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Simon Preston established a career as a virtuoso organist and conductor of (mainly) religious choral music. He was a composer and an expert on organs as well, affecting the replacement of the traditional cathedral-style organ at Christ Church, Oxford, with a Rieger organ from Austria; he was consulted on the replacement of organs at the concert hall at St. John's, Smith Square and at Tonbridge School. Preston developed a broad repertory as both organist and conductor, taking in church (and other) music from the Baroque era but also reaching well into the 20th century. He performed and recorded concertos and solo works by J.S. Bach, concertos by Poulenc and Copland, and the Saint-Saëns Third Symphony. He also led performances of sacred music by Palestrina and Lassus, choral works of Handel and Purcell, and Anglican church music. Preston recorded extensively for various labels, including Decca, Philips, and Deutsche Grammophon.

Preston was born on August 4, 1938, in Bournemouth, England. As a child, he served as a chorister at Cambridge University (King's College), a time when he also took organ lessons from Hugh McLean. Later on, at the Royal Academy of Music, he studied organ with C.H. Trevor. Preston returned to King's College in 1958 for nearly five additional years of music study: his teachers there included Sir David Willcocks. By the early '60s, he had made several recordings, which included albums of music by Orlando Gibbons and Olivier Messiaen. Preston served as sub-organist at Westminster Abbey from 1962 to 1967. For the next several years, he toured Europe and the U.S. as an organ recitalist.

From 1970 until 1981, he served at Christ Church, Oxford, as organist and tutor in music. He recorded heavily during this time, achieving particular acclaim for his 1975 Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms on Argo with the Choir of Christ Church. Preston was organist and master of the choristers at Westminster Abbey from 1981 through 1987, during which time he composed some music for the 1984 film Amadeus and directed music at the 1986 royal wedding. After leaving his post at Westminster, Preston freelanced both from the keyboard and at the podium, touring around the world in both capacities. From 1987 until 2000, he recorded the complete organ music of Bach for Deutsche Grammophon. In 2006, Preston issued the album Royal Albert Hall Organ Restored on Signum Classics, which featured works by Mendelssohn, Bolcom, Jongen, and others. Preston was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the 2009 Birthday Honours. Among his final recordings was a 2010 reading of Berlioz's Te Deum with Susanna Mälkki conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Several of Preston's earlier recordings were reissued in the 2010s. Simon Preston died on May 13, 2022, at the age of 83. ~ Robert Cummings

With an active performing career spanning eight decades, and an impressive class of students that included Darius Milhaud, Albert Schweitzer, and Marcel Dupré, French organist and composer Charles-Marie Widor maintained a lifelong position as one of the country's most prominent and influential musicians. Born in 1844, Widor was given his first lessons by his father, a well-known organ-builder and amateur performer. By age 11, Widor's skill had manifest itself so strongly that he was able to successfully compete for the job of organist at the lycée in his hometown of Lyons. A few years later the young musician traveled to Brussels, where he came under the tutelage of organist J.N. Lemmens, a well-known teacher at the Brussels Conservatory, whose own teacher could boast of having studied with a student of J.S. Bach. Therefore, the venerable German tradition of Bach interpretation formed the backbone of Widor's work with Lemmens. By 1870 Widor had earned a one-year position as replacement organist at St. Sulpice Cathedral in Paris; the appointment was such a success that Widor held on to the position until just four years before his death 67 years later.

During the 1870s Widor's career as a composer for media other than the organ began to take shape. Between the time of appointment at St. Sulpice in 1870 and the turn of the century, he produced three full symphonies, two ballets, a number of chamber works, and some sacred vocal music. Widor joined the organ faculty of the Paris Conservatoire in 1890 (replacing César Franck), and by 1896 had also been appointed professor of composition. During the early years of the twentieth century, Widor divided his time between his work at St. Sulpice, his duties with the Conservatoire, and activities on the administrative staff of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Widor's strength and dexterity on the organ remained basically unimpaired until his retirement from St. Sulpice in 1933, at which time his student Marcel Dupré took over. Widor died four years later at the age of 93.

