Research Results For 'Canto'

JOHN COBHOUSE

John Cam Hobhouse (Lord Broughton) was an English writer and statesman. He was born in 1786 and died in 1869. He was the son of Sir Benjamin Hobhouse, and was an intimate friend of Lord Byron, whom he accompanied in his travels to Greece and Turkey in 1809. He published in 1812 Journey into Albania and other Provinces of the Turkish Empire. He also accompanied Lord Byron to Italy in 1816-1817, and wrote Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold. In 1816 he published Letters on the Hundred Days, or Last Reign of Napoleon. He entered parliament in 1819 as member for Westminster. In 1832 he entered Lord Melbourne's ministry as secretary at war, and became a privy-councillor. In 1833 he was made chief-secretary for Ireland, and in 1835 he was appointed president of the board of control. He held this office until Sept. 1841, and in Lord Russell's administration, 1846-1852. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Broughton in 1851.
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LORD BYRON

Lord George Gordon Noel Byron was an English poet. He was born in 1788 at London and died in 1824. He was the grandson of Admiral John Byron, and son of the admiral's only son, Captain John Byron, of the Guards, so notorious for his gallantries and reckless dissipation that he was known as 'Mad Jack Byron.' His mother was Catherine Gordon of Gight, in Aberdeenshire, who was left a widow in 1791. Mrs. Byron retired with the infant poet to Aberdeen, where she lived in seclusion on the ruins of her fortune.

Until the age of seven he was entirely under the care of his mother, and to her injudicious indulgence the waywardness that marked his after career has been partly attributed. On reaching his seventh year he was sent to the grammar-school at Aberdeen, and four years after, in 1798, the death of his grand-uncle gave him the titles and estates of the family. Mother and son then removed to Newstead Abbey, the family seat, near Nottingham. Soon after Byron was sent to Harrow, where he distinguished himself by his love of manly sports and his undaunted spirit. While yet at school he fell deeply in love with Miss Chaworth, a distant cousin of his own. But the lady slighted the homage of the Harrow school-boy, her junior by two years, and married another and more mature suitor. In The Dream Byron alludes finely to their parting- interview.

In 1805 he was entered to Trinity College, Cambridge. Two years after, in 1807, appeared his first poetic volume, Hours of Idleness, which, though indeed containing nothing of much merit, was castigated with a verse verity by Brougham in the Edinburgh Review. This caustic critique roused the slumbering energy in Byron, and drew from him his first really notable effort, the celebrated satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. In 1809, in company with a friend, he visited the southern provinces of Spain, and voyaged along the shores of the Mediterranean. The fruit of these travels was the fine poem of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the first two cantos of which were published on his return in 1812. The poem was an immense success, and Byron 'awoke one morning and found himself famous.'

His acquaintance was now much courted, and his first entry on the stage of public life may be dated from this era. During the next two years between 1813 and 1814 the Giaour, the Bride of Abydos, the Corsair, Lara, and the Siege of Corinth showed the brilliant work of which the new poet was capable. On the second of January, 1815, Byron married Anna Isabella, only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, but the marriage turned out unfortunate, and in about a year, Lady Byron having gone on a visit to her parents, refused to return, and a formal separation took place. This rupture produced a considerable sensation, and the real cause of it has never been satisfactorily explained. It gave rise to much popular indignation against Byron, who left England, with an expressed resolution never to return.

He visited France, the field of Waterloo and Brussels, the Rhine, Switzerland, and the north of Italy, and for some time took up his abode at Venice, and latterly at Rome, where he completed his third canto of Childe Harold. Not long after appeared the Prisoner of Chillon, The Dream, and other Poems; and in 1817 Manfred, a tragedy, and the Lament of Tasso. From Italy he made occasional excursions to the islands of Greece, and at length visited Athens, where he sketched many of the scenes of the fourth and last canto of Childe Harold. In 1819 was published the romantic tale of Mazeppa, and the same year was marked by the commencement of Don Juan.

