• Period: Classical (1750-1819)
• Country: Germany
• Genres: Opera, Ballet, Chamber

Biography

One of the great masters of eighteenth century opera, Gluck is known for his elegant synthesis of the French and Italian operatic traditions, exemplified by such remarkable works as Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste. A native of the Upper Palatinate, Gluck first studied with the Czech cellist and composer (and Franciscan friar) Bohuslav Cernohorsky, later continuing his studies with Sammartini in Italy. Already known as an opera composer in the 1740s, Gluck visited Paris and London, where he met Handel. He married in 1750, settling in Vienna as an opera conductor.

In 1762, Gluck wrote his Orfeo ed Euridice, heralding a new era in the history of opera. Combining the Classical ideals of beauty and simplicity with an innate sense of dramatic impetus, it broke down many of the overwrought formal conventions of the Baroque and set the standard for a whole generation of operatic composers. In many ways, opera in the nineteenth century had its conception in the works of Gluck.

While Gluck achieved wide fame in his own time, his works are rare in opera houses today; he is primarily remembered as a reformer and revolutionary. In his dedication to Alceste, Gluck wrote that he "sought to confine music to its true function of serving poetry by expressing feelings and the situations of the story without interrupting and cooling off the action through useless and superfluous ornaments." This statement has often been interpreted as a desire to subordinate music to poetry; however, what inspired Gluck's reform was his belief that music gains in expressiveness when it is properly balanced with poetry. Thus, for example, by abolishing the traditional strict separation of recitative and aria, Gluck used music as a means of maintaining an uninterrupted flow of the dramatic action. Gluck's librettist for Orfeo ed Euridice, Alceste, and Paride ed Elena -- the three works best representing his reformist ideas -- was Raniero de Calzabigi, a poet and critic who anticipated some of the composer's fundamental ideas concerning poetry and music. For example, Calzabigi opposed the traditional poetic approach to mythology, exemplified by Pietro Metastasio, the greatest librettist of the opera seria tradition. While Metastasio's mythological figures appear as thinly disguised eighteenth century characters, Calzabigi's poetry strives to create an atmosphere of timelessness, which perfectly suited Gluck's artistic intentions.

After bringing his reforms to fruition, Gluck had several new works produced in Paris. The most remarkable of these works is Armide (1777), based on an old libretto by Philippe Quinault, which Lully used for his eponymous work in 1686. Viewed by conservatives as an attack on the French musical and literary traditions, Gluck's operas were targeted by a literary cabal, which decided to embrace Niccolò Piccinni, a respected composer of comic operas, as a standard-bearer. In a literary squabble reminiscent of the "quarrel of the buffoons" in 1752, the traditionalists proclaimed the superiority of traditional (that is: Italian, or, more precisely, Metastasian) opera over French opera, represented by the iconoclastic Gluck. It should be noted that the two composers, who respected each other, refused to participate in the war of words, leaving the polemics to Parisian pseudo-intellectuals.

In essence, Gluck's victory over his adversaries was the triumph of music. His works are regarded as seminal contributions to musical drama, and his ideas were gradually accepted, first by Piccinni himself, and later by Cherubini, who flourished as an opera composer in the 1790s and early 1800s. In the nineteenth century, Gluck's approach to opera was adopted by Spontini, who in turn influenced Berlioz as an opera composer. ~ Zoran Minderovic, All Music Guide

(b Erasbach, 2 July 1714; d Vienna, 15 Nov 1787). Bohemian-German composer. His father was a forester in the Upper Palatinate (now the western extreme of Czechoslovakia); Czech was his native tongue. At about 14 he left home to study in Prague, where he worked as an organist. He soon moved to Vienna and then to Milan, where his first opera was given in 1741. Others followed, elsewhere in Italy and during 1745-6 in London, where he met Handel's music. After further travel (Dresden, Copenhagen, Naples, Prague) he settled in Vienna in 1752 as Konzertmeister of the Prince of Saxe-Hildburghausen's orchestra, then as Kapellmeister. He also became involved in performances at the court theatre of French opéras comiques, as arranger and composer, and he wrote Italian dramatic works for court entertainments. His friends tried, at first unsuccessfully, to procure a court post for him; but by 1759 he had a salaried position at the court theatre and soon after was granted a royal pension.

He met the poet Calzabigi and the choreographer Angiolini, and with them wrote a ballet-pantomime Don Juan (1761) embodying a new degree of artistic unity. The next year they wrote the opera Orfeo ed Euridice, the first of Gluck's so-called ‘reform operas’. In 1764 he composed an opéra comique, La rencontre imprévue, and the next year two ballets; he followed up the artistic success of Orfeo with a further collaboration with Calzabigi, Alceste (1767), this time choreographed by Noverre; a third, Paride ed Elena (1770), was less well received.

