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Record company and label. The company was established in 1957 by Doug Dobell (b London, 1918; d Nice, France, 10 July 1987), the owner of a record store in London. The first discs to be released were 10-inch EPs, which were put out in limited quantities. Later the catalogue was expanded to include 12-inch LPs; by the mid-1970s the company had issued more than 50 albums, mostly of traditional and mainstream jazz. The catalogue included recordings made by such English musicians as Tubby Hayes, Bruce Turner, Dick Morrissey, Keith Smith, Kenny Baker, and Tony Coe and items by visiting Americans, among them Bud Freeman, Eddie Miller, Buck Clayton, Albert Nicholas, and George Lewis (i). In 1962 the company sponsored and issued the results of Jack McVea’s first session as a leader in 15 years. Much of the repertory was produced by Dobell, who, as a pianist himself, was responsible for recording albums by Dick Wellstood, Dill Jones, Brian Lemon, Don Ewell, Dick Katz, Joe Turner (i), and Ralph Sutton. In addition 77 issued some albums first put out by Delmark and other small American labels....

Record company and label. It was established in 1975 by Trevor Watts and John Stevens and released only three recordings, two by the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and one by the group Amalgam.

American record company. It was founded in Los Angeles in 1962 by the former US army trumpeter Herb Alpert and the promoter-producer Jerry Moss. For first few years, A&M depended largely on revenues from Alpert's own recordings. His easy-listening instrumental music recorded with the Tijuana brass had sold over 20 million copies by 1968, when the company's turnover was $50 million. In 1966 A&M also scored a big success with Sergio Mendes and the Sandpipers' single, Guantanamera. Moss, however, was keen to broaden the appeal of A&M, and began recording such West Coast artists as Captain Beefheart and Dr John. In 1969 the label opened its first British office and by the early 1970s A&M also signed American recording deals with such artists as Procol Harum, The Move, Joe Cocker, Jimmy Cliff and Cat Stevens.

By the 1970s A&M were established as the most successful independent record label in the USA. In ...

Firm of music publishers. It was founded in New Haven in 1962 by Gary J.N. Aamodt and Clyde Rykken to provide modern critical editions of music of historical interest and artistic integrity for scholars, students, and performers of Western art music. The “Recent Researches” series were launched in 1964 with volumes of music from the Renaissance and Baroque periods; it has since expanded to span the history of Western music. Another series is dedicated to oral traditions in music. The series Recent Researches in American Music was initiated in 1977 in collaboration with the Institute for Studies in American Music. In 1968 the firm moved to Madison, Wisconsin, and the same year took over the production and distribution of the Yale University Collegium Musicum series of historical editions. Starting in 1988, the company has served as publisher for Music of the United States of America (MUSA), a set of scholarly editions, in collaboration with the American Musicological Society and with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Other projects have included A-R Special Publications (for performers) and a three book series co-published with the Music Library Assocation....

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Record company. Founded in 1955 in New York by American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters, it was coeval with the birth of rock and roll, although a couple of years passed before the label produced hits in that genre, with such songs as Danny and the Juniors’ “At the Hop” (1957) and “Rock and roll is here to stay” (1958). It achieved sustained success with less boisterous pop music, particularly the work of Paul Anka (“Diana,” “Put your head on my shoulder,” and “Puppy Love”). The rest of the company’s output comprised children’s, spoken word, ethnic, jazz, and rhythm-and-blues records.

From the late 1950s the label attracted many successful African-American artists, including Fats Domino and B.B. King; after signing in 1959 Ray Charles scored his first number one pop single in 1960 with “Georgia on my Mind” and his first number one album in 1962 with Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music...

