an Italian violoncellist and composer. He wrote nearly 40 cello sonatas, the Capricci for Violoncello Solo, and other works. Many of his compositions were written in an old-fashioned, Baroque style.
a German pianist and composer. He wrote several folk songs, concerts, and two operas, Amor und Psyche and Peter und Ännchen, in the same style as Mozart. Abeille also wrote two sonatas for keyboard with accompanying violin (1783) as well as several instrumental works.
a German composer of the Classical era. He was a renowned player of the viola da gamba, and composed important music for that instrument.
a German composer, violinist and organist. Among his best-known works are compositions for string orchestra and chamber music. He composed a collection of 59 individual works under the title Erstlinge musikalischer Blumen. They included works for four instruments and basso continuo - allemandes, courantes, preludes, sarabandas and sonatinas.
a Maltese-Italian composer of both operas and church music. After 1758 he composed a good deal of church music, including seven masses and several litanies. He died in Naples.
an English soprano and composer. Particularly praised for her performances in the repertoire of George Frideric Handel, Abrams enjoyed a successful concert career in London during the 1780s. Music historian Charles Burney praised the sweetness of her voice and her tasteful musical interpretations.
a German composer and choral conductor. He composed roughly 3,000 individual works mostly in the area of vocal music. Several of his songs were at one time universally sung, and have obtained a more or less permanent place in the popular repertory. During his lifetime, Abt was a renowned choral conductor and he spent much of the last three decades of his life working as a guest conductor with choirs throughout Europe and in the United States.
a Spanish composer who studied music in London with Ignaz Moscheles and it is possible that he also studied with Chopin in Paris. Both men had an impact on the style and form of his musical compositions. His most important compositions were vocal art songs and songs for the piano where he successfully blended the folklore of Galicia with the technique and spirit of Romantic piano music. He also composed one opera Inese e Bianca, which was never staged. In addition to composing, Adalid y Gurréa spent much of his time teaching music courses and organizing music competitions.
a French composer, music critic and prolific composer of operas and ballets, he is best known today for his ballets. He was a noted teacher, who taught Delibes and other influential composers.
an English organist and composer for organ. His published organ works include many fugues, voluntaries, ninety interludes, and several variations on popular airs. He also wrote variations for piano and many anthems, hymns, and sacred songs. He was known for his skill in improvisation and for years was in charge of performances on Flight & Robson's Apollonicon.
a German organist and composer at Salzburg Cathedral and at court, and composed a good deal of liturgical music (including eight masses and two requiems) as well as oratorios and orchestral and keyboard works.
a Flemish lutenist and influential author of Pratum Musicum (Antwerp, 1584) (reprinted with alterations several times until 1600). This contains lute solos, and more importantly settings of madrigals for multiple lutes and different ensembles involving lutes and voices giving much study material for the researcher into renaissance performance practice. The book contains around 85 tablatures for fantasias, songs and dances. Most of the vocal pieces are in Italian. The Neapolitan songs, with their parallel fifths (which not required in Italian text, so it is a question here of a style marker) have a more rustic character. One of them, Del crud’amor, has an almost Oriental character. Various dances for solo lute also tend toward the rustic.
a Dutch composer, painter, lady in waiting and noble. She was born in The Hague to Cornelis van Aerssen and Anna Albertina van Schagen Beijeren and in 1786 married Baron Carel van Boetzelaer. She was the lady in waiting to Anne, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange, the spouse of prince William IV of Orange. She was a dilettante painter and made a portrait of princess Caroline. She was possibly active as a dilettante composer at court. In 1780, she published several compositions. They were inspired by the Italian music and considered unique for the Netherlands. She died in IJsselstein.
a late German/Swedish baroque composer, born in Löth parish, Memming district, Östergötland, a province in Sweden, and studied in Uppsala. He was Kapellmeister in Nuremberg and wrote occasional vocal works and numerous symphonies, harpsichord concertos and sonatas, many of which were published. He was a fluent composer in the north German galant style of the time, and is also an appreciated musician and conductor. He died at Nuremberg.
a Netherlandish composer of the Renaissance writing in the Franco-Flemish style. A prominent member of the Grande chapelle, the Habsburg musical establishment, he was a renowned composer in the years around 1500, and his music was widely distributed throughout Europe. He composed music in all of the important sacred and secular styles of the time.
a German composer of Renaissance music and a music theorist. Among his theoretical works is Musica instrumentalis deudsch (1529), a study of musical instruments, and one of the most important works in early organology; and one of the earliest books on the Rudiments of music.
