Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen (Old Viennese Melodies) is a set of three short pieces for violin and piano, written by Fritz Kreisler. It is not known when he wrote them, but they were published in 1905, deliberately misattributed to Joseph Lanner. They had become parts of Kreisler's repertoire well before September 1910, when he copyrighted them under his own name. The three pieces are usually performed or heard separately, and are: • Liebesfreud (Love's Joy) • Liebesleid (Love's Sorrow) • Schön Rosmarin (Lovely Rosemary). Kreisler often played these pieces as encores at his concerts. In 1911, he published his own piano solo arrangement of Liebesfreud. They have appeared in numerous settings for other instruments, or orchestrated. Two of them, Liebesfreud and Liebesleid, were the subject of virtuoso transcriptions for solo piano by Kreisler's friend Sergei Rachmaninoff (1931), who also recorded these transcriptions. Csárdás (or Czardas) is the only famous composition of Vittorio Monti A rhapsodical concert piece written in 1904, it is a well-known folk piece based on a Hungarian csárdás. It was originally composed for violin, mandolin or piano. Nowadays, it is usually played on the violin, but can also be played as a piano solo, saxophone solo, on the accordion, or as an orchestral arrangement. The duration of the piece is about four and a half minutes. Jean-Marie Leclair l'aîné, also known as Jean-Marie Leclair the Elder, (10 May 1697 – 22 October 1764) was a Baroque violinist and composer. He is considered to have founded the French violin school. His brothers Jean-Marie Leclair the younger (1703–77), Pierre Leclair (1709–84) and Jean-Benoît Leclair (1714-after 1759) were also musicians. Leclair was born in Lyon, but left to study dance and the violin in Turin. In 1716, he married Marie-Rose Casthanie, a dancer, who died about 1728. Leclair had returned to Paris in 1723, where he played at the Concert Spirituel, the main semi-public music series. His works included several sonatas for flute and basso continuo. In 1730 Leclair married for the second time. His new wife was the engraver Louise Roussel, who prepared for printing all his works from Opus 2 onward. Named ordinaire de la musique by Louis XV in 1733, Leclair resigned in 1737 after a clash with Guidon over control of the musique du Roy. Leclair was then engaged by the Princess of Orange – a fine harpsichordist and former student of Handel – and from 1738 until 1743 served three months annually at her court, working in The Hague as a private maestro di cappella for the remainder of the year. He returned to Paris in 1743. His only opera Scylla et Glaucus was first performed in 1746 and has been revived in modern times. From 1740 until his death in Paris, he served the Duke of Gramont. Leclair was renowned as a violinist and as a composer. He successfully drew upon all of Europe's national styles. Many suites, sonatas, and concertos survive along with his opera, while some vocal works, ballets, and other stage music is lost. In 1758, after the break-up of his second marriage, Leclair purchased a small house in a dangerous Parisian neighborhood, where he was found stabbed to death in 1764. Although the murder remains a mystery, there is a possibility that his ex-wife may have been behind it – her motive being financial gain – although the strongest suspicion rests on his nephew, Guillaume-François Vial. Whether at the hands of a relative who had not forgiven him for abandoning the family, or as the work of another musician envious of his talent, on or about October 23, 1764, Jean-Marie Leclair was killed by a stab in the back. The Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso in A minor (French: Introduction et Rondo capriccioso en la mineur ), Op. 28, is a composition for violin and orchestra written in 1863 by Camille Saint-Saëns for the virtuoso violinist Pablo de Sarasate. Since its 19th century premiere, it has continued to be one of Saint-Saëns's most popular compositions. Camille Saint-Saëns, like many other French Romantic composers such as Édouard Lalo and Georges Bizet, held a deep interest in the style of Spanish dance music. This style permeates his solo violin works, particularly the Havanaise Op. 83 and the Introduction et Rondo Capriccioso. In 1859, the 15 year old violin prodigy Pablo de Sarasate approached the celebrated composer and commissioned a violin concerto, which the flattered Saint-Saëns proceeded to compose. (This piece became Saint-Saëns’ Violin Concerto No. 1 in A major.) Four years later in 1863, Saint-Saëns wrote yet another solo piece for Sarasate: The Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso in A minor for violin and orchestra. Sarasate premiered this piece in Paris on April 4, 1867. Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), known as the "father of American music", was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century. His songs — such as "Oh! Susanna", "Camptown Races", "Old Folks at Home" ("Swanee River"), "Hard Times Come Again No More", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Old Black Joe", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", and "Beautiful Dreamer" — remain popular over 150 years after their composition. Gaetano Pugnani (27 November 1731– 15 July 1798, full name: Giulio Gaetano Gerolamo Pugnani) was born in Turin. He trained on the violin under Giovanni Battista Somis and Giuseppe Tartini. In 1752, Pugnani became the first violinist of the Royal Chapel in Turin. Then he went on a large tour that granted him great fame for his extraordinary skill on the violin. In 1754, he was very well-received at the Concert Spiritual in Paris, but in 1768 he had an even more successful musical encounter in London, directing the King's Theatre from 1767 to 1769. In 1770, Pugnani returned home to Turin and became the director of the Royal Chapel. His fame as a composer began to grow, but it would never equal his fame as a violinist. During this time, he also taught the violin. His most famous pupil was Giovanni Battista Viotti; from 1780 to 1782 they performed in Switzerland, Dresden, Warsaw and St. Petersburg. Pugnani died in Turin. Fritz Kreisler borrowed Pugnani's name in order to publish some of his pieces (such as Praeludium and Allegro and Tempo di Minuetto), but in 1935 Kreisler revealed that these works were actually his own. Thaïs (pronounced tah-eess / ta:'i:s) is an opera in three acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Louis Gallet based on the novel Thaïs by Anatole France. It was first performed at the Opéra Garnier in Paris on 16 March 1894, starring the American soprano Sybil Sanderson, for whom Massenet had written the title role. The work was first performed in Italy at the Teatro Lirico Internazionale in Milan on 17 October 1903 with Lina Cavalieri in the title role and Francesco Maria Bonini as Athanaël. In 1907, the role served as Mary Garden's American debut in New York in the U.S. premiere performance.