(*German: Gymnasium), he was once again fortunate to find another teacher that supported his interest in music, encouraging him to compose works for school events, dramas, and even got him involved with the local Catholic church.

His time at high school soon camed to an end and he went to Leipzig to study law. Although he was most probably complying with his mother's wishes, his studies did not last very long. His will to be a musician was far too strong. Having settled in Leipzig, he decided to concentrate on composition. Having written a musical psalm setting that was perfomed at a church (the Thomaskirche). The city's mayor liked it so much, he invited Telemann to compose a cantata for Sunday mass every two weeks. The cantor of the church did not much like Telemann's increasing influence at his church, but could not do anything about it. His works were requested for every Sunday soon after.

At the age of 21, Georg Telemann founded the Collegium Musicum, a musical ensemble for which he organized concerts regularly. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed director of the Leipzig Opera and started to compose operas and giving the roles to his own music students.

After leaving Leipzip in 1705, he took up employment composing and directing in various places all over Germany and what is now Poland including Count Erdmann II of Promnitz in Sorau, the Eisenach Court where he made the aquantance of Johann Sebastian Bach, and finally a post in Frankfurt where he married the daugher of a Frankfurt council clerk and had ten children.

At the age of fourty, Teleman moved to Hamburg where he was made Cantor of the Hamburg Johanneum(*German name: Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums.) It is the oldest highschool in Hamburg. Since the school had been founded in 1529, its cantor was not only the director of the school, but also responsible for the music played in Hamburgs five main churches. This position soon led Telemann to become the music director of the Hamburg Opera. It was here that he was closer to his good friend, the musician Georg Frideric Handel, for whom he arranged a lot of concerts.

Along with staging vast musical events for the city, Telmann was known quite well for his composition of Tafelmusik(table music). The pieces were meant to be played at banquets in circles of nobility and the middle class, always beginning with a French-style overture and a series of melodic pieces that were to be played in any which order.

Living over a span of eighty-six years, Georg Philipp Telemann wrote six hundred Italian overtures, fourty-seven concertos(concerts for solo insturmentalists and orchestra), six oratorios including the famed Tag des Gerichts (Judgement Day) and fourty operas, this great composer will live on in our hearts as one of the most prolific of all time, having given a gift to humanity that has and will always endure throughout the centuries.

To listen to music by this great composer click here.

Frederick Delius was an English composer born into a family of fourteen children. He grew up in Bradford located in the north of England, but his parents, who were wool-merchants, were actually German. His musical training during his youth consisted of piano and violin lessons, although it has to be said that his music at that time was considered more of a hobby at an amateur level. Nonetheless, he showed a lot of musical promise and wanted to be a musician. His father was dead-set against it, having impressed upon Frederick Delius that a future in the wool business had been where his destiny lay.

After finishing grammar school, he decided to enter into the family business, giving in to his father's wishes. This did not last very long, for he proved not to be a very talented businessman. Yet, having had to go on many business trips abroad to Paris and Norway during that time did spark a great interest for travel and led him to the United States. Little did he know at that time, his travels to Paris and Norway would be important to his musical career in the future.

At the age of twenty-two, he persuaded his father to help him set up as a grower of citrus fruit in Florida. During his stay, he negleted his work as a farmer and was finally able to dedicate himself to his true passion, music. He ended up meeting Thomas Ward, a local musician, who became his teacher in composition. It was here on the desolate plantation in subtropical weather where his first compositions were written. Following this, he moved to Virginia for several months, earning his keep by playing the organ, singing and giving music lessons.

In 1886, two years after his arrival in America, Frederick Delius ended up returning to Europe. His father finally gave in to his wishes and granted him the support he needed to study for a while at the Leipzig Conservatory in Germany. The academic training at the conservatory did very little to benefit his very instinctive talent, yet he met a person that would change his whole life, namely the Norwegian composer Edward Grieg. Grieg not only became a life-long friend who encouraged his music, but also persuaded Delius's father to fully support his son's ambitions as a composer.

After eventually moving to Paris, Delius started composing a great deal of works and became known in artistic circles by many of the greats. It was not until 1896 that he met his wife-to-be, a young artist named Jelka Rosen, marrying her only a year after they had met. The two of them settled down in a little French village named Grez-sur-Loing.