Record company. Brothers Edward and Leo Messner founded the company as Philo Records in 1945 and changed the name to Aladdin the next year. Aladdin’s records, which appeared on the Aladdin label and over a half-dozen subsidiaries, were among the most popular “race” (later rhythm-and-blues) records of the time, and represented many facets of African American popular music following World War II. Based in Los Angeles, the company released upbeat boogie by Amos Milburn, such as the 1948 hit “Chicken-Shack Boogie,” and group vocal music by artists like the Five Keys. Blues also appeared on Aladdin by artists such as Charles Brown and Lightnin’ Hopkins. Jazz saxophonist Lester Young also recorded extensively for Aladdin during the 1950s. Several songs released on Aladdin foreshadowed the development of rock and roll, such as Shirley and Lee’s 1956 classic “Let the Good Times Roll.” In 1962, the company was sold to Lew Chudd’s Imperial Records....

Australian firm of publishers. It was started about 1890 in Sydney when Jacques Albert (b Fribourg, 1850; d at sea, 1914) began importing violins. In 1894 he was joined by his son Michel François [Frank] (1874–1962), who became sole proprietor in 1896. He continued to trade as J. Albert & Son and in the early 1900s negotiated Australian publishing rights with overseas music houses for both the American Annuals and Sixpenny Pops series. The firm extended its merchandise to orchestral and brass band instruments but sold this stock in 1932 to Allan’s in Melbourne. Shortly afterwards, J. Albert & Son Pty Ltd was formed to control the music publishing interests of the family. About 1970 the firm began the Albert Edition catalogue of predominantly Australian classical compositions, which now exceeds 500 titles and includes works by Ross Edwards, Margaret Sutherland, Wesley-Smith and Butterley. Alexis François Albert (...

Italian firm of music and general engravers and publishers, music and print sellers. The firm was active in Venice at the sign of the Beata Vergine della Pace on the Rialto from about 1770 to at least 1803. It was founded by the engravers Innocente Alessandri (b Venice, c1740), a pupil of Francesco Bartolozzi, and Pietro Scattaglia. From about 1770, during the years of publication of their joint magnum opus, Animali quadrupedi (Venice, Carlo Palese, 1771–5, illustrated with 200 plates designed, engraved and hand-coloured by themselves), they also worked as engravers and selling agents for the music publisher Luigi Marescalchi; on at least one title-page they are also described as his printers, which may have been another of their regular responsibilities. Together with Marescalchi they were associated with the revival of music publishing in Italy after 70 years of almost total inactivity. The fact that their names appear on almost all title-pages of Marescalchi’s Venice editions has often led cataloguers and bibliographers to ascribe to them publications that should properly be regarded as Marescalchi’s, resulting in numerous errors in RISM, the ...

(b Milan, 29 June–6 Aug 1647; d Milan, Sept 2, 1712). Italian composer and tenor. His family was originally from Centonara, in the province of Novara, where the surname Chiapetta (Chiappetta, Chiappetti, Ciapeta, Ciapetta) was so common that ‘de Alessandri’ was used to identify the branch to which the composer belonged. It was because of these origins that his contemporary L.A. Cotta included him in a list of Novara musicians, describing him as ‘Giulio de Alessandri Chiapetta di Centonara in Riviera di S Giulio’. The documents which refer to him and his compositions use both surnames separately, and so ‘Giulio d’Alessandri’ and the ‘Canon Chiapetta’ have been identified as two different composers. He was ordained priest on 6 April 1669. On 10 December 1676 he was appointed a tenor and vicemaestro di cappella of Milan Cathedral. During this period he collaborated with P.F. Tosi, who worked at Milan Cathedral from ...

(b ?Rome, Nov 24, 1747; d Casinalbo, nr Modena, Aug 15, 1798). Italian composer. According to Manferrari, he was born at S Damaso, near Modena. He studied in Naples and had his first large work, the oratorio Il Tobia, performed in Rome in 1765. Having gained recognition as a harpsichordist and conductor in Turin and in Paris at the Concert Spirituel, he visited Verona and Venice to prepare his first operas, Ezio and Il matrimonio per concorso, for Carnival 1767. At about this time he married the buffa singer Maria Lavinia Guadagni (b Lodi, 21 Nov 1735; d Padua, c1790), sister of the celebrated castrato Gaetano Guadagni; both were employed by the King's Theatre, London, for which Alessandri composed the comic operas La moglie fedele (1768) and Il re alla caccia (1769). Although he must have visited Vienna for the première of his opera ...

