Great Composers and their Lives

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Andrés Segovia 1893 - 1987
2007-11-24 16:56:00
    Segovia has been give the name, ‘Father of the Classical Guitar,’ not only because he played beautifully, but because he did so much to further its name and reputation as a concert instrument. Andrés Segovia did compose a few selected pieces for the guitar and they are very interesting and very beautiful. I am putting him into this blog, Great Composers and their Lives, not because he was a composer who composed a ton of pieces, but also because he contributed so much not only to music itself with his performances, but he went through a great deal for my favourite instrument. The guitar had always been a known instrument, but it was an instrument for the lower classes, for dances, and taverns, and had never been really recognised as a concert instrument, except in its own circles of course. Although, this is no longer the case due to Segovia, there are even some musicians today that criticize the instrument’s ability on stage. You can probably guess that during his tim...

Hans Werner Henze 1926
2007-11-24 01:35:00
    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, an even rock.     Above all, this is a person that is not only great, but had to deal with a great deal 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 qui...

Kurt Weil 1900 – 1950
2007-11-17 11:57:00
  Kurt Weil l was born to the son of a Jewish cantor in Dessau, Germany in the year 1900. His father, Albert Weill, wrote liturgical music and gave lessons in religion at the Synagogue in Dresden. Concerning religion, due to the fact that both of his parents were devout Jews, he had a strict upbringing. In regard to his musical education, he grew up with the Hebrew music tradition. At the early age of nine, he started learning piano from his father. Duke Friedrich II  showed a lot of liking for the boy in 1910 and allowed him not only free entry to the performances in his theatre, but also let him go to the rehearsals. This surely had quite an influence upon Weill   At the age of 12, Kurt Weill started to compose. He seized every opportunity possible to visit the Duke’s theatre as well. From 1918 to 1923, he studied in Berlin under Humperdinck, Busconi and one of Busconi’s students, Phillip Jarnach. The debut performance of his first opera, “the Protagonist” in Dresden in ...

Intro and Welcome
2007-11-17 11:43:00
I hope you like the blog. Please, feel free to make comments. And, if you have time, don’t forget to visit my site, www.ferrisguitar . It is a website dedicated to inspiring guitarists, but in my opinion, all musicians could have interest for it. There are recordings, interesting reading, photos, a forum and more. All in all, it is a great piece of my life that I am sharing with others. 
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Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov 1844-1908
2007-11-09 22:53:00
   Niko lai Rims ky-Korsakov is a Russian composer that is known most for composing many opera, among which are Sadko, the Snow Maiden, Sheherazade, the Capriccio espagnol, and many others. He was born in a small Russian city known as Tikhvin located in Russia. There is no doubt that he was subject to a great deal of Russian folk songs as a child, which had left a great impression upon him.    Interestingly enough, contrary to many composers I have written about up until this point, young Nikolai did not aspire to become a great composer, he did not want to become a musician at all. He had just dabbled in music a little bit. No, his great dream was to become a naval officer. Therefore, in 1856, he joined the Corps of Naval Cadets. In 1861, he met a composer by the name of Mily Balakirev, who encouraged him to take music a bit more seriously and taught him when he was on leave. During this time, Korsakov did not only serve his country while at sea, but also composed a symphony reco...

Claudio Monteverdi 1567 – 1643
2007-11-02 14:02:00
Claudio Mont everdi was born in Cremona, Italy in 1567 becoming the fifth member of a family of  four. Along with his mother and father, he had also had a brother and sister. He had somewhat of an eccentric childhood,  to the point of being a bit strange and tragic. His father was a chemist but actually practiced medicine, which of course even at this time was illegal. His mother actually died when he was nine years of age. His father remarried again, but his second wife died when Monteverde was 16.  His father remarried once again. You can imagine how difficult this must be on a child. Nevertheless, he received a fine musical education at the cathedral’s Maestro di Cappella. By the age of 16, he had already published many musical works, among them a three-part motet and eight books of madrigals.     A year after publishing his works, he started working for a powerful family, known as the Gonzaga family, in Mantua, working as a string player. It was because of this that his n...
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Joaquin Rodrigo 1901 - 1999
2007-10-27 21:16:00
This composer, the most important Spanish composer of our time,  was born on November 22nd, 1901. November 22nd 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. Its second movement, Adagio, 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...