Gluck now decided to apply his new ideals to French opera, and in 1774 gave Iphigénie en Aulide (as well as Orphée, a French revision of Orfeo) in Paris; it was a triumph, but also set the ground for a controversy between Gluck and Italian music (as represented by Piccinni) which flared up in 1777 when his Armide was given, following a French version of Alceste (1776). Iphigénie en Tauride followed in 1779 - his greatest success, along with his greatest failure, Echo et Narcisse. He now acknowledged that his career was over; he revised Iphigénie en Tauride for German performance, and composed some songs, but abandoned plans for a journey to London to give his operas and died in autumn 1787, widely recognized as the doyen of Viennese composers and the man who had carried through important reforms to the art of opera.

Gluck's opera reforms - they are not exclusively his own, for several other composers (notably Jommelli and Traetta, both like Gluck French-influenced) had been working along similar lines - are outlined in the preface he wrote, probably with Calzabigi's help, to the published score of Alceste. He aimed to make the music serve the poetry through its expression of the situations of the story, without interrupting it for conventional orchestral ritornellos or, particularly, florid and ornamental singing; to make the overture relevant to the drama and the orchestration apt to the words; to break down the sharp contrast between recitative and aria: ‘in short ... to abolish all the abuses against which good sense and reason have long cried out in vain ’. Orfeo exemplifies most of these principles, with its abandonment of simple recitative in favour of a more continuous texture (with orchestral recitative, arioso and aria running into one another) and its broad musical-dramatic spans in which different types of solo singing, dance and choral music are fully integrated. It also has a simple, direct plot, based on straightforward human emotions, which could appeal to an audience as the complicated stories used in contemporary opera seria, with their intrigues, disguises and subplots, could not. He had a limited compositional technique, but one that was sufficient for the aims he set himself. His music can have driving energy, but also a serenity reaching to the sublime. His historical importance rests on his establishment of a new equilibrium between music and drama, and his greatness on the power and clarity with which he projected that vision; he dissolved the drama in music instead of merely illustrating it.

works:
Dramatic music

• Artaserse (1741)
• La caduta dei giganti (1746)
• Le nozze d′Ercole e d′Ebe (1747)
• La Semiramide riconoscuita (1748)
• La clemenza di Tito (1752)
• Le cinesi (1754)
• L′innocenza giustificata (1755)
• L′île de Merlin (1758)
• L′ivrogne corrigé (1760)
• Le cadi dupé (1761)
• Orfeo ed Euridice (1762, Fr. version, Orphée, 1774)
• La rencontre imprévue (1764)
• Telemaco (1765)
• Alceste (1767, Fr. version 1776)
• Paride ed Elena (1770)
• Iphigénie en Aulide (1774)
• Armide (1777)
• Iphigénie en Tauride (1779, Ger. version 1781)
• Echo et Narcisse (1779)
• c 20 others
• 4 ballets incl. Don Juan (1761), Semiramis (1765)

Vocal music

• 7 Klopstock songs (1786)
• other songs
• sacred works incl. De profundis (1787)

Instrumental music

• 8 trio sonatas
• syms.

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Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) was an Austrian composer and opera reformer. His operas represent an end to the older style of the opera seria and the beginning of the modern music drama.

Christoph Willibald Gluck was born of German-Bohemian stock on July 2, 1714, at Erasbach in the Upper Palatinate. His father was a forester. In 1726, according to some sources, Gluck was sent to a Jesuit college where he received formal music lessons as part of his education. At the age of 19 he enrolled in the university in Prague, where he was also actively engaged in musical activities.

After a short stay in Vienna in 1736, Gluck went to Milan, where he was in the employ of the Melzi family from 1737 to 1739. At this time he studied with the composer Giovanni Battista Sammartini. In 1741 Gluck's first opera, Artaserse, after a libretto by Pietro Metastasio, was produced.

During the next 20 years Gluck pursued the career of the typical 18th-century opera composer. He was active in Vienna, traveled extensively to serve his various patrons, and produced one or two new operas a year. In 1762, however, his dramatic ballet Don Juan was performed in Vienna; this event marked a significant change in Gluck's career. Don Juan is a ballet which narrates a story rather than presents a series of abstract geometric patterns. Most significantly, the music for Don Juan reflects the action onstage, thereby paving the way for Gluck's "reform" operas. In 1766, in Vienna, Gluck returned to the "reform" ballet, producing Semiramide, in which music and plot complement one another.

