Top Early Artists on Rhapsody Online

John Dowland

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 16:49:13 -0800

John Dowland (1563 - 1626) might properly be considered the first singer/songwriter to the stars, as the 16th century English composer, singer, and lutenist was idolized in the courts of Europe for melancholy songs like "Come, heavy sleep" (the basis for Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal), "Flow my tears," and "I saw my Lady weepe." He even got a gig at the funeral of James I. Today, you're less likely to encounter him through a toe-tapping vocal number like "In darknesse let mee dwell" than you are through his instrumental music, which has undergone a major revival as concert repertoire for classical guitarists.

His most highly regarded 84 ayres for voice and lute, published mainly between 1597 and 1612, elevated the level of English song to high art, matching the gloomy sentiments of the verse, which were so en vogue during his day, with biting discord. His 70-odd pieces for solo lute are widely performed today, and include intricate fantasias, dances and sets of variations. - Nate Cavalieri

Hildegard von Bingen

Wed, 2 Dec 2009 11:07:14 -0800

Claudio Monteverdi

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 09:47:42 -0800

Though many of his pieces were composed in the early seventeenth century, Claudio Monteverdi wrote music to which modern audiences can still relate. His progressive mind led to breakthroughs in compositional techniques, even while the musical materials he worked with gave his compositions an ancient feel, including melodies based in the austere sounding scales of the Medieval and Renaissance eras. He unified music and drama in Orfeo (perhaps the first fully successful Opera): slight chromatic dips or inflections perfectly accentuated the meaning of the text. From sacred music written for the church to sublime madrigals composed for virtuoso singers, all Monteverdi's work has an affecting purity. - Jessy Terry

Giovanni da Palestrina

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 09:01:12 -0700

With works that are often regarded as the perfect models of Renaissance polyphony, Italian composer Giovanni da Palestrina had his first major appointment as the organist of San Agapito, Palestrina. After the election of Pope Julius III, he was appointed maestro di cappella of the Cappella Giulia in Rome, where he wrote his first works. Well-regarded in Rome's musical society, he shuffled through posts at two of Rome's greatest churches, St. John Lateran (1555-'60) and San Maria Maggiore (1561-'66). During the 1560s and 1570s Palestrina's fame and influence was bolstered by the wide distribution of his published works. His most famous mass, Missa Papae Marcelli, is said to have been composed to satisfy the requirements for musical cogency and textual intelligibility during the Counter-Reformation. After marrying his second wife, a wealthy fur merchant's widow, he enjoyed his most productive years at the end of his life free from financial concern. He died in Rome in 1594. A prolific composer of masses, motets and sundry sacred works, he assimilated and refined his predecessors' polyphonic techniques to produce a "seamless" texture based on balanced voices and a sense of nobility and restraint that made an unquestionable influence on Renaissance music. - Nate Cavalieri

Giuseppe Giuliano

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 13:02:42 -0800

Sequentia

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:55:17 -0700

Salvatore Accardo

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 16:49:25 -0800

Slovak National Symphony Orchestra

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 13:08:13 -0700

Gaspar Sanz

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:14:14 -0800

Josquin des Pres

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:10:15 -0700

Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo De Silos

Fri, 29 May 2009 09:34:35 -0700

William Byrd

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 16:49:15 -0800

William Byrd and Thomas Tallis were the first two composers of note in England. They worked together at the Chapel Royal in London and were the only musicians with a license to publish music in England in the sixteenth century. Byrd's adventurous polyphony was harmonically and rhythmically progressive. - Henry B.