Carlo Gesualdo 1561 – 1613
2007-10-24 00:31:00
Don Carlo Gesualdo was not only a wonderful and amazing composer,lutenist and harpsichordist, he was also a ferocious and violent man. Not much is known about his life. There is evidence that he spent most of his life in Naples, Italy, where he lived the life of a noble man. He was namely known at the time as Prince of Venosa.  His mother was the niece of Pope Pius the IV and his uncle Carlo Borromeo was later to become a saint.  When he originally started composing, he disguised his own name using a pseudonym, although soon after this was known by a great many for the following reason. You see, Gesualdo not only became known for writing tremendous music, but also violently and brutally killing his wife, who was actually his own cousin, and her lover, having found them both in bed together. After the murder, he decided to let the cat out of the bag and compose under his real name. After this horrible event, he married another woman, Leonara d’Este, the niece of Duke Alfonso of F...
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Niccoló Paganini 1782 – 1840
2007-10-16 15:57:00
Born in Genoa, Italy, Niccoló Paganini was given a violin by his parents. His father wanted to excel so badly that he locked him in a room for many hours and forced him to practice. At the age of 11, he made his first public performance and was already going on tour at thirteen. By the age of 16, he was already quite successful, yet he also developed a drinking habit that followed him throughout the rest of his life.   Niccoló Paganini is a perfect example of how making a child prodigy of your child is just a bad idea. Of course, there are a lot of children who have a natural talent at playing and compel themselves to make progress on the instrument,  but in many cases, they are forced by the parents to be great on the instrument as a result of “hyper-parenting”. This term is used in psychology to describe what some parents, who would of course like their children to become great, do. This includes, for instance, forcing a child to take lessons on an instrument or forcing th...

Christoph Willibald von Gluck 1714 – 1787
2007-10-15 02:22:00
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 ...

Erik Satie 1866-1925
2007-10-14 23:30:00
Here is what I call an interesting musician. Erik Satie, a pianist and composer, grew up in a bicultural family, having a mother who was Scottish and a father who was French. Although he studied at the Paris Conservatoire and was always a very gifted musician, in the beginning of his career, he had reputation to be very lazy and unreliable, even to the point of being untalented. Despite this, he wrote 3 Gymnopédies.   In 1890, living in Montmartre, France, he met his life-long friend Claude Debussy. He used to like to go to a lot of cafés to meet other musicians and have discussions with them. It was in this year that he wrote Gnosssiennes, which sounds very oriental.   For a long time, he was very low on money and had to live in very humble accommodations, although his desire was to always do more with his music. Not being very satisfied with his knowledge of composition, he went back to school and studied basic compositional technique in 1905. It was during this time that his ...
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Intro
2007-10-10 01:33:00
Along with reading this blog, don’t forget to visit www.ferrisguitar.com It is a website that has been created to inspire guitarists and musicians alike. Along with this blog, there are recordings, pictures…. all in all, a piece of my life.  Michael Ferris’s latest recordings. Just click on the picture for the link!
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Giovanni Pierluigi Sante da Palestrina c. 1525 - 1594
2007-10-06 19:49:00
  This Italian composer, Giovanni Pierluigi Sante da Palestrina, known by musicians today simply under the name of Palestrina, started his musical career at the Cathedral of Saint Agapita in his hometown Palestrina, a city outside Rome, which he was actually named after. He became a church choirboy there,  soon after to join the choir at Santa Maria Maggiore(Saint Mary Major) in Rome, studying music under Firmin le Bel. After his studies, he came back to his hometown and worked as a choirmaster and organist in the Cathedral of Saint Agapita. He married in 1547. Then, in 1550, his mentor at the time, Cardinal del Monte, was elected pope and appointed Palestrina to be a conductor at the  Julian Chapel in St. Peter’s. It was at this time that he wrote his first book of masses printed in 1554. This was unique because it was the first book of masses written by an Italian composer. In Italy at the time, most all of the sacred music came from the France, Spain, or the Netherlands.  ...
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Heitor Villa-Lobos 1887 - 1959
2007-10-01 13:23:00
A great composer that gave a great deal to the guitar- and of course, to those that play and listen to it. This wonderful man was responsible for making the country of Brazil known for its music. He was a boy who grew up in Rio de Janeiro and learned cello from his father. This had been probably his second favorite instrument to the guitar… In his first prelude, he actually tried to imitate a cello in the bass. Throughout his life, he gained quite a mastery on the guitar. And the most interesting thing is that he never got any type of academic training on the instrument… Most of his pieces are full of single chord formations that are moved up and down the fretboard with slight varations. He most likely just sat there and messed with the guitar for hours, listening to every single sound that it made until he was able to invent some of? the most? unusual sounds the guitar, at that time, had ever made. The chords he made up are without a doubt incredible and it’s fa...
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