Continuing to devout his life to music, he wrote his first true masterpieces between the age of thirty-seven and fourty - Paris and A Village Romeo and Juliet – two compositions that are truly representative of his style and musical ability. He composed many works after that such as Sea Drift, Appalachia, Brigg Fair, A Mass of Life, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, among many others. Due to his acquaintanceship with Thomas Beecham, a famous English conductor who advocated Delius's music, he not only became famous in Germany, but also in his fatherland, England, and the rest of the English-speaking world.

In 1918, Deilius contracted syphilis and eventually stopped composing due to becoming blind and paralyzed. It was not until a man by the name of Eric Fenby, a composer, teacher and great fan of Delius, offered his services as a scribe (as an amanuensis) that Delius was able to dictate his final works over a period of six years. Frederick Delius, aided by Fenby, painstakingly composed some of his most noted works, among which were A Song of Summer and Songs of Farewell.

To listen to music by this great composer, click here.

Cultural misunderstandings, crazy and dangerous situations, inter-cultural friendships, love and disappointment and the excitement of exploring. "Crossing Borders" tells the story of living and becoming an adult in a foreign country away from friends and family. This narrative is not a simple travel log of pondering curiosities, it unites the weirdest, most interesting and funniest experiences from twelve years living abroad. The story starts out with the author's experiences of his first adventure in the heart of Europe-in German speaking Austria. Dreams of going to study at the Viennese Academy of Music go up in smoke when the protagonist fails the entrance exam. The protagonist not only ends up living in a mountain village in the Alps, but also discovers traits and virtues in his new Austrian friends that he never thought possible. From almost getting shot in Cairo, having his bride kidnapped on their wedding day, to getting blackmailed by a Moroccan snake charmer, each chapter takes the reader on an extraordinary cultural trip, a book for anyone who likes to travel, whether in their mind or reality.

To learn more about this book, click here

 This Spanish composer was one of the greatest in the sixteenth century. Tomás Luis de Victoria came from a very religious background in a time when Spain was influenced much by Catholicism and the church. It was the time of the Inquisition, a tribunal responsible for purging the society by actually persecuting a great deal of people who refused to be Catholic, as well as many people who did, sometimes just to save their lives. (These new-born Catholics were known in Spain as 'conversos'. ) This great composer was living during a time when the Jesuit Order was in effect, a Roman Catholic order founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola in 1534 to defend Catholicism against the Reformation and to do missionary work among the heathen, the ones that did not want to submit to religious conversion.

Religion during this time had a great impact on not only the society, but also its music. Tomás Luis de Victoria born in Ávila to a family of eleven children, the seventh child in fact. After the death of his father at nine years of age, he was cared for by his two uncles who happened to be priests. He went to school and sang at the local cathedral. Through his musical ability, he gained quite a reputation. After his voice changed, he was encouraged by everyone around him, including King Philip II of Spain to carry on his music in Rome, Italy at the Collegio Germanico(a boarding school), where he not only studied music but also strived to be a priest, a goal he finally reached at twenty-seven years of age.

His faith is reflected in the music he had written to a great extent. He wrote motets, masses, magnificats and many sacred works. Actually, he dedicated all of his musical ability to the composition of sacred works. It is believed that living in Rome brought him into contact with a great deal of composers during the era, either living or visiting the city. The fact that the great and influential composer of the time, Palestrina, was a choir director (maestro di cappella) at the nearby Seminario Romano leads to the undoubted belief that the two knew each other and frequently exchanged their thoughts and ideas with one another. It may have very well been that Victoria had even taken lessons from him.

After spending fifty years in Rome all together. Victoria finally went back to Spain under the service of the Dowager Empress Maria. It was her that caused him to write one of his best known works, Officium defunctorum, a requium (mass for a deceased person) for her death in 1603.

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This composer actually came from a very poor family from Italy. The poverty of his family had almost kept him from making a musical career. Having shown a lot of talent for music at a very young age, his father did everything possible to be able to buy him a used spinet (a type of harpsichord) to learn on. Already at the age of twelve, Giuseppe Verdi had become the local organist.