Widor was, by all accounts, one of the most formidable organists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His dedication to the music of Bach in particular, earned him the respect of several generations of musicians worldwide. Widor's student Albert Schweitzer, who helped Widor edit Bach's complete organ works, did much to publicize Widor's ideals. Widor was considered by many to be the greatest improviser after César Franck, and Gabriel Faure, another gifted improviser and friend of Widor's, is known to have challenged Widor to improvisational "duels" on a number of occasions. Not surprisingly, Widor's compositions for organ have outlasted his other works. The ten Symphonies for organ are particularly powerful, especially the Symphonie Gothique (1895) and the Symphonie Romaine (1900), in which the composer's knowledge of plainchant, and his penchant for delicate contrapuntal textures come to the fore in a most rewarding way.

In his day, Johann Sebastian Bach was better known as a virtuoso organist than as a composer. His sacred music, organ and choral works, and other instrumental music had an enthusiasm and seeming freedom that concealed immense rigor. Bach's use of counterpoint was brilliant and innovative, and the immense complexities of his compositional style -- which often included religious and numerological symbols that seem to fit perfectly together in a profound puzzle of special codes -- still amaze musicians today. Many consider him the greatest composer of all time.

Bach was born in Eisenach in 1685. He was taught to play the violin and harpsichord by his father, Johann Ambrosius, a court trumpeter in the service of the Duke of Eisenach. Young Johann was not yet ten when his father died, leaving him orphaned. He was taken in by his recently married oldest brother, Johann Christoph, who lived in Ohrdruf. Because of his excellent singing voice, Bach attained a position at the Michaelis monastery at Lüneberg in 1700. His voice changed a short while later, but he stayed on as an instrumentalist. After taking a short-lived post in Weimar in 1703 as a violinist, Bach became organist at the Neue Kirche in Arnstadt (1703-1707). His relationship with the church council was tenuous as the young musician often shirked his responsibilities, preferring to practice the organ. One account describes a four-month leave granted Bach to travel to Lubeck, where he would familiarize himself with the music of Dietrich Buxtehude. He returned to Arnstadt long after he was expected and much to the dismay of the council. He then briefly served at St. Blasius in Mühlhausen as organist, beginning in June 1707, and married his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, that fall. Bach composed his famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565) and his first cantatas while in Mühlhausen, but quickly outgrew the musical resources of the town. He next took a post for the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar in 1708, serving as court organist and playing in the orchestra, eventually becoming its leader in 1714. He wrote many organ compositions during this period, including his Orgel-Büchlein, and also began writing the preludes and fugues that would become Das wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-Tempered Klavier). Owing to politics between the Duke and his officials, Bach left Weimar and secured a post in December 1717 as Kapellmeister at Köthen. In 1720, Bach's wife suddenly died, leaving him with four children (three others had died in infancy). A short while later, he met his second wife, soprano Anna Magdalena Wilcke, whom he married in December 1721. She would bear 13 children, though only five would survive childhood. The six Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046-51), among many other secular works, date from his Köthen years. Bach became Kantor of the Thomas School in Leipzig in May 1723 (after the post was turned down by Georg Philipp Telemann) and held the position until his death. It was in Leipzig that he composed the bulk of his religious and secular cantatas. Bach eventually became dissatisfied with this post, not only because of its meager financial rewards, but also because of onerous duties and inadequate facilities. Thus he took on other projects, chief among which was the directorship of the city's Collegium Musicum, an ensemble of professional and amateur musicians who gave weekly concerts, in 1729. He also became music director at the Dresden Court in 1736, in the service of Frederick Augustus II; though his duties were vague and apparently few, they allowed him the freedom to compose what he wanted. Bach began making trips to Berlin in the 1740s, not least because his son Carl Philipp Emanuel served as a court musician there. The Goldberg Variations, one of the few pieces by Bach to be published in his lifetime, appeared in 1741. In May 1747, the composer was warmly received by King Frederick II of Prussia, for whom he wrote the gloriously abstruse Musical Offering (BWV 1079). Among Bach's last works was his 1749 Mass in B minor. Besieged by diabetes, he died on July 28, 1750. ~ Robert Cummings

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was not only one of the greatest composers of the Classical period, but one of the greatest of all time. Surprisingly, he is not identified with radical formal or harmonic innovations, or with the profound kind of symbolism heard in some of Bach's works. Mozart's best music has a natural flow and irresistible charm, and can express humor, joy or sorrow with both conviction and mastery. His operas, especially his later efforts, are brilliant examples of high art, as are many of his piano concertos and later symphonies. Even his lesser compositions and juvenile works feature much attractive and often masterful music.