a German organist and composer. Born in Hettstedt, Agthe served as court organist to Frederick Albrecht, Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg. Among his compositions are six Singspiele, a ballet, and piano sonatas. He died in Ballenstedt; a son, Albrecht Agthe, was a music teacher.
a Spanish classical guitarist and composer. Aguado's major work Escuela de Guitarra was a guitar tutor published in 1825. Aguado's other works include Trois Rondos Brillants (Opus 2), Le Menuet Affandangado (Opus 15), Le Fandango Varie (Opus 16), as well as numerous waltzes, minuets, and other light pieces. The more extended works require a virtuoso technique and left-hand stretches that are almost impossible on the longer string lengths of modern guitars.
a Spanish monk, musician and composer. He was first the organist at the cathedral in Huesca from 1585 to 1603, and then moved to a more prestigious position as maestro de música at La Seo Cathedral in Saragossa. He published a collection of works in 1618, and eighteen of his keyboard works survive. He is considered the first major figure of the Aragonese School of music centered on Saragossa.
a Danish (originally German) composer. She is known as the first female composer in Denmark. She composed music for several ballets, operas, and plays of the royal theatre.
a mandolin virtuoso and composer who lived at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Vienna and there wrote Opus 1, Potpourri for mandolin (or violin) and guitar, Opus 2, Variations for mandolin and guitar, Opus 3, Nocturne concertantes for mandolin and guitar and Opus 4, Variations concertantes for mandolin and guitar.
a French composer. His compositional output includes 10 operas, some symphonies (only one of which survives), 2 bassoon concertos, a cello concerto, two cantatas, several sacred vocal works, more than 30 string quartets, and other chamber music.
a Spanish composer and priest. He held a post as Maestro de Capilla in San Sebastián and in Logroño from 1795 to 1800, when he returned to San Sebastián until his retirement in 1829. Albéniz wrote chiefly for the harpsichord and fortepiano. The work by which he is best known today is the Sonata in D major, of which a popular transcription for guitar has been made.
a Spanish composer. There is very little information available about the details of his life. He served as Fernando VI's service. From 1748 onwards, he served as the royal chapel organist.
an Italian Baroque composer and violinist. His works were influenced by Antonio Vivaldi and they were much played in England. He wrote mostly instrumental works and published 12 symphonies as well as 10 concertos in six parts for violins.
an Italian-born composer, who spent most of his life in Poland. His opera Don Juan albo Ukarany libertyn (Don Juan, or the Libertine Penalized) was performed in the 1780s with both Italian and Polish libretti.
an Italian Baroque composer. While famous in his day as an opera composer, he is mainly remembered today for his instrumental music, such as the concertos.
an Austrian musician. His published compositions consist of preludes, fugues and sonatas for the piano and organ, string quartets, etc.; but the greater proportion of his works, vocal and instrumental, exists only in manuscript.
an English organist and composer. He wrote instrumental music, glees and much church music. Much detail of his life is included in his semi-autobiographical novel, The Life Of Miss Fanny Brown published under the pseudonym John Piper in 1771. He also held a position as private organist to the Earl of Donegall.
an Argentine composer, policy maker and politician. A prolific composer, he created numerous waltzes, minuets, nocturnes and contra dances, as well as numerous pieces of chamber music for piano and flute. Among his numerous works of sacred music, he published The Agony, a canto for tenor, baritone and organ, for Good Friday observations in 1843; the majority of his compositions from this period were lost, however.
a French composer and pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, among the leading virtuoso pianists in Paris, a city in which he spent virtually his entire life.
an Italian composer of the Roman School and brother of Domenico Allegri; he was also a priest and a singer. He was born and died in Rome. The famous Miserere, copied from memory on two hearings by the 14-year-old Mozart, performed yearly on Wednesday and Friday of Passion Week, in the papal chapel, is his composition.
a Portuguese composer and organist. In 1726, he became organist of the Royal and Patriarchal Chapel. In 1728, the first of his serenatas, Il trionfo della virtù, was performed in Lisbon at the palace of Cardinal João da Mota e Silva. His comic opera, La pazienza di Socrate, was performed at the royal palace in 1733. It was the first Italian opera in Portugal. A contemporary diarist states that Almeida composed music for the popular performances of presépios (Nativity scenes) in the Mouraria quarter of Lisbon.
a Portuguese composer. The musical studies of João Pedro de Almeida Mota were probably as a choirboy, either in the Sé of Lisbon or in the São Vicente de Fora church, both churches being the center of musical activity in Lisbon at the time.
a German composer, organist and trumpeter. He is not to be confused with a similarly named composer in the 1620s who contributed to the collection Angst der Hellen und Friede der Seelen.