( b Rome, Jan 25, 1960). Italian harpsichordist, organist and conductor . Largely self-taught, he conducted his first major concert, of Cavalli's Calisto, in Rome in 1985, with a group of singers that were to form the nucleus of a permanent ensemble, Concerto Italiano. The ensemble's first recording, of Monteverdi's fourth book of madrigals, was widely acclaimed for its passion and colour, winning a Gramophone award in 1994; subsequent recordings have included madrigals by Monteverdi, Marenzio and Frescobaldi, and vocal works by Lassus. In 1995 Alessandrini founded the complementary Concerto Italiano instrumental ensemble, with whom he has performed and recorded concertos by Bach and Vivaldi, and made an imaginative recording of Bach's Art of Fugue. His other recordings include Bach's sonatas for violin and harpsichord, vocal works by Vivaldi, Alessandro Scarlatti and Pergolesi, and Handel's Roman oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno. With Concerto Italiano he has appeared at major concert halls and festivals throughout Europe. In ...

(b St Gall, March 17, 1911; d Lausanne, March 17, 1959). Swiss composer, pianist and organist. He began his music studies in Zürich in 1932, for the most part teaching himself; from 1934 to 1937 he studied in Paris with Dupré, Paul Roës and Nadia Boulanger, and returned to Switzerland in 1940. Settling in Lausanne, he worked as a concert pianist, composer, music critic and broadcaster. His eclectic style took elements from the varied musical currents of the time, but he retained a basis of sonata form and tonal harmony. He favoured driving rhythms and his writing is complex and compact. (L. Marretta-Schär: Raffaele d’Alessandro: Leben und Werk, Winterthur, 1979)

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German family firm of wind instrument makers. The business, located in Mainz, was established in 1782 by Franz Ambros Alexander (b Miltenberg, July 22, 1753; d Mainz, Dec 1, 1802), who was described in a Mainz Cathedral report of the same year as a wood-turner and wind instrument maker. Portraits depict Franz Ambros and his son Philipp (1787–1864) with clarinets. After his death, Alexander's business was continued by his widow and two of his sons, Claudius (1783–1816) and Philipp, later joined by a third, Kaspar Anton (1803–72). Under the direction of Philipp and Kaspar Anton the firm became known as Gebrüder Alexander, the name it still bears. Kaspar Anton's two sons Franz Anton (1838–1926) and Georg Philip (i) (1849–97) became the third generation to direct the company. Woodwind instruments, mainly for military use, were the firm's main products until the mid-19th century. By that time, however, band instrumentation had become more brass orientated; after Philipp's death in ...

(b Meadow, TN, Oct 24, 1867; d Birmingham, England, Oct 13, 1920). American revivalist and publisher. He attended Maryville College, Tennessee, and the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago; in 1893 he assisted Moody in his revival at the World’s Colombian Exposition in Chicago. From 1908 he toured with J. Wilbur Champman through the USA, Great Britain, Australia and missionary areas of East Asia. He was noted for his skill in inspiring a congregation to sing enthusiastically and in conducting large choirs. He published a number of revival songbooks and owned the copyrights of several popular gospel hymns, such as Charles H. Gabriel’s ...

(b Breslau [now Wrocław], June 8, 1924; d Aug 7, 2005). Chilean composer and educator of German origin. She emigrated to Chile in 1939 and adopted Chilean nationality in 1951. She studied with Frè Focke (1949–53) in Chile and with René Leibowitz and Olivier Messiaen in France in 1954. Through several significant educational projects she contributed to a better public understanding of contemporary music in Chile; she also promoted Chilean musical culture in Europe. Her works won international prizes and she received commissions from patrons and organizations in Europe and the USA. Her music, modernist in style and sometimes using sounds generated by unconventional means, includes two ballets, Las tres caras de la luna (1966) and … a false alarm on the nightbell once answered cannot be made good, no ever (1977–8), and several works for full orchestra, including Cinco epigramas (...

