Composers

Fertility problems linked to children's mental health issues, research claims
Danish doctors who studied 2.4 million kids say they have higher risk of conditions such as autism if mum had trouble
conceiving

theguardian.com, Monday 30 June 2014 14.20 BST
Three pregnant women
Researchers believe children born to women with fertility problems have a higher chance of developing mental health
issues. Photograph: i love images/Alamy
Children born to parents with fertility problems are more likely to develop psychiatric disorders than those with
healthier mothers and fathers, research suggests.
Doctors found higher rates of mental problems from anxiety and schizophrenia to autism in children whose parents
had issues getting pregnant.
The scientists could not explain the findings but said genetic faults or other biological problems with the mother or
father were more likely to blame than any fertility treatment they had.
"The exact mechanisms behind the observed increase in risk are still unknown but it is generally believed that underlying
infertility has a more important role in adverse effects in offspring than the treatment procedures," said Allan Jensen, an
epidemiologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.One possibility is that faulty genes that raise the risk of
psychiatric diseases are more common in women or men with fertility problems. "If transferred to their offspring, this
may at least partly explain the increased risk of psychiatric diseases," Jensen said.
The Danish group used a database that links patient records, allowing them to study the medical histories of parents and
their children. They first searched for all children born in Denmark between 1969 and 2006. From a total of more than
2.4 million, they separated out 124,000 (5%) born to women with registered fertility problems, and 2.3 million (95%)
whose mothers had no such problems. A registered fertility problem recorded on a mother's medical notes might be due
to medical issues with either parent, although the researchers did not look specifically at fathers' health.
The researchers followed the children's medical histories, typically for 20 years, until 2009. During that time, children
born to parents with fertility problems had a 33% higher risk of psychiatric disorders. The children had a 27% higher risk
of schizophrenia and psychoses, a 37% higher risk of anxiety and neurotic disorders, an 28% greater risk of learning
difficulties, and a 22% higher risk of mental development disorders, including autism spectrum disorders, the scientists
found.
Further analyses of children aged 19 and under, and 20 and over found that the risks continued into adulthood.
Based on the figures, Jensen calculated that in Denmark, around 1.9% of all diagnosed psychiatric disorders are
associated with the mother or father's infertility. "This figure supports our interpretation of the results, that the
increased risk is real but modest," said Jensen, who will describe the work at the European Society of Human
Reproduction and Embryology meeting in Munich on Monday. The research has not been published in a peer-reviewed
journal.
Yacoub Khalaf, medical director of the assisted conception unit at Guy's Hospital in London, was sceptical of the figures.
"As a clinical observation, if they suggest the risk of mental retardation is increased by 28%, surely over the years we
would have seen an epidemic of mental retardation as a result of fertility treatment, which has never been observed.
The figures are staggering and at odds with anything that's been reported so far."
Allan Pacey, chair of the British Fertility Society, said the results were intriguing. "I suspect we are seeing an effect of
biology going on to affect these children or perhaps it's the social environment in which those young children were
brought up."

Previous research on children born after fertility treatment suggests that certain procedures, such as intracytoplasmic
sperm injection (ICSI), may raise the risk of birth defects, though the link is not definite.

But common fertility treatments do not seem to raise the risk of mental disorders. A major study published in the British
Medical Journal last year by another Danish team found that children born after IVF and ICSI were no more likely to have
mental disorders than children conceived naturally. The researchers did see a small increase of mental problems in
children born after their mothers had ovarian stimulation followed by intrauterine sperm injection.

This article was amended on 30 June 2014 to clarify that the fertility problems could have originated with either
parent, not just the mother.

Achille-Claude Debussy (French: [ail klod dbysi]; 22 August 1862 25 March 1918) was a French composer. Along with
Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music, though he himself
intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions. In France, he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour
in 1903. Debussy was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his use of
non-traditional scales and chromaticism influenced many composers who followed. Debussy's music is noted for its
sensory content and frequent eschewing of tonality. The French literary style of his period was known as Symbolism, and
this movement directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant.
Joseph-Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 December 28, 1937) was a French composer known especially for his melodies,
masterful orchestration, richly evocative harmonies and inventive instrumental textures and effects. Along with Claude
Debussy, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music. Much of his piano music,
chamber music, vocal music and orchestral music is part of the standard concert repertoire.Ravel's piano compositions,
such as Jeux d'eau, Miroirs, Le tombeau de Couperin and Gaspard de la nuit, demand considerable virtuosity from the
performer, and his mastery of orchestration is particularly evident in such works as Rapsodie espagnole, Daphnis et
Chlo and his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Ravel is perhaps known best for his
orchestral work Bolro (1928), which he once described as "a piece for orchestra without music". According to SACEM,
Ravel's estate had earned more royalties than that of any other French composer.
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (sometimes spelled Strawinsky or Stravinskii; Russian: ,
transliterated: Igor Fdorovi Stravinskij; Russian pronunciation: *ir fjodrvt
strvinskj]; 17 June [O.S. 5 June]

1882 6 April 1971) was a Russian (and later, a naturalized French and American) composer, pianist and conductor. He
is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century.Stravinsky's compositional
career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the
impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka
(1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The last of these transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought
about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary
who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His "Russian phase" was followed in the 1920s by a period in which he
turned to neoclassical music. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto
grosso, fugue and symphony). They often paid tribute to the music of earlier masters, such as J.S. Bach and Tchaikovsky.
In the 1950s, Stravinsky adopted serial procedures. His compositions of this period shared traits with examples of his
earlier output: rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few two- or three-note cells and
clarity of form, of instrumentation and of utterance.[clarification needed]
Arnold Schoenberg or Schnberg (German: *anlt nbk] ( listen); 13 September 1874 13 July 1951) was an
Austrian composer and painter, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of
the Second Viennese School. With the rise of the Nazi Party, by 1938 Schoenberg's works were labelled as degenerate
music (Anon. 19972013); he moved to the United States in 1934.Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and
development, has been one of the most influential of 20th-century musical thought. Many European and American
composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have passionately
reacted against it.Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed
German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality
(although Schoenberg himself detested that term) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art
music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, an influential compositional method of
manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation
and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a
centralized melodic idea.

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was born in 1875, in the Basque town of Ciboure, France, near Biarritz, only 18 kilometers from
the Spanish border. His mother, Marie Delouart, was Basque - according to Ravel's biographer, Roger Nichols,
"illegitimate" and "practically illiterate" - and had grown up in Madrid, Spain, while his father, Joseph Ravel, was an
educated and successful engineer, a Swiss inventor and industrialist from French Haute-Savoie. Both were Catholics and
they provided a happy and stimulating household for their children. Some of Joseph's inventions were quite important,
including an early internal-combustion engine and a notorious circus machine, the "Whirlwind of Death", an automotive
loop-the-loop that was quite a success until a fatal accident at the Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1903. Joseph delighted in
taking his sons to factories to see the latest mechanical devices, and he also had a keen interest in music and culture.
Ravel substantiated his father's early influence by stating later, As a child, I was sensitive to musicto every kind of
music.
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was born on 17 June 1882 in Oranienbaum, a suburb of Saint Petersburg, the Russian
imperial capital, and was brought up in Saint Petersburg. His parents were Fyodor Stravinsky, a bass singer at the
Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, and Anna (ne Kholodovsky). His grandfather was of Polish noble
descent,*clarification needed+ of the Strawioski family of Sulima coat of arms.*4+*5+ He recalled his schooldays as being
lonely, later saying that "I never came across anyone who had any real attraction for me". Stravinsky began piano
lessons as a young boy, studying music theory and attempting composition. In 1890, he saw a performance of
Tchaikovsky's ballet The Sleeping Beauty at the Mariinsky Theatre. By age fifteen, he had mastered Mendelssohn's Piano
Concerto in G minor and finished a piano reduction of a string quartet by Glazunov, who reportedly considered
Stravinsky unmusical, and thought little of his skills.
Claude Debussy was born on 22 August 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, the eldest of five children. His father,
Manuel-Achille Debussy, owned a china shop there; his mother, Victorine Manoury Debussy, was a seamstress. The
family moved to Paris in 1867, but in 1870 Debussy's pregnant mother fled with Claude to his paternal aunt's home in
Cannes to escape the Franco-Prussian war. Debussy began piano lessons there at the age of seven with an Italian
violinist in his early 40s named Cerutti; his aunt paid for his lessons. In 1871 he drew the attention of Marie Maut de
Fleurville,[7] who claimed to have been a pupil of Frdric Chopin. Debussy always believed her, although there is no
independent evidence to support her claim.[8] His talents soon became evident, and in 1872, at age ten, Debussy
entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he spent the next 11 years. During his time there he studied composition with
Ernest Guiraud, music history/theory with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, harmony with mile Durand,[9] piano with
Antoine Franois Marmontel, organ with Csar Franck, and solfge with Albert Lavignac, as well as other significant
figures of the era. He also became a lifelong friend of fellow student and noted pianist Isidor Philipp. After Debussy's
death, many pianists sought out Philipp for advice on playing his pieces.
Arnold Schoenberg or Schnberg was also a painter, an important music theorist, and an influential teacher of
composition; his students included Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Hanns Eisler, Egon Wellesz, and later John Cage, Lou
Harrison, Earl Kim, Leon Kirchner, and other prominent musicians. Many of Schoenberg's practices, including the
formalization of compositional method and his habit of openly inviting audiences to think analytically, are echoed in
avant-garde musical thought throughout the 20th century. His often polemical views of music history and aesthetics
were crucial to many significant 20th-century musicologists and critics, including Theodor W. Adorno, Charles Rosen and
Carl Dahlhaus, as well as the pianists Artur Schnabel, Rudolf Serkin, Eduard Steuermann and Glenn Gould.Schoenberg's
archival legacy is collected at the Arnold Schnberg Center in Vienna.

Achille-Claude Debussy
From the start, though clearly talented, Debussy was argumentative and experimental. He challenged the rigid teaching
of the Academy, favoring instead dissonances and intervals that were frowned upon. Like Georges Bizet, he was a
brilliant pianist and an outstanding sight reader, who could have had a professional career had he so wished.[10] The
pieces he played in public at this time included sonata movements by Beethoven, Schumann and Weber; and Chopin
the Ballade No. 2, a movement from the Piano Concerto No. 1, and the Allegro de concert, a relatively little-known piece
but one requiring an advanced technique (it was originally intended to be the opening movement of a third piano
concerto). During the summers of 1880, 1881, and 1882 Debussy accompanied the wealthy patroness of Pyotr Ilyich
Tchaikovsky, Nadezhda von Meck, as she travelled with her family in Europe and Russia. The young composer's many
musical activities during these vacations included playing four-hand pieces with von Meck at the piano, giving music
lessons to her children, and performing in private concerts with some of her musician friends.

Joseph-Maurice Ravel .Ravels parents encouraged his musical pursuits and sent him to the Conservatoire de Paris, first
as a preparatory student and eventually as a piano major. His teachers included mile Descombes. He received a first
prize in the piano student competition in 1891. Overall, however, he was not successful academically even as his
musicianship matured dramatically. Considered very gifted, Ravel was also called somewhat heedless in his studies.
Around 1893, Ravel created his earliest compositions, and he was introduced by his father to the caf pianist Erik Satie,
whose distinctive personality and unorthodox musical experiments proved influential.
Ravel was not a "bohemian" and evidenced little of the typical trauma of adolescence. At twenty years of age, Ravel was
already "self-possessed, a little aloof, intellectually biased, given to mild banter." He dressed like a dandy and was
meticulous about his appearance and demeanor. Short in stature, light in frame, and bony in features, Ravel had the
"appearance of a well-dressed jockey". His large head seemed suitably matched to his great intellect. He was well-read
and later accumulated a library of over 1,000 volumes. In his younger adulthood, Ravel was usually bearded in the
fashion of the day, though later he dispensed with all whiskers. Though reserved, Ravel was sensitive and self-critical,
and had a mischievous sense of humor. He became a lifelong tobacco smoker in his youth, and he enjoyed strongly
flavored meals, fine wine, and spirited conversation.

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky . Despite his enthusiasm for music, his parents expected him to study law. Stravinsky
enrolled at the University of Saint Petersburg in 1901, but he attended fewer than fifty class sessions during his four
years of study.[8] In the summer of 1902 Stravinsky stayed with the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and his family in
the German city of Heidelberg, where Rimsky-Korsakov, arguably the leading Russian composer at that time, suggested
to Stravinsky that he should not enter the Saint Petersburg Conservatoire, but instead study composing by taking private
lessons, in large part because of his age. Stravinsky's father died of cancer that year, by which time his son had already
begun spending more time on his musical studies than on law. The university was closed for two months in 1905 in the
aftermath of Bloody Sunday: Stravinsky was prevented from taking his final law examinations and later received a half-
course diploma in April 1906. Thereafter, he concentrated on studying music. In 1905, he began to take twice-weekly
private lessons from Rimsky-Korsakov, whom he came to regard as a second father. These lessons continued until
Rimsky-Korsakov's death in 1908.