As he grew older, despite his talent as a player and composer, he was refused entrance into the Milan Conservatory in favor of better, more trained candidates. This disappointment did not stop him though. Though his perseverance, he had been found by a patron, Antonio Barezzi, who loved Verdi's music. This allowed him to study privately in Milan. It was to his patron's daughter that he gave piano and sing lessons to, whom he married in 1836.

His first opera, Oberto, brought him a great deal of success, having been commissioned to write three more, the first of which was a huge failure. During the casting of his second opera, Nabucco, which had been a great success, Giuseppe Verdi was subject to a great blow. His two sons and his wife died and despite the success of his opera, it proved to be the most difficult time of his life. The distress mixed in with the success of his opera had caused Verdi to dive into his work, wanting to bring the opera to a new level. In contrast to the other composers of that time, it is interesting that he was more interested in the dramatic side of opera and less in the purity of showmanship portrayed by many other composers. For his opera, Macbeth, he incorporated a very poor voice for the soprano role of Lady Macbeth instead of someone who could sing to absolute perfection. In his opinion, the beauty and drama was intensified by such a voice.

Having written a great deal of operas and extensively traveling, he met his second wife, a soprano named Giuseppa Strepponi, in London, whom he married at the age of 46 in 1859. Throughout his life, he composed a great deal of works such as La traviata, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, Les vêpres siciliennes, un ballo in maschera, Aida, and Don Carlo. His last two operas were named Othello and Falstaff, having been written and performed when Verdi was in his seventies.

Giuseppe Verdi died at the ripe old age of 87 in year 1901. He had requested that no music be played for his funeral, yet a person watching the procession started singing Va, pensiero from his first huge success, the opera Nabucco, and then everyone started singing, all two thousand spectators.

To listen to music by this great composer, click here.

This composer was great, but was unfortunately overpowered by alcoholism and died of cancer. Yet, there were few during his lifetime that were so gifted on the piano as he was. Having been born in Dublin, John Field showed his talent at a very young age. His father played violin and I am sure that this was quite an influence upon Field's life, coming from a family involved in the music scene at the time.

He started playing at the age of nine, having first learned from his musician grandfather and then with Tommaso Giordani, a well-known organist. Field gave his first performance a mere year afterwards. But, it was not until his family moved to London that his true musical education began. At the young age of eleven, he started working in the piano shop of a truly great composer, Muzio Clementi. It was here that he became his personal apprentice and piano demonstrator. Only a year later, he made his first appearance in London at a benefit concert playing one of Clementi's pieces. After seven years of guidance under Clementi, he made his first debut in 1799 playing his famed First Piano Concerto, which him a great deal of recognition. Shortly after, he published his first work, Piano Sonatas, Opus 1, which had been dedicated to his maestro, Muzio Clementi.

This dedication along with the long acquaintanceship with his famous teacher brought along just what he needed to really boost his career. John Field was invited to go with his teacher on a concert tour starting in Paris, France and ending in St. Petersburg, Russia, It was here that met the Russian general, Marklovsky, who, with his great influence and contacts, sponsored him for several years to come. Along with giving concerts during his stay in Russia, he became a sought-after teacher and eventually married one of his own students to whom he had two sons. At the same time, he had a woman on the side that also bore an additional two sons making him not only a great musician, but a father of four children. After contributing a great deal to the musical world and giving concerts all over Europe, this great composer died in Moscow at the age of fifty-five years old.

To listen to music by this great composer click here

Hugo Philipp Jakob Wolf was a very interesting Austrian composer. A true picture of how detrimental it can be for a composer to get a venereal disease. Yet, due to his genius, he was able to truly give a lot to the world in an incredibly short time.

Having been taught violin and piano by his father since the age of 4, at the age of 8, he was taken to see his first opera, Belisaro by Donizetti. He was so taken back by the work, that he went home and started trying to play pieces of it on the piano. To everyone’s amazement, he was able to play large portions of the opera by heart after having only heard it for the first time. He was sent to an array of different schools to support his musical education, but on account of his stubbornness, he proved to be an incredibly difficult student. - So difficult, that he was not able to keep from getting expelled from the various schools he attended.

