Camille Saint-Saëns Symphony No 3 in C minor, Op 78 Järvi

Jean-Baptiste Lully - His Music and His Life

His real name was Giovanni Battista Lulli, as mentioned in the "Ullstein Music Encyclopedia (Berlin/Frankfurt, 1965). Lully was born in Florenz/Italy on November 28, 1632.

In 1646, Lully started his carreer as kitchen helper in Paris. He was an outstanding violinist and has been promoted as one of the "music popes" - a member of the "violins du roi" (Royal Violinists). His new string techniques inspired the French violin play with an unbelievable precision.

As  nobleman, Lully became a royal dancer, actor and composer of King Louis XIV. All his compostions showed a royal but sometimes uncomfortable glorification.

In 1669, Lully "invented" the French National Opera with lyrics from the Greek and Roman mythology. Orchestral compositions with oboes soli remained with tonal glam and glory.

Lully passed away in Paris on March 22, 1687.

Pastorale d'ete by Arthur Honegger - His Music and His Life

The French Arhur Honegger has been born in Le Havre on March 10, 1892 as a son of Swiss parents. He studied with Andre Gedalge (1856-1926) and Charles-Marie Widor (1845-1937).

Honegger's compostion works couldn't be dictated by conglomeration-tendencies. Honegger remainded incredible and unique, catholic-mysterious and as a great composer of mythical stories, adapted in "King David" (1921), "Johanna - burned of the shike" (1938, German version premiered 1947) or the dramatic psalm, also entitled "King David" (1941).

The Biblical drama "Judith"(1925) or "Oedipus Rex" (1926) became real composition challenges because of Igor Stravinsky.

Honegger's fifth symphony entitled "Di Tre Tre" is already incredible, because of all movements and an ending with a drumbeat.

Arthur Honegger passed away in Paris on November 27, 1955.

Claude Debussy - His Music and His Life

Claude Debussy was born into a poor family in France  on August 22, 1862, but his obvious gift at the piano sent him to the Paris Conservatory at age 11. At age 22, he won the Prix de Rome, which financed two years of further musical study in the Italian capital. After the turn of the century, Debussy established himself as the leading figure of French music. During World War I, while Paris was being bombed by the German air force, he succumbed to colon cancer at the age of 55.

Quotes

"Music is the space between the notes."

– Claude Debussy-

Achille-Claude Debussy was born on August 22, 1862, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, the oldest of five children. While his family had little money, Debussy showed an early affinity for the piano, and he began taking lessons at the age of 7. By age 10 or 11, he had entered the Paris Conservatory, where his instructors and fellow students recognized his talent, but often found his attempts at musical innovation strange.

In 1880, Nadezhda von Meck, who had previously supported Russian composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, hired Claude Debussy to teach piano to her children. With her and her children, Debussy traveled Europe and began accumulating musical and cultural experiences in Russia that he would soon turn toward his compositions, most notably gaining exposure to Russian composers who would greatly influence his work.

In 1884, when he was just 22 years old, Debussy entered his cantata L'Enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Son) in the Prix de Rome, a competition for composers. He took home the top prize, which allowed him to study for two years in the Italian capital. While there, he studied the music of German composer Richard Wagner, specifically his opera Tristan und Isolde. Wagner’s influence on Debussy was profound and lasting, but despite this, Debussy generally shied away from the ostentation of Wagner’s opera in his own works.

Debussy returned to Paris in 1887 and attended the Paris World Exhibition two years later. There he heard a Javanese gamelan—a musical ensemble composed of a variety of bells, gongs and xylophones, sometimes accompanied by vocals—and the subsequent years found Debussy incorporating the elements of the gamelan into his existing style to produce a wholly new kind of sound.

The music written during this period came to represent the composer's early masterpieces—Ariettes oubliées (1888), Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun; completed in 1892 and first performed in 1894) and the String Quartet (1893)—which were clearly delineated from the works of his coming mature period.

