TAILLEFERRE, GERMAINE (1892–1983)

Nicolas Horvath began his music studies at Monaco’s Académie de Musique et de Théâtre Prince Rainier III and soon began to make an impression on a number of artists who would become his mentors. Aged 16 he caught the attention of the American conductor Lawrence Foster before coming to the notice of several distinguished international pianists, including Liszt specialist Leslie Howard. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including First Prize at both the Scriabin and the Luigi Nono International Competitions. He has become noted for hosting concerts of unusual length, sometimes lasting over twelve hours, such as the overnight performance of the complete piano music of Erik Satie at the Paris Philharmonie before a cumulative audience of 14,000 people. In 2019 he performed alongside Philip Glass at the same venue in a programme devoted to the American composer’s piano music. Horvath’s extensive and varied discography on Grand Piano includes the highly acclaimed Philip Glass solo piano music edition, Glassworlds; the complete piano works of Erik Satie; piano sonatas by the Estonian composer Jaan Rääts and music by the American experimental composer Alvin Lucier; Carl Czerny’s 30 Études; and lesser-known piano music by Claude Debussey, Anne-Louise Brillion de Jouy and Hélène de Montgeroult. Nicolas is a Steinway Artist.

Louis-Nicolas Clérambault served as organist at Mme de Maintenon’s Maison Royale de Saint-Cyr and at the Paris church of Saint-Sulpice in the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV. He was among the most highly regarded French composers and performers of his day.

The son of a rich merchant, the French composer André Cardinal Destouches enjoyed a varied early career, visiting Siam and returning to France to join the King’s Musketeers, the Mousquetaires Noires. He found a talent for music, attracted royal attention, and was to serve in various positions in the court musical establishment under Louis XIV, from 1725 arranging and directing concerts for Queen Maria Leszcynska.

Johann Adolf Hasse held a leading position in Italy and Germany as a composer of opera seria, often based on texts by the most famous of contemporary librettists, Metastasio. He sang at Hamburg Opera, scored great success as a composer of opera in Naples, and enjoyed an international career that took him to Venice and to Dresden, where he served as Kapellmeister to the Elector for some 30 years until he and his wife, the famous mezzo-soprano Faustina Bordoni, were dismissed, after the Seven Years War. In Vienna in later years Hasse finally found himself, together with Metastasio, in rivalry with Gluck and the librettist Calzabigi, champions of operatic reform. At the height of his career Hasse enjoyed the greatest fame, but his achievements were soon forgotten after his death.

A native of Apulia, Leonardo Leo studied in Naples, where he won early recognition from the Viceroy and appointment as an organist to the court chapel. For the last nine months of his life he held the position of maestro di cappella to the royal chapel, having previously served as a deputy in this position. He wrote a quantity of music, sacred and secular, and was an important figure in the musical life of Naples, both as a composer and as a teacher. His pupils included Piccinni.

Italian by birth, Lully made his career in France, where he rose from the position of a page to Mlle de Montpensier to that of Composer of the King’s Music, Master of Music to the Royal Family, and to a position of complete control of all musical performances that involved singing throughout. He collaborated with Molière and with Corneille, and, more particularly, with the poet Quinault, creating comédies-ballets and tragédies lyriques, in both of which there was an element of dance (a French royal preoccupation). The most important French composer of his period, his development of the French overture—with its introductory, slow dotted rhythms and ensuing fugal section—was influential, as was his insistence on orchestral discipline, particularly in the matter of string bowing.

Montéclair was a noted basse violon player in the Paris Opéra orchestra, followed a court to Italy, and taught two of François Couperin’s daughters. Montéclair never married, however he lived to retire with a royal pension after playing with the opera orchestra until 1737. Although he did not leave behind a large volume of music when compared to contemporaries like Couperin, he composed a small, exquisite body of innovative and varied works—a tragédie lyrique, an opera-ballet, instrumental concerts, songs, three books of cantatas (twenty French and four Italian), some lost sacred music, and teaching manuals, among other things.

Born in Cremona in 1567, Claudio Monteverdi served at the court of the Dukes of Mantua from the early 1590s until 1612, when he moved to Venice as maestro di cappella at the basilica of St Mark, a position he retained until his death in 1643. His importance as a proponent of the so-called seconda prattica, the new concerted music characteristic of the early Baroque, is unquestioned, as is his pre-eminence in the development of the new form of opera that sprang from the combination of music and rhetoric in the art of Italian monody.

Pergolesi was a composer of considerable importance in the development of Italian comic opera in the early 18th century, making a singular contribution during a remarkably brief career. Born in 1710, he studied in Naples and became maestro di cappella there to a member of the vice-regal court in 1732, later entering the service of another nobleman after the Bourbon restoration.

A son of Philidor l’aîné, François-André Danican Philidor followed parallel careers as a chess virtuoso and as the successful composer of over 21 operas. It was chess that secured him an early livelihood and took him to London. It was there that he died in 1795, having taken temporary refuge from the revolutionaries in France because he was listed among the condemned in spite of his republican sympathies.

A native of Genoa, Rossi studied with Frescobaldi in Rome and enjoyed the patronage of the Barberini family, serving also the Estes in Modena and the Sforzas.

Alessandro Scarlatti, a native of Palermo, made his principal career in Naples, where he was instrumental in the development of 18th-century Neapolitan opera. Instrumental music by Alessandro Scarlatti includes keyboard toccatas and concertos as well as concerti grossi, trio sonatas and solo sonatas, all in the established style of the time.

Germaine Tailleferre is best known for being the only female member of the French group of composers known as Les Six, alongside Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc. Although a prolific composer, until recently little of her music was performed regularly, and even now, forgotten works are being rediscovered.