Hello Everyone,

I would like to know where on the InterNet I can find biographical information
on classical composers....could anyone point me to some good websites?

Thank You,
Boanne

14 responses total.

I believe you've mentioned in another item that you've done internet (web)
searches.  Have you not tried that for the composers you're interested in?

Try this one:

www.culturefinder.com/cgi-bin/culturefinder/cf/content/music/allstar

(The whole thing including http wouldn't fit.  Sorry.)

It's a list 40 composers.  Click on a name and you get the 
bio.  On the bio pages you'll find links to a few selected 
compositions.  Click on one of them, and you get a brief 
descrption of the composition, and in most cases a link to 
a CDNOW page that features playable excerpts from the
composition.  It's a nice format.  

I visited the Culturefinder page referred to in the previous post.  I 
liked their selection of composers and works, but found the writing to 
be largely puerile and somewhat inaccurate.  They tell you that 
Bruckner's Fourth is his only symphony with a nickname, but don't 
provide the nickname, and they tell you he "played on Wagner's team", 
which tells you a lot about cultural history but very little about 
Bruckner's music and that misleading.

A generally good classical website with a lot more info is at 
www.classical.net.  But for this type of information, good old books 
are still superior.  There's lots of very useful guides for beginning 
collectors, and for biographies Harold C. Schoenberg's "Lives of the 
Great Composers" is still as well-written and informative as anything 
out there.

The CultureFinder format was the brainchild of
a popularizer whose name I forget.  The "team"
format is impossible to follow if you want to write
something intelligent.  The format for individual
works is a little better ("Cocktail Party Fact,"
"Commitment Factor." etc.) but still limiting.
I think the idea was to produce snappy little
encomia that might attract a new listener.

(But I still like the way CF takes you from composer
to specific composition to playable excerpt.)

If you are interested in some Middle Ages and Rennisance info, one of 
the possible projects for one of Vandy's upper level music history 
classes is a web page (I didn't do that, because I didn't want to 
bother....)  the address for those is:
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Blair/Courses/MUSL242
(There are also some other links from the 242 homepage that could be 
useful.  

For Baroque and Classical pages, check out:
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Blair/Courses/MUSL253/243gate.htm

This seemed like perhaps the best place to drop in this little news 
item, which is that the Newer edition of the New Grove Encyclopedia of 
Music and Musicians has been published.  The previous edition came out 
in 1980, so this is not an everyday event.

The 1980 edition, first to be called "New", was a complete overhaul of 
the work.  The 2001 edition is basically an update, though with many 
new articles on older matters, as well as a lot of additions on recent 
music.  I was cheered to see, checking its articles on some of the more 
tonal composers of the late 20th century, a complete freedom from the 
rigid avant-garde orthodoxy that blighted so much musicological 
thinking (though not always in Grove's) of that time.  I was less 
pleased to see some of the errors I found in work-lists in the 1980 
edition preserved unchanged.

Grove's emphasis has always been on "classical" or Western art music, 
though there is plenty on ethnomusicology, and the new edition has made 
a determined effort to add short articles on major, and even medium-
level, pop musicians of various kinds.  They need not have bothered: 
there are now much superior multi-volume encyclopedias of pop, jazz, 
etc., and the little articles in Grove's don't tell you much.  But 
there's nothing else (certainly not the over-rated Baker's) that covers 
classical with anywhere near Grove's thoroughness.

I haven't seen the print edition yet, but the online edition is up.  
It's pretty cool: if, like me, you're affiliated with a major 
university or other institution that might subscribe, look it up.  The 
web address is www.grovemusic.com.

Whatever happened to Boanne Lorraine?

he/she went on your twit filter :(

No no no, there was some controversy about her. She left in a huff or 
was hounded off or something. Now I have to go find the items. Don't 
go away.

I hope valerie didn't delete those items :(

Can't find 'em, going back to 1996. Either it was before that or else 
it was some other cf than agora. She pissed off a lot of people here. 
Oh well, you can go away now. :(

too unlucky

Yeah, you woulda liked her.

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