a German theologian and Baroque composer. Much of his compositional output consists of vocal concertos, motets and chorales.
a German organist, bass singer, and composer. He was a son-in-law and copyist of Johann Sebastian Bach. Many of his works, including a magnificat and two cantatas, have been lost. His compositions are not valued highly today; Bach spoke well of his compositional ability, perhaps due to their personal relationship.
an English harpist and composer. Traveled extensively throughout Europe, alternately performing and composing, notably a fantasy on Moses and his Variations for harmonic notes on the Naiads Chorus from Oberon.
a Russian composer known as one of the fathers of the Russian art song. He wrote seven operas, twenty musical comedies, a symphony, three string quartets, more than 200 songs, and many other pieces.
a German princess and composer. Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, regent of the states of Saxe-Weimar and Saxe-Eisenach. She transformed her court and its surrounding into the most influential cultural center of Germany.
Princess of Prussia, Duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg. As a composer she achieved a modest amount of fame and is most known for her smaller chamber works, which included trios, marches, cantatas, songs and fugues. In 1758, Anna Amalia began a serious study of musical theory and composition, engaging as her tutor Johann Philipp Kirnberger, a student of Johann Sebastian Bach. She composed chamber music, such as flute sonatas.
a German virtuoso guitarist, horn player, violist, conductor and composer. Amon composed around eighty works, including symphonies, concerti, sonatas, and songs. He also wrote two masses, various liturgical works, and two operettas.
a leading Spanish Basque composer of the Renaissance, at the Royal Court Chaplaincy in Granada of Queen Isabel I of Castile.
a German musician, composer and music publisher. He was born and died in Offenbach am Main. In 1774, as the patriarch of a Huguenot family, André founded one of the first music publishing houses to be independent of a bookshop, in Offenbach am Main. Among his closest friends in Offenbach were Goethe, at the time of his engagement to Anna Elisabeth Schönemann, and he is pictured in the seventeenth book of Goethe's autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit with an Offenbach am Main background in 1775. In 1777, André was appointed musical director at the German theatre in Berlin, the Deutsches Theater, without having to abandon Offenbach am Main, however. He composed some 30 operas, ballads and songs.
a German composer and music publisher best known for his central place in Mozart research. He wrote operas, symphonies, masses, and lieder, as well as an unfinished Lehrbuch der Tonsetzkunst (Textbook of the Art of Composition) in two volumes.
an Italian opera composer. Born in Taggia, Liguria, he studied with Niccolò Piccinni and Antonio Sacchini, and worked mainly in London, Venice and Rome. He wrote more than 80 operas, both opera seria and opera buffa, although he concentrated on church music, especially oratorios, during his last years. Anfossi died in Rome in 1797.
an Italian composer of the Renaissance who was involved in the heart of Rome’s liturgical musical life. He was one of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's most important predecessors and possibly his mentor. As maestro di capella of St Philip Neri's Oratory and the Capella Giulia at St Peter's, he was composing music at the very center of the Roman Catholic Church, during the turbulent reforms of the Counter-Reformation and as part of the new movements that began to flourish around the middle of the century. His music reflects these changes.
the first American Moravian Missionary to travel and work in Egypt, one of the earliest American-born chamber music composers, and the maker of perhaps the earliest surviving bowed string instrument made in America. Although Antes is often recognized for his choral works, such as Go Congregation Go! and Surely he has Bourne our Griefs, the mystery surrounding the creation of his "six Quartettos" is also well known.
an Italian organist, harpsichordist, composer and organ builder. An expert in organ building, he worked on the organ of Santo Stefano dei Cavalieri, a large 5- manual and more than 60 stop organ. Very important are the Six Sonatas for Harpsichord published in Rome in 1727.
an Italian composer who spent 25 years in Russia and wrote at least 14 operas for the Russian Imperial Court including Tsefal i Prokris, the first opera in Russian.
a cornetist, conductor, composer, pedagogue and the first famed virtuoso of the cornet à piston or valved cornet. He was influenced by Niccolò Paganini's virtuosic technique on the violin and successfully proved that the cornet was a true solo instrument by developing virtuoso technique on the instrument.
an English composer, best known for the patriotic song Rule, Britannia!. He also wrote a version of God Save the King, which became the British national anthem, and the song A-Hunting We Will Go. Arne was the leading British theatre composer of the 18th century, working at Drury Lane and Covent Garden.
an English composer and organist, born in London (his mother is said to have been Princess Amelia; his father was Thomas Arnold), and began writing music for the theatre in about 1764. A few years later he became director of music at the Marylebone Gardens, for which much of his popular music was written. In 1777 he went to work for George Colman the Elder at the Little Theatre, Haymarket. In 1783 he became organist at the Chapel Royal, and in 1793 he became organist at Westminster Abbey, where he was eventually buried.