Debussy's seminal opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, was completed in 1895 and was a sensation when first performed in 1902, though it deeply divided listeners (audience members and critics either loved it or hated it). The attention gained with Pelléas, paired with the success of Prélude in 1892, earned Debussy extensive recognition. Over the following 10 years, he was the leading figure in French music, writing such lasting works as La Mer (The Sea; 1905) and Ibéria (1908), both for orchestra, and Images (1905) and Children's Corner Suite (1908), both for solo piano.

Claude Debussy passed away on March 25, 1918.He lost his battle with rectal cancer at his Paris home. Aged 55, Debussy was universally acknowledged as one of the most important musicians of his time. His harmonic innovations had a profound influence on subsequent generations of composers, and by creating new genres and revealing a range of timbre and color he developed a highly original musical aesthetic. 

Francois Adrien Boildieu - His Music and His Life

Born on December 16, 1775 in Rouen, the Frenchman Francois Adrien Boildieu was a son of an Archdiocesan secretary. At the age of 18, he started composing cheerful and amusing lyrical dramas and operas.

In Paris, the piano constructor Sebastian Erard (1752-1831) became Boildieu's mentor. Etienne Nicolas Mehul (1763-1817) and Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842) were Boildieu's very closed friends.

He composed 38 operas, which remained as pearls of the so-called Opera Comique. I like to mention just only a few such as "Der Kalif von Bagdad" from 1800 (a kalif was an Arabian governor and Mohammed's follower), "Johann von Paris" (1812), and, especially "La Dame Blanche" (The White Lady, 1825) - just aired in my show last Sunday.

Boildieu's piano compositions amuse through wonderful but superficial gleam.

The great composer passed away in Paris on October 8, 1834.

George Bizet - His Music and Life

Born on October 25, 1838, in Paris, the French George Bizet passed away -also in Paris- on June 3, 1875.

As a music professor's son, Bizet started to study at the Parisienne College of Music at the age of 9!!! During the ten academic years Bizet passed many examinations with distinctions. One of his teacher was Jacques Halevy a.k.a. Elias Levy (1799-1862), his then future father-in-law.

At the age of 17 (1855), Bizet composed his first symphony in c-major. The premiere took place only in 1935 through Felix von Weingaertner (1863-1942) in Basel, Switzerland. Bizet considered this composition as immature 'schoolboy-work".

In 1857, his operetta "Le Docteur Miracle" (The Wonder Doctor0 won the first prize. In Italy, Bizet composed the comic opera "Don Procopio" with its premiere only 1906 in Monte Carlo.

The following operas remained as very unsuccessful, even they content many wonderful classic compositions: "Le Pecheurs de Perles" (1863), "Ivan le Terrible" (1865) or "Djamileh" (1877).

The two "L'Arlesienne Suites" (1872 and 1876) remained as world record classical compositions till today and are being aired on European radio stations many times.

The opera "Carmen" is one of the most performed operas worldwide up to now and remained as Bizet's great success.

Daniel Francois Esprit Auber - His Music and Life

Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, born January 29, 1782 in Caen/France and passed away May 12, 1871, was a leading composer of French opera from the 1820s onwards, collaborating from then for some thirty years with the librettist Augustin- Eugène Scribe. He is particularly known for his contributions to the genre of opéra- comique, although one of his most famous works is Masaniello or La muette de Portici (The Dumb Girl of Portici), of which the first title is preferred in English. This work, staged in Paris in 1828, began the era of French grand opera. Auber wrote a considerable quantity of music, vocal and instrumental, sacred and secular. He was respected by Rossini and Wagner, and much honoured by the state in his life-time.

Operas

Auber's most popular operas are Fra Diavolo, Le cheval de bronze (The Bronze Horse), Les diamants de la couronne (The Crown Diamonds), and the seminal grand opera Masaniello or La muette de Portici (The Dumb Girl of Portici). It's funny, that only Auber's 13th opera "Le Macon" became a great success. I love all his compositions.