WORLD FAMOUS

COMPOSERS
PYOTR ILYICH
TCHAIKOVSKY
 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a distinguished
Russian composer who scripted many
symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets, and
chamber music, which became an esteemed part of
the classical library.
 PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY’S CHILDHOOD
AND EARLY LIFE
 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk.
 Tchaikovsky started taking piano lessons from the
gentle age of five. He was very talented in music,
but his parents decided to send Tchaikovsky to the
Imperial School of Jurisprudence in Saint
Petersburg in 1850 for a more promising
livelihood.
 Music became a panacea for Tchaikovsky! Fond of
the works by Verdi, Rossini, Mozart, and Bellini,
Tchaikovsky would work on the themes for his
friends that they sang during choir practice at the
school's harmonium.
 PURSUING MUSIC DURING CIVIL
SERVICE
 On June 10, 1859, the 19-year-old Tchaikovsky
graduated with the rank of titular counselor and
sooner Tchaikovsky joined the budding Saint
Petersburg Conservatory, which opened in 1862.
 Rubinstein taught instrumentation and composition
at the Conservatory. At the Saint Petersburg
Conservatory, Tchaikovsky learned how to
compose music like those of Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart, Joseph Haydn, and Ludwig van
Beethoven from Anton Rubinstein and Nikolai
Zaremba.
 TCHAIKOVSKY AND THE GROUP OF
‘THE FIVE’
 ‘The Five’ (Mily Balakirev, Alexander Borodin, César
Cui, Modest Mussorgsky and Nikolai Rimsky-
Korsakov) was a group of composers who met in
Saint Petersburg.

 In 1869, Tchaikovsky entered into a working

relationship with Balakirev; that provided an avenue
for Tchaikovsky's first recognized work of genius, the
fantasy-overture ‘Romeo and Juliet’.
 GROWING FAME FOR THE NASCENT
OPERA COMPOSER
 Many reputed artists were willing to perform on the
music composed by him, including Sergei Taneyev,
Max Erdmannsdörfer, Adele Aus der Ohe, Eduard
Nápravník, etc.

 Tchaikovsky began to compose operas. His first

opera, ‘The Voyevoda’, based on a play by
Alexander Ostrovsky, was premiered in 1869.
 Between these projects, he started to compile an
opera called ‘Mandragora’, to a libretto by Sergei
Rachinskii.

 The first Tchaikovsky opera to survive in one piece,

‘The Oprichnik’, was premiered in 1874.

 In the second half of 1874, ‘Vakula the Smith’

(Opus 14) was also composed.
 As a conductor, Tchaikovsky extensively promoted Russian
music.

 Tchaikovsky was voted a member of the ‘Académie des Beaux-

Arts’ in France in 1892, the only second Russian to be honored
so after the first being the famous sculptor ‘Mark Antokolski’.

 Next year, the University of Cambridge in Britain also presented

an honorary Doctor of Music degree to Tchaikovsky.
 The premiere of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, the
‘Pathétique’ was performed on October 30, 1893.
Nine days later, in Saint Petersburg, Tchaikovsky
expired there at the age of 53.
BENJAMIN BRITTEN
 Benjamin Britten was an English composer,
conductor and pianist, considered to be one of the
greatest composers of the 20th century.
 He was a prolific composer and his large body of
works included opera, other vocal music, orchestral
and chamber pieces.

 Over the years, he received a number of awards and

honors. He was also the first musician to receive life
peerage and become Baron Britten.

 Today he is best remembered for works like ‘Peter

Grimes’, and ‘The Young Person's Guide to the
Orchestra’, and most importantly, ‘The War Requiem.’
 Music was his first love. He learned to play the
piano when he was barely two years old and by five
he started composing music. His mother was his
first teacher. At the age of ten, he started taking
viola lessons.
 STUDYING WITH FRANK BRIDGE
 In 1927 he attended festival where young Benjamin
met Frank Bridge.


 Bridge was highly impressed by the young boy’s

musical talent and offered to provide him with music
lessons provided he came to London.

 He would continue his studies at Lowestoft and

concurrently take regular trips to London to study
music with him.
 He continued studying with Bridge in private and
attended various concerts, getting acquainted with
the works of musicians like Stravinsky,
Shostakovich and Mahler. The ‘Sinfonietta, Op. 1’,
‘A Boy was Born Op 3’, ‘Friday Afternoons’, and
‘A Hymn to the Virgin’ were some of his important
works of this period.
 After completing his studies at RCM, Benjamin Britten returned
to Lowestoft. There, he began working on eight music pieces he
had written for piano as a teenager.

 In February 1935, Bridge arranged for Britten to appear in a job

interview for BBC’s music department.

 He began writing scores for the film unit on a regular basis.

 Britten also worked independently, writing scores for a number

of radio, theatre, as well as film productions. Some important
works of this period were ‘King Arthur’ and ‘The Sword in the
Stone’ (radio); ‘The Ascent of F6’, ‘On the Frontier’ and
‘Johnson Over Jordan’ (theatre); ‘Night Mail’ and ‘Love from a
Stranger’ (film).
 MAJOR WORKS
 Benjamin Bitten is best remembered for his 1962
work, ‘The War Requiem’, a large-scale, non-
liturgical requiem based on the Latin Mass for Dead
and interwoven with nine of the poems on war by
Wilfred Owen. It was composed mostly in 1961 and
completed in January 1962.
ERNEST BLOCH
 Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-American composer
considered to be one of the most popular
personalities of that time. Apart from composing he
also worked as a professor in his later years. His
works were acknowledged to be innovative and
inventive.
 He is widely recognized as a successful composer
whose works were appreciated and enjoyed all over
by people of all ages.
 Ernest Bloch was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on
24 July 1880.
 Bloch’s interest in music started at a very early age
and by the age of nine, he had started playing the
violin. Soon after, he also started composing. Bloch
then studied music at the school of arts in Brussels
where he was tutored by the Belgian violinist
Eugène Ysaÿe.
 CAREER IN MUSIC AND LATER LIFE

 Bloch travelled to New York in 1916 during the

World War I. He went there as a conductor with
the Maud Allan Dance Company.
 He performed in many concerts in New York and
Boston and with time he became a major figure
among the contemporary musicians of America.
 His important teaching assignments were at the
Mannes School of Music in New York and the
Cleveland Institute of Music where, in 1920, he
became the institute’s first Musical Director and
served there for five years.
 He was appointed as the director of the San
Francisco Music School in the year 1925 and also
served there for five years. In 1927, he composed
America, an Epic Rhapsody, which won the first
prize in a contest, which was sponsored by Musical
America.
 Most of his well known works were heavily
influenced by Jewish liturgical and folk music. His
composition, Schelomo (1916), for cello and
orchestra, was dedicated to the cellist Aleixandre
Barjansky.