GLUCK, CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD (1714 87 ). A famous German composer and operatic reformer. He was born July 2, 1714, at Weiden wang, in the Upper Palatinate, where his father was forester to Prince Eugene of Savoy, and later to Prince Lobkowitz' at Eisenberg. From 1726 to 1732 the boy attended a Jesuit seminary at Komotav, where he was taught singing, violin, 'cello, and organ. In the latter year he went to Prague to continue his musical studies, and was compelled to eke out a livelihood by playing in th.3 neighboring villages. While there he heard and stored away in his memory many rustic tunes which later did service in his operas. Czernohor sky, noting his aptitude, took him as a pupil. In 1736 he went to Vienna, where, through the good offices of the Lobkowitz family, he met Prince Melzi. The latter became deeply interested in the young musician and took him to Milan, where Cluck continued his technical studies with Sammartini.
Gluck was twenty-seven years old when his first opera, Artaserse, was produced at La Scala. Artaserse led to commissions for other works, and within five years Gluck produced eight operas. His fame having reached England, he went to London in 1745 at the invitation of Lord Middle sex and produced La caduta de' giganti in honor of the Duke of Cumberland's victories. The time, however, was inauspicious, and The Fall of the Giants was withdrawn after only five perform ances. The performances of an earlier opera, Artamene, were more successful. Then occurred a circumstance of which Gluck's biographers have made much. To .a libretto, Piramo e Tisbe, he wrote a patchwork score from the most popular airs of his earlier operas. To the complete fail ure of this pasticcio is attributed the awakening of Gluck's mind to the true function of operatic music—the expression of given dramatic situa tions; although Orfeo, with which Gluck in augurated his reform of opera, was not composed until sixteen years later.
In 1748, Gluck's father having died and left him a small inheritance, he settled in Vienna, which remained his principal place of residence for the rest of his life. On May 14, 1748, in cele bration of the Empress's birthday, he produced in the recently completed opera house La Semira mide riconosciuta, which achieved great success. The spring of 1749 found the composer in Copen hagen, where he was received with distinction and lodged in the royal palace, and where he pro duced a two-act serenade, Tetide, in honor of the recent birth of a Crown Prince (afterwards Christian VII.). In April of the same year he traveled in the guise of a Capuchin (for no other reason, it is believed, than to avoid trouble re garding passports) to Rome. There and in Naples he brought out a new two-act opera, Teleinacco, ossia (Isola di Circe, which was attended with his usual success.
Shortly afterwards Gluck returned to Vienna, where, in September, 1750, he married Marianne Pergin. They soon left Vienna for Naples, where he achieved great success with his opera La clemenza di Tito. In 1754, having produced, and Again successfully, two operas, It Trionfo di Ca millo and Antigone, in Rome, the Pope created him a Chevalier of the Golden Spur, and there after the composer, who set great store by this title, was always careful to call himself Ritter von Gluck. Previous to this visit to Rome he
had been appointed by Count Durazzo conductor of the Opera at Vienna. His productivity in this office was great, including the composition of light operas whose librettos Durazzo secured from Paris, where they were brought out with music usually by Duni and Monsigny, while the Viennese heard the same librettos with music by Gluck. Meanwhile Gluck was growing steadily in intellectual breadth. He became more and more dissatisfied with the flippant conventionalities of the Italian opera of the day—though he him self had composed an appalling number of works in that style—and, calling to his aid as librettist the Imperial Councilor Raniero di Calzabigi, who was in sympathy with his views on operatic re form, he produced at Vienna in October, 1762, Orfeo ed Evridice. This, his first great opera, is still a famous work and on of its airs ("Che faro senza Euridice") is a familiar concert number to-day. Though not immediately successful, Orfeo soon established itself in popular favor, not only in Vienna, but also in Italy, where, at Parma, Traetta was unable to obtain a hearing for his Armida because every one wanted to hear Orfeo. Gluck's other operas in his great style are Alceste (1767), Paride ed Elena (1769), 1phigenie en Aulide (Paris, 1774), Armide (1777), and Iphigenie en Tauride (1770).
The production of 1phigenie en Aulide in Paris was an important event in Cluck's life. It led to the hotly waged and now historic contest between the operatic reformers headed by Gluck and those who championed the existing style of opera. The latter put forward Piccini to oppose Gluck, but Gluck was overwhelmingly victorious. In 1780 he returned to Vienna, but ill health pre vented him from accomplishing anything of im portance, and he died in that city, November 15, 1787. Gluck's reform of the opera was his great est service to music. He found it marred by sense less embellishments, and a mere vehicle for the display of singers' voices; he left operatic music restored to its original purpose of expressing musically the meaning of the words to which it was composed, and of emphasizing the dramatic situation. Consult: Marx, Gluck and die Oper (Berlin, 1803) ; Ferris, Great Musical Com posers (New York, 1887) ; Newman, Gluck and the Opera (London, 1895) ; Reissmann, Christoph IVillibald von Cluck (Berlin and Leipzig, 1882).
GLtiCKSTADT, glnkIstht. A town in the Prussian Province of Schleswig-Holstein, on the Elbe, 32 miles below Hamburg (Map: Prussia, C 2). It is a pretty town, regularly built, and intersected by canals. It has a gymnasium, rail way repair-shops, ship-yards, manufactures of furniture, wagons, mirrors, soaps, shoes, cigars, etc. The fisheries are important. When the Elbe is ice-bound the harbor receives much of the Hamburg shipping. It is very commodious and admits the largest vessels. Gliickstadt was founded in 1620 by Christian IV. of Denmark, fortified, and endowed with various commercial privileges. During the Thirty Years' War it suc cessfully withstood three sieges; its fortifications were demolished in 1815. Population, in 1890, 5958; in 1900, 65S6.