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Tragédie en musique in five acts by Jean-Philippe Rameau to a libretto by (Jean-)Louis de Cahusac; Paris, Opéra, 5 December 1749.

* – original version only † – 1756 version only

Though produced with more than usual magnificence and a cast including Jélyotte (Zoroastre), Chassé (Abramane) and Fel (Amélite), Zoroastre had initially only limited success. Despite 25 performances it proved far less popular than Mondonville’s Le carnaval du Parnasse, staged during the same period. By May 1752 Rameau and Cahusac had begun an extensive reworking affecting the whole character of the work. This version, first given on 19 January 1756, was much more successful. It was revived with minor modifications on 26 January 1770 to inaugurate the Opéra’s Palais Royal theatre, rebuilt after the fire of 1763. The earlier version was staged at Dresden on 17 January 1752 in an Italian translation by Casanova, music by Johann Adam replacing most of Rameau’s.

As Cahusac pointed out, ...

(b Buenos Aires, Nov 11, 1935; d Buenos Aires, Aug 25, 1999). Argentine and Italian composer and conductor. He studied in Buenos Aires at the Municipal Conservatory (1947–51), composition with Gilardi at the National Conservatory (1952–7) and conducting with Mariano Drago at the National University of La Plata (1957–65). From 1965–7 he studied in Italy, at the Accademia di S Cecilia, Rome (composition with Petrassi) and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Siena (conducting with Franco Ferrara).

His career as a conductor began in Buenos Aires in 1955. He conducted all the leading Argentine orchestras and toured the American continent and occasionally Europe. He was principal conductor of the National SO (1968–9; 1979–83; 1992) and of the Rosario SO (1977–90) and has appeared frequently at the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, conducting both operas and concerts.

He composed music in many genres, including film music. His opera ...

(b Oradea, April 4, 1932). Romanian composer, active in Germany. A lyricist and exquisite colourist, he preferred small and well-refined works. His musical language is close to the impressionist and postimpressionist one, especially in his first years of composition. In recent years he has focused more on film music.

Zorzor began to learn the piano at the age of seven. He studied with Mihail Andricu, Martian Negrea, Tudor Ciortea, and Tiberiu Olah at the Bucharest Conservatory (now UNMB-National Music University of Bucharest). The imprisonment of his father by the communist regime in 1950 intimidated him and deliberately marginalized him for many years. After graduation in 1961, he worked as a proofreader for the Composers’ Union until 1965 and taught piano at the Arts Lyceum no.1. He is the author of some musical studies and articles printed in the journal Muzica, and he also collaborated on scripts for transmissions on the radio or television....

(b Panopolis [now Ahmīm], Egypt; fl Alexandria, 3rd or 4th century ce). Greco-Egyptian alchemist and philosopher. He composed allegories, and 28 books, in the form of letters, on alchemy; only fragments survive. A musical treatise has been attributed to him, but should be considered anonymous and of the 8th or 9th century, although it represents a compilation of the ideas of alchemists of the 3rd and 4th centuries, among whom Zosimus was the most prominent figure.

Two chapters on music occur in the writings of the Greek alchemists, one in the treatise attributed to Zosimus and the other in an anonymous work, wrongly assumed by Berthelot and Ruelle to be a commentary on it. According to Gombosi, these two chapters together form a single treatise and the attribution to Zosimus is incorrect. It survives complete in I-Vnm 299 and uses a rare technical term, stochos, which in two other manuscripts is replaced by ...

(b Munich, Jan 24, 1869; d Dresden, Dec 11, 1941). German bass . The son of the bass-baritone Ludwig Zottmayr, he studied in Munich and began his career as a concert singer. After stage appearances in Vienna (1906) and in Prague (1908, Neues Deutsches Theater), he was engaged at Dresden from ...

(b Amberg, Bavaria, March 31, 1828; d Weimar, Oct 16, 1899). German bass-baritone . He made his début in 1855 at Nuremberg and was then engaged at Hamburg, Hanover and, in 1865, at the Munich Hofoper, where he remained until 1880. He sang King Mark in the first performance of ...