Michiru Yamane

Fri, 29 May 2009 09:35:17 -0700

Anonymous (Classical)

Wed, 2 Dec 2009 11:07:13 -0800

Amy Dorfman

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 06:25:44 -0700

Fiona Pears

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:43:12 -0700

Don Carlo Gesualdo

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:35:32 -0700

Born in Naples in 1561, Don Carlo Gesualdo is an Italian composer, nobleman and amateur musician, highly notorious for murdering his first wife and her lover. After catching them in bed together he brutally stabbed both and hauled the bodies out for everyone in the palace to see -- a brutal crime unpunishable at the time due to his nobility. Though the transgression is probably what makes him most famous, his intensely expressive madrigals, which employed chromaticism not heard again for nearly 300 years, are also remarkable. Many of the pieces in his six books of madrigals, written between 1594-1611, and his three collections of sacred music, written between 1603-1611, use unexpected harmonies, dissonances, key changes, and highly expressive settings of text. Gesualdo died in isolation, at his castle Gesualdo in Avellino, buried in the church of the Gesu Nuovo, in Naples. The church was nearly destroyed by an earthquake in 1688 and when it was rebuilt Gesualdo's tomb was covered by pavement. - Nate Cavalieri

Ghent Chorus of Collegium Vocale

Sat, 2 May 2009 10:10:29 -0700

Johannes Ockeghem

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 09:06:36 -0700

(born: c.1410; died: ?Tours, 6 Feb 1497).
Franco-Flemish composer. The earliest reference to him as a singer shows that he was a vicaire-chanteur at Notre Dame, Antwerp, for a year from 24 June 1443. His déploration on Binchois' death (1460) suggests a connection with the Burgundian ducal chapel where Busnois and Dufay worked. He entered the service of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon, in Moulins in the mid-1440s and was a member of the chapel in 1446-8. In the year ending 30 September 1453 he is cited in the French court archives 'nouveau en 1451'. This service continued during Louis XI's reign, though he held other offices, including a canonry at Notre Dame, Paris (1463-70). In 1470 he visited Spain, in 1484 Bruges and Dammes. After Louis death he remained premier chapelain and was still on the payroll in 1488. He enjoyed an enviable personal and professional reputation.
His most imposing works are his mass settings. Several are based on pre-existing material, sacred or secular. One of the earliest is probably the Missa 'Caput' which states the cantus firmus in the lowest voice, but in other (probably later) works, such as the Missa 'De plus en plus', he varied the treatment of the cantus firmus, assimilating it increasingly to the rhythmic and melodic character of the other voices; his two incomplete mass cycles are based on late chansons of his own, and his polyphonic Requiem is the earliest known setting. Others of his masses, including the Missa prolationum and the Missa 'Mi-mi', are freely composed. The former is perhaps the most extraordinary contrapuntal achievement of the 15th century, with its simultaneous use of all four prolations in complex canonic combinations, while the other clearly shows his own characteristic style, with its variations in mensuration, texture and sonority. His motets display even greater inventiveness, combining homophonic textures, skilful cantus firmus treatments, sweeping melodic lines, energetic rhythmic figures and frequent imitation. Most of his chansons use traditional formes fixes and feature trebledominated textures, though some are canonic and occasionally anticipate early 16th-century chanson style. The level of contrapuntal skill and artistic excellence of his music laid a foundation for the achievements of Josquin's generation.

Geoff Love

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:14:13 -0700

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:14:27 -0700

Gerard Schwarz

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:21:20 -0700

Gregorio Allegri

Sat, 5 Sep 2009 11:20:04 -0700

Anthony Rolfe Johnson

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 10:22:19 -0700

Michel Beroff

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:58:54 -0700

Francisco Araiza

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:14:26 -0700

Michael Praetorius

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:13:45 -0800

Medici String Quartet

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:03:30 -0700

Giovanni Gabrieli

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:06:46 -0700

Gabrieli, Giovanni (b. Venice, c. 1553-6; d. there, Aug 1612).
Italian composer, nephew of Andrea Gabrieli. Like his uncle, with whom he studied, he worked briefly at the Munich court (c. 1575-8) and in 1585 he became organist of St Mark's, Venice, and of the confraternity of S Rocco, posts he held for the rest of his life. After Andrea's death, he edited many of his works for publication. His own fame and influence were widespread and crucial, notably in northern Europe - Schetz was among his many pupils - and he represents the highest point of the High Renaissance Venetian school. He composed motets and mass movements (Symphoniae sacrae, 1597, 1615, MSS), instrumental ensemble music (1597, 1615, MSS) and organ works (1593, MSS), as well as a few madrigals (1587 and anthologies). Much of his sacred ceremonial music exploits the architecture of St Mark's, using contrasting groups of singers and players to create cori spezzati effects, but often in a more intense and dissonant style than his uncle's. His music for wind ensemble is lively and colourful and includes up-to-date concertato writing; the organ ricercares are in a well-developed and specific keyboard style. - MUZE