Arnold Schoenberg was born into a lower middle-class Jewish family in the Leopoldstadt district (in earlier times a
Jewish ghetto) of Vienna, at "Obere Donaustrae 5". His father Samuel, a native of Bratislava, was a shopkeeper, and his
mother Pauline was native of Prague. Arnold was largely self-taught. He took only counterpoint lessons with the
composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, who was to become his first brother-in-law (Beaumont 2000, 87).
In his twenties, Schoenberg earned a living by orchestrating operettas, while composing his own works, such as the
string sextet Verklrte Nacht ("Transfigured Night") (1899). He later made an orchestral version of this, which became
one of his most popular pieces. Both Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler recognized Schoenberg's significance as a
composer; Strauss when he encountered Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder, and Mahler after hearing several of Schoenberg's
early works.

Achille-Claude Debussy.Debussy's private life was often turbulent. At the age of 18 he began an eight-year affair with
Marie-Blanche Vasnier, wife of a Parisian civil servant. The relationship eventually faltered following his winning of the
Prix de Rome in 1884 and obligatory residence in Rome. On his permanent return to Paris and his parents' home on the
avenue de Berlin (now rue de Lige) he began a tempestuous relationship with Gabrielle ('Gaby') Dupont, a tailor's
daughter from Lisieux, soon cohabiting with her on the rue de Londres, and later the rue Gustave Dor. During this time
he also had an affair with the singer Thrse Roger, to whom he was briefly engaged. Such cavalier behaviour was
widely condemned, and precipitated the end of his long friendship with Ernest Chausson. He ultimately left Dupont for
her friend Rosalie ('Lilly') Texier, a fashion model whom he married in 1899, after threatening suicide if she refused him.
However, although Texier was affectionate, practical, straightforward, and well liked by Debussy's friends and
associates, he became increasingly irritated by her intellectual limitations and lack of musical sensitivity. In 1904,
Debussy was introduced to Emma Bardac, wife of Parisian banker Sigismond Bardac, by her son Raoul, one of his
students. In contrast to Texier, Bardac was a sophisticate, a brilliant conversationalist, and an accomplished singer. After
despatching Lilly to her father's home at Bichain in Villeneuve-la-Guyard on 15 July 1904, Debussy secretly took Bardac
to Jersey for a holiday. On their return to France, Debussy wrote to Texier from Dieppe on 11 August, informing her their
marriage was over, but still making no mention of Bardac. Debussy briefly moved to an apartment at 10 avenue
Alphand. On 14 October, five days before their fifth wedding anniversary, Texier attempted suicide, shooting herself in
the chest with a revolver while standing in the Place de la Concorde; she survived, although the bullet remained lodged
in her vertebrae for the rest of her life. The ensuing scandal was to alienate Debussy from many of his friends, whilst
Bardac was disowned by her family.

Joseph-Maurice Ravel. Ravels parents encouraged his musical pursuits and sent him to the Conservatoire de Paris, first
as a preparatory student and eventually as a piano major. His teachers included mile Descombes. He received a first
prize in the piano student competition in 1891. Overall, however, he was not successful academically even as his
musicianship matured dramatically. Considered very gifted, Ravel was also called somewhat heedless in his studies.
Around 1893, Ravel created his earliest compositions, and he was introduced by his father to the caf pianist Erik Satie,
whose distinctive personality and unorthodox musical experiments proved influential. Ravel was not a "bohemian" and
evidenced little of the typical trauma of adolescence. At twenty years of age, Ravel was already "self-possessed, a little
aloof, intellectually biased, given to mild banter." He dressed like a dandy and was meticulous about his appearance and
demeanor. Short in stature, light in frame, and bony in features, Ravel had the "appearance of a well-dressed jockey".
His large head seemed suitably matched to his great intellect. He was well-read and later accumulated a library of over
1,000 volumes. In his younger adulthood, Ravel was usually bearded in the fashion of the day, though later he dispensed
with all whiskers. Though reserved, Ravel was sensitive and self-critical, and had a mischievous sense of humor.[14] He
became a lifelong tobacco smoker in his youth, and he enjoyed strongly flavored meals, fine wine, and spirited
conversation.

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky. Stravinsky became an overnight sensation following the success of The Firebird's premiere
in Paris on 25 June 1910. The composer had travelled from his estate in Ustilug, Ukraine, to Paris in early June to attend
the final rehearsals and the premiere of The Firebird. His family joined him before the end of the ballet season and they
decided to remain in the West for a time, as his wife was expecting their third child. After spending the summer in La
Baule, Brittany, they moved to Switzerland in early September. On the 23rd, their second son Sviatoslav Soulima was
born at a maternity clinic in Lausanne; at the end of the month, they took up residence in Clarens. Over the next four
years, Stravinsky and his family lived in Russia during the summer months and spent each winter in Switzerland. During
this period, Stravinsky composed two further works for the Ballets Russes: Petrushka (1911), and Le Sacre du printemps
(The Rite of Spring; 1913). Shortly following the premiere of The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky contracted typhoid from
eating bad oysters, and was confined to a Paris nursing home, unable to depart for Ustilug until 11 July.

Arnold Schoenberg or Schnberg .In 1898 Schoenberg converted to Christianity in the Lutheran church. According to
MacDonald (2008, 93) this was partly to strengthen his attachment to Western European cultural traditions, and partly
as a means of self-defence "in a time of resurgent anti-Semitism". In 1933, after long meditation, he returned to
Judaism, because he realised that "his racial and religious heritage was inescapable", and to take up an unmistakable
position on the side opposing Nazism. He would self-identify as a member of the Jewish religion later in life.In October
1901, he married Mathilde Zemlinsky, the sister of the conductor and composer Alexander von Zemlinsky.

Claude Debussy was born into a poor family in France in 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.
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.

Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, France. Ravel was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at age 14,
and later studied with Gabriel Faur. His ballet Daphnis et Chlo was commissioned by Sergey Diaghilev. Other pieces
include the the orchestral works La Valse and Bolro. Ravel remains the most widely popular of all French composers.
Ravel died in Paris in 1937.
Maurice Ravel was born Joseph-Maurice Ravel on March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, France, to a Basque mother and Swiss
father. In 1889, at the age of 14, Ravel began taking courses at the Paris Conservatoire, a prestigious music and dance
school located in the captial of France, studying under Gabriel Faur.

Igor Stravinsky
Born: Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg, June 17, 1882
Died: New York, April 6, 1971
While pursuing law studies in 1902, Stravinsky met Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who advised the young man to study music.
Stravinsky began studying with the famous Russian composer in 1903, and after Rimsky's death in 1908, never had
another teacher. His early works caught the imagination of ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929), impressario
of the famed Ballets Russes, who invited Stravinsky to compose a ballet. The result was the voluptuous and
impressionistic (with Stravinskian overtones) The Firebird in 1910. This was followed by the even more successful
Petrushka in 1911. With his ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913, with its representations of prehistoric pagan Russian rituals
and sacrifice, Stravinsky's music ignited the most famous riot in the history of music. With its savage rhythms, absence of
melody, and barbaric energy, The Rite of Spring marks the true beginnings of Twentieth Century music, and even today
never fails to thrill or amaze listeners.

Arnold Schoenberg
Born: 1874
Died: 1951
Nationality: Austrian
Publisher: AMP
In 1933, shortly before his 60th birthday, Arnold Schoenberg, one of the most important composers in history, was
forced to flee his native Europe due to the increasing Nazi terror. He came to America, where he taught briefly at
Boston's Malkin Conservatory before moving to Los Angeles for reasons of health in October 1934. There he taught
privately, as well as at the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles.
The name Schoenberg is inextricably linked in most people's minds with serialism and The Second Viennese School.
However, a number of the works he wrote during his "American" period are quite different in flavor. They embrace a
return, in varying degrees, to "tonality," for they use within their serial structures triadic elements and tonal
implications. The Chamber Symphony No. 2 (1939) integrates the warm, rich harmonies of late Romanticism with
transparent textures and a rhythmically lively, almost neo-classic spirit. Additionally, several of these tonal works are
based on baroque models.

Claude Debussy. 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.
Wagners influence on Debussy was profound and lasting, but despite this, Debussy generally shied away from the
ostentation of Wagners opera in his own works.

Maurice Ravel. Ravel continued to study at the Conservatoire until his early 20s, during which time he composed some
of his most renowned works, including the Pavane pour une infante dfunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess; 1899); the
Jeux d'eau (1901), also known as "Fountains" or "Playing Water," a piece that Ravel dedicated to Faur; the String
Quartet (1903), which is played in F major and follows four movements; the Sonatine (circa 1904), for the solo piano; the
Miroirs (1905); and the Gaspard de la nuit (1908).
Ravel's later works include the Le Tombeau de Couperin, a suite composed circa 1917 for the solo piano, and the
orchestral pieces Rapsodie espagnole and Bolro. Possibly the most famous of his works, Ravel was commissioned by
Sergey Diaghilev to create the ballet Daphnis et Chlo, which he completed in 1912. Eight years later, in 1920, he
completed La Valse, a piece with varying credits as a ballet and concert work.

Igor Stravinsky. In 1920, Stravinsky settled in Paris, and entered a period of neo-classicism, in which he composed music
modeled on the styles and forms, if not the melodies and harmonies, of Mozart and Haydn. Some of the works
composed in this style are the Octet for Winds, the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex, the ballets Pulchinella and Apollon
Musagte, the Symphony of Psalms, and Stravinsky's only full-scale opera, The Rake's Progress . When World War II
broke out, Stravinsky fled Europe and came to the United States, where he settled in Hollywood, California. He
eventually became an American citizen in 1940. In the 1950s, Stravinsky shocked the musical world by turning to
serialism and produced the twelve-tone ballet Agon and the choral work Canticum Sacrum, among others. By this time,
Stravinsky had lived long enough to see himself internationally honored as the western world's greatest living composer,
and spent his last years conducting, recording his works, and granting interviews. His musical influence on composers of
this century has been limitless.
Arnold Schoenberg ."A longing to return to the older style [of music] was always vigorous in me; and from time to time I
had to yield to that urge," Schoenberg wrote in his 1948 essay One Always Returns. These fascinating pieces include
Suite for String Orchestra (1934), written in the form of a baroque suite, and the brilliant "recompositions" Concerto for
Cello (1933) (based on the harpsichord concerto by Georg Matthias Monn, 1746), and Concerto for String Quartet and
Orchestra (1933) (after Handel's Concerto Grosso Op. 6 No. 7). They are "complex, free-wheeling elaborations of 18th-
century source materials," Joseph Horowitz has written, "tonal yet reflecting...Schoenberg's 12-tone craftsmanship."
Schoenberg's use of tonal materials in these works does not imply, however, that he had repudiated serialism or his
revolutionary theoretical ideas; in them he merely transformed the triad's harmonic function and significance.

Claude Debussy .
Debussy's seminal opera, Pellas et Mlisande, 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 Pellas, paired with the success of Prlude 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 Ibria (1908),
both for orchestra, and Images (1905) and Children's Corner Suite (1908), both for solo piano.Around this same time, in
1905, Debussy's Suite bergamasque was published. The suite is comprised of four parts"Prlude," "Menuet," "Clair de
lune" (now regarded as one of the composer's best-known pieces) and "Passepied."

Joseph-Maurice Ravel
(March 7, 1875 - December 28, 1937). was born in France near the Spanish border, to Swiss and Basque parents. His
father's engineering work soon brought the family to Paris, and the young man entered the Paris Conservatory at age
14. He enrolled as a pianist but switched to composition under Gabriel Faur and Andr Gedalge. Ravel was less radical a
composer than Claude Debussy but rebellious in his own way. Where Debussy could write pieces to please the
Conservatory masters and win a Prix de Rome, Ravel refused to be bound by the school's composition rules. His failure
to win prizes did not endear him to his masters, even though he wrote successful pieces early on, including his Violin
Sonata (1897) and Shhrazade (1898). Given those successes, his failure to win the Prix de Rome in 1905 led to a public
scandal and a change in the Conservatory directorship.

Igor Stravinsky.
Russian/international composer who began two of the major strains of contemporary music. He studied with Nicolai
Rimsky-Korsakov, and his early works, like the Symphony No. 1 in E Flat, show the influence of that master. Almost
immediately, however, he began to incline toward the music of the French impressionists Claude Debussy and Maurice
Ravel, while retaining his nationalist outlook. This resulted in such pieces as Fireworks, The Faun and the Shepherdess,
and the major ballet Firebird. It was not a simple matter of combining, however. A new musical element entered the mix
clean orchestral textures, "bright" instrumentation, and an emphasis on stamping, irregular rhythms heard especially
in the Firebird's "Infernal Dance of the King Katschei."