Mozart was the last of seven children, of whom five did not survive early childhood. By the age of three he was playing the clavichord, and at four he began writing short compositions. Young Wolfgang gave his first public performance at the age of five at Salzburg University, and in January 1762, he performed on harpsichord for the Elector of Bavaria. There are many astonishing accounts of the young Mozart's precocity and genius. At the age of seven, for instance, he picked up a violin at a musical gathering and sight-read the second part of a work with complete accuracy, despite his never having had a violin lesson.

In the years 1763-1766, Mozart, along with his father Leopold, a composer and musician, and sister Nannerl, also a musically talented child, toured London, Paris, and other parts of Europe, giving many successful concerts and performing before royalty. The Mozart family returned to Salzburg in November 1766. The following year young Wolfgang composed his first opera, Apollo et Hyacinthus. Keyboard concertos and other major works also came from his pen.

In 1769, Mozart was appointed Konzertmeister at the Salzburg Court by the Archbishop. Beginning that same year, the Mozarts made three tours of Italy, where the young composer studied Italian opera and produced two successful efforts, Mitridate and Lucio Silla. In 1773, Mozart was back in Austria, where he spent most of the next few years composing. He wrote all his violin concertos between 1774 and 1777, as well as Masses, symphonies, and chamber works.

In 1780, Mozart wrote his opera Idomeneo, which became a sensation in Munich. After a conflict with the Archbishop, Mozart left his Konzertmeister post and settled in Vienna. He received a number of commissions and took on a well-paying but unimportant Court post. In 1782 Mozart married Constanze Weber and took her to Salzburg the following year to introduce her to his family. 1782 was also the year that saw his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail staged with great success.

In 1784, Mozart joined the Freemasons, apparently embracing the teachings of that group. He would later write music for certain Masonic lodges. In the early and mid-1780s, Mozart composed many sonatas and quartets, and often appeared as soloist in the 15 piano concertos he wrote during this period. Many of his commissions were for operas now, and Mozart met them with a string of masterpieces. Le nozze di Figaro came 1786, Don Giovanni in 1787, Così fan tutte in 1790, and Die Zauberflöte in 1791. Mozart made a number of trips in his last years, and while his health had been fragile in previous times, he displayed no serious condition or illness until he developed a fever of unknown origin near the end of 1791. ~ Robert Cummings

Occupying an important historical position between his better-known colleagues Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten, William Walton is seen by many as the first modern British composer to approach the brilliance and vitality which characterized English music during Handel's day.

Born in northwest England during the first years of the twentieth century, Walton was the son of a choirmaster, and appropriately, served as a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford from 1912 to 1918. Studies at the university itself proved unsatisfying, and William left Oxford without a degree in 1920, relying instead upon the patronage of the Sitwell family, who had befriended the young composer. Through the influence of this affluent and well-known family, Walton was able to break into the London music scene, and by 1922 his chamber piece Façade had achieved some popularity with the concert-going public. A performance of his comic overture Portsmouth Point in Zurich in 1926, and Paul Hindemith's championing of his Viola Concerto in 1929 helped introduce Walton music into the European music scene. The famous Belshazzar's Feast for chorus and orchestra soon followed, and the 1930s brought with commissions from well-known musical figures, including Jascha Heifetz, who asked the composer to write him a Violin Concerto in 1939.

Walton spent much of World War II composing music for films, including Next of Kin and The Foreman Went to France. In 1948, he moved to Ischia, a small island off of Naples, and he was knighted in 1951. In 1954, after many years of effort, his grand opera Troilus and Cressida was produced at Covent Garden; unfortunately, the work has not received the attention it deserves. Walton composed prolifically until the end of his life, fulfilling commissions for such notables as George Szell, Gregor Piatigorsky and Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1973, he conducted a fiftieth anniversary performance of Facade. While never again achieving the degree of public and critical acclaim which he enjoyed before the World War II, he was nevertheless able to live comfortably on Ischia, where he died in 1983.