(b Piraeus, 20 Nov or Dec 31, 1938; d Athens, Aug 18, 2006). Greek tuba player. Giannis Zouganelis grew up in a shack at the outskirts of Piraeus. At his father’s death from tuberculosis, his mother confined Giannis in 1948 in a borstal as a solution to her absolute poverty. Mr. Koskinas from Corfu, a music teacher in the borstal, realized Zouganelis’s talent and introduced him to some famous musicians in Athens. Zouganelis graduated from the Conservatory of Athens in 1967 (with the highest distinctions and prizes). In one of his public appearances that year, he gave the Greek première of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Concerto for tuba. Zouganelis’s velvet sound, the speed of his passages, his extraordinary facility in producing multiphonics, and his inventiveness with the techniques of the tuba made him an ideal performer for avant-garde composers. Starting with Theodore Antoniou’s humorous Six Likes for solo tuba (...

(b Brno, 13 March 1966). Czech composer, pedagogue, and writer on music, son of zdeněk zouhar. He studied composition at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts (JAMU) in Brno (with Miloš Ištván and alois piňos) and musicology at the Masaryk University, followed by post-graduate studies at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz (with Herman Markus Preßl and younghi pagh-paan) and JAMU. He remains an external pedagogue at both these institutions, as well as being active as a researcher at the Palacký University Olomouc (vice-dean starting in 2010), Ostrava University, and Masaryk University.

His brand of postmodernism is surprisingly respectful, using disparate materials in a serious manner, and generally staying with a few pieces of material for the duration of a piece or movement. Often composed in an additive, evolutionary structure, his works are sonically reminiscent of New York post-minimalism, but are very European in their approach to expressivity and emotional intensity. This approach includes both the intense rhythms of ...

(b Kotvrdovice, Feb 8, 1927; d Brno, November 18, 2011). Czech composer. He studied at Brno University (PhD 1962) and was a composition pupil of Theodor Schaefer at the Brno Academy, where he later taught as a professor of composition (1962–95). He was head of the music section of the Brno University Library (1953–61), then an editor for Czech Radio until 1970. In 1997 he became head of composition at the academy in Banská Bystrica (Slovakia) and university professor at Brno. His early works show the influence of Janáček and Martinů; he corresponded with the latter, conducted the world première of his Otvírání studánek (‘The Opening of the Wells’) and in 1966 organized the International Martinů Festival at Brno. Later Zouhar made greater use of modality in his music, with loose rhythm and an emphasis on horizontal relationships, eventually becoming more markedly up to date in his resources. He is the author of ...

A popular music genre of the Creole-speaking Caribbean, particularly Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Lucia and Dominica, but also Haiti and French Guiana. These regions share a similar French and British colonial past and are populated mainly by the descendants of African slaves. The term ‘zouk’ originated in Martinique where it was the common expression initially for a party, and later for dance parties. In the 1980s it became associated with the music of the group Kassav, whose members, from Guadeloupe and Martinique, now mostly live in Paris.

In zouk, musical influences can be so intermingled and disguised in complex arrangements that they are difficult to isolate. A music in perpetual transformation, it is a product of what Guilbault has described as the inter-island cross-fertilization of popular and traditional musics over a long period, part of a network of traditions (including African) with the imprint of many foreign influences. It has absorbed elements from Haitian ...

Hungarian family of church musicians.

(b Zsasskó, County Árva [now Žaškov, Slovakia], Oct 22, 1794; d Eger, April 18, 1866). Schoolmaster and cantor. His musicality greatly influenced the careers of his children. Following his retirement from teaching, he was a violinist in the orchestra of Eger Cathedral.

(b Alsó-Kubin [now Dolný Kubin, Slovakia], April 3, 1819; d Eger, Dec 2, 1887). Conductor and composer, son of (1) András Zsasskovszky. He entered the teacher-training college in Kassa (now Košice) in 1837 and completed his musical studies at the Prague Organ School (1841–2). From 1845 until his death he was the conductor at Eger Cathedral and a music teacher at the local teacher-training college. In 1864 he reorganized the boys' choir of the cathedral in the spirit of the Cecilian movement. His compositions include vespers, responsories and hymns; his Manuale musico-liturgicum (...

