Critic or Journalist

(b Barcelona, March 27, 1862; d Barcelona, March 31, 1908). Spanish composer, folklorist and music critic. He studied composition with Antonio Nicolau and Anselmo Barba and piano with C.G. Vidiella in Barcelona and was music critic for various journals there, including La renaixensa, L'avenç and, from 1905 to 1908, El poble català. He published his Collecció de 6 melodies per a cant i piano and five Cansons per cant i piano (both Barcelona, 1887), which are settings of poems by Angel Guimerá, Francisco Matheu y Fornells, Apeles Mestres and Jacinto Verdaguer. He illustrated the latter volume himself, and some of his work was displayed at an exhibition of the Sociedad de Acuarelistas in Barcelona. A distinguished folklorist as well as a sensitive composer and skilful melodist, he collected Catalan folksongs and published arrangements of 23 of these in Cansons populars catalanas (Barcelona, 1891). He used native rhythms and melodies in his songs and piano pieces (among them ...

(b Pont-de-Vaux, Ain, April 24, 1633; d Paris, May 4, 1691). French lawyer and man of letters. He is often confused with his great-grandson, Charles-Emmanuel Borjon de Scellery (c1715–95). He was active in the law courts of both Dijon and Paris and is known chiefly for his writings on jurisprudence. He also composed poetry (noëls ‘en patois bressan’), published after his death and later set to music, and is credited with Traité de la musette, avec une nouvelle méthode, pour apprendre de soy-mesme à jouer de cet instrument facilement, et en peu de temps (Lyons, 1672, 2/1678/R), which describes an instrument in vogue throughout France at the time and includes examples of music collected by the author.

(b Avignon, France, May 18, 1854; d Versailles, France, May 20, 1933). Organist, composer, collector, and writer on musical instruments. Born a count into an old Norman family, he studied organ with Gigout in Paris in the late 1880s and was admitted to the Académie des Sciences Morales, des Lettres et des Arts de Versailles in 1891. Beginning in 1897, de Bricqueville played the organ in the chapel of the palace of Versailles for about 20 years. Writing as a music critic, he enthusiastically promoted Wagner but also appreciated earlier French opera. His studies of historical instruments, instrument collecting, and music iconography, while largely superseded by later research, offer valuable insight to the state of scholarship at the turn of the 20th century. He described his private collection of instruments (mainly European of the preceding three centuries) in three published catalogues, the last being Catalogue sommaire de la collection d’instruments de musique anciens formée par le Cte de Bricqueville...

(b Bassano del Grappa, nr Vicenza, July 12, 1848; d Bassano del Grappa, June 23, 1916). Italian writer on music. After graduating in law from the University of Padua (1871), he studied the cello, flute and guitar; he also became an outstanding performer on the lute, which led him to investigate the structure, tuning and repertory of that instrument.

Chilesotti owned a large collection of 16th- and 17th-century tablatures, both printed and manuscript, and was a pioneer in transcribing lute music. His methods were interpretative, in that he picked out the implied polyphony in the tablature and retained the single staff in transcription, using a treble clef. In order for the music to be performed on the guitar he employed a false tuning in E rather than the original tuning in G or A. Many scholars were critical of these choices, finding the transcriptions too guitar-like. Chilesotti’s two principal publications, the ...

[Yuly Dmitrevich]

(b Berdyansk, Crimea, 4/April 16, 1868; d Tel-Aviv, Feb 11, 1927). Russian composer, critic, lexicographer and folklorist. He studied law at Kharkov University but soon turned to music, studying theory and composition with Taneyev and Ippolitov-Ivanov at the Moscow Conservatory (1893–7). From 1897 to 1919 he worked as a music critic for the newspaper Russkiye vedomosti. In 1901 his translation of Riemann’s Lexikon into Russian with newly written sections on Russian music was published in Moscow. Although an early opera, Esther, was performed in 1894, his work as a critic overshadowed that as a composer. Under the influence of the Russian nationalist music critic Vladimir Stasov, however, he turned his attention to Jewish folklore, collecting, arranging, performing and publishing the songs of eastern European Jews. In 1909 his first album of ten Jewish folksongs appeared in Moscow; a second volume followed later in the same year. Engel continued to promote his new interest with public lectures and a series of articles in ...