Arnold Schoenberg
(September 13, 1874 - July 13, 1951) was one of the founders of musical Modernism, an incredibly influential figure from
the early twentieth century to at least twenty-five years after his death with Stravinsky, one of the two most influential
composers of his time. Even those fundamentally antithetical to atonality were moved to see musical aesthetics very
much as he did. As a composer, Schoenberg largely taught himself, sometimes relying on the advice of his friend, the
composer Alexander von Zemlinksy. Zemlinsky's sister Mathilde became Schoenberg's first wife. The marriage came
close to foundering when Mathilde left Schoenberg for an artist. She returned, but the marriage never recovered.
Nevertheless, when she died in 1923, Schoenberg was devastated. Still, he remarried quickly, this time choosing the
sister of the violinist Rudolf Kolisch, Gertrud. It was a love match.

Soon after that debacle, Ravel entered a period of great productivity, producing works like L'Heure Espagole and
Rapsodie Espagole (1907), Valse Nobles et Sentimentales (1911), major piano pieces, and Daphnis et Chlo for Sergei
Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1912. Around this time, he met Igor Stravinsky and joined a group of radical composers
known as Les Apaches. In 1906, he started but did not finish Wien, an orchestral homage to Johann Strauss.
Wien would turn into La Valse fourteen years later. In the interim, World War I brought his composing to a near halt.
Ravel tried to enlist but was turned down for physical reasons and ended up a military transport driver. In 1916 he
started to feel the urgings to compose when dysentery sent him to Paris to recover. Soon after, his mother died. Ravel's
mother was the closest human contact Ravel had he never married and with her loss came devastation and more
musical inactivity. He wrote little during this period: most notably, Trois Poemes de Mallarm (1913), Trois Chansons
(1915), and Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917).

Claude Debussy, in full Achille-Claude Debussy (born August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Francedied March 25,
1918, Paris), French composer whose works were a seminal force in the music of the 20th century. He developed a
highly original system of harmony and musical structure that expressed in many respects the ideals to which the
Impressionist and Symbolist painters and writers of his time aspired. His major works include Clair de lune (Moonlight,
in Suite bergamasque, 18901905), Prlude laprs-midi dun faune (1894; Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), the
opera Pellas et Mlisande (1902), and La Mer (1905; The Sea).

Igor Stravinsky
Firebird's success led to two more ballets for Diaghilev's Ballets russes: Ptrouchka and Le Sacre du Printemps, both
landmarks of twentieth-century music. The Russian element becomes less Romantic and more "objectified." By Le Sacre,
the "infernal" element of Firebird had erupted into a previously-unheard, epic "barbarism," so much so that some of the
audience rioted at the Paris premiere. The score became an icon of musical modernism and influenced many other
modern giants, including Sergei Prokofieff (Symphony Nos. 2 and 3, Scythian Suite, and They Are Seven), Bla Bartk
(Allegro barbaro, The Miraculous Mandarin, the piano sonata, and Cantata profana), Darius Milhaud (Les Choephores),
Arthur Honegger (Mouvements symphoniques), and the young Aaron Copland (Grohg). Stravinsky felt uncomfortable
with the direction and almost immediately turned again, searching for a sparer music. Works in this transitional period
include Symphonies for Wind Instruments and part of the opera Le Rossignol.

Arnold Schoenberg
From the early twentieth century, Schoenberg was considered a leading light of the younger generation, attracting the
attention of no less than Gustav Mahler. He kept up a steady stream of composition, extending the language of the day
as well as striking out in new directions. However, in 1912, he underwent an artistic crisis and for close to a decade
completed no major new piece. For most of these years, he made very little money, mainly from private teaching,
although he had achieved international fame. During World War I, he was rejected from military service for health
reasons. However, his students were called up, and he had to stop teaching for a time.
The Twenties saw a change in his fortunes. He began to compose again, this time in a new compositional language he
had worked out, which he called "the method of composing with twelve tones" what today is known as dodecaphonic
serialism. He founded the Union for Private Performance, a subscription organization dedicated to new music and
intended only for interested parties, rather than for the general public. Orchestral works were given in chamber
arrangements, and the composers played included Claude Debussy, Mahler, and even Charles Ives. He received
conducting engagements in major European music centers, as well as several honors in Germany and in Austria. He was
put in charge of the composition master class at the Berlin Academy of Art and elected (supported by Kurt Weill) to the
Prussian Academy.

Ravel was private, meticulous and precise as a person. Like Debussy, he was considered feline in manner, though he was more
birdlike in appearance. Few caught him composing, though many saw him orchestrate, and his study rarely showed signs of a work
in progress. As contemporaries, Ravel and Debussy influenced and respected each other, but their relationship suffered at the hands
of critics eager to denigrate Ravel in favor of Debussy. From around 1900 until his death, Debussy was considered France's greatest
living composer. Ravel assumed the mantle only after Debussy's death. Today, Debussy and Ravel are often thought of together, but
they were very different composers. Ravel employed Impressionist techniques in works like Daphnis et Chlo, Ma Mre l'Oye, and La
Valse, but he was really an objectivist and a Classicist. Unlike Debussy, he wrote cleanly shaped melodies, etched textures, distinct
rhythms, and firm structures. He used conventional tonality and rarely if ever the whole tone scale. A fabulous orchestrator, Ravel
employed the full battery of instruments, but placed every note, chord, and instrument like a jeweler working with clear pristine
colors. (His orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is one of his most famous "works.") Effects sound with polish and
glitter; nothing is wasted. His search for novel colors often led to setting instruments in odd ranges or roles. ~ Roger Hecht

Igor Stravinsky
The end of World War I moved Stravinsky's music even further in this direction with L'Histoire du Soldat, Tango, and Ragtime. In all
these scores, he introduces a pared-down aesthetic and what at first seems like an element of parody but which turns out to be an
element of "objectification," like a Cubist collage with everyday objects. At the same time, he becomes interested in classical
procedures and updates them for an expanded harmonic language. Masterpieces include the octet, the "ballet with song" Pulcinella,
and Oedipus Rex, which takes off from the Handelian oratorio. The new style, termed neoclassicism, again captures the allegiance of
most composers. Stravinsky, as Leonard Bernstein remarked, had called the tune again. Between the two wars, he was probably the
most influential modern composer, especially in the United States and France. His masterpieces include the Concerto for two solo
pianofortes, the piano and the violin concerti, the ballets Apollo and Jeu de Cartes, Concerto in D for strings, Danses Concertantes,
Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, Symphony of Psalms, Symphony in Three Movements, Symphony in C, Ebony Concerto, Mass, climaxing
in the full-length opera The Rake's Progress (libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman), a twentieth-century classic.
After The Rake's Progress, Stravinsky felt he had reached a creative impasse with the neoclassic style. He turned to serialism and
became strongly influenced by the manner of Anton Webern, although he never lost his personal musical imprint. Major works
include Movements for piano and orchestra, The Dove Descending Breaks the Air for chorus, Cantata, In Memoriam Dylan Thomas,
Three Shakespeare Songs, Threni, Introit, and Requiem Canticles. Stravinsky wrote music with the craft of a fine jeweler. Almost
everything he wrote is of very high quality, and much of it has entered the standard repertory. ~ Steve Schwartz

Achille-Claude Debussy (22nd August 1862 25th March 1918) was a French composer. He was one of the most important figures in
music at the turn of the 20th century; his music represents the transition from late-romantic to 20th century classical. Debussys
most dramatic contribution to music history was his disregard for traditional chord structures and tonality. He is one of the most
important exponents of the whole tone scale in classical music history. His compositions flowed without a strict sense of metre or
rhythm, and are considered the pioneering works of the impressionist genre of classical music, named in comparison with the visual
arts movement. Debussys impact was far reaching. His free use of harmony, which often altogether disregarded the concepts of
tertian harmony, has been cited as an influence on the rise of jazz music later in the 20th century.

Arnold Schoenberg (Composer, Arranger)
Born: Septtember 13, 1874 - Vienna, Austria
Died: July 13, 1951 - Los Angeles, Caligornia, USA
Arnold (Franz WaIter) Schoenberg (originally: Schnberg), was a great Austrian-born American composer whose new method of
musical organization in 12 different tones related only to one another profoundly influenced the entire development of modern
techniques of composition.Arnold Schoemberg studied at the Realschule in Vienna; learned to play the cello, and also became
proficient on the violin. His father died when Schoenberg was 16; he took a job as a bank clerk to earn a living; an additional source
of income was arranging popular songs and orchestrating operetta scores. Schoenberg's first original work was a group of 3 piano
pieces, which he wrote in 1894; it was also about that time that he began to take lessons in counterpoint from Alexander Zernlinsky,
whose sister he married in 1901. He also played cello in Zernlinsky's instrumental group, Polyhymnia.

Claude Debussy has exercised widespread influence over later generations of composers, both in his native France and
elsewhere. He was trained at the Paris Conservatoire, and decided there on a career as a composer rather than as a
pianist (his original intention). His highly characteristic musical language, thoroughly French in inspiration, extended the
contemporary limits of harmony and form, and he had a remarkably delicate command of nuance, whether in piano
writing or in the handling of a relatively large orchestra.
Operas
Debussy attempted many operas, two based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe, but he completed only one: Pellas et
Mlisande, a version of the medieval play by Maurice Maeterlinck, with its story of idealised love perfectly matched by
the composers musical idiom.

Joseph-Maurice Ravel (7th March 187528th December 1937) was a French composer and pianist.
His piano music, chamber music, and orchestral works have become staples in the repertoire. Ravels piano
compositions, such as Miroirs and Gaspard de la nuit are virtuosic, and his orchestrations, such as Daphnis et Chlo and
his orchestral arrangement of s Pictures at an Exhibition, are notable for the effective
use of tonal color and variety of sound and instrumentation. To the general public he is probably best known for his
orchestral work, Bolro, which he considered a trivial work and once described as a piece for orchestra without music.
According to SACEM, Ravels estate earns more royalties than that of any other French musician. According to
international copyright law, Ravels works are public domain since January 1, 2008 in most countries. In France, due to
anomalous copyright law extensions to account for the two world wars, they will not enter the public domain until 2015.

Arnold Schoenberg. In 1897 Arnold Schoemberg wrote his 1st String Quartet, in D major, which achieved public
performance in Vienna on March 17, 1898. About the same time, he wrote 2 songs with piano accompaniment which he
designated as Op. 1. In 1899 he wrote his first true masterpiece, Verklrte Nacht, set for string sextet, which was first
performed in Vienna by the Rose Quartet and members of the Wiener Philharmoniker on March 18, 1902. It is a fine
work, deeply imbued with the spirit of Romantic poetry, with its harmonic idiom stemming from Wagner's modulatory
procedures; it remains Schoenberg's most frequently performed composition, known principally through its
arrangement for string orch. About 1900 he was engaged as conductor of several amateur choral groups in Vienna and
its suburbs; this increased his interest in vocal music. He then began work on a choral composition, Gurre-Lieder, of
monumental proportions, to the translated text of a poem by the Danish writer Jens !tter Jacobsen. For grandeur and
opulence of orchestral sonority, it surpassed even the most formidable creations of Gustav Mahler or Richard Strauss; it
calls for 5 solo voices, a speaker, 3 men's choruses, an 8-part mixed chorus, and a very large orch. Special music paper of
48 staves had to be ordered for the MS. He completed the first 2 parts of Gurre-Lieder in the spring of 1901, but the
composition of the remaining section was delayed by 10 years; it was not until February 23, 1913, that Franz Schreker
was able to arrange its complete performance with the Wiener Philharmoniker and its choral forces.

Igor Stravinsky is widely regarded as the most original and influential composer of the 20th century * Studied with
Rimsky Korsakov in St Petersburg 1905-08 * Early works heard by Diaghilev who commissioned The Firebird for Ballets
russes * Further collaborations Petrushka and The Rite of Spring saw composer move from nationalism towards vibrant
modernism * Wartime period brought radical experimental phase * Economic conditions prompted smaller-scale
theatrical ventures such as The Soldier's Tale with Ramuz * Pulcinella launched neo-classical phase which dominated
1920s-40s * Major works from this period included Oedipus Rex, Symphony of Psalms, and The Rake's Progress * At
outbreak of Second World War moved to USA, settling in California * Ballet Agon was watershed for late serial works,
including Requiem Canticles * Hallmarks of his style, in whatever period, are Russian folk inflections, rhythmic energy
and orchestral virtuosity * Ballet scores are among the most significant of the past century * Complete recorded legacy
on Sony Classical.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY
Orchestral Music
The most influential piece of orchestral music by Debussy is the Prlude laprs-midi dun faune (Prelude to the
Afternoon of a Faun), based on a poem by Mallarm. This was later used for a ballet, with choreography by Nijinsky,
who created a considerable scandal at the first performance. The music evokes a pagan world, as the satyr of the title
takes his ease in the afternoon shade on a summer day.
The three symphonic sketches that constitute La Mer (The Sea), published with a famous woodcut known as The Wave
(from the Japanese artist Hokusais views of Mount Fujian indication of oriental influence on Debussy), offer
evocations of the sea from dawn to midday, of the waves, and of the dialogue of wind and sea. Other orchestral works
by Debussy include Nocturnes, made up of three sections: Nuages (Clouds), Ftes (Festivals) and Sirnes. Images, a
work in three movements completed in 1912, includes Gigues, Ibria and Ronde de printemps, the last a celebration of
spring. His Le Martyre de Saint Sbastien, finally scored by Andr Caplet, was in origin a theatrical and choreographic
collaboration with Gabriele dAnnunzio.