In 1820 appeared Marino Faliero Doge of Venice, a tragedy; the drama of Sardanapalus; the Two Foscari, a tragedy; and Gain, a mystery. After leaving Venice Byron resided for some time at Ravenna, then at Pisa, and lastly at Genoa. At Ravenna he became intimate with the Countess Guiccioli, a married lady; and when he removed to Pisa, in 1822, she followed him. There he continued to occupy himself with literature and poetry, sustained for a time by the companionship of Shelley, one of the few men whom he entirely respected and with whom he was quite confidential.

Besides his contributions to the Liberal, a periodical established at this time in conjunction with Leigh Hunt and Shelley, he completed the later cantos of Don Juan, with Werner, a tragedy, and the Deformed Transformed, a fragment. These are the last of Byron's poetical efforts. In 1823, troubled perhaps by the consciousness that his life had too long been unworthy of him, he conceived the idea of throwing himself into the struggle for the independence of Greece. In January, 1824, he arrived at Missolonghi, was received with the greatest enthusiasm, and immediately took into his pay a body of 500 Suliotes. The disorderly temper of these troops, and the difficulties of his situation, together with the malarious air of Missolonghi, began to affect his health. On the 9th April, 1824, while riding out in the rain, he caught a fever, which ten days later ended fatally.

Thus, in his thirty-seventh year, died prematurely a man whose natural force and genius were perhaps superior to those of any Englishman of his time, and, largely undisciplined as they were, and wasted by an irregular life, they acquired for him a name second, in the opinion of continental Europe at least, to that of no other Englishman of his time. The body of Byron was brought to England and interred near Newstead Abbey.
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TULLIO SERAFIN

Tullio Serafin was an Italian conductor. He was born in 1878 and died in 1968. He studied in Milan and became a violinist in the orchestra at La Scala. In 1900 he made his debut as a conductor at Ferrara. In 1909 he was conducting at La Scala, later becoming a regular guest at Covent Garden, and from 1924 to 1934 he conducted at the New York Met, where he presented the first American performance of Turandot. He worked devotedly in the revival of bel canto, and was a major formative influence on Maria Callas, who said later: 'He taught me exactly the depth of music.
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VINCENZO DA FILICAJA

Vincenzo Da Filicaja was an Italian poet. He was born in 1642 at Florence and died in 1707. Of a noble family, he first achieved note for his stirring odes on the victory of Sobieski over the Turks in 1683. The publication of his odes, sonnets, etc, in 1684 established Filicaja's fame as the first poet of his time in Italy. The Grand-duke of Tuacany appointed him governor of Volterra, and then of Pisa, in which posts he gained the esteem equally of people and sovereign. Among his most successful poems are the Canzone to John Sobieski on the occasion of the relief of Vienna from the Turks, and the celebrated sonnet on Italy, imitated by Byron in the 4th canto of Childe Harold, stanzas 42, 43.
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CANTO

In music, canto describes the highest vocal part, the air or melody in choral music. It was anciently the tenor, now it is the soprano.
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CANTO FERMO

Canto fermo is the plain ecclesiastical chant in cathedral service; the plain song.
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CANTO FIGURATO

Canto Figurato is a term applied by the old ecclesiastics to the chant in its more florid forms, in which more than one note was sung to a syllable.
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DESCANT

Originally, a descant was a double song; a melody or counterpoint sung above the plain song of the tenor; a variation of an air; a variation by ornament of the main subject or plain song. The term is also applied to the upper voice in a part of music and also to the canto, cantus, or soprano voice. The term has also been used synonymously with counterpoint, or polyphony, which developed out of the French dechant, of the 12th century.
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GREGORIAN CHANT

In music, a Gregorian chant is a plain song, or canto fermo, a kind of unisonous music, according to the eight celebrated church modes, as arranged and prescribed by Pope Gregory I in the 6th century.
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