Although he was overshadowed in the latter half of his career by Benjamin Britten, Walton was never the old-fashioned reactionary (a frequent, but unjust, accusation). Much like his contemporaries Poulenc and Prokofiev, Walton was at heart an expressive, lyric composer who refused to subjugate this natural ability to the "modernist" tendencies that the press berated him for not embracing. His music is a sparkling synthesis of old and new, the greatest examples of which can be found in the two Symphonies (1935 and 1960), and the Viola (1929), Violin (1939) and Cello (1956) Concertos.

Jeremiah Clarke was a popular composer and organist around the dawn of the eighteenth century, but his best-known piece was known for years as "Purcell's Trumpet Voluntary."

The man whose music has been played at more nuptials in the English-speaking world than anyone but Wagner or Mendelssohn has no clearly established early history. In 1940 a researcher named E.H. Fellowes tentatively linked him to a family of choir singers at St George's Chapel, Windsor.

The earliest thing we really know about Clarke is that he was a boy choir singer in the Chapel Royal at the time of the coronation of James II. His voice changed in 1692; in that year he became the organist of Winchester College. He left there in 1696, and reappears in the record on June 6, 1699, when he was appointed a vicar-choral of St Paul's Cathedral, London. He received some promotions and titles, and in 1704 took the position of organist of the Chapel Royal, jointly with William Croft.

He wrote attractive and popular theater pieces, many effective anthems, and other sacred music, and some harpsichord pieces including The Prince of Denmark's March, which is the proper name for the piece of worldwide fame known as the Trumpet Voluntary. (The work itself has an interesting history. Its familiar trumpet, organ, and drum arrangement is of contemporary origin, but was inspired by a nineteenth century organ version that ascribed the tune to Henry Purcell, at the time one of the few names known to posterity from the then-shadowy Baroque era.)

Accounts of Clarke's life suggest that he was subject to periods of deep depression. He shot himself and was buried in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral.

Most music lovers have encountered George Frederick Handel through holiday-time renditions of the Messiah's "Hallelujah" chorus. And many of them know and love that oratorio on Christ's life, death, and resurrection, as well as a few other greatest hits like the orchestral Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music, and perhaps bits of Judas Maccabeus or one of the other English oratorios. Yet his operas, for which he was widely known in his own time, are the province mainly of specialists in Baroque music, and the events of his life, even though they reflected some of the most important musical issues of the day, have never become as familiar as the careers of Bach or Mozart. Perhaps the single word that best describes his life and music is "cosmopolitan": he was a German composer, trained in Italy, who spent most of his life in England.

Handel was born in the German city of Halle on February 23, 1685. His father noted but did not nurture his musical talent, and he had to sneak a small keyboard instrument into his attic to practice. As a child he studied music with Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, organist at the Liebfrauenkirche, and for a time he seemed destined for a career as a church organist himself. After studying law briefly at the University of Halle, Handel began serving as organist on March 13, 1702, at the Domkirche there. Dissatisfied, he took a post as violinist in the Hamburg opera orchestra in 1703, and his frustration with musically provincial northern Germany was perhaps shown when he fought a duel the following year with the composer Mattheson over the accompaniment to one of Mattheson's operas. In 1706 Handel took off for Italy, then the font of operatic innovation, and mastered contemporary trends in Italian opera seria. He returned to Germany to become court composer in Hannover, whose rulers were linked by family ties with the British throne; his patron there, the Elector of Hannover, became King George I of England. English audiences took to his 1711 opera Rinaldo, and several years later Handel jumped at the chance to move to England permanently. He impressed King George early on with the Water Music of 1716, written as entertainment for a royal boat outing. Much of his keyboard music, including the suite with the famous melody "The Harmonious Blacksmith" dates from just before his going to Italy and his first decade in England. For 18 months, between 1717 and 1719, Handel was house composer to the Duke of Chandos, for whom he composed the 11 Chandos Anthems for chorus and string orchestra. He also founded the Royal Academy of Music, a new opera company in London, with the support of the Duke and other patrons. Through the 1720s Handel composed Italian operatic masterpieces for London stages: Ottone, Serse (Xerxes), and other works often based on classical stories. His popularity was dented, though, by new English-language works of a less formal character, and in the 1730s and 1740s, after the Academy failed, Handel turned to the oratorio, a grand form that attracted England's new middle-class audiences. Not only Messiah but also Israel in Egypt, Samson, Saul, and many other works established him as a venerated elder of English music. The oratorios displayed to maximum effect Handel's melodic gift and the sense of timing he brought to big choral numbers. Among the most popular of all the oratorios was Judas Maccabeus, composed in 32 days in 1746. His Concerti grossi, Op. 6, and organ concertos also appeared in the same period. In 1737, Handel suffered a stroke, which caused both temporary paralysis in his right arm and some loss of his mental faculties, but he recovered sufficiently to carry on most normal activity. He was urged to write an autobiography, but never did. Blind in old age, he continued to compose. He died in London on April 14, 1759. More than 3,000 mourners were present for the funeral of the famous composer. He was buried at Westminster Abbey and received full state honors. Beethoven thought Handel the greatest of all his predecessors; he once said, "I would bare my head and kneel at his grave." ~ TiVo Staff