Collaboration with Calzabigi

Gluck came under the influence of the Italian dramatist and man of letters Ranieri Calzabigi, active in Vienna as court poet following Metastasio's long, brilliant career. Gluck and Calzabigi collaborated on three operas. Their first collaboration was Orfeo ed Euridice, produced in Vienna in 1762. They severely modified the legendary tale and abandoned the traditional "dry" recitative; the opera is one of great simplicity and directness in which nothing extraneous hinders the presentation of the drama. Calzabigi and Gluck thus opened the way for the possibilities for reform of the old-fashioned Italian opera seria. Their second collaborative effort, Alceste, modeled on the Euripides drama, premiered in 1767 in Vienna. Three years later Paride ed Elena, their last collaboration, was produced in Vienna.

Career in France

In 1770 Gluck was at the height of his fame. François du Roullet, attaché to the French embassy in Vienna, wrote a libretto for Gluck, but in the French style, based on Racine's famous drama Iphigénie en Aulide. Du Roullet's drama proved to be the means which brought Gluck to France. In 1773 he agreed to compose several French operas and moved to Paris at the instigation of his former pupil, Marie Antoinette, to supervise the productions. Iphigénie en Aulide was premiered the following year, which also saw the production of the French version of Orfeo ed Euridice. In 1775, as an act of homage to the memory of Jean Baptiste Lully and as a diplomatic gesture to French sensitivities, Gluck undertook to compose an opera based on Philippe Quinault's drama Armide, which had already been composed by Lully.

The French version of Gluck's Alceste was mounted at the Paris Opéra in 1776, and Armide was presented in 1777. His career came to a close with Iphigénie en Tauride in 1779. He retired from public life that year and returned to Vienna, where, following a stroke, he died on Nov. 15, 1787.

Opera Reform

Gluck was a very practical man of the theater, and during the 2 decades he was involved with opera reform he continued to compose other operas and entertainments in the old-fashioned, traditional style. It was largely due to Calzabigi's and Gluck's efforts that a general reexamination of the condition of the musical theater in the mid-18th century resulted in a series of masterpieces. Gluck's major accomplishment was to prove the efficacy of a lofty, serenely neoclassic style for the music drama. The reform operas were intended to demonstrate the possibilities the music theater held for the presentation of great, sublime ideas, and Gluck's efforts must be considered a success.

Gluck was very conscious of the precise role music was to play in the theater. "I sought to restrict music to its true function, namely to serve the poetry by means of the expression - and the situations which make up the plot - without interrupting the action or diminishing its interest by useless and superfluous ornament…. I have not cherished the invention of novel devices except when they were demanded by the situation and the expression. There was, finally, no rule which I did not gladly violate for the sake of the intended effect" (Dedicatory Letter, Alceste, 1769). In his five major reform operas there are no distracting subplots or senseless comedy scenes; the dramas move irrevocably toward the denouement, and Gluck always made the music entirely suitable for the intention of the drama.

Gluck's impact was tremendous. He received the ultimate accolade in France by precipitating several literary and critical "wars." During his lifetime there were many imitators and disciples, especially in France. The perfection of Gluck's operatic vision haunted the imaginations of composers as diverse as Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner a century later. In Gluck's creations the genesis of modern opera composition is to be found.

Further Reading

The best biography of Gluck in English is Alfred Einstein, Gluck (trans. 1936; rev. ed. 1964). The operas are discussed in depth by Donald J. Grout, A Short History of Opera (2 vols., 1947; rev. ed., 1 vol., 1965). See also Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama (1956).

For more information on Christoph Willibald Gluck, visit Britannica.com.

Gluck, Christoph Willibald von (b Erasbach, 2 July 1714, d Vienna, 15 Nov. 1787). German composer. He wrote the music for Angiolini's Don Juan (1761), Alessandro (1765), and Semiramis (1765). His operas Orpheus and Eurydice (1762) and Iphigenia in Aulis (1774) have a large dance content and have attracted the attention of choreographers throughout the years, most notably Pina Bausch. Balanchine's staging of Orpheus and Eurydice at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 1936 placed the dancers centrestage, as did Mark Morris's staging seen 60 years later at the Edinburgh Festival.

Gluck, Christoph Willibald von (1714-87). German composer who in the 1760s ‘reformed’ the Italian opera seria by placing the emphasis on the text rather than the music. Several of his innovations were derived from French sources and his ‘Reform operas’, particularly Iphigénie en Aulide (1774), can be seen as a continuation of the French operatic tradition. He made repeated visits to Paris in the 1770s and even rewrote Orfeo and Alceste for French audiences. His operas became the centre of a Parisian literary polemic in the 1770s, Gluckists versus Piccinistes (partisans of the Italian Nicola Piccini).