(b Berlin, March 29, 1800; d Berlin, July 7, 1876). German bass . He sang in the children’s chorus of the Berlin Hofoper, then in the regular chorus and in 1819 took on small parts there. After an engagement in Budapest, in 1826 he joined the Königstädtisches Theater, Berlin, making his début as Gaveston (...

(b Esztergom, May 12, 1887; d Budapest, June 24, 1936). Hungarian violinist, composer and conductor. He studied the violin with Hubay and composition with Koessler at the Budapest Academy of Music (1901–6). In 1907 he qualified as a teacher, and soon after he changed his name to the more Hungarian-sounding Zsolt. As a composer, he made a highly successful début in 1908 with the première of his Piano Quintet, which was awarded the Erkel Prize. Also in 1908 he accepted the position of leader of the Queen's Hall Orchestra, London. He returned to Hungary two years later, eventually obtaining a teaching post alongside Hubay at the Budapest Academy, but then returned to the London orchestra in 1913. Interned in England at the beginning of World War I, he was repatriated in 1919, and subsequently served as professor of violin at the Budapest Academy. His students included Sándor Végh. Zsolt frequently played viola in the Hubay String Quartet, and in ...

[Bydwealth, Emily]

(b Salinas de Oro, nr Pamplona, Dec 6, 1888; d Hermosillo, Sonora, May 26, 1987). Mexican composer and pianist of Spanish birth. At the age of eight she entered the Pamplona Academia Municipal de Música, studying the piano with Joaquín Maya, and at 15 the Madrid Real Conservatorio, completing her course there in 1906. After her father's death in 1909, she returned to Pamplona; there she was appointed profesor auxiliar de piano at the institution from which she had graduated. Her brother, Nestor, canon archivist of Pamplona Cathedral, officiated at her marriage in 1919 to Dr Joaquin Fuentes Pascal (1887–1976), from whom she separated three years later. She then moved to Paris, studying at the Schola Cantorum with the Bach specialist Blanche Selva, for piano, and composition with Vincent d'Indy. She undertook many concert tours in the following years; in 1931 she played at Town Hall, New York, being billed as a Basque composer. She gave a further concert at the Roerich Museum, New York, later in the same year, which culminated with her eight Basque Folk Dances for two pianos, choreographed by dancers from the Centro Basco Americano of New York City. In New York she met the prominent Mexican acoustician, Augusto Novaro (...

(b Garay, Vizcaya, Feb 13, 1837; d Madrid, Jan 13, 1914). Spanish composer of Basque descent. He was a choirboy in the basilica of Santiago, Bilbao. In 1852 he was appointed organist in the parish church of Santurce, and the following year left Spain for South America, where he was widely acclaimed. He returned in 1866 and began studies in harmony and composition with Hilarión Eslava at the conservatory in Madrid, where he won first prize in both subjects. In 1873 he was the first recipient of a scholarship for the newly created Spanish Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. After his stay in Rome, he returned to Spain through Germany and France, his travels increasing his awareness of European musical trends. In 1875 he was appointed second maestro to the royal chapel in Madrid; three years later he succeeded Eslava as first maestro, and also began teaching at the conservatory. He became a full professor in ...

(Nikolayevich )

(b Moscow, Nov 15, 1936). Russian saxophonist and composer. Self-taught as a musician, he played clarinet in the brass band of the Moscow M. V. Lomonosov State University, where he studied physics (graduating in 1958), and tenor saxophone in the big band of the Tsentral’ny Dom Rabotnikov Iskusstva (Central house of artists; 1954–7). In 1956 he joined the octet Vosmoyrka, at that time the best jazz group in Moscow. Later he was a member of Oleg Lundstrem’s orchestra (1960–65) and the Kontsertny Estradny Orkestr Tsentral’novo TV i Vsesoyuznovo Radio (Concert variety orchestra of central TV and all-union radio). In 1967–8 he led two groups known by the name Crescendo – a quintet in which the vibraphonist Leonid Garin played in 1968 and a quartet. From 1974 to 1979 he worked with the ensemble Melodiya, and in the 1980s he was active as a freelance and wrote film music. In ...