Born: Mar 7, 1875; France Died: Dec 28, 1937; France Period: Romantic
Maurice Ravel was among the most significant and influential composers of the early twentieth century. Although he is
frequently linked with Claude Debussy as an exemplar of musical impressionism, and some of their works have a surface
resemblance, Ravel possessed an independent voice that grew out of his love of a broad variety of styles, including the
French Baroque, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Spanish folk traditions, and American jazz and blues. His elegant and lyrically
generous body of work was not large in comparison with that of some of his contemporaries, but his compositions are
notable for being meticulously and exquisitely crafted. He was especially gifted as an orchestrator, an area in which he
remains unsurpassed.

In 1901 Arnold Schoemberg moved to Berlin, where he joined E. von Wolzogen, F. Wedekind, and O. Bierbaum in
launching an artistic cabaret, which they called berbrettl. He composed a theme song for it with trumpet obbligato,
and conducted several shows. He met Richard Strauss, who helped him to obtain the Liszt Stipendium and a position as
a teacher at the Stern Conservatory. He returned to Vienna in 1903 and formed friendly relations with G. Mahler, who
became a sincere supporter of his activities; G. Mahler's power in Vienna was then at its height, and he was able to help
him in his career as a composer. In March 1904 Schoenberg organized with Alexander Zernlinsky the Vereinigung
Schaffender Tonknstler for the purpose of encouraging performances of new music. Under its auspices he conducted
on Jan. 26, 1905, the first performance of his symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande; in this score occurs the first use of
a trombone glissando. There followed a performance on February 8, 1907, of Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie, Op. 9,
with the participation of the Rose Quartet and the wind instrumentalists of the Wiener Philharmoniker; the work
produced much consternation in the audience and among critics because of its departure from traditional tonal
harmony, with chords built on fourths and nominal dissonances used without immediate resolution. About the same
time, he turned to painting, which became his principal avocation. In his art, as in his music, he adopted the tenets of
Expressionism, that is, freedom of personal expression within a self-defined program. Schoenberg's reputation as an
independent musical thinker attracted to him such progressive-minded young musicians as Alban Berg, Anton Webern,
and Egon Wellesz, who followed Schoenberg in their own development. His 2nd String Quartet, composed in 1908,
which included a soprano solo, was his last work that carried a definite key signature, if exception is made for his Suite
for Strings, ostentatiously marked as in G major, which he wrote for school use in America in 1934.

Igor Stravinsky, in full Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (born June 5 [June 17, New Style], 1882, Oranienbaum [now
Lomonosov], near St. Petersburg, Russiadied April 6, 1971, New York, N.Y., U.S.), Russian-born composer whose work
had a revolutionary impact on musical thought and sensibility just before and after World War I, and whose
compositions remained a touchstone of modernism for much of his long working life. (Three Pieces for ClarinetClick
here for an audio excerpt from Stravinskys Three Pieces for Clarinet.)... (76 of 2,883 words)

CLAUDE DEBUSSY
Piano Music
In his writing for the piano Debussy proved himself a successor to Chopin, who had died in Paris 13 years before
Debussys birth. His own debt to Chopin was overtly expressed in his two books of tudes (Studies), completed in 1915.
The Deux Arabesques, early works, enjoy continued popularity, as does the Suite bergamasque, with its all too popular
Clair de lune. Estampes (Prints) evokes the Far East in Pagodes, Spain in La Soire dans Grenade (Evening in
Granada), and autumnal sadness in Jardins sous la pluie (Gardens in the Rain), while LIsle joyeuse turns to Watteau
for inspiration. Two sets of Images offer further delicate pictures, while the two books of Prludes offer still more varied
images, from La Fille aux cheveux de lin (The Girl with Flaxen Hair) and La Cathdrale engloutie (The Submerged
Cathedral) to the final Feux dartifice (Fireworks). The single La Plus que lente (More than Slow) of 1910 and the light-
hearted Childrens Corner Suite form a further part of a larger series of works.

Maurice Ravel.Ravel continued to express admiration for Debussy's music throughout his life, but as his own reputation
grew stronger during the first decade of the century, a mutual professional jealousy cooled their personal relationship.
Around the same time, he developed a friendship with Igor Stravinsky. The two became familiar with each other's work
during Stravinsky's time in Paris and worked collaboratively on arrangements for Sergey Diaghilev.
Between 1909 and 1912, Ravel composed Daphnis et Chlo for Diaghilev and Les Ballets Russes. It was the composer's
largest and most ambitious work and is widely considered his masterpiece. He wrote a second ballet for Diaghilev, La
Valse, which the impresario rejected, but which went on to become one of his most popular orchestral works. Following
his service in the First World War as an ambulance driver, and the death of his mother in 1917, his output was
temporarily diminished. In 1925, the Monte Carlo Opera presented the premiere of another large work, the "lyric
fantasy" L'enfant et les sortilges, a collaboration with writer Colette.

Igor Stravinsky was born in St. Petersburg, which was the capital of Russia at the time. His father was a famous opera
singer, so as a kid, Igor got to hang out at the opera house, where he met all the famous musicians of the day. At one
performance, he even caught sight of Tchaikovsky.
Igor began taking piano lessons at age 9. When he grew up, he started studying law. One of his fellow law students was
the son of composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who agreed to give Stravinsky composition lessons. Law fell by the
wayside completely after Stravinsky had a big success with The Firebird, which he composed for Serge Diaghilev, head of
the Russian Ballet.

Arnold Schoenberg.In 1924 Schoenberg's creative evolution reached the allimportant point at which he found it
necessary to establish a new governing principle of tonal relationship, which he called the "method of composing with
12 different notes related entirely to one another." This method was adumbrated in his music as early as 1914, and is
used partially in his 5 Klavierstcke, Op. 23, and in his Serenade, Op. 24; it was employed for the first time in its integral
form in the piano Suite, Op. 25 (1924); in it, the thematic material is based on a group of 12 different notes arrayed in a
certain pre-arranged order; such a tone row was henceforth Schoenberg's mainspring of thematic invention;
development was provided by the devices of inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion of the basic series; allowing
for transposition, 48 forms were obtainable in all, with counterpoint and harmony, as well as melody, derived from the
basic tone row. Immediate repetition of thematic notes was admitted; the realm of rhythm remained free. As with most
historic innovations, the 12-tone technique was not the creation of Schoenberg alone but was, rather, a logical
development of many currents of musical thought. Josef Matthias Hauer rather unconvincingly claimed priority in laying
the foundations of the 12-tone method; among others who had elaborated similar ideas at about the same time with
Schoenberg was Jef Golyscheff, a Russian migr who expounded his theory in a publication entitled "12 Tondauer-
Musik." Instances of themes consisting of 12 different notes are found in the Faust Symphony of Franz Liszt and in the
tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra of Richard Strauss in the section on Science. Schoenberg's great achievement was
the establishment of the basic 12-tone row and its changing forms as foundations of a new musical language; using this
idiom, he was able to write music of great expressive power. In general usage, the 12-tone method is often termed
"dodecaphony," from Greek dodeca, "12," and phone, "sound." The tonal composition of the basic row is devoid of
tonality; an analysis of Schoenberg's works shows that he avoided using major triads in iany of their inversions, and
allowed the use of only the 2nd inversion of a minor triad. He deprecated the term "atonality" that was commonly
applied to his music.

Claude Debussy was born in St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, France. His father was a salesman and kept a
china shop. His mother was a seamstress. Some traumatizing events in his childhood caused him a depression
and he never spoke about his early years. Later he could not compose without having his favorite porcelain
frog.
Debussy's piano teacher, Mme. Maute, had been a student of Frdric Chopin. She sent Debussy to the Paris
Conservatory, where he studied from 1872-84 with Csar Franck, Ernest Guiraud and others. He lived at the
castle of Nadezhda von Meck and taught her children. She was a wealthy patroness of Pyotr Ilyich
Tchaikovsky, and eventually Debussy played all pieces by Tchaikovsky in addition to other classical repertoire.
She also took Debussy on trips to Venice, Vienna and Moscow. In Vienna he heard "Tristan und Isolde" by
Richard Wagner and later admitted that it had influenced him for a number of years.

Maurice Ravel.Ironically, Ravel, who in his youth was rejected by some elements of the French musical
establishment for being a modernist, in his later years was scorned by Satie and the members of Les Six as
being old-fashioned, a symbol of the establishment. In 1932, an injury he sustained in an automobile accident
started a physical decline that resulted in memory loss and an inability to communicate. He died in 1937,
following brain surgery.
In spite of leaving one of the richest and most important bodies of work of any early twentieth century
composer, one that included virtually every genre except for symphony and liturgical music, Ravel is most
often remembered for an arrangement of another composer's work, and for a piece he considered among his
least significant. His orchestral arrangement of Mussorgsky's piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition has been
wildly popular with concertgoers (and the royalties from it made Ravel a rich man). Bolro, a 15-minute
Spanish dance in which a single theme is repeated in a variety of instrumental guises, has been ridiculed for its
insistent repetitiveness, but it is also a popular favorite and one of the most familiar and frequently performed
orchestral works of the twentieth century.

Igor Stravinsky went on to write more ballets for Diaghilev. One of those was The Rite of Spring, about a
pagan ritual in ancient Russia. The opening night audience found the music and choreography so shocking that
there was actually a riot in the theater!
Stravinsky moved around a lot. In Europe, he lived in France and Switzerland; during World War II, he came to
the United States, where he lived in both California and New York. Stravinskys music moved around, too -- he
never really picked one style. He wrote Russian-sounding music, music that looked back to previous centuries,
modern music, opera, and religious music -- including a symphony with psalms in it.

Arnold Schoenberg
Meanwhile, Schoenberg made appearances as conductor of his works in various European cities (Amsterdam,
1911; St. Petersburg, 1912; London, 1914). During World War I, he was sporadically enlisted in military service;
after the Armistice, he settled in Mdling, near Vienna. Discouraged by his inability to secure performances for
himself and his associates in the new music movement, he organized in Vienna, in November 1918, the Verein
fr Musikalische Privatauffhrungen (Society for Private Musical Performances), from which critics were
demonstratively excluded, and which ruled out any vocal expression of approval or disapproval. The
organization disbanded in 1922.

Claude Debussy
Debussy won the Prix de Rome twice--in 1883 and 1884--and the money covered his studies at the Villa de
Medici in Rome for the next four years. In Rome he met Franz Liszt and Giuseppe Verdi and heard more of
Wagner's music, which made a strong impression on him. In 1888 and 1889 he went to listen to yet more of
Wagner's music at the Bayreuth Festspiehaus. There he was very impressed by "Parsifal" and other of
Wagner's works. He used the Wagnerian chromaticism for upgrades to his own tonal harmony in "Cinq poems
de Baudelaire" (1889).Debussy became influenced by the impressionist poets and artists in the circle of
Stephane Mallarme. In 1890 he wrote his most famous music collection for piano, "Suite bergamasque",
containing "Clair de Lune". His "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" (1892) continued the most productive 20-
year period in his life. He composed orchestral "Nocturnes", "La Mer", "Images" (1899-1909), and the intricate
ballet "Jeux" (1912) for "Ballets Russes" of Sergei Diaghilev. He was fascinated with Maurice Maeterlinck's play
"Pelleas et Melisande", which inspired him to compose the eponymous symbolist opera which was praised by
Paul Dukas and Maurice Ravel.

Maurice Ravel was among the most significant and influential composers of the early twentieth century.
Although he is frequently linked with Claude Debussy as an exemplar of musical impressionism, and some of
their works have a surface resemblance, Ravel possessed an independent voice that grew out of his love of a
broad variety of styles, including the French Baroque, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Spanish folk traditions, and
American jazz and blues. His elegant and lyrically generous body of work was not large in comparison with that
of some of his contemporaries, but his compositions are notable for being meticulously and exquisitely
crafted. He was especially gifted as an orchestrator, an area in which he remains unsurpassed.