It was not until the age of 15 that he was enrolled at the Vienna Conservatory, where he had the chance to meet and make friends with the great composer and director Gustav Mahler, a person for whom he had a great deal of admiration. During this time, he regularly visited the opera house and developed quite a passion for the works of Wagner, which undoubtedly had an influence upon his music. Unfortunately, this stability did not last very long, for only two years after, he was expelled from the conservatory due to his rebellious and unpredictable temper and went back home a disgrace.

That same year he returned to Vienna with the intention of teaching. Shortly after his arrival in Vienna, he got involved with a ring of friends who had been very well educated as well as intelligent. Although these friends had certainly been a good influence, it was during this time that it is believed that he had visited a brothel with them that will have changed and ended his life. By 1880, he had already started suffering from intense depression which only intensified his temperament. He had always been able to find various sorts of opportunities though. From everything I’ve read, I have understood that he suffered from serious depressions and had a bad temper, yet at the same time he was incredibly talented and charming, which enabled him to find a great deal of employment, even though not always suited for it. He took the job as second Kapellmeister(music director) in Salzburg in 1881, a position he was only able to hold for a few months after which returning to Vienna.

In 1884, he started working as a music critic for a newspaper, the ‘Wiener Salonblatt’, writing a lot of very controversial articles, to the point of even being offensive. During his years as a critic, it was noted that he was especially keen on writing horrible things about Brahms. It was only a few years after, in 1887, that he wrote one of his most popular pieces, Italian Serenade for string quartet. After this, he quit his job as a critic and started composing pieces at an immense rate… several a day!!! Among these pieces were:

the Mörike-Lieder- a set of songs based upon the poems of Eduard Mörike, the Goethe-Lieder, Eichendorff-Lieder, Der Corregidor (the Magistrate)- an opera he finished after only 14 weeks, Spanishes Liederbuch (Spanish Songbook), Penthesilea – a symphonic poem based on a play by the German author Heinrich von Kleist, and the Italienisches Liederbuch (Italian Songbook).

All of these great works were composed within an amazing time span of a little over 9 years!!! A note to the reader, should it not have already been noticed by the list above: He was especially noted for writing in the German Song form known as Lied. This term is used to describe a German art song of the 19^th century written for voice and piano known for its expressiveness. After Franz Schubert, Wolf was one of the most significant composers of this musical form, known to have not only placed great importance upon the spoken word using lyrical expression, but also a lot of psychological insight in his pieces.

Unfortunately, the sickness (syphilis) he had acquired 20 years beforehand finally took hold of him completely and he was committed to an insane asylum in 1897 where he spent 6 long years before his death in 1903. Manuel Venegas, an opera, was the last of the works he left unfinished in 1887, right before his sickness took complete hold of him.

To listen to music by this great composer click here.

Christoph Willibald von Gluck grew up in Bohemia in family of nine children. His father was a tree farmer. Not much is known about his mother. On account of his father’s job, the family had to move around quite a bit. This, as can be imagined was very diffiult. His father’s desire was for him to follow in his footsteps as a tree farmer. Yet, in Gluck’s early teens, seeing that music was quite popular, he started learning to play quite a few instruments. Music started to take over his soul and become his every passion. His parents did not support his idea of becoming a musician. At the age of 13, he ran away from home… to the golden City, Prague. He supported himself there by playing at dances and in churches. His musical talents kept getting better and better. In my own belief, as is that of many others. The best type of musical training one can have is to be a working musician.

At the age of seventeen, he studied mathematics and logic, although no one really knows if he finished his degree or not. Shortly after, he made his way to Vienna, where he worked as a musician for Prince Melzi. Prince Melzi got married and relocated to Milan, whereby he took Chistoph Gluck with him. This was a wonderful bout of luck for the young composer, who had always loved the Italian operas he had seen in Prague.

He started studying under Battista Sammartini and was able to compose his first opera after only four years! He wrote Artaserse. Its debut was in a Milan and it was a hit ! He started making a lot of money with his music and ended up moving to England in 1945 where he was commisioned bay the Italian Opera of London to creat two operas. Here he was known to be competing with Handel who had once stated that “Gluck knows no more about counterpoint than his cook.” Only a year after, he took a job conducting for Pietro Mingotti’s Italian Opera Company and traveled all thoughout Denmark and Austria.

