Léon Minkus

Ludwig Minkus (Russian: Людвиг Минкус), also known as Léon Fyodorovich Minkus (23 March 1826 – 7 December 1917), was an Austrian composer of ballet music, a violin virtuoso and teacher.

Minkus is noted for the music he composed while serving as the official Composer of Ballet Music to the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres in Russia. During his long career, he wrote for the original works and numerous revivals staged by the renowned Ballet Masters Arthur Saint-Léon and Marius Petipa. Among the composer's most celebrated compositions was his score for La source (1866; composed jointly with Léo Delibes), Don Quixote (1869); and La Bayadère (1877). During his career Minkus wrote a substantial amount of supplemental material for insertion into already existing ballets. Among these pieces, Minkus is noted for the Grand Pas classique and Mazurka des enfants written especially for Marius Petipa's 1881 revival of the ballet Paquita. For this revival Minkus also created an expanded version of the ballet's Pas de trois, which would go on to become known as the Minkus pas de trois.

Today, Minkus's music is some of the most performed in all of ballet, and is a most integral part of the traditional classical ballet repertory.

Ludwig Minkus was born Aloysius Bernhard Philipp Minkus on 23 March 1826, in the Innere Stadt district of Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Empire. His father, Theodor Johann Minkus, was born in 1795 in Groß-Meseritsch, Moravia (today known as Velké Meziříčí near Brno, Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic) and his mother, Maria Franziska Heimann was born in 1807 in Pest, Hungary. Minkus was of Jewish descent—his parents converted to Catholicism not long before their relocation to Vienna, and were married on the following day.

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