Sigmund Romberg

Classical Music Dateline: July 29

Musicals & Operetta Composer

Sigmund Romberg, Hungarian-born American composer, was born July 29, 1887, in Nagy-Kaniza. Romberg wrote film scores and adapted his own work for film.

He became famous by adapting some endearing music of the greatest melodist of all time, Franz Schubert.  Blossom Time, which was produced in the UK as Lilac Time was popular.  His most successful and best known operettas include The Student Prince, The Desert Song and The New Moon. He also styled some of his music to that of Franz Lehar.  He was a contemporary of George Gershwin, with whom he co-write Rosalie.

Early in his career, Romberg was employed by the Shubert brothers  to write music for their musicals and revues. Still for the Shuberts, he also adapted several European operettas for American audiences, including the successful Maytime (1917) and Blossom Time (1921). His three hit operettas of the mid-1920s, named above, are in the style of Viennese operetta, but his other works mostly employ the style of American musicals of their eras. He also composed film scores including "Student Prince" and "The Desert Song." 



Resources:

Sigmund Romberg. en.wikipedia.org.
The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, Edited by Stanley Sadie. New Update Edition. London: Macmillan Publishers, 1994.

Video Credit:

Sigmund Romberg. en.wikipedia.org / Public Domain.  

Mauro Giuliani

Classical Composer Datebook:  July 27



Mauro Giuliani, Italian virtuoso guitarist,cellist, and composer, is born July 27 (1781) in Barletta. He devised a guitar with shorter fingerboard.

As a guitar composer he was very fond of theme and variations, a form extremely popular in Vienna. An example of this ability is his Variations on a Theme of Handel, Op. 107. This popular theme, known as "The Harmonious Blacksmith", appears in the Aria from Handel's Suite no. 5 in E for harpsichord.

Giuliani's achievements as a composer were numerous with with opus number constituting a huge part of the nineteenth-century guitar repertory. He composed excellent pieces for solo guitar, orchestra, Guitar-Violin and Guitar-Flute duos.

Hans Werner Henze

Classical Music / Composers Dateline: July 1

German Composer Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze is born on July 1, 1926, in Gütersloh, Westphalia. His output is marked by literary sensibility and use of orchestral colouration, as in the opera Elegy for Young Lovers (1959-1961), and later The Sea Betrayed (1992). He music is influenced by Schoenberg, however, he is not strictly a 12-note composer.

In recent years, Hans Werner Henze returned to his musical past becoming more lyrical and elaborate, as shown in his reconstruction of Monteverdi's Il ritorno di Ulisse (The Return of Ulysses), staged in Salzburg, Austria in 1985.

Some of Henze's works include nine symphonies, many ballets, and concerti.


Resources:

The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, edited by Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan New updated Edition, 1994.

Teach Yourself Classical Music. London: Hodder, 2000.



Image Credit:

Hans Werner Henze, Wikimedia Commons by Rolf Unterberg, Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive), 1960


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