He ended up settling down in Vienna and got married to a woman, Maria Anna Bergin, the daughter of a well-to-do merchant in 1750. She was half his his age and had lots of money, enabling him to become a bit more independent of the next few years to concentrate on his music.

It was during this time that he started developing ideas for his famous opera Orfeo ed Euridice, which was to become what he is most known for writing. Four years later, he was emplyed by the Empress Maria Theresa to be Kapellmeister, a job he kept for 15 years before moving to Paris. There, he enjoyed the patronage of his former student, Marie Antoinette. The success and the contraversy and experiences he had in Paris would take much to long to write.

Around 1780, Gluck moved back to Vienna, where his lived in luxious retirement for the rest of his life. He ended up dying due to a strok in 1787, yet dying a very wealthy and sucessful man. He still enjoys what some people call him, namely the father of the Rococo and Classical era.

To listen to music by this great composer click here.

Anyone who reads the name of this composer immediately thinks of the Canon in D. Of course, Johann Pachelbel wrote many great pieces, but the 3-part canon he had once written will come to mind every time we hear his name. And vice versa, when we hear this piece at a wedding, we will think of him. Interestingly enough, although he penned a great deal of works, the Canon in D composed for 3 violins and continuo was the only canon he had ever written. The piece can be described as 3 violins taking turns to elaborate on a simple theme, resulting in a musical climax which moves the soul.

What many people do not realize is that Johann Pachelbel is not considered a great composer on account of this work alone. Having written a great deal of other things, the famous Canon in D, although a beautiful piece, actually has very little importance in regards to his musical gifts to humanity. His works on the organ were much more important, for they were not only great pieces, but greatly influenced Johann Sebastian Bach.

Pachelbel was born in Nuremberg. His father was a wine dealer. As a child, having always been interested in scientific as well as musical knowledge, he had 2 music teachers. One of the teachers taught him to play and compose, while the other introduced him to the fundamentals of music. In 1669, he started studies at the University of Altdorf (Universität Aldtdorf) and at the same time took a position as an organist at the St. Lorenz Church (St. Lorenz Pfarrkirche). These happenings in his life were very brief though. In 1673, he went to Vienna, Austria, where he found work as an assistant organist at the St. Stephen’s Cathedral, otherwise known in German as the ‘Stephansdom’. After four years, he became the court organist to Duke of Saxe-Eisenach, a position he kept for only a year.

After this, Pachelbel decided to leave Vienna and went to Erfurt, Germany. There, he found work as an organist for the church named the ‘Erfurt Predigerkirche’. He spent 12 years in this city…He got married to a woman named Barbara Gabler and had a son. Unfortunately, after only 2 years of marriage, both his wife and son were victims of the Black Plague. He got married a second time in 1684. With his second wife, Juditha Dommer, he started a very large family consisting of 2 daughters and 5 sons.

An interesting fact is that Johann Pachelbel became friends with the Bach family and took J.S. Bach’s eldest brother Johann Christoph Bach on as a student in 1686. This certainly added to the future influence upon the music of J.S. Bach.

It was not until 1690 that he moved to Stuttgart to become the organist at the Wurttemberg Court. Unfortunately, he was forced to leave the position due to the French invasion, thereby returning to his hometown of Nuremberg.

He composed many motets, arias, Masses, and 13 Magnificats, including not only violins, but also singers, choirs, orchestras, as well as wind and brass instruments. Therefore his Canon in D was only a small piece amongst many. He was one of the most important organists before the age of Johann Sebastian Bach. Above all, having been acquainted with Catholic church music, he was able to add certain elements to his compositions, thereby bringing a unique beauty to Protestant church music . His works are representative of Protestant church music and give people somewhat of a cultural contrast in regards to two leading religious denominations during the 17^th century. This fact is of utmost significance in the history of music and should be thought of when Johann Pachelbel’s name is mentioned. It is too bad that many associate this genius with a mere canon.

To listen to music by this great composer click here.

Up until now, we have always talked about prolific composers that have written a lot of music for the world. Well, this one had written a single ‘hit’ and went down in history for composing one of the most famous tunes in all the world. You know the song for sure!