[Kerry Murphy]

(krĭs'tôf vĭl'ēbält fən glʊk) , 1714–87, German-born operatic composer. Gluck revolutionized opera by establishing lyrical tragedy as a unified vital art form. He studied music at Prague and later in Italy with G. B. Sammartini. His first 10 operas, in the Italian style, were successfully performed in Italy in the years 1741–45. In 1752, after sojourns in England and Germany, Gluck became conductor of Prince Hildburghausen's private orchestra in Vienna, and for the next decade he directed musical productions at the Viennese court. With his opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), inspired by Greek legend, Gluck introduced an entirely new kind of opera, in which dramatic, emotional, and musical elements were artistically fused for the first time. To Ranieri Calzabigi, the librettist of Orfeo and also Alceste (1767), Gluck gave much of the credit for his new operatic style. In 1773, Gluck went to Paris, where his first serious opera with a French libretto, Iphigénie en Aulide (1774), was performed. That and subsequent productions created much controversy between supporters of Gluck and proponents of traditional Italian opera. His last important work, Iphigénie en Tauride (1779), is often considered his masterpiece, and it firmly established his reputation. Eventually, Gluck's emphasis on dramatic impact and musical simplicity became incorporated into the French operatic tradition, and his influence on later composers was considerable.

Bibliography

See his collected correspondence and papers, ed. by H. and E. H. Mueller von Asow (tr. 1962); biographies by M. Cooper (1935) and A. Einstein (tr. 1936); study by E0rnest Newman (1895, repr. 1964).

Gluck, Christoph Willibald Von (1714–1787), Austrian composer of Bohemian birth. Gluck is important for his "reform" of the Metastasian opera seria in works written for Vienna and Paris. The son and grandson of gamekeepers, Gluck studied music (singing and violin), and at the age of thirteen or fourteen, faced with his father's determination that he follow the paternal vocation, fled to Prague, where he supported himself by various musical activities (notably as organist at the Týn Church). In Prague he had the opportunity to hear contemporary Italian opera by Vivaldi, Albinoni, and others. After briefly serving Prince Lobkowitz in Vienna, in 1737 he accepted employment as a violinist in Prince Melzi's service in Milan. Four years later his first Italian opera, Artaserse, to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782), had its premiere. For the next dozen years he followed a career path typical of moderately successful composers of Italian opera. He traveled extensively, for a while as music director of the Mingotti company and later for Locatelli's company, and wrote operas on commission for cities in Italy, as well as Dresden, Copenhagen, Vienna, and London. In these he gained a mastery of current conventions in opera structure, forms, expression of emotions, florid melodic writing, text setting, and orchestral scoring (although sometimes with brusque and unexpected results). In 1745 he became resident composer at the King's Theatre in London. The first of his two works written for production there, La caduta de' giganti, contains clear allusions to the current political situation in forecasting allegorically the suppression of the Jacobite rebellion. Both London operas include much music revised from earlier works, as would remain Gluck's custom throughout his career (and, indeed, it was standard practice for Italian opera composers to borrow from works of their own heard only elsewhere and, often at the behest of singers, to include music of others in their scores). While in England the composer became acquainted with George Frideric Handel's music and David Garrick's "realistic" style of dramatic acting, whose aesthetics were to mark his subsequent approach.

By 1748 Gluck was back in Vienna, where the court commissioned him to compose the music for Metastasio's La semiramide riconnosciuta to celebrate the birthday of Empress Maria Theresa. Two years later he married Maria Anna Bergin, whose dowry and personal wealth gave him financial stability. The couple remained based in her native Vienna, although in the early years of their marriage Gluck continued to accept foreign commissions that required travel. He also became Konzertmeister and later Kapellmeister to Prince Joseph Friedrich von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. For the imperial couple's visit to his estate outside Vienna, the composer wrote Le cinesi, a clever parody of contrasting dramatic genres as well as an address to tastes for the "exotic." These operas and other musical activities doubtless brought the composer to the attention of Count Durazzo, who in 1756 hired him to supervise concerts and French opéras comiques at the court-controlled Burgtheater (four years later the production of ballet music was added to his duties). Several commissions of Italian operas, French opéras comiques and ballet scores for the theater and for the court soon followed. Of these the most significant musically is the ballet d'action, Don Juan (1761, choreography by Gasparo Angiolini). Because he was busy with Viennese projects and because travel was hindered by the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748) and its aftermath, Gluck seldom ventured elsewhere during this period. One important exception was the opera for Rome, Antigono (1756); during his visit there the pope named him cavaliere dello sperone d'oro (knight of the golden spur), a title that the composer took pride in using.

