Great Composers and Their Lives

 This Spanish composer was one of the greatest in the sixteenth century. Tomás Luis de Victoria came from a very religious background in a time when Spain was influenced much by Catholicism and the church. It was the time of the Inquisition, a tribunal responsible for purging the society by actually persecuting a great deal of people who refused to be Catholic, as well as many people who did, sometimes just to save their lives. (These new-born Catholics were known in Spain as 'conversos'. ) This great composer was living during a time when the Jesuit Order was in effect, a Roman Catholic order founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola in 1534 to defend Catholicism against the Reformation and to do missionary work among the heathen, the ones that did not want to submit to religious conversion.

Religion during this time had a great impact on not only the society, but also its music. Tomás Luis de Victoria born in Ávila to a family of eleven children, the seventh child in fact. After the death of his father at nine years of age, he was cared for by his two uncles who happened to be priests. He went to school and sang at the local cathedral. Through his musical ability, he gained quite a reputation. After his voice changed, he was encouraged by everyone around him, including King Philip II of Spain to carry on his music in Rome, Italy at the Collegio Germanico(a boarding school), where he not only studied music but also strived to be a priest, a goal he finally reached at twenty-seven years of age.

His faith is reflected in the music he had written to a great extent. He wrote motets, masses, magnificats and many sacred works. Actually, he dedicated all of his musical ability to the composition of sacred works. It is believed that living in Rome brought him into contact with a great deal of composers during the era, either living or visiting the city. The fact that the great and influential composer of the time, Palestrina, was a choir director (maestro di cappella) at the nearby Seminario Romano leads to the undoubted belief that the two knew each other and frequently exchanged their thoughts and ideas with one another. It may have very well been that Victoria had even taken lessons from him.

After spending fifty years in Rome all together. Victoria finally went back to Spain under the service of the Dowager Empress Maria. It was her that caused him to write one of his best known works, Officium defunctorum, a requium (mass for a deceased person) for her death in 1603.

To listen to more music by this great composer, click here.

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This composer actually came from a very poor family from Italy. The poverty of his family had almost kept him from making a musical career. Having shown a lot of talent for music at a very young age, his father did everything possible to be able to buy him a used spinet (a type of harpsichord) to learn on. Already at the age of twelve, Giuseppe Verdi had become the local organist.

As he grew older, despite his talent as a player and composer, he was refused entrance into the Milan Conservatory in favor of better, more trained candidates. This disappointment did not stop him though. Though his perseverance, he had been found by a patron, Antonio Barezzi, who loved Verdi's music. This allowed him to study privately in Milan. It was to his patron's daughter that he gave piano and sing lessons to, whom he married in 1836.

His first opera, Oberto, brought him a great deal of success, having been commissioned to write three more, the first of which was a huge failure. During the casting of his second opera, Nabucco, which had been a great success, Giuseppe Verdi was subject to a great blow. His two sons and his wife died and despite the success of his opera, it proved to be the most difficult time of his life. The distress mixed in with the success of his opera had caused Verdi to dive into his work, wanting to bring the opera to a new level. In contrast to the other composers of that time, it is interesting that he was more interested in the dramatic side of opera and less in the purity of showmanship portrayed by many other composers. For his opera, Macbeth, he incorporated a very poor voice for the soprano role of Lady Macbeth instead of someone who could sing to absolute perfection. In his opinion, the beauty and drama was intensified by such a voice.

Having written a great deal of operas and extensively traveling, he met his second wife, a soprano named Giuseppa Strepponi, in London, whom he married at the age of 46 in 1859. Throughout his life, he composed a great deal of works such as La traviata, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, Les vêpres siciliennes, un ballo in maschera, Aida, and Don Carlo. His last two operas were named Othello and Falstaff, having been written and performed when Verdi was in his seventies.

Giuseppe Verdi died at the ripe old age of 87 in year 1901. He had requested that no music be played for his funeral, yet a person watching the procession started singing Va, pensiero from his first huge success, the opera Nabucco, and then everyone started singing, all two thousand spectators.

To listen to music by this great composer, click here.

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