As England's greatest composer of the Baroque, Henry Purcell was dubbed the "Orpheus Britannicus" for his ability to combine pungent English counterpoint with expressive, flexible, and dramatic word settings. While he did write instrumental music, including the important viol fantasias, the vast majority of his output was in the vocal/choral realm. His only opera, Dido and Aeneas, divulged his sheer mastery in the handling of the work's vast expressive canvas, which included lively dance numbers, passionate arias and rollicking choruses. Purcell also wrote much incidental music for stage productions, including that for Dryden's King Arthur. His church music includes many anthems, devotional songs, and other sacred works, but few items for Anglican services.

Purcell was born in 1659 to Henry Purcell, master of choristers at Westminster Abbey, and his wife Elizabeth. When he was five, his father died, forcing his mother to resettle the family of six children into a more modest house and lifestyle. In about 1668, Purcell became a chorister in the Chapel Royal, studying under chorus master Henry Cooke. He also took keyboard lessons from Christopher Gibbons, son of the composer Orlando Gibbons, and it is likely that he studied with John Blow and Matthew Locke. In 1673, Purcell was appointed assistant to John Hingeston, the royal instrument keeper.

On September 10, 1677, Purcell was given the Court position of composer-in-ordinary for the violins. It is believed that many of his church works date from this time. Purcell, a great keyboard virtuoso by his late teens, received a second important post in 1679, this one succeeding Blow as organist at Westminster Abbey, a position he would retain all his life. That same year saw the publication of five of the young composer's songs in John Playford's Choice Ayres and Songs to Sing to the Theorbo-lute or Bass-viol. Around the same time, he began writing anthems with string accompaniment, completing over a dozen before 1685, and welcome songs. Purcell was appointed one of three organists at the Chapel Royal in the summer of 1682, his most prestigious post yet.

Purcell composed his first ode for St. Cecilia's Day in 1683. The following month, upon Hingeston's death, he was named royal instrument keeper while retaining his other posts. The composer remained quite prolific in the middle part of the decade, primarily producing music for royal occasions. In 1685 the new King, James II, introduced many changes at Court, one of which was to make Purcell the Court harpsichordist and Blow the Court composer. Near the end of 1687, Queen Mary's pregnancy was announced and Purcell was commissioned to compose an anthem with the text of Psalm 128, Blessed are they that fear the Lord. Many other of his anthems appeared in 1688, as did one of his more famous ones for church use, O sing unto the Lord.

With the ascension of William and Mary to the throne on April 11, 1689, Purcell retained his post as royal instrument keeper, and he, along with Blow and Alexander Damazene, shared the duties of Court composers. With his royal duties reduced, he was able to pursue other opportunities, including teaching and writing for other organizations. One of Purcell's greatest successes came in 1689 with the production of Dido and Aeneas. He then collaborated with John Dryden on King Arthur in 1691, and also composed the music for The Fairy-Queen (1692), based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream both productions also scoring triumphs. In the final year of his life Purcell remained exceedingly busy, writing much for the stage, including The Indian Queen, left incomplete at his death on November 21, 1695. ~ Robert Cummings

Edward Elgar, one of the pre-eminent musical figures of his time, bridged the 19th and 20th centuries as the finest English composer since the days of Handel and Purcell. His compositions have been recorded countless times, and many have become mainstays in the classical repertoire throughout the world.