Renata Scotto

Sat, 7 Nov 2009 11:26:27 -0800

Sigiswald Kuijken

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:55:37 -0700

Lucia Popp

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:38:20 -0800

The Glyndebourne Chorus

Fri, 4 Sep 2009 10:46:46 -0700

Augustin Dumay

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:25:56 -0700

Santiago de Murcia

Fri, 2 Oct 2009 11:02:18 -0700

Gianna Rolandi

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:51:27 -0700

Yefim Bronfman

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:13:27 -0700

Israela Margalit

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:13:34 -0700

Ileana Cotrubas

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 10:22:10 -0700

Wiener Streichsextett

Sat, 5 Sep 2009 11:20:39 -0700

Sonia Maurer

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:09:03 -0700

Tito Gobbi

Sat, 7 Nov 2009 11:26:28 -0800

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

Sun, 1 Nov 2009 12:39:40 -0800

London Philharmonic Orchestra Wind Ensemble

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:51:30 -0700

St Louis Symphony Orchestra

Wed, 6 May 2009 09:32:55 -0700

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 09:56:07 -0700

Robert Johnson (Classical)

Fri, 2 Oct 2009 11:02:17 -0700

Marcus Henderson

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 06:25:07 -0700

Neil Black

Sun, 31 May 2009 08:27:06 -0700

Orlande de Lassus

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:13:37 -0700

( born: Mons, ?1530 or 1532; died: Munich, 14 June 1594).
Franco-Flemish composer. He served Ferrante Gonzaga of Mantua from c.1544, accompanying him to Sicily and Milan (1546-9). He worked for Constantino Castrioto in Naples, where he probably began to compose, then moved to Rome to join the Archbishop of Florence's household, becoming maestro di cappella of St John Lateran in 1553. After returning north, to Mons and Antwerp, where early works were published (1555-6), he joined the court chapel of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in Munich as a singer (1556). He married in 1558. Although a Catholic, he took over the court chapel in 1563 and served the duke and his heir, Wilhelm V, for over 30 years, until his death. In this post he consolidated his position by having many works published and travelling frequently (notably to Vienna and Italy, 1574-9), establishing an international reputation. The pope made him a Knight of the Golden Spur in 1574.
One of the most prolific and versatile of 16th-century composers, Lassus wrote over 2000 works in almost every current genre, including masses, motets, psalms, hymns, responsorial Passions and secular pieces in Italian, French and German. Most of his masses are parody masses based on motets, chansons or madrigals by himself or others; the large number of Magnificats is unusual. His motets include didactic pieces, ceremonial works for special occasions, settings of classical texts (some secular, e.g. Prophetiae Sibyllarum, 1600), liturgical items (offertories, antiphons, psalms, e.g. Psalmi…poenitentiales, 1584) and private devotional pieces. He issued five large volumes of sacred music as Patrocinium musices (1573-6), and after his death his sons assembled another (Magnum opus musicum, 1604).
Admired in their day for their beauty, technical perfection and rhetorical power, the motets combine the features of several national styles - expressive Italian melody, elegant French text-setting and solid northern polyphony - enhanced by Lassus's imaginative responses to the texts. His secular works reveal a cosmopolitan with varied tastes. The madrigals range from lightweight villanellas (Matona mia cara) to intensely expressive sonnets (Occhi, piangete); the chansons include 'patter' songs and reflective, motet-like works; and among the German lieder are sacred hymns and psalms, delicate love-songs and raucous drinking-songs. This versatility and wide expressive range place him among the most significant figures of the Renaissance.
Lassus's sons Ferdinand (c. 1560-1609) and Rudolph (c. 1563-1625) also served the Bavarian court chapel and assembled many of their father's works for publication. Ferdinand succeeded to his father's post at court; Rudolph composed much sacred music.