(‘Tooth and Nail’)

Czech rock group. Formed by university students in Prague in 1980 as Plyn (‘Gas’), with Marka Horáková (Míková; b 1959; piano, bass, vocals), Pavla Fediuková (Slabá, Jonssonová; b 1961; guitar, vocals), and Hana Kubíčková (Řepová; b 1961; drums, vocals). All of the members contributed songs in a punk, girl-band, dadaist fashion, playing college clubs and alternative music festivals. After Plyn was blacklisted, they re-formed under a new name as Dybbuk, and were joined by Kateřina Nejepsová (Jirčíková; b 1963) on the flute and saxophone, and Eva Trnková (b 1963) on the lead guitar. Their eponymous EP (Panton, 1987) was released during the communist era. Dybbuk disbanded in 1987.

In 1988 Míková started Zuby nehty with Slabá on the bass, Naďa Bilincová (1959−2011) on the guitar, and Tomáš Míka (b 1960) on the saxophone. In 1991 Dybbuk reunited to record their 1980s material on the album ...

(Danilovych)

(b Goloskovo, Nikolayev province, March 2, 1953). Ukrainian composer. He studied at the Gnesin Music College in Moscow (1969–71), then at Kiev Conservatory (the bayan with V.V. Besfail′ny, composition with Skoryk and conducting with Viktor Gnedash, graduating 1976–9). From 1976 he appeared in various countries as a bayan soloist, and later was president of the Ukrainian Association of Accordion Players (1988–95). He has also taught in the faculty of composition at the Kiev Conservatory (1990–94) of Kiev. He has won prizes in the Helsinki bayan and accordion competition (1975, first prize), the UNESCO composing competition ‘Young people for peace’ (Bydgoszcz, 1985, special prize and second prize), the Ivanna and Mar′yan Kots′ Competition (1991, third prize) and has been awarded the N. Ostrovsky Prize (1986), the N.V. Lysenko Prize (1994), and the title Honoured Representative of the Arts of Ukraine (...

[Zuckermann, Augusta; Zuckermann, Gussie]

(b New York, NY, Dec 25, 1885; d Miami, FL, March 8, 1981). American composer and pianist. She changed her name to Mana Zucca in her teens and became a protégée of the pianist and teacher Alexander Lambert; according to her unpublished memoirs she performed with major orchestras in New York before the age of ten (although this and other claims in her memoirs have not been verified). In 1902 she played an arrangement of Liszt’s 14th Hungarian Rhapsody with Frank Damrosch as part of his concert series for young people at Carnegie Hall. In about 1907 she went to Europe, where she met several prominent musicians and gave successful concert tours with the Spanish violinist Juan Manon. Her lively descriptions of Teresa Carreño, Ferruccio Busoni, Leopold Godowsky, and the composition teacher Max Vogrich were published in American music magazines. She also performed as a singer, notably in Franz Lehár’s ...

(b Waldbröl, April 12, 1803; d Nachrodt, March 23, 1869). German music scholar, critic and poet of Italian and Dutch extraction. He was educated in Mülheim am Rhein and at the Carmelite Gymnasium in Cologne. After three years’ military service he entered the University of Heidelberg in 1826 to study civics and law. There he joined a circle around Thibaut which concerned itself with early church music and the preservation of folksong repertories, and with friends he founded a literary student club. He also interested himself at this time with the German language and its dialects, mythology, archaeology, history, astronomy and natural science. In 1829 he published with E. Baumstark his first folksong collection, Bardale, and in the same year ceased studying for financial reasons. After living in Cologne, Mülheim and Bouzonville, he became tutor to the only son of Prince Gorchakov of Warsaw in 1833. In Warsaw he met Ernemann, Elsner, Vieuxtemps and Henselt and wrote for periodicals, among them Schumann’s ...