Elgar was born in Broadheath, England, on June 2, 1857. His father owned a music shop and was a church organist who taught his son piano, organ, and violin; apart from this instruction, Elgar was practically self-taught as a musician. At the age of 16, the composer became a freelance musician, and for the remainder of his life, he never took a permanent job. He conducted locally, performed, taught, and composed, scraping by until his marriage to Caroline Alice Roberts, a published novelist of some wealth, in 1889. Elgar had by this time achieved only limited recognition. He and his wife moved to London, where he scarcely fared better in advancing his career. The couple eventually retreated to Worcester, Elgar suffering from bitter self-doubt and depression. Alice stood by him the entire time, her unfailing confidence restoring his spirits. He was further buoyed by the success of his Imperial March, Op. 32, which earned him a publisher and a vital friendship with August Jaeger, his editor and confidant. In 1899, Elgar composed one of his best-known works, the "Enigma" Variations, Op. 36, which catapulted him to fame. The work is a cryptic tribute to Alice and to the many friends who stood behind the composer in the shaky early days of his career. Conductor Hans Richter proclaimed it a masterpiece, and his performances of the work in Britain and Germany established the composer's lasting success.

Elgar's most fruitful period was the first decade of the 20th century, during which he wrote some of his noblest, most expressive music, including the Symphony No. 1 in A flat major, Op. 55 (1907-1908), and the Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61 (1909-1910). His best-known works from this period, however, are the first four of his Pomp and Circumstance Marches (1901-1907); the first of these, subtitled "Land of Hope and Glory," became an unofficial second national anthem for the British Empire.

Elgar suffered a blow when Jaeger (the "Nimrod" of the "Enigma" Variations) died in 1909. The composer's productivity dropped, and the horrors of World War I deepened his melancholy outlook. His music became more intimate, even anguished. Still, he wrote some of his best chamber music during this period, as well as the masterly Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85 (1919), whose deep feeling of sadness and impending loss surely relates to the final illness of his faithful Alice, who died in 1920.

For some time after her death, Elgar wrote little of significance, but he made a historical foray into the recording studios when new electrical recording processes were developed. The fortunate result was a number of masterly interpretations of his orchestral music that have survived for posterity. In the early 1930s, Elgar set to work on a third symphony, left unfinished at his death in Worcester on February 23, 1934. The work was brought to a generally well-received realization by Anthony Payne in the late 1990s and was subsequently recorded. ~ Rovi Staff

Born blind, Vierne partially regained sight at age six. Obvious talent was rewarded with piano and solfège studies, to which were added harmony, violin, and a general course when he entered the Institution National des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris in 1880. There he was befriended by César Franck who, from 1886, gave him private tuition in harmony while including Vierne in his organ class at the Paris Conservatoire. The lessons of the master were not lost on him -- Franck possessed perhaps the richest harmonic palette in Western music and Vierne effortlessly absorbed many of its features. Vierne entered the Conservatoire as a full-time student in 1890. Franck died in November, succeeded by Charles-Marie Widor as professor of organ. Vierne soon became Widor's assistant, a post he continued to hold under Guilmant -- where he taught Dupré and Nadia Boulanger -- and deputized for Widor at St. Sulpice. Vierne took the Conservatoire's first prize for organ in 1894, though his career waited until 1900 to be spectacularly launched when, on May 21, he triumphed over four other organists in a competition for the prestigious post of titular organist at Notre Dame de Paris (its magnificent instrument reconditioned by Cavaillé-Coll) where his audience came to include such luminaries as Clémenceau and Rodin. The Symphony No. 1 for organ (1898-1899) forecasts the succession of moods -- grand and assertively virile, searchingly contrapuntal, effusive, and distressingly confessional -- which would deepen anguishingly in succeeding works, reflecting an unhappy marriage and divorce, professional disappointments, the loss of a son and a brother in the Great War, and a continual battle to retain minimal sight. After being passed over for professorship of the Conservatoire's organ class in 1911, Vierne taught at the Schola Cantorum. His Symphony No. 2 for organ, completed in 1903, drew from no less a critic than Debussy the stunning accolade, "M. Vierne's symphony is truly remarkable. It combines rich musicality with ingenious discoveries in the special sonority of the organ. J.S. Bach, the father of us all, would have been well pleased...." The spate of disturbingly eloquent compositions -- mélodies, piano pieces, chamber works, mass settings, the Symphony in A, and numerous works for organ (including, at last, six symphonies) -- continued to pour forth until his death. Concert tours took him to England in 1924 and 1925, and on to a three-month visit to the U.S. and Canada in 1927. Vierne died of a heart attack at the organ of Notre Dame during a public concert on June 2, 1937.