Igor Stravinsky was born in St. Petersburg, which was the capital of Russia at the time. His father was a
famous opera singer, so as a kid, Igor got to hang out at the opera house, where he met all the famous
musicians of the day. At one performance, he even caught sight of Tchaikovsky. Igor began taking piano
lessons at age 9. When he grew up, he started studying law. One of his fellow law students was the son of
composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who agreed to give Stravinsky composition lessons. Law fell by the
wayside completely after Stravinsky had a big success with The Firebird, which he composed for Serge
Diaghilev, head of the Russian Ballet.

Arnold Schoenberg's personality, which combined elements of decisive affIrmation and profound self-
negation, still awaits a thorough analysis. When he was drafted into the Austrian armed forces during World
War I (he never served in action, however) and was asked by the examiner whether he was the "notorious"
modernist composer, he answered "someone had to be, and I was the one." He could not understand why his
works were not widely performed. He asked a former secretary to Serge Koussevitzky why the Boston
Symphony Orchestra programs never included any of his advanced works; when the secretary said that Serge
Koussevitzky simply could not understand them, Schoenberg was genuinely perplexed. "Aber, er spiedoch
Brahms!" he said. To Schoenberg, his works were the natural continuation of German classical music.
Schoenberg lived in Los Angeles for several years during the period when I. Stravinsky was also there, but the
two never made artistic contact. Indeed, they met only once, in a downtown food market, where they greeted
each other, in English, with a formal handshake. Schoenberg wrote a satirical canon, Herr Modernsky,
obviously aimed at I. Stravinsky, whose neo-Classical works ("ganz wie Papa Bach") Schoenberg lampooned.
But when Schoenberg was dead, I. Stravinsky said he forgave him in appreciation of his expertise in canonic
writing.

Claude Debussy
In 1908 Debussy married singer Emma Bardac after they had a daughter, Claude-Emma. Debussy called her
Chou-Chou and composed for her the collection of piano pieces "Children's Corner Suite" (1909). His piano
masterpiece "Preludes" were composed in 1910-1913. The twelve preludes of the first book are alluding to
Frdric Chopin, with more provocative harmonies, especially the "La Cathedrale Engloutie". In the second
book of twelve preludes Debussy explored avant-garde, with deliciously dissonant harmonies and mysterious
images. The beginning of WW I and the onset of cancer depressed Debussy. He left unfinished opera, ballets
and two pieces after stories by Edgar Allan Poe that later were completed by his assistants. He died on March
25, 1918, in Paris.


Igor Stravinsky
Studies
At nine years old, Igor started taking piano and harmony lessons. At 18, he met Vladimir, the son of the
famous Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Vladimir and Stravinsky became friends. Through his
friend, Igor met Rimsky-Korsakov and studied orchestration and musical form with him. Rimsky-Korsakov held
weekly gatherings at his house where his students played their compositions. Stravinsky learned a lot from his
teacher and these gatherings. When Igor was 26, Rimsky-Korsakov died. Stravinsky never studied with anyone
after that. He said that Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Wagner and Tchaikovsky had influenced his work.
Stravinsky loved going to the theatre and the opera as well as reading the many books in his father's library.
Igor's father helped him learn to love music and also made sure he studied law.When Igor was 23 years old, he
received his law degree from the University of St. Petersburg.

Arnold Schoenberg
In his private life, Schoenberg had many interests; he was a fairly good tennis player, .and also liked to play
chess. In his early years in Vienna, he launched several theoretical inventions to augment his income, but none
of them ever went into practice; he also designed a set of playing cards. The MSS of arrangements of Viennese
operettas and waltzes he had made in Vienna to augment his meager income were eventually sold for large
sums of money after his death. That Schoenberg needed money but was not offered any by an official musical
benefactor was a shame. After Schoenberg relocated to Los Angeles, which was .to be his final destination, he
obtained successful appointments as a professor at the University of Southern California and eventually at the
University of California, Los Angeles. But there awaited him the peculiar rule of age limitation for teachers, and
he was mandatorily retired when he reached his seventieth year. His pension from the University of California,
Los Angeles, amounted to $38 a month. His difficulty in supporting a family with growing children became
acute and eventually reached the press. He applied for a grant from the munificent Guggenheim Foundation,
pointing out that since several of his own students had received such awards, he was now applying for similar
consideration, but the rule of age limitation defeated him there as well. It was only after the Schoenberg case
and its repercussions in the music world that the Guggenheim Foundation cancelled its offensive rule.
Schoenberg managed to square his finances with the aid of his publishing income, however, and, in the
meantime, his children grew up. His son Ronald (an anagram of Arnold) eventually became a city judge, an
extraordinary development for a Schoenberg.

Claude Debussy
In 1908 Debussy married singer Emma Bardac after they had a daughter, Claude-Emma. Debussy called her
Chou-Chou and composed for her the collection of piano pieces "Children's Corner Suite" (1909). His piano
masterpiece "Preludes" were composed in 1910-1913. The twelve preludes of the first book are alluding to
Frdric Chopin, with more provocative harmonies, especially the "La Cathedrale Engloutie". In the second
book of twelve preludes Debussy explored avant-garde, with deliciously dissonant harmonies and mysterious
images. The beginning of WW I and the onset of cancer depressed Debussy. He left unfinished opera, ballets
and two pieces after stories by Edgar Allan Poe that later were completed by his assistants. He died on March
25, 1918, in Paris.


Igor Stravinsky gave his last concert in Toronto in 1967.
He conducted Pulcinella. It was the only time in his conducting career that he had to remain seated. Stravinsky
was 87 years old.
Although he no longer composed music, he loved listening to recordings.Stravinsky was hospitalized in 1970,
but recovered long enough to make one more visit to Europe.
Igor Stravinsky died on April 6, 1971. There was a private funeral service on April 9th. Three days later, his
body was flown to Venice, Italy, for a public funeral. The funeral Mass included his own Requiem Canticles.
The coffin was taken by gondola to the island of San Michele. Igor Stravinsky was buried there near his old
friend Serge Diaghilev.

Arnold Schoenberg (Composer, Arranger)
Born: Septtember 13, 1874 - Vienna, Austria
Died: July 13, 1951 - Los Angeles, Caligornia, USA
Arnold (Franz WaIter) Schoenberg (originally: Schnberg), was a great Austrian-born American composer
whose new method of musical organization in 12 different tones related only to one another profoundly
influenced the entire development of modern techniques of composition.
Arnold Schoemberg studied at the Realschule in Vienna; learned to play the cello, and also became proficient
on the violin. His father died when Schoenberg was 16; he took a job as a bank clerk to earn a living; an
additional source of income was arranging popular songs and orchestrating operetta scores. Schoenberg's first
original work was a group of 3 piano pieces, which he wrote in 1894; it was also about that time that he began
to take lessons in counterpoint from Alexander Zernlinsky, whose sister he married in 1901. He also played
cello in Zernlinsky's instrumental group, Polyhymnia.

Claude Debussy
Born: St.Germain-en-Laye, August 22, 1862
Died: Paris, March 25, 1918
Beginning piano lessons at a very young age, Debussy's progress was so remarkable that he was able to enter the Paris Conservatory
at the age of eleven. He remained at the Conservatory for over ten years, alternately claiming prizes and perplexing his teachers with
his harmonic ideas. He won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1884, and by 1887 had begun attending the meetings of the Symbolist poets
in Montmarte. The credo of the Symbolists was that art should appeal to the senses before the intellect. Debussy also fell under the
influence of the French Impressionist painters of the day, in their concentration on color for its own sake and the play of light on
sufaces. Both of these schools would become crucial to Debussy's developing musical style.

Maurice Ravel, in full Joseph-Maurice Ravel (born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, Francedied December 28, 1937, Paris), French
composer of Swiss-Basque descent, noted for his musical craftsmanship and perfection of form and style in such works as Bolro
(1928), Pavane pour une infante dfunte (1899; Pavane for a Dead Princess), Rapsodie espagnole (1907), the ballet Daphnis et Chlo
(first performed 1912), and the opera LEnfant et les sortilges (1925; The Child and the Enchantments). Ravel was born in a village
near Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France, of a Swiss father and a Basque mother. His family background was an artistic and cultivated one, and
the young Maurice received every encouragement from his father when his talent for music became apparent at an early age. In
1889, at 14, he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he remained until 1905. During this period he composed some of his best
known works, including the Pavane for a Dead Princess, the Sonatine for piano, and the String Quartet. All these works, especially
the two latter, show the astonishing early perfection of style and craftsmanship that are the hallmarks of Ravels entire oeuvre. He is
one of the rare composers whose early works seem .

Igor (Feodorovich) Stravinsky was a great Russian-born French, later American composer, one of the supreme masters of 20th
century music, whose works exercised the most profound influence on the evolution of music through the emancipation of rhythm,
melody, and harmony. Igor Stravinsky was the son of Feodor (Ignatievich) and father of (Sviatoslav) Soulima Stravinsky. He was
brought up in an artistic atmosphere; he often went to opera rehearsals when his father sang, and acquired an early love for the
musical theater. He took piano lessons with Alexandra Snetkova, and later with Leokadia Kashperova, who was a pupil of Anton
Rubinstein; but it was not until much later that he began to study theory, first with Akimenko and then with Kalafati (1900-1903). His
progress in composition was remarkably slow; he never entered a music school or a consrvatory, and never earned an academic
degree in music. In 1901 he enrolled in the faculty of jurisprudence at University of St. Petersburg, and took courses there for 8
semesters, without graduating; a fellow student was Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov, a son of the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. In
the summer of 1902 Stravinsky traveled in Germany, where he met another son of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Andrei, who was a
student at the University of Heidelberg; Stravinsky became his friend. He was introduced to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and became a
regular guest at the latter's periodic gatherings in St. petersburg. In 1903-1904 he wrote a piano sonata for the Russian pianist
Nicolai Richter, who performed it at Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's home.

Arnold Schoenberg, Schoenberg also spelled Schnberg (born September 13, 1874, Viennadied July 13, 1951, Los Angeles),
Austrian-American composer who created a new method of composition based on a row, or series, of 12 tonesa method called
atonality. He was also one of the most influential teachers of the 20th century, among his most significant pupils were Alban Berg
and Anton Webern.

Claude Debussy
Debussy's earliest works are mostly pieces for voice or piano solo, including the very popular piano piece Clair de lune. In 1894 he
composed the orchestral tone poem Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, one of the seminal works in western music history. To
convey the images and atmosphere of Mallarm's poem "L'Aprs-midi d'un faune", Debussy employed a tonal palette of sighing and
sensual diaphonous harmonies. With the premiere of his only opera in 1902, Pellas et Mlisande, the demand for more of his music
increased. Most notable among these later pieces is a work that is the closest thing to a symphony that Debussy wrote, the
symphonic suite La Mer. Comprised of three symphonic movements Debussy called "sketches," the work is a musical "impression"
(for lack of a better term, and one that Debussy loathed) of the sights and sounds of the ocean. Debussy remains well-known for his
piano music, and his two books of piano Preludes contain much of his best writing. The descriptive titles of these pieces were added
by the composer after their completion. "Footsteps in the snow" is the title given to the Prelude, Book I: no. 6 and is a fine example
of Debussy's evocative writing for the piano.

Maurice Ravel, in full Joseph-Maurice Ravel (born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, Francedied December 28, 1937, Paris), French
composer of Swiss-Basque descent, noted for his musical craftsmanship and perfection of form and style in such works as Bolro
(1928), Pavane pour une infante dfunte (1899; Pavane for a Dead Princess), Rapsodie espagnole (1907), the ballet Daphnis et Chlo
(first performed 1912), and the opera LEnfant et les sortilges (1925; The Child and the Enchantments). Ravel was born in a village
near Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France, of a Swiss father and a Basque mother. His family background was an artistic and cultivated one, and
the young Maurice received every encouragement from his father when his talent for music became apparent at an early age. In
1889, at 14, he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he remained until 1905. During this period he composed some of his best
known works, including the Pavane for a Dead Princess, the Sonatine for piano, and the String Quartet. All these works, especially
the two latter, show the astonishing early perfection of style and craftsmanship that are the hallmarks of Ravels entire oeuvre. He is
one of the rare composers whose early works seem .

Igor (Feodorovich) Stravinsky. In 1905 he began taking regular lessons in orchestration with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who taught
him free of charge; under his tutelage, Stravinsky composed a Symphony in E-flat major; the 2nd and 3rd movements from it were
performed on April 27, 1907, by the Court Orchestra in St. Petersburg, and a complete performance of it was given by the same
orchestera on February 4, 1908. The work, dedicated to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, had some singularities and angularities that
showed a deficiency of technique; there was little in this work that presaged Stravinsky's ultimate development as a master of form
and orchestration. At the same concert, his Le Faune et la bergre for Voice and Orchesrtra had its first performance; this score
revealed a certain influence of French Impressionism. To celebrate the marriage of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's daughter Nadezhda to
the composer Maximilian Steinberg on June 17, 1908, Stravinsky wrote an orchestral fantasy entitled Fireworks. Nikolai Rimsky-
Korsakov died a few days after the wedding; Stravinsky deeply mourned his beloved teacher and wrote a funeral song for Wind
Instruments in his memory; it was first performed in St. Petersburg on January 30, 1909. There followed a Scherzo fantastique for
Orchestra, inspired by Maeterlinck's book La Vie des abeilles. As revealed in his correspondence with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov,
Stravinsky had at first planned a literal program of composition, illustrating events in the life of a beehive by a series of descriptive
sections; some years later, however, he gratuitously denied all connection of the work with Maeterlinck's book.