a Spanish Basque composer. He was nicknamed "the Spanish Mozart" after he died, because, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he was both a child prodigy and an accomplished composer who died young. They also shared the same first and second baptismal names; and they shared the same birthday, January 27 (fifty years apart).
a Spanish composer, born in Puente la Reina, Navarre. His Italian musical training led him, under the favour of Queen Isabel II, to concentrate on operatic writing; and though he later composed zarzuelas, he remained less committed to the renascent art form than his contemporaries such as Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, who continued to write in an essentially Italianate style throughout his life.
a Romanian pianist, singer and composer of Austrian birth. She was the daughter of Austrian composer Anton Teyber and niece of concertmaster Franz Teyber.
a Dutch-Jewish composer and pianist who was active in London and Paris for most of his life. He composed about 170 works for piano, piano four- and eight-hands, as well as ballads and display pieces for solo singers with piano accompaniment.
an English composer of the Renaissance. He was a skilled composer of polyphony, and may have been the teacher of John Taverner. Only scattered remnants of Ashwell's music survives. As was common for pre-Reformation music in England in Latin, the large majority of manuscripts were destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII (and a large proportion of English-language sacred music was destroyed during the subsequent reign of Mary, during her attempt to re-impose Roman Catholicism on the island).
a composer of classical and church music. He was also a child prodigy, having commenced to study music when five years of age and composing several masses and a piano concerto by age eight. By the time he was eighteen, he had composed five masses, twenty-four other works for church and theatre, and many instrumental pieces.
an Austrian composer and violinist, best known for an opera on Greek myths, and for a few symphonies and string trios of his which were attributed to Joseph Haydn at one time. Among the few scholars who have studied his music, there are many differing opinions as to the quality.
an English composer and organist. His compositions, which show the influence of his teacher Mozart, are now largely forgotten except for a few short anthems.
a French composer celebrated for high-spirited opéra comiques such as Fra Diavolo and Le domino noir. His grand opera La muette de Portici attained unexpected political influence when a performance in Brussels in 1830 sparked off a revolution which led to the creation of Belgium.
a musician and composer Württemberg. With 55 cantatas, he was the first of the family Auberlen, who was known for his musical talent.
a württembergischer teacher, musician and composer, the third famous representatives of Fellbacher teacher and musician family Auberlen.
a French composer and violinist, born in Paris and a student of Jean Baptiste Senaillé. His first position was as violinist in the service of the Prince of Condé. Thereafter he was a member of the Vingt-quatre Violons du Roy. From 1728 to 1752, he was the first violinist at the Paris Opéra. He regularly and successfully appeared for a dozen years beginning in 1729 at the Concert Spirituel with, among other works, concertos for violin and orchestra of his own composition. Together with Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville and Jean-Marie Leclair, Aubert brought the zest of Italian violin virtuosity into the French musical fare of their time. He died in Belleville.
an Austrian pianist and composer who was the daughter of the physician Leopold Auenbrugger. She was a highly regarded pianist and composer in Vienna. Together with her sister Caterina Franziska, she was a student of Joseph Haydn and Antonio Salieri. In 1780 Haydn dedicated a cycle of six sonatas to the two sisters. When Marianne died in 1782, Salieri, at his own expense, published her Keyboard Sonata in E-flat together with his own funeral Ode 'De si piacevoli'.
an Austrian pianist and composer. Auernhammer wrote mainly piano music, especially variations, which are characterized by extensive knowledge of pianistic techniques and artful use of the instrument.
an Italian composer known mainly for his operas. In 1725 he wrote his first comic opera , The Triumph of Love or The Marriage between friends; The following years saw the performances of his new works: in 1726 La Carlotta, his second comic opera, and in 1728 the 'Ezio, his first serious opera, which was presented in Rome .
an English composer during the Baroque and Classical periods. He was a church organist at St John The Baptist Church in Newcastle and at St. Nicholas's Church (later Newcastle Cathedral). He is most known for his 12 Concerti Grossi after Scarlatti and his Essay on Musical Expression, the first music criticism published in English.
an Italian composer and violinist. He came from a family of musicians. From about 1690 until his death he was member of the Neapolitan court orchestra.
a Maltese composer and music theorist. One of his successes was a setting of Metastasio's libretto La Passione di Gesù Cristo he conducted at the Manoel Theatre in Valletta in 1782. He is known especially through his work Il Musico Prattico, which appeared in French translation by Nicolas-Étienne Framéry.