Biography of great composers
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10 of the best Classical era composers
25 November 2020, 15:36 | Updated: 14 July 2023, 13:00
We all know ‘classical music’ – music that’s distinct from pop, rock or jazz. The revival of Monteverdi, especially, is credited to Boulanger.
She also conducted the world premieres of works by her former student Copland, and others, and championed pieces by Fauré and Lennox Berkley, as well as early Baroque masters Monteverdi and Schütz, who she gave touring lecture recitals on.
As for conducting an orchestra, that’s a job where I don’t think sex plays much part.” Amen to that.
Nadia Boulanger died on 22 October 1979 in Paris.
Stravinsky Firebird SCREAM
Nadia Boulanger taught the 20th century’s most famous composers
Nadia Boulanger taught an incredible array of composers, conductors and performers at Paris Conservatoire, École Normale de Musique and the American Conservatory in Paris, among other schools.
And, in 1983, the success of A Feather On The Breath Of God, an album of her music, piqued people’s curiosity about the author of these sensual, vivid, lyrical songs.
Now there are hundreds of recordings of Hildegard’s music, numerous biographies not to mention novels, popular histories, documentaries and websites hailing her as an early feminist and New Age guru.
Accounts written in Hildegard’s lifetime and just after describe an extraordinarily accomplished woman: a visionary, a prophet (she was known as “The Sibyl Of The Rhine”), a pioneer who wrote practical books on biology, botany, medicine, theology and the arts.
During 1815 alone, when he was just 18, Schubert composed over 140 masterly song settings – including the unforgettable ‘Erlkonig’.
Read more: 10 best Romantic composers in classical music history >
Vilde Frang – Ernst: Grand Caprice (after Schubert's "Der Erlkönig")
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
In the last years of the 18th century came Beethoven, who started writing music in the style inherited from Mozart and Haydn, and completely transformed it.
Moving into the 19th century, Beethoven’s music was getting increasingly ambitious in its use of melody, harmony and instrumentation.
How ironic that of all her achievements, it is her compositions that have stood the test of time.
Interested in finding out more about Hildegard of Bingen? From his symphonies to his concertos, operas to sonatas, dances and string quartets, his unfinished Requiem to his almost improbable by-ear transcription of Allegri’s Miserere, Wolfgang Amadeus was one of the most prolific composers and gifted musicians in the history of music.
Enamoured with the city of Rome, Mozart began writing Italian operas, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte.
It was the custom to promise the tenth child to the Church, so at eight (or 14, accounts differ), little Hildegard was sent to the isolated hilltop monastery of Disibodenberg in the care of an older girl, Jutta of Sponheim.
She spent nearly 40 years there with a handful of other women from noble families, each enclosed in a small stone cell, or “tomb”, in a confined area of the monastery away from the monks.
As abbess of this small community, Jutta instructed Hildegard in the Psalter, reading Latin and strict religious practices.
A heavenly voice told her to share her insights with the world and in 1141 her abbot agreed that Volmar should help her to record them.
News of Hildegard’s prophetic visions reached Pope Eugenius III and he sent delegates to Disibodenburg to obtain a copy of her work-in-progress, Scivias. But there were no mentions of her music in any reference book before 1979 and she barely warranted an entry in the 1990 edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music.
The rediscovery of Hildegard of Bingen's music
Interest in Hildegard started to grow around the 800th anniversary of her death in 1979, when Philip Pickett and his New London Consort gave possibly the first English performances of four of Hildegard’s songs.
Mozart’s ‘Lacrimosa’ on four theremins is hauntingly beautiful
Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-1799)
Joseph Boulogne, or the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, was an extraordinary composer dubbed by former US president John Adams as “the most accomplished man in Europe”.
Boulogne, born the son of a slave and white plantation owner, became a composer in the court of Marie Antoinette, teaching the Queen and writing numerous symphonies, sonatas, concertos, operas and string quartets.
20 years later, his ‘Choral’ Symphony marked the first time a composer had used choral voices in a major symphony, paving the way for Romantic composers like Mahler and Berlioz.
Beethoven, arguably the defining figure in the history of Western music, split apart the Classical style at the seams, marking – with his nine symphonies, five piano concertos, one opera, and countless sonatas, string quartets and concertos – the dawn of the Romantic era.
Life and Music
Ralph's interest in music began at an early age, when in addition to playing the violin, viola, piano and organ he became increasingly interested in composition.
He studied at the Royal College of Music alongside Gustav Holst, then for three years at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a pupil of Parry, Charles Wood and Stanford.
Ralph's early work was influenced by his dissatisfaction with the English music scene.
In Jutta’s biography, written after her death by her secretary, the monk Volmar, we discover just how hard life was for the nuns.
A single window linked them to the outside world and they were allowed one meagre meal a day in winter and two in summer.
CPE Bach Keyboard Concerto in G-major Wq 4 2nd mvt
Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787)
Gluck blazed the trail for 19th-century opera.
You can discover his music, including the best-known Violin Concerto No. 9, on Spotify here.
Read more: The life of Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges >
Joseph Bologne, Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges Violin Concertos
Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868)
Rossini was an Italian composer and champion of the bel canto style, that would fade in popularity towards the second half of the 19th century but was beloved in Rossini’s time.
The Barber of Seville, home to the wonderful ‘Figaro’ aria, is one of today’s most frequently performed operas of the bel canto era, a period – during which Donizetti and Bellini were also active – that bridged the gap between comic and Romantic opera.
When Rossini penned the overture to his opera William Tell, he was writing what would become one of the most recognisable and beloved melodies in classical music – and almost a cliché as the soundtrack for film scenes of galloping horses and car chases.
Overture to Gioachino Rossini's opera 'William Tell' performed entirely on blown bottles
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Schubert is celebrated as one of the four great pillars of 18th-century music, along with Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, and a key figure in bridging the Classical and Romantic periods.
But the nuns who flourished under her unorthodox regime were allowed extraordinary freedoms, such as wearing their hair long, uncovered and even crowned with flowers.
Nevertheless, Hildegard commanded the respect of the Church and political leaders of the day. He was also a violin virtuoso, and stood at the helm of one of Europe’s great orchestras, Le Concert des Amateurs.
Unfortunately, a lot of the Chevalier’s music was lost during the French Revolution, and what survived was quickly forgotten.
But what of the Classical era?
Frustrated by Baroque opera, its lengthy moments of vocal indulgence and lean plot lines, Gluck wanted to compose arias that would enhance the plot or title character.
Here was a composer who wanted drama to lead, and music to follow. And so a recording of Hildegard’s music, A Feather On The Breath Of God, introducing the pure soprano of Emma Kirkby and Gothic Voices, became an unexpected bestseller.
Today we think of Hildegard as one of the first identifiable composers in the history of Western music (most medieval composers were “Anon”).
From Mozart to Beethoven, we explore the greatest composers active in the second half of the 18th century.
The Classical era was a time for championing the symphony, composing comic operas, and developing the piano sonata.
It refers to the period in Western Classical Music from around 1750 to 1820 and is largely dominated in our history books by composing heavyweights, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.
But what of the other contributors to this time of revolution – of the industrial and symphonic variety – and musical elegance?