Franz Gruber was born on the 25^th of November, 1787 in a small Austria city known as Hochburg. His family was very poor and made a living as linen weavers. As far as his father was concerned. He was to follow in his footsteps and take up the same trade. He tried his hardest and convinced his father that his true calling was to become a musician. Well, his father gave in and he started studying music.

After completing his musical training in Burghausen and his teaching degree, he became an elementary teacher in a small village by the name of Arnsdorf in 1807. At the same time, he also worked there as an organist. Yet, he also took up another organist job in a near-by village called Oberndorf.

The song he was noted for writing originated in Austria, and so its original version is actually German, known by the name ‘Stille Nacht’(Silent Night). The words to the song were written by the priest Joseph Mohr. He had written the text in the form of a poem much earlier. It is still contemplated why this poem had been transformed into a Christmas carol.

The song’s origin can only be speculated upon based on stories and rumours passed down throughout the generations. Legend has it that on December 24^th, 1818, there was a problem with the church’s organ in the small village of Oberndorf, just outside of the city of Salzburg, Austria. In desperation to have music for the Christmas mass, Father Mohr gave a poem he had written two years earlier to Franz Gruber and asked him to write something. Silent night was performed on that Christmas Eve in the St. Nicolas Church. I had been written for soprano, tenor, and choir. Oh, and lets not forget the guitar accompaniment!

Since then, the song has been translated into over 300 languages and is sung around Christmas every year. By the time it was first recorded in 1866, it had already become popular all around the world...

The song had supposedly been the cause of what was considered somewhat of a miracle. It is said that on the Christmas Eve of 1914, the German and British troops were lying in their trenches. For some reason, after a moment of silence, a German started singing ‘Silent Night’ in German and then, the British retorted by singing the same carol in English. Right smack dab in the middle of World War I, the British and the Germans had stopped fighting and called what is known today as the ‘Christmas Truce’. There is no proof stating this, yet I would like to believe that these people had taken the Christmas spirit in and chosen to think about humanity instead of their differences.

On a different note, interestingly enough, Silent Night still remains to this very day a very special and sacred song in Salzburg, Austria and its surroundings. In contrast to many cities around the world, which play the song all repeatedly throughout the Christmas season, the song can only be heard in Salzburg on Christmas Eve, and is very reluctantly listened to beforehand. Tradition in Salzburg is to sing the song to candlelight on Christmas Eve in church and around the Christmas tree.

I speak from experience when I say, if you ever teach guitar to youngsters in Salzburg… as far as the parents will ever be concerned, the kids can play whatever they would like on the guitar, as long as they learn to play Silent Night for the family on Christmas Eve.

Here is the first verse of the song literally translated into English. There are subtle differences:

Silent Night! Holy Night!                    Stille Nacht! Heil'ge Nacht!
All is asleep, alone standing guard,   Alles schläft; einsam wacht
only the godly tender pair.                Nur das traute hoch heilige Paar.
Holy infant with curly hair,                 Holder Knab' im lockigen Haar,
Sleep in heavenly peace!                  Schlafe in himmlischer Ruh!

Have a Merry Christmas !
------------ Michael Ferris

Muzio Clementi was born in Rome. His father, who was quite fond of music and an amateur musician himself, had been a successful silversmith. He recognized his son’s talent right away and started him up playing the organ at the age of 7. Only 2 years after, in direct competition with adults, he was appointed organist at his local church.

Seven years later, Sir Peter Beckford, a wealthy Englishman, heard Clementi play and was so impressed by his music that he wanted to become his patron. He offered to take him to England and sponsor his studies as well as offer him room and board. His father agreed and allowed him go. The only think that Clementi had to do in return for this grand gesture of kindness, was to entertain with his playing at the nobleman’s country residence of Steepleton Iwerne, just north of Blandford Forum in Dorset . It was here that the Muzio Clementi became a fine player, receiving not only a great deal of musical knowledge but also receiving quite a good academic education. The peaceful environment also provided for a great deal of alone-time for him to practice the harpsichord. He made his first public piano recital at the age of 18, the beginning of his concert career.

In 1774, having been freed of his obligations to Sir Peter Beckford, he moved to London. Only a year later, he made his first appearance. In 1779, he published his Six Piano Sonatas Opus 2, which he made a name for himself with. These pieces namely distinguished the piano sonata from the harpsichord sonata in the music world.

