How often we relax to the quintessential melodies of Spain’s Isaac Albéniz (1860 – 1909). His Rapsodia Espanola, Sevilla and Granada, based on Catalan folk songs, are perhaps the better-known of his compositions. These exquisite heartrending melodies evoke the Spanish dream more than could any Goya painting but what of the man behind the music?
In a letter dated October 1866, French composer Georges Bizet (1838 – 1875) went straight to the point of opera: ‘As a musician, I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.’
Happy Birthday to You is said to be the most popular song in the English language. Being translated into at least 18 languages, it has been promoted all over the world and is sung for the birthday boy or girl by the guests celebrating the occasion. The melody used in this song dates back to the late 19th century, and it was used for the song Good Morning to All.
Whispering Hope is one of Western civilisation’s most engaging and enduring ballads. I was told by my Liverpool-Irish mother that at the onset of World War II, the suicide rate went through the roof, such was the anti-war sentiment.
Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler had much in common. The first was Italian yet he liberated and led the French nation. The latter was of Austrian birth but freed and championed the German people. Napoleon put an end to French revolutionary abuses. Adolf Hitler brought an end to the corruption and banking houses usurious deprivation following the victors’ vicious terms inflicted upon Germany after World War One.
In a letter dated October 1866, French composer Georges Bizet (1838 – 1875) went straight to the point of opera: ‘As a musician, I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.’
Herbert von Karajan (5 April 1908 – 16 July 1989) was an Austrian conductor. He was the principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for 34 years. During the German renaissance, the National Socialist era (1933-1945), he debuted at the Salzburg Festival, with the Vienna Philharmonic, and the Berlin Philharmonic.
How often do we relax to the quintessential melodies of Spain’s Isaac Albéniz (1860 – 1909). His Rapsodia Espanola, Sevilla and Granada, based on Catalan folk songs, are perhaps the better known of his compositions. These exquisite mind-bending melodies evoke the Spanish dream more than could any Goya painting; but what of the man behind the music?
One of the most surprising discoveries for me was to learn that Franz Lehár, whose operas and waltzes match those of the Strauss family, lived in my own lifetime. Much as I love the melodies and waltzes from The Merry Widow and Wiener Frauen (Viennese Women) I was ignorant of the fact that he was a contemporary of The Beatles and Elvis Presley.
If X-rated entertainment is music to your ears, then orchestral music may be just what you are looking for. Enthusiasts of television soaps would eat their hearts out if they knew what we classical fans have been enjoying for the last few hundred years. If I hint at the plot, you will understand why we’re still glued to our sets; the theatrical ones that are.
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Europe Renaissance 
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