(b Sorochintsï, Poltava province, 19/March 31, 1809; d Moscow, 21 Feb/March 4, 1852). Russian novelist and dramatist. Born into an impoverished gentry family in the Ukraine, where he spent his childhood and youth, he received a rather meagre education. He went to St Petersburg in 1828 and began to make his name with the stories in Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka (1831–2); his introduction to Zhukovsky and Pushkin also broadened his outlook. All his early stories, including Taras Bul′ba (1835), have Ukrainian settings, but with Nevskiy prospekt (1835) and The Diary of a Madman (1835) he began to write about St Petersburg. His satirical comedy The Inspector-General (1836) was not only a landmark in the history of the theatre, but also in the history of Russian social attitudes. The short story The Overcoat...

(d Glasgow, c1771). ?Scottish writer on the theory of music. From 1765 to 1770 he was associated with the University of Glasgow, for the chapel of which he compiled A Collection of Church-Music (Glasgow, 1766). In the same year he published by subscription the first part of a two-part treatise, the two parts together appearing as An Essay Towards a Rational System of Music (Glasgow, 1770, 2/1807). Although Holden summarised current knowledge about sound, including harmonic theory, sound perception, the co-vibration of partials and difference tones, he derived his principles for the practice of music from the ‘natural’ propensities of the human mind, consciousness and common sense. His Essay is thus the first systematic treatise on music founded upon Scottish commonsense philosophy.

(Ger.: ‘song circle’)

A circle or club of people dedicated to the cultivation of popular song. Examples are the ‘Mittwochskränzchen’ (‘Cour d’amour’) that met during the early 1800s in Goethe’s Weimar home, the Stägemann circle in Berlin, 1815–18, that included the young poet Wilhelm Müller, the Dresden Liederkreis (‘Dichtertee’), c 1804–24, in which Weber met the poet Kind, and the ‘Schubertianer’ or friends of Schubert in Vienna, who held regular meetings during the 1820s. Liederkreis activities were varied, recreational as well as creative. They included singing simple group songs, playing charades and other games with songs, and listening to song performances staged with costumes, ‘attitudes’ or elaborate ‘living pictures’. To supply the demand parody texts were often set to song melodies from, for example, Das Mildheimische Liederbuch (ed. R.Z. Becker, 1799, 4/1810); either the melodies were rearranged or the verse newly set. Collections that reflected the work of a Liederkreis were titled accordingly, like J.H.C. Bornhardt’s ...

( b Cartagena, Oct 24, 1863; d St Blasien, Baden, Feb 27, 1929). Spanish composer, folklorist and music critic . His father was a captain of a marine infantry battalion, and he began his musical training under a military bandsman in his father's regiment. In the early 1880s, while stationed in Madrid as a second lieutenant, he began to study harmony, counterpoint, fugue and composition with Ruperto Chapí, remaining his sole disciple until Chapí's death in 1909. During these years he devoted most of his spare time to composition. He was a member of the Sociedad Filarmónica Madrileña (1901–11) and a founder-member of La Asociación Wagneriana Madrileña (inaugurated 4 May 1911). He was music critic for the periodical El mundo (1907–15) and also contributed articles to ABC. He also conducted numerous concerts of the Sociedad de Conciertos, Madrid, and the S Cecilia choral society. In ...