Arnold Schoenberg (born Sept. 13, 1874, Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empiredied July 13, 1951, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) Austrian-born
U.S. composer. He was raised as a Catholic by his Jewish-born parents. He began studying violin at age eight and later taught himself
cello. While working as a bank clerk, he studied composition with Alexander Zemlinsky (18711942); Schoenberg soon wrote his first
string quartet (1897), which was acclaimed. With Richard Strauss's help he obtained a teaching post in Berlin, but he soon returned
to Vienna, having composed his gigantic cantata Gurrelieder (1901, orchestrated 1913). In 1904 Alban Berg and Anton Webern
began their studies with him, which would profoundly shape their later artistic careers. About 1906 Schoenberg came to believe that
tonality had to be abandoned. During his subsequent period of free atonality (190716) he created remarkable works such as the
monodrama Erwartung (1909), Five Orchestral Pieces (1909), and Pierrot lunaire (1912). From 1916 to 1923 he issued almost
nothing, being occupied with teaching and conducting but also seeking a way to organize atonality. He eventually developed the 12-
tone method ( serialism), in which each composition is formed from a special row or series of 12 different tones. In 1930 he began
work on a three-act opera based on a single tone row; Moses und Aron remained unfinished at his death. The rise of Nazism moved
him to reassert his Jewish faith and forced him to flee to the U.S., where he remained, teaching at the University of California at Los
Angeles (193644). Though never embraced by a broad public, he may have exercised a greater influence on 20th-century music than
any other composer.

Maurice Ravel, in full Joseph-Maurice Ravel (born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, Francedied December 28, 1937,
Paris), French composer of Swiss-Basque descent, noted for his musical craftsmanship and perfection of form
and style in such works as Bolro (1928), Pavane pour une infante dfunte (1899; Pavane for a Dead Princess),
Rapsodie espagnole (1907), the ballet Daphnis et Chlo (first performed 1912), and the opera LEnfant et les
sortilges (1925; The Child and the Enchantments). Ravel was born in a village near Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France,
of a Swiss father and a Basque mother. His family background was an artistic and cultivated one, and the
young Maurice received every encouragement from his father when his talent for music became apparent at
an early age. In 1889, at 14, he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he remained until 1905. During this
period he composed some of his best known works, including the Pavane for a Dead Princess, the Sonatine for
piano, and the String Quartet. All these works, especially the two latter, show the astonishing early perfection
of style and craftsmanship that are the hallmarks of Ravels entire oeuvre. He is one of the rare composers
whose early works seem .

Claude Debussy (born Achille-Claude Debussy) was among the most influential composers of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His mature compositions, distinctive and appealing, combined
modernism and sensuality so successfully that their sheer beauty often obscures their technical innovation.
Debussy is considered the founder and leading exponent of musical Impressionism (although he resisted the
label), and his adoption of non-traditional scales and tonal structures was paradigmatic for many composers
who followed.

Arnold Schoenberg (born Sept. 13, 1874, Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empiredied July 13, 1951, Los Angeles,
Calif., U.S.) Austrian-born U.S. composer. He was raised as a Catholic by his Jewish-born parents. He began
studying violin at age eight and later taught himself cello. While working as a bank clerk, he studied
composition with Alexander Zemlinsky (18711942); Schoenberg soon wrote his first string quartet (1897),
which was acclaimed. With Richard Strauss's help he obtained a teaching post in Berlin, but he soon returned
to Vienna, having composed his gigantic cantata Gurrelieder (1901, orchestrated 1913). In 1904 Alban Berg
and Anton Webern began their studies with him, which would profoundly shape their later artistic careers.
About 1906 Schoenberg came to believe that tonality had to be abandoned. During his subsequent period of
free atonality (190716) he created remarkable works such as the monodrama Erwartung (1909), Five
Orchestral Pieces (1909), and Pierrot lunaire (1912). From 1916 to 1923 he issued almost nothing, being
occupied with teaching and conducting but also seeking a way to organize atonality. He eventually developed
the 12-tone method ( serialism), in which each composition is formed from a special row or series of 12
different tones. In 1930 he began work on a three-act opera based on a single tone row; Moses und Aron
remained unfinished at his death. The rise of Nazism moved him to reassert his Jewish faith and forced him to
flee to the U.S., where he remained, teaching at the University of California at Los Angeles (193644). Though
never embraced by a broad public, he may have exercised a greater influence on 20th-century music than any
other composer.

IGOR STRAVINSKY
The son of a distinguished Russian singer, Stravinsky spent his earlier years in Russia, either in St Petersburg
or, in the summer, at the country estates of his relatives. He studied music briefly with Rimsky-Korsakov but
made a name for himself first in Paris with commissions from the impresario Diaghilev, for whom he wrote a
series of ballet scores. He spent the years after the Russian Revolution of 1917 in Western Europe and in 1939
moved to the United States of America. There in the post-war years he turned from a style of eclectic
neoclassicism to composing in the twelve-note technique propounded by Schoenberg. A versatile composer,
inventive in changing styles, he may be seen as the musical counterpart of the painter Picasso.

Claude Debussy (born Achille-Claude Debussy) was among the most influential composers of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His mature compositions, distinctive and appealing, combined
modernism and sensuality so successfully that their sheer beauty often obscures their technical innovation.
Debussy is considered the founder and leading exponent of musical Impressionism (although he resisted the
label), and his adoption of non-traditional scales and tonal structures was paradigmatic for many composers
who followed.

IGOR STRAVINSKY

Arnold Schoenberg (b Vienna, 13 Sept 1874; d Los Angeles, 13 July 1951). Austro-Hungarian composer,
anAmerican citizen from 1941. He began violin lessons when he was eight and almost immediately started
composing, though he had no formal training until he was in his late teens, when Zemlinsky became his
teacher and friend (in 1910 he married Zemlinsky's sister). His first acknowledged works date from the turn of
the century and include the string sextet Verklrte Nacht as well as some songs, all showing influences from
Brahms, Wagner and Wolf. In1901-3 he was in Berlin as a cabaret musician and teacher, and there he wrote
the symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande, pressing the Straussian model towards denser thematic
argument and contrapuntal richness.
He then returned to Vienna and began taking private pupils, Berg and Webern being among the first. He also
moved rapidly forwards in his musical style. The large orchestra of Pelleas and the Gurrelieder was replaced by
an ensemble of 15 in Chamber Symphony no.1, but with an intensification of harmonic strangeness, formal
complexity and contrapuntal density: like the String Quartet no.1, the work is cast as a single movement
encompassing the characters of the traditional four and using every effort to join unconventional ideas (a
sequence of 4ths in the Chamber Symphony, for instance) into a conventional discourse. When atonality
arrived, therefore, as it did in 1908, it came as the inevitable outcome of a doomed attempt to accommodate
ever more disruptive material. However, Schoenberg found it possible a quarter-century later to return to
something like his tonal style in such works as the Suite in G for strings, the completion of the Chamber
Symphony no.2 and the Theme and Variations for band.

Maurice Ravel
French, of paternal Swiss and maternal Basque descent, Ravel combined skill in orchestration with meticulous
technical command of harmonic resources, writing in an attractive musical idiom that was entirely his own in
spite of contemporary comparisons with Debussy, a composer his senior by some 20 years.
Stage Works
Operas
Ravel wrote two operas. The first, Lheure espagnole (The Spanish Clock), is described as a comdie musicale;
the second, with a libretto by Colette, is the imaginative LEnfant et les sortilges (The Child and the
Enchantments), in which the naughty child is punished when furniture and animals assume personalities of
their own.

Claude Debussy
The son of a shopkeeper and a seamstress, Debussy began piano studies at the Paris Conservatory at the age
of 11. While a student there, he encountered the wealthy Nadezhda von Meck (most famous as Tchaikovsky's
patroness), who employed him as a music teacher to her children; through travel, concerts and acquaintances,
she provided him with a wealth of musical experience. Most importantly, she exposed the young Debussy to
the works of Russian composers, such as Borodin and Mussorgsky, who would remain important influences on
his music.
Debussy began composition studies in 1880, and in 1884 he won the prestigious Prix de Rome with his cantata
L'enfant prodigue. This prize financed two years of further study in Romeyears that proved to be creatively
frustrating. However, the period immediately following was fertile for the young composer; trips to Bayreuth
and the Paris World Exhibition (1889) established, respectively, his determination to move away from the
influence of Richard Wagner, and his interest in the music of Eastern cultures.

IGOR STRAVINSKY

Maurice Ravel
World Changes
France had suffered defeat to Prussia (Germany) in the War of 1870 and was in an upheaval. French arts were
flourishing, but the legal system was in decay. It was the age of emerging science, the climax of railways, and
the beginning of aviation. In 1875, when Maurice Ravel was born, the world was in a big hurry to change.
Home Life
Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, 1875, at Ciboure near the Spanish border. He had a Swiss father and a
Basque mother, but his family really came from France. Maurice's father was a highly skilled engineer and
inventor. Ravel adored his mother. They were a happy family! When Maurice was three years old, his brother
douard was born. The brothers were close all their lives. Edouard became an engineer and his father's
partner. Can you imagine a somersaulting car? They invented one. In 1903, it appeared in Barnum & Bailey's
Circus in the United States. Unfortunately it crashed and killed the driver. Ravel was interested in both
mechanics and music. Sometimes on his music tours he would find interesting mechanical information and
send it to his father.

Arnold Schoenberg
In 1933 he was obliged as a Jew to leave Berlin: he went to Paris, and formally returned to the faith which he
had deserted for Lutheranism in 1898. Later the same year he arrived in the USA, and he settled in Los Angeles
in 1934. It was there that he returned to tonal composition, while developing serialism to make possible the
more complex structures of the Violin Concerto and the String Quartet no.4. In 1936 he began teaching at
UCLA and his output dwindled. After a heart attack in 1945, however, he gave up teaching and made some
return to expressionism (A Survivor from Warsaw, String Trio), as well as writing religious choruses.

Claude Debussy
After a relatively bohemian period, during which Debussy formed friendships with many leading Parisian writers and
musicians (not least of which were Mallarm, Satie, and Chausson), the year 1894 saw the enormously successful
premiere of his Prlude l'aprs-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun)a truly revolutionary work that
brought his mature compositional voice into focus. His seminal opera Pellas et Mlisande, completed the next year,
would become a sensation at its first performance in 1902. The impact of those two works earned Debussy widespread
recognition (as well as frequent attacks from critics, who failed to appreciate his forward-looking style), and over the
first decade of the twentieth century he established himself as the leading figure in French musicso much so that the
term "Debussysme" ("Debussyism"), used both positively and pejoratively, became fashionable in Paris. Debussy spent
his remaining healthy years immersed in French musical society, writing as a critic, composing, and performing his own
works internationally. He succumbed to colon cancer in 1918, having also suffered a deep depression brought on by the
onset of World War I. Debussy's personal life was punctuated by unfortunate incidents, most famously the attempted
suicide of his first wife, Lilly Texier, whom he abandoned for the singer Emma Bardac. However, his subsequent marriage
to Bardac, and their daughter Claude-Emma, whom they called "Chouchou" and who became the dedicatee of the
composer's Children's Corner piano suite, provided the middle-aged Debussy with great personal joys.
Maurice Ravel
Studies
When Ravel was seven years old he began both piano and harmony lessons. Guess what? He liked playing outside more
than practising. That probably doesn't surprise you at all. At 14, Maurice enrolled at the Paris Conservatory, but he didn't
get very good marks. He actually got expelled for a while for not paying attention! When Ravel went back, he studied
under Gabriel Faur. They became great friends, although they were 40 years apart. Ravel was a student at the
Conservatory for 14 years. He composed several pieces, but never won the coveted Prix de Rome that he hoped for.
The Apache Club
In 1900, Maurice Ravel joined a group of artists and intellectuals called the Apache Club. No girls were allowed in this
club! Their activities involved all the arts. It lasted until 1914. Ravel met fellow Apache members Erik Satie, Jean
Cocteau, Andr Gide, Paul Valry, Igor Stravinsky, Nijinsky and Serge Diaghilev, among others. They met in the home
of Ida and Cyprien Godebski. Maurice composed his Ma Mere L'Oye (Mother Goose Suite) for the Godebski children.
Igor Stravinsky said Ravel wasn't a handsome man, but he was a great dresser. He was short, wiry, with a large head,
dark hair, and stylish and carefully trimmed beard and moustache.