[Der wilde Alexander]

(fl mid- to late 13th century). German poet-composer. He is not attested in official documents or mentioned in contemporary literature. The only biographical clues are certain allusions in his poetry to historical events between 1285 and 1288 but more recent study shows additional allusions to events from 1247 to 1252. In two manuscripts he is named ‘der wilde Alexander’, perhaps because of his unusual style or his restless itinerant life, and in the Jena manuscript he is called ‘Meister Alexander’. But the Meistersinger did not regard him as one of the 12 masters.

Alexander was one of the most important Minnesinger and composers of Sprüche (see Spruch) after the time of Walther von der Vogelweide. In the surviving sources he is represented mainly by 24 Spruch strophes (in only one Ton), but also by two Minnelieder and one Leich. The principal themes of his Spruch...

(b Ilimbav, Sibiu, May 14, 1914; d Bucharest, April 20, 1997). Romanian ethnomusicologist. He studied at the Bucharest Royal Academy of Music (1931–6) and became Brăiloiu's closest collaborator, working with him at the folklore archive of the Society of Romanian Composers (1935–49); he continued his research appointment there when the archive was incorporated in the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore (1949), undertaking several field studies and collecting numerous examples of Romanian folksong, some of which have been recorded. He was Brăiloiu's successor in the folklore department of the Royal Academy of Music (1943–8), where he held various posts before becoming professor (1954–9). In 1956 he did research in China and from 1965 to 1967 he was the folklore expert of the Ministry of Culture of the United Arab Republic in Cairo, where he made recordings of Egyptian and Nubian folksong. In ...

(b Constantinople, 1881; d Chamonix, July 27, 1954). Armenian cellist. He studied with Grützmacher and while a student played chamber music with Brahms and Joachim. At the age of 17 he appeared as the soloist in Strauss's Don Quixote with the composer conducting and scored a triumph; he was then invited to play concertos with Nikisch and Mahler. In 1901 he settled in Paris, where Casals saw some of his fingerings and recognized that Alexanian shared his own, then revolutionary, ideas on technique and interpretation. Many years' collaboration followed, leading to the publication in 1922 of their joint treatise Traité théorique et pratique du violoncelle and in 1929 of Alexanian's analytical edition of the solo cello suites of Bach. Alexanian was professor of the Casals class at the Ecole Normale de Musique from 1921 to 1937, when he left for the USA. His classes in Paris, Baltimore and New York attracted artists and students from all over the world, and his influence extended far beyond his own pupils (among them Maurice Eisenberg and Antonio Janigro) to such cellists as Feuermann, Cassadó, Piatigorsky and Fournier. He was also a conductor of distinction....

(fl c1400). English composer. He was the composer of two works in the Old Hall Manuscript. One is a Gloria (no.8), ascribed to ‘Aleyn’ without initial; it is a homorhythmic setting in score, notable for its sprightly text declamation. The other piece, also in score, is an erased descant setting of Sarum Agnus Dei no.3 (Old Hall, no.128), where the remains of the ascription appears to read ‘W. Aleyn’ (not ‘W. Typp’, as reported in D. Fallows: ...

(b Posillipo, Naples, March 8, 1875; d San Remo, Oct 27, 1954). Italian composer. After studying the piano privately with Alessandro Longo, and harmony and composition with Camillo de Nardis and Serrao at the Conservatorio di S Pietro a Majella, Naples, he moved in 1895 to Leipzig, where he completed his composition studies with Jadassohn. In 1896 he went to Berlin and launched himself as a pianist, though he did not continue this activity systematically for long: in later life he appeared in public only as a song accompanist and chamber music player, mainly in his own works. From 1899 until about 1905 he was based in Paris, but travelled as far afield as Russia. He then settled in Milan, moving in 1914 to San Remo, which remained at least his summer home for the rest of his life. From 1916 he taught composition at the Liceo Musicale, Bologna, which he directed from ...