(b Paris, July 21, 1804; d Houilles, nr Paris, Dec 25, 1893). French writer and politician. The son of a porcelain manufacturer, Schoelcher first made his mark as an art critic, but it was during a voyage to the Caribbean and the southern USA in 1829–30 that he found his true calling, when he encountered slavery for the first time. From then on, Schoelcher was a tireless champion for the slaves of the French territories, publishing numerous pamphlets and books arguing for the abolition of involuntary servitude. Appointed Under-Secretary of State in 1848, he wrote, and succeeded in passing, the law abolishing slavery in the French colonies. Schoelcher opposed the coup d'état of December 1851 and was exiled. He spent the next 18 years in England, where his fascination with Handel was born. In August 1870 he returned to France; in 1871 he was elected to the National Assembly, where he served until being voted a senator for life in ...

(b Kharkiv, 14/Sept 26, 1832; d Odessa, 30 March/April 11, 1887). Ukrainian composer, critic and folksong collector. His early interest in science and music was encouraged by his family, for his father was a professor of economic science and his grandfather had been a conductor. Sokal′s′ky originally intended to make a career as a scientist: in 1852 he graduated in natural sciences from Kharkiv University, and gained the degree of Master of Chemistry three years later. He was then a secondary school teacher, before going to New York in 1857 as secretary to the Russian consulate. Returning to Russia in 1859 he turned to journalism, writing (often under the pen name Fagot) articles on science and economics for the Moskovskiye vedomosti, the St Petersburg Golos and the Odessa press; he also wrote often outspoken but perceptive reviews of concerts and new music, edited the ...

(b Voznesensk, Kostroma province, 5/Sept 17, 1838; d Kostroma, 8/Dec 21, 1910). Russian writer on church music . Voznesensky graduated from the Kostroma Seminary in 1860 and from the Moscow Theological Academy in 1864. He served as teacher of chant in the Kostroma Seminary until 1883, when he became an inspector of the Riga Seminary until 1894; he then served as head priest of the cathedral of the Trinity, Kostroma. In the late 1880s and in the 1890s he published several volumes of studies dealing with the different varieties of chant in Russian churches. His works are basically compilations, and eclectic in nature. He did only a minimal amount of original research on the historical evolution of Russian chant, but he was among the first in Russia to investigate the melodic traditions of south-western Russian provenance from the 17th and 18th centuries preserved in Western staff notation. He translated into Russian a treatise of the ‘method’ of the Greco-Slavonic chanting originally written in Latin by Ioan de Castro (Rome, ...

(b Berlin, Aug 1, 1877; d Berlin, Oct 26, 1930). German music collector and critic . After taking a degree at Leipzig University in jurisprudence (1899) and practising as a lawyer for some years, he studied musicology with Fleischer, Klatte, Kretzschmar and Wolf at Berlin (1906–9). Though he published some articles on music history and music bibliography, he was active mainly as a music critic, and became a chairman of the Verband Deutscher Musikkritiker and secretary of the Gesellschaft für Ästhetik. His most conspicuous achievement was the methodical amassing of a music library of manuscripts and printed source material from the Middle Ages to the 20th century and a comprehensive collection of writings about music. After trying unsuccessfully to find a buyer for the whole collection at 650,000 marks, Wolffheim had the library auctioned by the firms of Martin Breslauer and Leo Liepmannssohn of Berlin on ...

(fl 1560–92). Scottish clergyman . He compiled an important set of partbooks, sometimes known as the St Andrews Psalter or ‘Thomas Wode’s Partbooks’, containing Scottish (and other) music of the 16th century. A canon of Lindores Abbey before the Reformation (1560), Wood joined the reformers, settled in St Andrews in 1562, became vicar there in 1575, and is frequently mentioned in Kirk Session Registers until 1592. His duplicate sets of partbooks (EIRE-Dtc, GB-Eu , Lbl , US-Wgu ) contain the 106 four-voice psalm settings by David Peebles (1562–6), canticles by Angus, Kemp and Blackhall (1566–9), and motets, anthems, psalms, songs and instrumental pieces – Scottish, English and continental (copied from 1569 to 1592) – together with illuminating and entertaining comments by Wood on many of the items. Between 1606 and about 1625 further additions to the partbooks were made by other hands.