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Text extracted from opening pages of book: Grea i: C om6sers..' ari'd' The*.-By Louis C-Bison Author of Curiosities of Music, European Remi niscences, The Theory of Music, etc. ILLUSTRATED Boston The Page Company publishers JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH PREFACE. THIS work does not pretend to give a complete presentation of musical biography. Many of the lesser composers who did not influence musical - history in any way have been omitted from its pages, or dismissed with a mere mention. It has been the effort of the author, however, to bring to gether the lives of the great composers in such a manner that the average reader ( with out any technical knowledge of music) may understand how their work aided in musical development, and in what degree their schools were interwoven. In order to make this point more clear, the chronological order has not been adhered to where a departure from it seemed to make more definite the influence of a composer. Louis C. ELSON. ix CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE ...... ix I. PRELIMINARY THE OLD FLEMISH SCHOOL . . . . . .11 II. THE OLD ITALIAN COMPOSERS PALESTRINA ..... 24 III. OPERA AND ORATORIO GLUCK BACH HANDEL .... 37 IV. HAYDN AND MOZART ... 66 V. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN ... 99 VI. FRANZ PETER SCHUBERT . . .128 VII. CHOPIN AND THE MODERN PIANO COMPOSERS . . . . . 154 VIII. MENDELSSOHN AND SCHUMANN . 171 IX. A BATCH OF OPERATIC COMPOSERS. 197 X. WAGNER: His LIFE AND THEORIES. 221 XI. JOHANNES BRAHMS .... 252 XII. GIUSEPPE VERDI .... 262 XIII. OTHER INFLUENCES IN MODERN Music 275 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE JOHN SEBASTIAN BACH . . Frontispiece CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD VON GLUCK . . 39 GEORG FRIEDRICH HANDEL, . . . 57 JOSEPH HAYDN 66 WOLFGANG MOZART 78 LUDWIG VON BEETHOVEN.... 99 FRANZ SCHUBERT . . . . .128 FREDERICK CHOPIN 154' FRANZ LISZT . . . . . . .164 FELIX MENDELSSOHN 172 ROBERT SCHUMANN 180 HENRY PURCELL 198 CHARLES GOUNOD 207 CARL MARIA VON WEBER . . . .214 RICHARD WAGNER ..... 221 GIUSEPPE VERDI 262 GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR WORK. CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY THE OLD FLEMISH SCHOOL. COMPOSERS, in the modern sense of the word, could only come into being after music had changed from a very free art into a science which admitted of rules, and which it was possible to teach. There was, to be sure, a certain order of progressions demanded in the old melodies which charmed the ancient world, but, as all the music was probably melodic, as there were no chords or combinations of parts, such men as Sopho cles or Euripides, who set their tragedies 12 Great Composers and Their Work. to music, such reformers as Saint Ambrose or Saint Gregory, who evolved set progressions of melody, and such enthusiastic bard-musi cians as the old Troubadours or Minne singers could scarcely be called compos ers, even though they were famous in music. It was a little before the year 1000 that the combination of different musical parts into a harmonious whole began to be st adied as a science. The first results were not exactly what we should call har monious, however. Guido of Arezzo, Hue bald of St.* Amands, and a number of others were engaged during the tenth and eleventh centuries in producing some of the most hideous music that civilized ears were ever forced to listen to, a continuous succession of fourths and fifths. Probably the first party who fairly de serves the name of a musical composer was a Frenchman, a Trouvre ( as the Trouba