This composer was born in Paris to a family that had been active in the field of music for generations. He was the son of an organist, Charles Couperin, from whom he began his musical training from a very young age. He also learned a great deal from his uncle with the same name, François Couperin. At the age of 10, his father died and he was then taught by an organist by the name of Jacques Thomelin.

His family had a musical tradition going back two centuries before he had been born. In fact, the family’s church, St. Gervais, had successively employed a member of the Couperin family as organist, non-stop, for a period of 173 years. As a sign of how advanced his musical ability had been, it is interesting that the post was officially offered to François at the age of 10 upon his father’s death, yet postponed until his 18th birthday. At the same time, there is information leading to the assumption that that the young Couperin played for services and received wages even before he was eighteen years of age

In 1689, at the age of 21, he married a woman by the name of Marie-Anne Ansault. Only a year later, he received a royal license to publish his only 2 organ masses. Shortly after, he composed a set of 4 sonatas, thereby marking the beginning of his career as a composer. In 1693, he became one of the four organists to King Louis XIV and succeeded Jean-Baptiste Lully as court composer. Along with this, his reputation as a teacher immensely was growing, teaching not only the kings children but a great deal of French nobility. He was not only busy teaching, but also performing, which was very demanding upon him personally.

In 1696, he was presented with his own coat of arms and only six years later, he received the Order of Chevalier de Latran, a form of knighthood and became the king’s harpsicordist. Even after the king’s death in 1715, he remained secure in the court of Louis XV. He died in Paris in 1733

Couperin was quite a prolific composer. Some of his best works were Concerts royaux, L’apothéose de Lully, Leçons de ténèbres and his Organ Masses. Yet, without a doubt, one of the most significant things he composed would be the four books of harpsicord works written between 1713 and 1730. The book contains various pieces which Couperin called ‘Ordres’. These ‘Ordres’ were a succession of dance music and were structured very similar to suites. Each piece of music or ‘Ordre’ had a particular name depicting a person, object, scene or a mood. ( Examples of such titles were: La Visionaire [The dreamer]; Les Ombres Errantes [The Moving Shadows]; Papillons [Butterflies] ). These pieces are representative of great technique as well as demonstrating what Couperin is most known for, namely fusing Italian and French music of the time.

François Couperin was a great composer, an organist, and a harpsicordist that was responsible for bringing together the musical elements and style of France and Italy. In addition to this, his innovative ideas and compositions are said to actually bridge two musical eras, the Baroque and the Classical. A truly great composer!

To listen to a piece by François Couperin click here

For a little change, I thought I would write about a great composer that is still to be admired, for he is still living a prolific life.

Hans Werner Henze is a German that has gone through a lot but has been able to give the world a great deal, not only a lot of songs, but a new type of musical style. His works are comprised of a mixture of various musical styles having evolved into their own. Among them are: twelve-tone technique, serialism, neo-classicism, jazz, and even rock.

Above all, this is a person that is not only great, but had to deal with plenty of prejudice and alienation throughout his lifetime in order to bring his music to the world.. Being a pacifist, he not only grew up during the rise of Nazism in Germany having a father who was a Nazi supporter, he also had to deal with being a homosexual in these harsh times. Born in Gütersloh, Germany, the oldest of 6 children, he got interested in music at a very early age. His father, who was quite conservative, was against him going into the music field. Nevertheless, he ended up going to a state-run music school at the age of 16, studying piano and percussion. He was unfortunately drafted into the army 2 years later and had to serve in Poland just before the end of the war, ending up as a British prisoner.

At the end of the war, he did not let his musical talent go to waste. After working for a while as a theatre pianist, he continued his studies at the Heidelberg Institute for Church Music (German: Das kirchenmusikalischen Institut in Heidelberg) under Wolfgang Fortner in 1946. He later studied 12 tone technique under René Leibowitz in Darmstadt and Paris. 12 tone technique, originally thought up of by Arnold Schoenberg, is a method of composing a song by using all 12 notes of a chromatic scale, all of them equally sounded, typically avoiding a certain key.