Richard Wagner was one of the most revolutionary figures in the history of music, a composer who made pivotal contributions to the development of harmony and musical drama that reverberate even today. Indeed, though Wagner occasionally produced successful music written on a relatively modest scale, opera -- the bigger, the better -- was clearly his milieu, and his aesthetic is perhaps the most grandiose that Western music has ever known.

Early in his career, Wagner learned both the elements and the practical, political realities of his craft by writing a handful of operas which were unenthusiastically, even angrily, received. Beginning with Rienzi (1838-40) and The Flying Dutchman (1841), however, he enjoyed a string of successes that propelled him to immortality and changed the face of music. His monumental Ring cycle of four operas -- Das Rheingold (1853-54), Die Walküre (1854-56), Siegfried (1856-71) and Götterdämmerung (1869-74) -- remains the most ambitious and influential contribution by any composer to the opera literature. Tristan and Isolde (1857-59) is perhaps the most representative example of Wagner's musical style, which is characterized by a high degree of chromaticism, a restless, searching tonal instability, lush harmonies, and the association of specific musical elements (known as leitmotifs, the flexible manipulation of which is one of the hallmarks of Wagner's music) with certain characters and plot points. Wagner wrote text as well as music for all his operas, which he preferred to call "music dramas."

Wagner's life matched his music for sheer drama. Born in Leipzig on May 22, 1813, he began in the early 1830s to write prolifically on music and the arts in general; over his whole career, his music would to some degree serve to demonstrate his aesthetic theories. He often worked as a conductor in his early years; a conducting engagement took him to Riga, Latvia, in 1837, but he fled the country in the middle of the night two years later to elude creditors. Wagner as a young man had some sympathy with the revolutionary movements of the middle 19th century (and even the Ring cycle contains a distinct anti-materialist and vaguely socialist drift); in the Dresden uprisings of 1849 he apparently took up arms, and he had to leave Germany when the police restored order. Settling in Zurich, Switzerland, he wrote little for some years, but evolved the intellectual framework for his towering, mature masterpieces. Wagner returned to Germany in 1864 under the protection and patronage of King Ludwig II of Bavaria; it was in Bayreuth, near Munich, that he undertook the construction of an opera house (completed in 1876) built to his personal specifications and suited to the massive fusion of music, staging, text, and scene design that his later operas entailed. Bayreuth became something of a shrine for the fanatical Wagnerites who carried the torch after his death; it remains the goal of many a pilgrimage today. His attitude toward Jews was deeply ambivalent (he believed, mistakenly, that his stepfather was Jewish), but some of his writings contain anti-Semitic elements that have aroused considerable controversy among opera lovers, especially in view of Adolf Hitler's apparent predilection for the composer's music. ~ Rovi Staff

