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Studio H at Hudson
Studio H is a unique multimedia recording studio at Hudson Regional Library, offering the community a free, fully-equipped, adaptable space for audio recording, videography, photography and interactive technology.
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Unlike most 19th Century composers who had to struggle to make a living, Felix Mendelssohn came from a very wealthy family. He never had to work, but he worked harder to fulfill his family's expectations than many who suffered poverty. He was an extremely gifted musical genius who wrote some of his best works while he was still a teenager. Mendelssohn gained fame as a conductor, and as the organizer of many music festivals in Germany and in England...
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Franz Joseph Haydn s importance in the history of music is so great that it would be difficult to summarize his achievements in a few paragraphs. He inherited the sonata from Bach and made it into a great form of musical expression. He established the symphony, preparing the way for Mozart and Beethoven. He is often called the father of the string quartet. In fact, Mozart commented that it was from Haydn that he learned how to compose for four-stringed...
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Born just a few years after Mozart died, Franz Schubert had a lot in common with the famous composer. Schubert was also a gifted child who astonished adults with his musical ability. As a teen, Schubert was taught by one of Mozart s rivals. And like Mozart, Schubert s life ended prematurely and was filled with struggle. Still, while Mozart was celebrated across Europe, Schubert was almost completely unknown until just a few years before his death....
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When he was just 13 years old, a young Russian immigrant named Izzy Baline left his New York City home and had to support himself. It was a struggle for several years, as he sang for pennies and often slept in flophouses or on park benches. Soon after changing his name to Irving Berlin and writing a series of hit songs, he became rich beyond his wildest imagination. For several decades, he was the most successful composer of American pop music. He...
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For more than 100 years, the name of Johann Sebastian Bach has been considered among the most highly regarded of all composers. The holy cantor church musician has been written about in many books. So, it might be difficult for some of us to imagine, but for several generations after his death, Bach had been forgotten. What remained of his vast number of works gathered dust in private collections or distant archives. Many of his works were discarded;...
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Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg, Germany, to a family that lived in extreme poverty. Yet by the time of his death he had become one of the most financially successful classical music composers who ever lived. It wasn't easy. His family had to move several times while Hannes (as he was nicknamed) was still a boy. He had to go to work when he was just 13, playing the piano in rough waterfront taverns in Hamburg. Often he wouldn't come home until...
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The most famous of the bandmaster-composers was John Philip Sousa (1854-1932), who in 1880 became leader of the U.S. Marine band. In 1892, he organized his own band that toured throughout the world. Known as The March King, Sousa was a highly skilled composer of marches. He wrote more than one hundred of them, including the famous Stars and Stripes Forever that became the official United States march in 1987. A strong-willed child, Sousa s first memories...
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During Beethoven s darkest times, when he stumbled about the streets of Vienna like a ragged madman, people thought his career was over. Many of his friends and patrons had died. He no longer seemed to be producing music except for a few trivial pieces. >But appearances were wrong. He was creating what is generally regarded as his greatest single work. Known as the Ninth Symphony, it is much more difficult and massive than any of the preceding eight....
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The most popular of all Russian composers, Peter Tchaikovsky is probably best known for his ballets. Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and Nutcracker are still performed worldwide. But a good part of Tchaikovsky s career was spent writing operas. Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades are two of his better-known works. A precocious child, Peter could read French and German by the age of six. At seven, he wrote verses in French. In school, he studied to be...
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As a little boy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart began writing musical compositions when most kids his age were still learning to read. By the time he was seven, Mozart was an accomplished musician who could play several instruments and also sing. Accompanied by his older sister, Nannerl, and his father, Leopold, young Wolfgang toured Europe. He performed before royalty and some of the richest members of society. By the time he was twelve, Wolfgang was famous....
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Ordained as a priest, Antonio Lucio Vivaldi became one of Europe s most popular composers during the early part of the eighteenth century. He wrote hundreds of concertos, dozens of operas, and many sacred works before his music fell out of fashion during the latter part of his life. He died in obscurity and his work suffered a similar fate for almost two centuries. His music was rescued from oblivion in the 1930s. His most famous work, The Four Seasons,...
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More than any other musician in the early twentieth century, Duke Ellington brought jazz into nightclubs and later into the living rooms of America. The music he played sprang in part from the blues and gospel rhythms of the plantation slaves living in the mid-nineteenth century, infused with the sounds of ragtime from the turn of the century. Jazz has been called the first musical form created in the United States. It was a type of sharp improvisation...
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Many people believed that Hungarian-born Franz Liszt was the greatest piano player of all time. Certainly, he was the first musical superstar. During an eight-year concert tour in the 1840s, he revolutionized the way that pianists performed in public. He had several love affairs before taking Holy Orders in the Catholic Church. One of the most versatile figures in music history, he was also a composer, concert promoter, and conductor. He was a very...
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From an early age, Frederic Chopin displayed natural musical ability. Often compared to Mozart, Chopin was invited to play for members of the aristocracy in small, private concerts. But, unlike Mozart, his parents did not take advantage of his childhood talent. Frederic Chopin left his Polish homeland behind when he was only 20 and lived most of his life in Paris, France, the cultural hub of Europe. His genius as a pianist and composer flowered there...
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George Gershwin couldn't seem to stay out of trouble when he was a boy. He was a tough kid who got in a lot of fights and frequently skipped school. When his family bought a piano, his life was transformed. He quickly mastered the instrument, and then dropped out of school when he was fifteen to become a musician. Within a year, he had sold his first song. When he was 20, he wrote his first big hit. Five years after that, Rhapsody in Blue catapulted...
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What is probably the most famous pairing in musical history began without fanfare in 1871 when writer William S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan teamed up to produce a Christmas entertainment called Thespis. The two men parted ways soon afterward and it took a theatrical promoter named Richard D Oyly Carter to reunite them four years later. Their first big hit came in 1878 with their operetta H.M.S. Pinafore. It reached the United States the...
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Giuseppe Verdi was born in obscurity in a tiny Italian village in 1813. When he died in 1901, hundreds of thousands of people turned out to pay their respects to the man whom many people consider as the best opera composer of all time. His career spanned more than half a century and included such successes as Rigoletto, La Traviata, Il Trovatore, Otello, Falstaff, and Aida, the most often-performed work at New York s Metropolitan Opera. Yet when he...
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French composer Hector Berlioz believed in love at first sight. When he was 23, he attended a performance of Shakespeare s play Hamlet and fell head over heels in love with Harriet Smithson, an English actress who had a leading role. Harriet didn't show any interest in him. She ignored his letters. When he tried to meet her backstage, she ordered the guard to throw him out.
Berlioz was hurt and angry. He wanted revenge. He got it by murdering Harriet...
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