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pages of Classical Music Composers ! |
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English Language : Classical Music : Composers : Preclassical Era (1600 - 1750) Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) |
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NATIONALITY Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) : Christoph Willibald Gluck was German. IN GENERAL Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) : Gluck's basic effect to the music of his era was the reformation of the opera and the radical change of the relative role of music and all other components that an opera contains. Gluck accomplished this by studying intensively the various European operatic idioms and applying - often in a pressing way - changes to the musical function of the opera as well as in its role as simple-unsophisticated entertainer of the public. Gluck managed to be recognized in a large extent for his work during his lifetime, and his several operas were met with important success. STYLE Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) : Before the effect of the composer, opera had been bottomed in a swamp, where stories without depth were giving the base for operas purposed for audiences without particularly deep musical requirements, with often incohesive points between the various parts of the action and with yodels by singers that sometimes electrified the crowds. Little by little, with patience and insistence, Gluck began to revise this picture, at least as his own work is concerned : with large use of the recitative so that the development of the course of the work is smooth - that is to say no existence of annoying voids in the story - less fanfares and ballets during the performance, more request for musicality and "difficult" orchestral passages so that the action is stressed, with exclusion of the cembalo from the orchestra so that orchestra sounds totally different, as well as much deeper musical meanings in the texts of his singers and also in the score of the orchestra. Thus, Gluck can be rightly considered as the reformer of the opera in his era, while preparing the way for a still better course of the opera in the future. WORKS Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) : Gluck's output is of large extent, having as epicentre - naturally - the opera : 107 operas, among which "Orpheus and Eurydice", "Alkestis", "Iphigenia in Tauris" etc., pantomimes, ballets and some religious works.
Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) Painting created by Joseph Siffried Duplessis in 1775. |
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