Alexandre Guilmant was a French composer, organist, and educator known during his lifetime as a virtuoso performer. He was very influential as a professor at the Paris Conservatory, and his compositions continue to be a valuable resource to both student and professional organists. He was born in 1837 in Meudon, France and began playing the organ at a very young age. He initially learned from his father, Jean-Baptiste Guilmant, who was the organist at the St. Nicolas cathedral in Boulogne, and he also studied harmony later with Gustav Carulli. Around 1849, he began filling in for his father at St. Nicolas, and four years later he became the organist at St. Joseph des Carmes. Over the next seven years, his Messe Solennelle received its first performance at St. Nicolas, he began teaching solfege at the Ecole Communale de Musique, and he joined the Société Philhamonique as a violist. In 1860, he left Paris for two years to learn from the Belgian master organist Nicolas Lemmens in Brussels. Lemmens was also a former student of Aldolf Friedrich Hesse, who studied with Johann Christian Kittel, a pupil of J. S. Bach. Following his time with Lemmens, Guilmant returned to Paris and enjoyed an almost immediate rise to fame as an organist. He was invited to inaugurate the Aristide Cavaillé-Coll organ at St Sulpice in 1862 and the organ at Notre Dame in 1868. Three years later, he was appointed organist at La Trinité, where he remained for 30 years. It was during this period when he composed multi-volume collections of organ works, including Pieces for Organ in Different Styles, The Practical Organist, and The Liturgical Organist. Additionally, his interest in early music led him to compile several volumes of organ music from European composers from before 1750, such as Grigny, Couperin, and Clerambault. He was appointed organist in residence at the Palais du Trocadero in 1878, and he also began touring as a recitalist in Europe, Russia, and the United States. He continued composing, performing, and travelling until the 1890s, when he became more active as an educator. With Vincent d'Indy and Charles Bordes, he helped establish the Schola Cantorum in 1894, a music school modeled after the pedagogical philosophies of César Franck. After two years, Guilmant became an organ professor at the Paris Conservatory, replacing Charles-Marie Widor, who transitioned to teaching composition. Some of his more prominent students included Joseph Bonnet, Nadia Boulanger, and Marcel Dupré. Guilmant taught, composed, and performed until his death in 1911 in Meudon. ~ RJ Lambert

German composer and organist Sigfrid Karg-Elert, though not widely known, had a prodigious output, having composed his greatest bulk of work for the organ and harmonium. A reappraisal of his work began with a series of ambitious recording projects in the 1990s, cataloguing his most important contributions.

The composer's father, Johann Karg, a book dealer, rarely saw his family. Constantly on the move, the family lived in many areas throughout German-speaking Europe. Karg-Elert was the youngest of 12 children. Nonetheless, in spite of these hardships, his great musical aptitude was recognized early on. Traveling through Leipzig, the boy tried out for a position with the choir of Saint John's Church, which began his musical training. At 12, he composed a cantata, and soon thereafter began private piano lessons. In 1896, composer Emil von Reznicek obtained three years of tuition free study at the Leipzig Conservatory for the budding musician. There, he studied with Carl Reinecke, Salomon Jadassohn, and others. He supported himself during this time playing in cafes and playing now and then with regional orchestras.

Karg-Elert's Piano Concerto, performed by himself as soloist, won him additional free training at the Leipzig Conservatory, enabling him to graduate fully from the institution. This was arranged by piano virtuoso Reisenauer, who also convinced Karg-Elert to embark on a recital tour of Germany. However, it was composition that interested him, and on his return to Leipzig, he took up advanced composition study with Teichmuller at the conservatory. He was later appointed head of the master class at the Magdeburg Conservatory in 1902.

Not happy at Magdeburg, he left teaching altogether and concentrated full-time on composition. Around 1904, he met Edvard Grieg, who recommended his work to several publishers, notably Novello and Carl Simon, the Berlin publisher and harmonium specialist. The publication of his work resulted in gaining the backing of influential performers and composers of the day. Busoni, Kreutzer, and Reger performed his work, and encouraged the creation of new ones.

In 1915, Karg-Elert enlisted in the army, and played various instruments in the regimental bands. At this time, he composed his solo works for flute and clarinet. He returned to Leipzig in 1919 to teach at the Leipzig Conservatory once more. A rather dark time in the composers' life intervened between 1920 to about 1926. He was being criticized by some of his peers for not being nationalistic enough, and too cosmopolitan. The era of heightened national pride caused Karg-Elert to feel like a stranger in his own country, and he was even branded as a Jew, although he was not.

Karg-Elert composed over 250 pieces for organ, 100 pieces for the harmonium d'art (developed by French instrument-maker Mustel), numerous chamber works, and he completed several theoretical works. His theory of Harmonologie developed original approaches to practical theoretical considerations.