Although writing one beforehand called ‘das Wundertheater’, his first full opera and significant work which made him famous was named ‘Boulevard Solitude‘ and was written in 1952. It comprised of the various styles, aria, jazz, blues, and recitative, all united by the same 12 note sequence.

Henze was the ballet director at Wiesbaden State Theatre for a while in 1950, but got tired of living in Germany and went to live in Italy. He ended up in Naples where he concluded his operas ‘König Hirsch’ and ‘Der Prinz von Homburg’. The latter was composed along with a close friend of his, Ingeborg Bachman, an Austrian author and poet who played a leading role in post-war literature. She was the librettist for the opera. For those of you reading that do not know, a librettist is the person that creates the words to be set to music for an opera.

In 1961, Henze moved to Rome. It was here that he became an international figure. He started teaching master classes in composition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria and became a visiting professor at Dartmouth college in New Hampshire. It was at this time that he wrote his fifth symphony for the New York Philharmonic and went to the US to see his work premier under the direction of Leonard Bernstein.

One very interesting aspect of Henze’works is the ability to express and intertwine his political beliefs and social critic in his music. Music and politics have been intertwined for quite some time, but this is a prime example of how music can enter into the political world. During the 1960’s, Henze became quite interested in communism and wrote ‘Das Floss der Medusa’( The Raft of Medusa) based on the painting with the same name by artist Théodore Géricault. This oratorio was intended to be a requiem for Che Guevara. The grand premier in Hamburg actually failed on account of the fact that the players from West Berlin refused to play under the portrait of Che Guevara with a red flag draped across the stage. The police ended up coming and not only some students were arrested, but also the opera’s librettist. Since then, he has written other politically motivated pieces, such as his 6^th Symphony, written during a year-long stay in Cuba where he was teaching and researching new ideas. This piece encompassed and interesting mix of Greek and Vietnamese freedom songs.

Hans Werner Henze has written a great deal of works since this time and still lives in Italy. He has given a lot to humanity and the musical world; to list all of his achievements on this blog would be impossible. A great composer of today’s present, a truly great musical personality who has not only dedicated, but put his whole life into his music.

 “I have evolved a concept of beauty nurtured by experiences both terrible and wonderful.” ----Hans Werner Henze

To listen to music by this great composer click here

This composer, the most important Spanish composer of our time, was born on November 22^nd, 1901. November 22^nd is the feast day of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. This is a composer that seems to have done the impossible, for he was not only incredibly gifted, but also blind. He lost his sight at the age of three on account of diphtheria. It is said that when one loses the ability to see, a keen development of the senses takes place, and among them the sense of hearing. This composer definitely shows cogent evidence of this, for his works were great. Among them, his masterpiece, the Concerto de Aranjuez, is probably known by even the most ignorant to classical music. It’s second movement, Andante, has not only been used in many documentary films on Spain, but also in a great deal of films.

When Rodrigo was 8 years old, he started to learn violin and piano. At the age of 17, he attended the Valencia Conservatory and wrote his first works in 1923. The question is, how was he able to compose being blind? Answer – he first wrote in Braille, thereby dictating the finished work to a scribe. In 1927, following the example of many Spanish composers of the time, he moved to Paris to study under Dukas for five years at the École Normale de Musique. He and his works were well known at this time and so was encouraged by other composers such as Ravel, Falla and Stravisnsky to continue making such great progress. It was during this time period when he made the acquaintance of the Turkish pianist Vicotria Kamhi, a significant woman in his life, for she became his wife in 1933.

He returned home to Spain for a short time only to find out that he was to be bestowed a grant to study Musicology at the Paris Conservatoire and at the Sorbonne. Back to France! Unfortunately, on account of the civil war which broke out in 1936, his grant was cut off, leaving him in grave financial difficulties. Luckily, he was able to survive this; he moved back to Spain at the end of the war and brought his gift of music along with him, namely the Concerto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra, immediately making him Spain’s leading composer. He composed many other beautiful works, although nothing has quite compared to the Concerto de Aranjuez. Of course, his gift was not only to Spain alone. To date, it is the most frequently played guitar concerto in the world and has greatly helped contribute to the guitar’s recognition as a concert instrument. The next time you listen to this great work by Joaquin Rodrigo, take a second in your mind to thank him for writing it.

To listen to music by this great composer click here