By 1760 Gluck was well established as the leading opera composer in Vienna. While during the decade he continued to compose opéras comiques, serenatas, and other works for the court (often to texts by the venerable Metastasio) and was awarded a court pension in 1763, he is remembered today for his "reform" of opera seria in his Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) and Alceste (1767). Significantly, the librettist for both was Raniero Calzabigi, an Italian familiar with French theatrical and operatic dramaturgy and probably the anonymous critic of the Metastasian model (Lettre sur le méchanisme de l'opéra italien, 1756). Operatic change was in the air: Gluck and other Italian opera composers and librettists had already anticipated some of the directions that the "reform" would take. Still, Orfeo and Alceste mark the most thoroughgoing development of a new aesthetic, a "noble simplicity" according to contemporaries: the drama comes first and unfolds in a logical, straightforward way; aria structures are more varied and flexible and avoid lengthy orchestral introductions (ritornelli); florid vocal display is avoided in favor of a more direct expression in often syllabic settings; the chorus has a heightened role; integration of chorus, soloists, aria, accompanied recitative, and dance in impressive tableaux match requirements of the plot and give the work greater musical continuity (though the divisions remain clear). In performance, acting by the soloists, including their gestures, became more "natural"; the first Orfeo, the castrato Gaetano Guadagni, had studied with Garrick, and the music historian Charles Burney later recounted that Gluck himself told him that he had insisted on numerous repetitions during rehearsals until all aspects of the performance met his standards. Alceste, in addition, broke with tradition in omitting castrati from the soloists' ranks (original version).

As several of the innovations were inspired by the model of the French tragédie and the tragédie lyrique, Gluck decided to try to conquer Paris, then the cultural capital of Europe. Preceded by a clever publicity campaign mounted by C. L. G. L. du Roullet, the librettist for several of his French operas, Gluck arrived there in late 1773. With the support of his former student, Marie Antoinette (dauphine, shortly to become queen), he soon gained a contract with the Académie Royale de Musique. After six months of intensive rehearsal his first opera for the Académie, Iphigénie en Aulide, was a success, followed shortly by Orphée et Euridice, a revision of Orfeo, performed to even greater acclaim. Alceste (1776) differs substantially from its Italian predecessor. In choosing to reset Jean-Baptiste Quinault's libretto written for Jean-Baptiste Lully, Gluck sought in Armide (1777) to align himself explicitly with the French tradition. His Iphigénie en Tauride (1779) is his masterpiece. These five operas show the composer's growing mastery of French declamation and his substantial advance in the "reform" agenda. In Alceste, for example, the two principal characters and the chorus are portrayed more convincingly as a loving couple and grieving people, compared to the Italian version. In Armide Gluck not only exploited spectacular stage effects, but also achieved a more fluid musical construction. Iphigénie en Tauride builds on this in an unusually high number of ensembles matching the drama.

After having divided his time between Paris and Vienna for six years, Gluck returned to the Austrian capital for good in 1779. His final major operatic effort was to revise a translation into German of Iphigénie en Tauride (1781). Orfeo/Orphée (often in various hybrid versions) and his French tragédies lyriques were an important legacy. Not only were these operas part of the repertory throughout the nineteenth century, although they were sometimes revised to meet current casts and audience tastes by musicians such as Berlioz (Orphée, 1859; Alceste, 1861, both Paris), Wagner (Iphigénie en Aulide, 1847, Dresden) and Richard Strauss (Iphigénie en Tauride, 1889, Weimar), they have continued to be revived in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Bibliography

Brown, Bruce A. Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna. Oxford, 1991.

Brown, Bruce Alan, and Julian Rushton. "Gluck, Christoph Willibald Ritter von." In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 2nd ed. London, 2001.

Gluck, Christoph Willibald. Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Rudolf Gerber, et al. Kassel and Basel, 1951–.

Howard, Patricia. Christoph Willibald Gluck: A Guide to Research. 2nd ed. New York, 2003.

——. Gluck: An Eighteenth-Century Portrait in Letters and Documents. Oxford, 1995.

Lesure, François, ed. Querelle des Gluckistes et des Piccinnistes. Geneva, 1984. Facsimiles of eighteenth-century pamphlets and other materials.

Rice, John A. Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera. Chicago, 1998.

—M. ELIZABETH C. BARTLET

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