Khatchaturian was born in 1903 and died in 1978.
His ballet "Gayaneh" was first staged in 1939, although, at the time, it was called "Happiness". He revised the ballet twice. The final revision was first staged in 1945. It is set on a collective farm in southern Armenia. Gayaneh, a cotton-picker, is the wife of the good-for-nothing Giko. The Red Army saves Gayaneh and sends Giko into exile after he sets fire to the bales of cotton and attacks Gayaneh. Gayaneh marries the Red Army commander. The "Sabre Dance" is part of their wedding festivities.
Mendelssohn was born in 1809 and died in 1847.
The comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was written by William Shakespeare in 1594. In 1843, Mendelssohn wrote music (Opus 61) for Schlegel's five-act translation of the original English play. Mendelssohn had actually previously written the Overture (in 1826, Op. 21).
Mussorgsky was born in 1839 and died in 1881.
In 1867, he composed "A Night on Bald Mountain", which was inspired by a story taken from Mengden's drama "The Witch".
Orff lived from 1895 to 1982.
In 1934, Orff acquired an 1847 book of medieval poetry published by Johann Andreas Schmeller. The book was based on a manuscript discovered in 1803 at the Bavarian Abbey of Benediktbeuren. The manuscript apparently was written during the 13th century, and contains more than 200 songs and poems. This manuscript was the source for his "Carmina Burana", the full title of which is "Carmina Burana: Secular Songs for Soloists and Chorus with Accompanying Instruments and Magic Tableaux". It was first performed June 8, 1937, at the Frankfurt Opera, conducted by Bertil Wetzelsberger. The premiere was a great success.
Prokofiev was born in 1891 and died in 1953. In the early 1930s, he voluntarily returned to the Soviet Union and adopted Soviet citizenship. The Soviet government mandated that music should be written in a manner that could be understood and enjoyed by the masses.
One of the first works that Prokofiev wrote to satisfy this requirement was the music for the film "Lieutenant Kij�", which was made in 1933 in the Leningrad Belgoskino Studios. In 1934, he combined into a symphonic suite revised versions of five of the numbers from the score. The 4th movement (Troika) portrays a ride in a three-horse sleigh.
Ravel was born in 1875 and died in 1937.
Ravel originally wrote the Alborada del Gracioso for piano, as the fourth piece in the cycle "Miroirs" (1904-5). He later wrote the orchestral version in 1918. An "alborada" is a morning serenade, and a "gracioso" is a jester in a Spanish nobleman's house.
Rimsky-Korsakov was born in 1844 and died in 1908.
In 1886, he wrote the Russian Easter Festival Overture, which he dedicated to his contemporaries Alexander Borodin and Modeste Mussorgsky. It is based on themes from the Russian church service. In describing the overture, the composer wrote that the "transition from the gloomy and mysterious evening of Passion Saturday to the unbridled pagan-religious merrymaking on the morn of Easter Sunday is what I was eager to reproduce in my overture."
Rossini was born in 1792 and died in 1868. His work as a composer of opera began in 1810 and spanned 20 years. His first works were one-acts for the theatres of northern Italy. He wrote operas of several different genres, the last of which was romantic French grand opera, of which "William Tell" is an example. The three major centers of his operatic career were Venice, Naples, and Paris.
In 1815, he took up the position of resident composer for the San Carlo theatre, which contracted him to write serious operas. However, he was allowed to accept commissions from elsewhere. As a result, in 1816, he wrote his most famous comic opera, "The Barber of Seville", for a theatre in Rome. Rossini frequently re-used material he had previously written. The overture to this opera is one of the most notorious examples of this. (It was previously used in the operas "Aureliano in Palmira" and "Elizabeth, Queen of England".)
Rossini also wrote "semi-serious" operas. "La Gazza Ladra" (The Thieving Magpie) is an example of such an opera. In it, a potentially tragic sequence of events is resolved in a happy ending. The overture begins with a slow introduction, which is followed by a fast movement.
Saint-Sa�ns was born in Paris on October 9, 1835, and died in Algiers on December 16, 1921. Berlioz called him "one of the greatest musicians of our epoch." At the age of 4� he performed on piano the Beethoven sonata for violin and piano. Besides being a composer, he also studied astronomy, physics, and natural history, and wrote poetry, critical essays and a play.
"Danse Macabre" is a medieval symbolic representation of death. It was probably influenced by the epidemics of bubonic plague in the 14th century.
Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797 and died in 1828. One of his early instructors was Antonio Salieri.
Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759, "Unfinished", consists of 2 movements. The first (Allegro moderato) is in B Minor, while the second (Andante con moto) is in E major. No one knows why he never finished the symphony.
Johann Strauss the Younger was born in Vienna on October 25, 1825, and died there of pneunomia on June 3, 1899. He became a musician against his father's wishes. He secretly studyed the violin with his mother's encouragement. He made his first attempt at writing a waltz when he was 6.
He wrote numerous waltzes. The word "waltz" comes from the German "waltzen", which means "to revolve".
Tchaikovsky was born in 1840. His father was a government mining official. His family was well-to-do but had little involvement with music. He came to love music mostly as a result of improvising at the piano. He was sent to school to prepare for a career in law. When he was 19 he started working at the Ministry of Justice in St. Petersburg. In his spare time he studied music at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. Anton Rubinstein, the director of the Conservatoire, noticed and encouraged Tchaikovsky's musical talent. Tchaikovsky quit his job so that he could study full time. In 1865, he was appointed professor of harmony at the new Moscow Conservatoire. Tchaikovsky died in 1893.
Tchaikovsky visited Rome during the Carnival celebrations in February 1880. He was enchanted with what he saw and heard in Italy. While there, he sketched what would become the Capriccio Italien. He completed it in Russia in May. It premiered in Moscow in December, at a concert of the Royal Music Society.