IGOR STRAVINSKY
The son of a distinguished Russian singer, Stravinsky spent his earlier years in Russia, either in St Petersburg or, in the
summer, at the country estates of his relatives. He studied music briefly with Rimsky-Korsakov but made a name for
himself first in Paris with commissions from the impresario Diaghilev, for whom he wrote a series of ballet scores. He
spent the years after the Russian Revolution of 1917 in Western Europe and in 1939 moved to the United States of
America. There in the post-war years he turned from a style of eclectic neoclassicism to composing in the twelve-note
technique propounded by Schoenberg. A versatile composer, inventive in changing styles, he may be seen as the musical
counterpart of the painter Picasso.

Arnold Schoenberg
In 1933 he was obliged as a Jew to leave Berlin: he went to Paris, and formally returned to the faith which he had
deserted for Lutheranism in 1898. Later the same year he arrived in the USA, and he settled in Los Angeles in 1934. It
was there that he returned to tonal composition, while developing serialism to make possible the more complex
structures of the Violin Concerto and the String Quartet no.4. In 1936 he began teaching at UCLA and his output
dwindled. After a heart attack in 1945, however, he gave up teaching and made some return to expressionism (A
Survivor from Warsaw, String Trio), as well as writing religious choruses.

Claude Debussy wrote successfully in most every genre, adapting his distinctive compositional language to the demands
of each. His orchestral works, of which Prlude l'aprs-midi d'un faune and La mer (The Sea, 1905) are most familiar,
established him as a master of instrumental color and texture. It is this attention to tone colorhis layering of sound
upon sound so that they blend to form a greater, evocative wholethat linked Debussy in the public mind to the
Impressionist painters.His works for solo piano, particularly his collections of Prludes and Etudes, which have remained
staples of the repertoire since their composition, bring into relief his assimilation of elements from both Eastern cultures
and antiquityespecially pentatonicism (the use of five-note scales), modality (the use of scales from ancient Greece
and the medieval church), parallelism (the parallel movement of chords and lines), and the whole-tone scale (formed by
dividing the octave into six equal intervals). Pellas et Mlisande and his collections of songs for solo voice establish the
strength of his connection to French literature and poetry, especially the symbolist writers, and stand as some of the
most understatedly expressive works in the repertory. The writings of Mallarm, Maeterlinck, Baudelaire, and his
childhood friend Paul Verlaine appear prominently among his chosen texts and joined symbiotically with the composer's
own unique moods and forms of expression.

Maurice Ravel's Spanish period began in 1907.
He had never spent much time in Spain, but his mother had grown up in Madrid. She had sung the theatre and folk
songs of her youth around their home. Those songs had been important to Maurice. Ravel wrote three "Spanish" pieces
specifically for the orchestra: Rhapsodie, La Valse, and Bolero.
During this time, he began international concert tours, beginning in England in 1909. On one trip to England, he met the
author Joseph Conrad, who gave him a gift of cigarettes. Ravel was a very heavy smoker. His biggest worry on some of
his foreign tours was how to get the French cigarettes he loved.
One of Ravel's best ballets, Daphnis and Chloe, premiered in 1912. The production was a mess because of problems
between the musicians and dancers. Even Diaghilev and the great dancer Nijinsky were involved Maurice was so
exhausted and upset by everything that he left for a year to recover his health.

IGOR Stravinsky made an immediate impression in Paris with his score for LOiseau de feu (The Firebird) for the Ballets
Russes of Diaghilev. There followed the very Russian Petrushka, set in a Russian fairground, and then the 1913 succs de
scandale of Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring). After wartime works on a smaller scale, including The Soldiers
Tale, Stravinsky turned again to ballet for Diaghilev in Pulcinella, based on music wrongly attributed to Pergolesi. Later
ballets include Apollon musagte, Le Baiser de la fe (The Fairys Kiss), Jeu de cartes (Card Game) and Agon. The Latin
opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex, with a text translated from Cocteau, was first staged in 1928, while the opera The Rakes
Progress, neoclassical in form and based on the engravings of Hogarth, with a libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester
Kallman, was staged in Venice in 1951.

Arnold Schoenberg was born into a lower-middle-class Jewish family in Vienna while the city was still recovering from
anti-Semitic agitation after the financial panic of 1873. When he was eight, he began studying violin and composing, but
his only formal teacher was the composer Alexander Zemlinsky, whose sister Schoenberg later married. Through
Zemlinskys influence, his 1897 String Quartet in D major was accepted for performance, but the string sextet Verklrte
Nacht of 1899 was turned down, and his early songs (opp.13) unleashed protests at their first performance in 1900.
After that, in Schoenbergs own words, scandal never left him as he strove to expand musics expressive potential by
increasingly pressing the bounds of late-Romantic harmonyin such works as the symphonic poem Pelleas und
Melisande (1903) and the monumental cantata Gurrelieder (190011)and then finally bursting those bounds in, for
example, the freely atonal (music not in any key) song cycle Das Buch der hngenden Grten (190809), Five
Orchestral Pieces (1909), and the song cycle Pierrot lunaire (1912). The logical extension of this development for him
and for Alban Berg and Anton Webern, his disciples in the so-called Second Viennese Schoolwas to adopt, beginning
with the set of five piano pieces, op. 23 (192023), what he termed a method of composing with twelve tones that are
related only to one another (serial or twelve-tone technique).

Achille-Claude Debussy (22nd August 1862 25th March 1918) was a French composer. He was one of the
most important figures in music at the turn of the 20th century; his music represents the transition from late-
romantic to 20th century classical. Debussy's most dramatic contribution to music history was his disregard for
traditional chord structures and tonality. He is one of the most important exponents of the whole tone scale in
classical music history. Read more about Claude Debussy on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under
the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.

IGOR Stravinsky made an immediate impression in Paris with his score for LOiseau de feu (The Firebird) for
the Ballets Russes of Diaghilev. There followed the very Russian Petrushka, set in a Russian fairground, and
then the 1913 succs de scandale of Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring). After wartime works on a
smaller scale, including The Soldiers Tale, Stravinsky turned again to ballet for Diaghilev in Pulcinella, based on
music wrongly attributed to Pergolesi. Later ballets include Apollon musagte, Le Baiser de la fe (The Fairys
Kiss), Jeu de cartes (Card Game) and Agon. The Latin opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex, with a text translated from
Cocteau, was first staged in 1928, while the opera The Rakes Progress, neoclassical in form and based on the
engravings of Hogarth, with a libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, was staged in Venice in 1951.

Arnold Schoenberg
Little is known about Schoenbergs religious upbringing or childhood Jewish experiences. What might seem to
be major milestones in his lifehis conversion to Protestant Christianity in 1898 and, especially, his return to
Judaismare in fact only events in a continual internal struggle and spiritual quest. His conversion to
Christianity, however, was not (as the distinguished music scholar Alexander Ringer observes in his well-
known study, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer As Jew) under secularizing or assimilationist influences, but
rather because, virtually untutored in Jewish values, he looked for other vessels to quench his spiritual thirst.
By 1923, he was already committed to Jewish national concerns, and his drama Der Biblische Weg (The Way to
the Bible; 192327) advocated a temporary national home for the Jewish people prior to eventual permanent
settlement in Palestine.

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer best known for his piece Bolero (1928), which he considered a
trivial piece of music. He was expelled from the Conservatoire de Paris because he could not meet their
competitive requirements, and would continue to have trouble with critics. Ravel joined a group of other
musicians called the Apaches. His masterpiece Pavane for a Dead Princess (1902) was performed with the
group. Ravel became friends with Claude Debussy and they often compared works. But fans of each composer
began feuding, so they decided it was best to stop seeing each other. Ravel went on to compose until 1932.
His arrangement of Mussgorsky's Pictures at an Exhibition brought him great profit. In 1928, he made a four
month tour to America, where he met and became friends with George Gershwinn. Critics in America were
much more receptive of Ravel's work and boosted him to international acclaim. He died in France in 1937 after
an experimental brain surgery.

Achille-Claude Debussy (22nd August 1862 25th March 1918) was a French composer. He was one of the
most important figures in music at the turn of the 20th century; his music represents the transition from late-
romantic to 20th century classical. Debussy's most dramatic contribution to music history was his disregard for
traditional chord structures and tonality. He is one of the most important exponents of the whole tone scale in
classical music history. Read more about Claude Debussy on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under
the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer best known for his piece Bolero (1928), which he considered a
trivial piece of music. He was expelled from the Conservatoire de Paris because he could not meet their
competitive requirements, and would continue to have trouble with critics. Ravel joined a group of other
musicians called the Apaches. His masterpiece Pavane for a Dead Princess (1902) was performed with the
group. Ravel became friends with Claude Debussy and they often compared works. But fans of each composer
began feuding, so they decided it was best to stop seeing each other. Ravel went on to compose until 1932.
His arrangement of Mussgorsky's Pictures at an Exhibition brought him great profit. In 1928, he made a four
month tour to America, where he met and became friends with George Gershwinn. Critics in America were
much more receptive of Ravel's work and boosted him to international acclaim. He died in France in 1937 after
an experimental brain surgery.

IGOR Stravinsky made an immediate impression in Paris with his score for LOiseau de feu (The Firebird) for
the Ballets Russes of Diaghilev. There followed the very Russian Petrushka, set in a Russian fairground, and
then the 1913 succs de scandale of Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring). After wartime works on a
smaller scale, including The Soldiers Tale, Stravinsky turned again to ballet for Diaghilev in Pulcinella, based on
music wrongly attributed to Pergolesi. Later ballets include Apollon musagte, Le Baiser de la fe (The Fairys
Kiss), Jeu de cartes (Card Game) and Agon. The Latin opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex, with a text translated from
Cocteau, was first staged in 1928, while the opera The Rakes Progress, neoclassical in form and based on the
engravings of Hogarth, with a libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, was staged in Venice in 1951.

Arnold Schoenberg formally converted back to Judaism in 1933, but he considered it the culmination of
maturation, spiritual development, and fulfillment of personal destiny, and he claimed that he had always
considered himself a Jew. The dominant theme throughout his life derives from a dualistic outlook on all
phenomena as interactions or relationships between the concrete and the abstract, usually expressed as an
irresolvable conflict. He seems to have sought resolution of that conflictbetween an amorphous God
awareness and a hunger for structurein formal religion. After the National Socialists came to power, in
1933, Schoenberg was summarily dismissed from his post at the Prussian Academy of Arts, where he had been
teaching since 1926. He was denounced as a Jew and a leading exponent of degenerate art. A fervent
Zionist, he drafted a bold Four-Point Program for Jewry, propounding that a united Jewish party must be
created.Ways must be prepared to obtain a place to erect an independent Jewish state. In 1934, he
emigrated to the United States and settled eventually in Los Angeles, where he taught for a year at the
University of Southern California and from 1936 at U.C.L.A. He became an American citizen in 1941.

Born: 1862 Died: 1918 Country: France Period: Romantic
Claude Debussy (born Achille-Claude Debussy) was among the most influential composers of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. His mature compositions, distinctive and appealing, combined modernism and sensuality so
successfully that their sheer beauty often obscures their technical innovation. Debussy is considered the founder and
leading exponent of musical Impressionism (although he resisted the label), and his adoption of non-traditional scales
and tonal structures was paradigmatic for many composers who followed. The son of a shopkeeper and a seamstress,
Debussy began piano studies at the Paris Conservatory at the age of 11. While a student there, he encountered the
wealthy Nadezhda von Meck (most famous as Tchaikovsky's patroness), who employed him as a music teacher to her
children; through travel, concerts and acquaintances, she provided him with a wealth of musical experience. Most
importantly, she exposed the young Debussy to the works of Russian composers, such as Borodin and Mussorgsky, who
would remain important influences on his music.

Maurice Ravel was born in 1875, in a little French fishing village on the Mediterranean. His mother was from the Basque
country in Spain and his father was a Swiss inventor. Little Maurice Ravel was a talented pianist. He gave his first recital
at age fourteen, and later studied piano at the Paris Conservatory. At the Conservatory he did well on piano, but was
lazy with the rest of his studies. He got kicked out of his composition class because he never won any prizes! Tough
school. But he stayed in Paris, and joined a group of avant-garde artists who called themselves the "Hooligans". He was
friends with the other famous French impressionist composer Claude Debussy. Ravel and Debussy got on well at first,
visiting each other and performing each others' pieces. But over time they developed a complex rivalry. Audiences
couldn't really tell their styles of music apart, which annoyed both of them. Each had their own little group of
supporters, and there were disagreements about who influenced whom.

Arnold Schoenberg
During the last two decades of Schoenbergs life, Jewish subjects became increasingly important to him. Between 1930
and 1932 he worked at his opera Moses und Aron, which occupies a central position in his oeuvre. In 1938, the year in
which the Kristallnacht pogroms signaled the end of Central European Jewry, he composed an English setting of the kol
nidrei recitation; and, in 1947, he wrote A Survivor from Warsaw, which Ringer calls the ultimate artistic expression of
both Schoenbergs lifelong Jewish trauma and his abiding faith. The 1950 choral setting of Psalm 130 in the original
Hebrew, his contribution to an Anthology of Jewish Music, was dedicated to the State of Israel. But Schoenberg was
never able to complete any of his large-scale religious works, including Moses und Aron and an oratorio Die Jakobsleiter
(191722). Each breaks off with the protagonist left unable to find fulfillment through prayer. In April 1951, a matter of
weeks before his death, Schoenberg was made honorary president of the Israel Academy of Music in Jerusalem. In his
letter of acceptance he gave voice for the last time to the ideals that marked his life as composer and Jew: Those who
issue from such an institution must be truly priests of art. For just as God chose Israel to be the people whose task it is
to maintain the pure, true, Mosaic monotheism despite all persecution so too it is the task of Israeli musicians to set
the world an example.

Igor Stravinsky was born 17 June 1882 in Oranienbaum (Lomonosov), Russia. The Russian composer is considered by
many to be the most influential composer of the 20th century and was even named by Time magazine as one of the 100
most influential people of the 20th century.
Stravinsky is most famous for his three ballets, The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring (the latter causing
huge controversy). Most importantly, he was noted for constantly reinventing music and being an overall musical
revolutionary, sometimes offending people with his drastic ideas along the way.
However, he was also an accomplished pianist and conductor, often leading orchestras in the premieres of his new
works.
Stravinskys father wanted his son to pursue a career in law, which, at first, Stravinsky did, enrolling at the University of
St. Petersburg. However, with the passing of his father and his burgeoning interest in music he finished with only a half-
diploma and starting taking music lessons from the great Rimsky-Korsakov.
Born: 1862 Died: 1918 Country: France Period: Romantic
Claude Debussy (born Achille-Claude Debussy) was among the most influential composers of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. His mature compositions, distinctive and appealing, combined modernism and sensuality so
successfully that their sheer beauty often obscures their technical innovation. Debussy is considered the founder and
leading exponent of musical Impressionism (although he resisted the label), and his adoption of non-traditional scales
and tonal structures was paradigmatic for many composers who followed. The son of a shopkeeper and a seamstress,
Debussy began piano studies at the Paris Conservatory at the age of 11. While a student there, he encountered the
wealthy Nadezhda von Meck (most famous as Tchaikovsky's patroness), who employed him as a music teacher to her
children; through travel, concerts and acquaintances, she provided him with a wealth of musical experience. Most
importantly, she exposed the young Debussy to the works of Russian composers, such as Borodin and Mussorgsky, who
would remain important influences on his music.

Maurice Ravel was born in 1875, in a little French fishing village on the Mediterranean. His mother was from the Basque
country in Spain and his father was a Swiss inventor. Little Maurice Ravel was a talented pianist. He gave his first recital
at age fourteen, and later studied piano at the Paris Conservatory. At the Conservatory he did well on piano, but was
lazy with the rest of his studies. He got kicked out of his composition class because he never won any prizes! Tough
school. But he stayed in Paris, and joined a group of avant-garde artists who called themselves the "Hooligans". He was
friends with the other famous French impressionist composer Claude Debussy. Ravel and Debussy got on well at first,
visiting each other and performing each others' pieces. But over time they developed a complex rivalry. Audiences
couldn't really tell their styles of music apart, which annoyed both of them. Each had their own little group of
supporters, and there were disagreements about who influenced whom.

Arnold Schoenberg
During the last two decades of Schoenbergs life, Jewish subjects became increasingly important to him. Between 1930
and 1932 he worked at his opera Moses und Aron, which occupies a central position in his oeuvre. In 1938, the year in
which the Kristallnacht pogroms signaled the end of Central European Jewry, he composed an English setting of the kol
nidrei recitation; and, in 1947, he wrote A Survivor from Warsaw, which Ringer calls the ultimate artistic expression of
both Schoenbergs lifelong Jewish trauma and his abiding faith. The 1950 choral setting of Psalm 130 in the original
Hebrew, his contribution to an Anthology of Jewish Music, was dedicated to the State of Israel. But Schoenberg was
never able to complete any of his large-scale religious works, including Moses und Aron and an oratorio Die Jakobsleiter
(191722). Each breaks off with the protagonist left unable to find fulfillment through prayer. In April 1951, a matter of
weeks before his death, Schoenberg was made honorary president of the Israel Academy of Music in Jerusalem. In his
letter of acceptance he gave voice for the last time to the ideals that marked his life as composer and Jew: Those who
issue from such an institution must be truly priests of art. For just as God chose Israel to be the people whose task it is
to maintain the pure, true, Mosaic monotheism despite all persecution so too it is the task of Israeli musicians to set
the world an example.

Igor Stravinsky was born 17 June 1882 in Oranienbaum (Lomonosov), Russia. The Russian composer is considered by
many to be the most influential composer of the 20th century and was even named by Time magazine as one of the 100
most influential people of the 20th century.
Stravinsky is most famous for his three ballets, The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring (the latter causing
huge controversy). Most importantly, he was noted for constantly reinventing music and being an overall musical
However, he was also an accomplished pianist and conductor, often leading orchestras in the premieres of his new
works.
Stravinskys father wanted his son to pursue a career in law, which, at first, Stravinsky did, enrolling at the University of
St. Petersburg. However, with the passing of his father and his burgeoning interest in music he finished with only a half-
diploma and starting taking music lessons from the great Rimsky-Korsakov.

Achille-Claude Debussy (French: [ail klod dbysi]; 22 August 1862 25 March 1918) was a French composer. Along with
Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music, though he himself
intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions. In France, he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour
in 1903. Debussy was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his use of
non-traditional scales and chromaticism influenced many composers who followed. Debussy's music is noted for its
sensory content and frequent eschewing of tonality. The French literary style of his period was known as Symbolism, and
this movement directly inspired Debussy both as a composer and as an active cultural participant.
Joseph-Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 December 28, 1937) was a French composer known especially for his melodies,
masterful orchestration, richly evocative harmonies and inventive instrumental textures and effects. Along with Claude
Debussy, he was one of the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music. Much of his piano music,
chamber music, vocal music and orchestral music is part of the standard concert repertoire.Ravel's piano compositions,
such as Jeux d'eau, Miroirs, Le tombeau de Couperin and Gaspard de la nuit, demand considerable virtuosity from the
performer, and his mastery of orchestration is particularly evident in such works as Rapsodie espagnole, Daphnis et
Chlo and his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Ravel is perhaps known best for his
orchestral work Bolro (1928), which he once described as "a piece for orchestra without music". According to SACEM,
Ravel's estate had earned more royalties than that of any other French composer.
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (sometimes spelled Strawinsky or Stravinskii; Russian: ,
transliterated: Igor Fdorovi Stravinskij; Russian pronunciation: *ir fjodrvt
strvinskj+; 17 June *O.S. 5 June+

1882 6 April 1971) was a Russian (and later, a naturalized French and American) composer, pianist and conductor. He
is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century.Stravinsky's compositional
career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the
impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka
(1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The last of these transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought
about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary
who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His "Russian phase" was followed in the 1920s by a period in which he
turned to neoclassical music. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto
grosso, fugue and symphony). They often paid tribute to the music of earlier masters, such as J.S. Bach and Tchaikovsky.
In the 1950s, Stravinsky adopted serial procedures. His compositions of this period shared traits with examples of his
earlier output: rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few two- or three-note cells and
clarity of form, of instrumentation and of utterance.[clarification needed]
Arnold Schoenberg or Schnberg (German: *anlt nbk] ( listen); 13 September 1874 13 July 1951) was an
Austrian composer and painter, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of
the Second Viennese School. With the rise of the Nazi Party, by 1938 Schoenberg's works were labelled as degenerate
music (Anon. 19972013); he moved to the United States in 1934.Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and
development, has been one of the most influential of 20th-century musical thought. Many European and American
composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have passionately
reacted against it.Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed
German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality
(although Schoenberg himself detested that term) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art
music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, an influential compositional method of
manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation
and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a
centralized melodic idea.
Aiden Mycah Jumarang
IV-Honesty
Assignment in MAPEH
Joseph-Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875 - December 28, 1937). was born in France near the Spanish border, to Swiss and Basque
parents. His father's engineering work soon brought the family to Paris, and the young man entered the Paris Conservatory at age
14. He enrolled as a pianist but switched to composition under Gabriel Faur and Andr Gedalge. Ravel was less radical a composer
than Claude Debussy but rebellious in his own way. Where Debussy could write pieces to please the Conservatory masters and win a
Prix de Rome, Ravel refused to be bound by the school's composition rules. His failure to win prizes did not endear him to his
masters, even though he wrote successful pieces early on, including his Violin Sonata (1897) and Shhrazade (1898). Given those
successes, his failure to win the Prix de Rome in 1905 led to a public scandal and a change in the Conservatory directorship. Soon
after that debacle, Ravel entered a period of great productivity, producing works like L'Heure Espagole and Rapsodie Espagole
(1907), Valse Nobles et Sentimentales (1911), major piano pieces, and Daphnis et Chlo for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1912.
Around this time, he met Igor Stravinsky and joined a group of radical composers known as Les Apaches. In 1906, he started but did
not finish Wien, an orchestral homage to Johann Strauss. Wien would turn into La Valse fourteen years later. In the interim, World
War I brought his composing to a near halt. Ravel tried to enlist but was turned down for physical reasons and ended up a military
transport driver. In 1916 he started to feel the urgings to compose when dysentery sent him to Paris to recover. Soon after, his
mother died. Ravel's mother was the closest human contact Ravel had he never married and with her loss came devastation and
more musical inactivity. He wrote little during this period: most notably, Trois Poemes de Mallarm (1913), Trois Chansons (1915),
and Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917). It was when Diaghilev asked him for another ballet after the war that Ravel's compositional
juices returned. He completed Wien, called it a "choreographic poem," and changed the title to La Valse. Diaghilev called the result a
"masterpiece" but added that, "it's not a balletit's the portrait of a ballet." He thought it undanceable and refused to stage it.
Ravel never spoke to him again. The ballet was not performed until Ida Rubenstein staged it in 1929 at the Paris Opera. After La
Valse came L'Enfant et les Sortilges (1925), a concert tour of the United States in 1928, and in the same year, Bolero. The Piano
Concerto in G Major and the Piano Concerto for Left Hand came out in 1930 and 1931. Ravel's last years were slowed by Pick's
disease, which may have been exacerbated by an automobile accident in 1932 (though he complained of memory problems and
insomnia years earlier). He started some projects but produced only a few works. Brain surgery in 1937 was unsuccessful, and he
died a year later.

Claude Debussy (born Achille-Claude Debussy) was among the most influential composers of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. His mature compositions, distinctive and appealing, combined modernism and sensuality so successfully that
their sheer beauty often obscures their technical innovation. Debussy is considered the founder and leading exponent of musical
Impressionism (although he resisted the label), and his adoption of non-traditional scales and tonal structures was paradigmatic for
many composers who followed. The son of a shopkeeper and a seamstress, Debussy began piano studies at the Paris Conservatory
at the age of 11. While a student there, he encountered the wealthy Nadezhda von Meck (most famous as Tchaikovsky's patroness),
who employed him as a music teacher to her children; through travel, concerts and acquaintances, she provided him with a wealth
of musical experience. Most importantly, she exposed the young Debussy to the works of Russian composers, such as Borodin and
Mussorgsky, who would remain important influences on his music.

Igor Stravinsky was born 17 June 1882 in Oranienbaum (Lomonosov), Russia. The Russian composer is considered by many to be the
most influential composer of the 20th century and was even named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of
the 20th century.Stravinsky is most famous for his three ballets, The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring (the latter
causing huge controversy). Most importantly, he was noted for constantly reinventing music and being an overall musical
However, he was also an accomplished pianist and conductor, often leading orchestras in the premieres of his new works.
Stravinskys father wanted his son to pursue a career in law, which, at first, Stravinsky did, enrolling at the University of St.
Petersburg. However, with the passing of his father and his burgeoning interest in music he finished with only a half-diploma and
starting taking music lessons from the great Rimsky-Korsakov.

Arnold Schoenberg was born into a lower-middle-class Jewish family in Vienna while the city was still recovering from anti-Semitic
agitation after the financial panic of 1873. When he was eight, he began studying violin and composing, but his only formal teacher
was the composer Alexander Zemlinsky, whose sister Schoenberg later married. Through Zemlinskys influence, his 1897 String
Quartet in D major was accepted for performance, but the string sextet Verklrte Nacht of 1899 was turned down, and his early
songs (opp.13) unleashed protests at their first performance in 1900.

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Fertility problems linked to children's mental health issues, research claims

strvinskj]; 17 June [O.S. 5 June]

strvinskj+; 17 June *O.S. 5 June+

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