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Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

2005-04-21T05:28:00.000-07:00

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
Was born on born April 30, and died in 1939 is an American post-modernist composer. She was the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize In 1995, she was named to the first Composer's Chair in the history of Carnegie Hall.

Arnold Schoenberg

2005-04-21T05:26:00.000-07:00

Arnold Schoenberg
Was born on September 13, 1874 and died on July 13, 1951 was a composer, born in Vienna, Austria. He is particularly remembered as one of the first composers to embrace atonal motivic development, and for his twelve tone technique of composition using tone rows.

Richard Wagner

2005-04-21T05:23:00.000-07:00

Richard Wagner
Was born on May 22, 1813 and died on February 13, 1883. He was an influential German composer, music theorist, and essayist, primarily known for his groundbreaking symphonic-operas.

Giuseppe Verdi

2005-04-21T05:18:00.000-07:00

Giuseppe Verdi
Was born on October 10, 1813 and died on January 27, 1901 was one of the great composers of Italian opera. A composer of romanti music, his work was already very popular during his lifetime and remains so today.

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky

2005-04-21T05:13:00.000-07:00

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky

Was born on May 7, 1840 and died on November 6, 1893. He was a Russian composer of the Romantic era. Although he was not a member of the group of nationalistic composers usually known in English-speaking countries as The Five, his music has come to be known and loved for its distinctly Russian character as well as its rich harmonies and stirring melodies.

Richard Strauss

2005-04-21T05:06:00.000-07:00

Richard Strauss
Was born on June 11, 1864 and died on September 8, 1949. He was a German composer of classical music particularly noted for his tone poems and operas. His father, a professional horn player, gave him a musical grounding exclusively in the classics, and he composed copiously from the age of six. He went briefly to university, but had no formal tuition in composition.

Jean Sibelius

2005-04-08T11:14:00.000-07:00

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

He studied in Helsinki from 1886 with Wegelius, also gaining stimulus there from Busoni, though at the same time he fostered ambitions as a violinist. In 1889 he went to Berlin to continue his composition studies with Becker, then after a year to Vienna under Goldmark and Fuchs.

Robert Schumann

2005-03-31T05:34:00.000-08:00

Robert Schumann
(1810-1856). He was the son of a bookseller, he early showed ability as a pianist and an interest in composing as well as literary leanings. In 1821 he went to Leipzig to study law but instead spent his time in musical, social and literary activities. He wrote some piano music and took lessons from Friedrich Wieck.

Franz Schubert

2005-03-31T05:28:00.000-08:00

Franz Schubert
born in Vienna, January 31, 1797 and he died there on November 19, 1828. For the son of a schoolmaster he showed a childhood aptitude for music, studying the piano, violin, organ, singing and harmony and, while a chorister in the imperial court chapel, composition with Salieri. By 1814 he had produced piano pieces settings of Schiller and Metastasio, string quartets, his first symphony and a three-act opera.

Gioacchino Rossini

2005-03-31T05:18:00.000-08:00

Gioacchino Rossini

born in Pesaro, February 29, 1792 and died in Passy, November 13, 1868.Both of his parents were musicians. His father was a horn player and his mother was a singer. He learned his horn playing and singing when he was just a young boy and played at least one opera in Bologna where his family lived. He studied there and began his operatic career when, at 18 he wrote a one-actcomedy for Venice.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

2005-03-31T05:13:00.000-08:00

Sergei Rachmaninoff was born on April 1, 1873 on a large estate near the ancient city of Novgorod, Russia. His father was an army officer and his mother was a wealthy heiress. His father gambled, drank, and squandered his wife's money. He deserted his family when Sergei was nine years old. By all accounts Young Sergei was a problem child, but had an extraordinary talent at the piano. At age nine he entered the College of Music in St. Petersburg. Because of his natural gift, Sergei did not bother to study. To solve his discipline problem Rachmaninoff moved to Moscow to live with Nikolai Zvereff of the Moscow Conservatory. Zvereff was one of the leading music teachers in Russia at the time. In 1892, Rachmaninoff graduated from the conservatory with high honors.

Giacomo Puccini

2005-03-31T05:07:00.000-08:00

Giacomo Puccini was born in lucca on December 22, 1858 and died in Brussels on November 29, 1924. After studying music with his uncle, Fortunato Magi, and with the director of the Istituto Musicale Pacini, Carlo Angeloni, he started his career at the age of 14 as an organist at St. Martino and St. Michele, Lucca, and at other local churches.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

2005-03-24T05:22:00.000-08:00

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). He was the son of Leopold He showed musical gifts at a very early age, composing when he was five and when he was six he was playing before the Bavarian elector and the Austrian empress.

Felix Mendelssohn

2005-03-24T05:16:00.000-08:00

Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg on February 3, 1809. He died in Leipzig on November 4, 1807. He grew up in a privileged enviroment. He studies the piano with Ludwig Berger and theroy and composition with Zelter and published his first piece in1820.

Franz Liszt

2005-03-24T05:07:00.000-08:00

Franz Liszt was born in Raiding, on October 22, 1811; and died in Bayreuth, on July 30,1886. He was taught the piano by his father and then establishing himself as a remarkable concert artist by the age of 12. In Paris he studied theory and composition. He wrote an opera and bravura piano pieces and accepted tours in France, Switzerland and England before ill-health and religious doubt made him reassess his career. He gave concerts in Paris, maintaining his legendary reputation, and published some essays, but was active chiefly as a composer (Annees de pèlerinage). To help raise funds for the Bonn Beethoven monument, he resumed the life of a travelling virtuoso (1839-47); he was adulated everywhere, from Ireland to Turkey, Portugal to Russia. In 1848 he took up a full-time conducting post at the Weimar court, where, living with the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, he wrote or revised most of the major works for which he is known, conducted new operas by wagner, berlioz and verdi and, as the teacher of Hans von Bülow and others in the German avant-garde, became the figurehead of the 'New German school'.

Joseph Haydn

2005-03-17T05:37:00.000-08:00

Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, March 31 1732, died in Vienna May 31 1809. He was trained as a choirboy and taken into the choir at St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, where he sang from circa 1740 to circa 1750. He then worked as a freelance musician, playing the violin and keyboard instruments, accompanying for singing lessons given by the composer Porpora, who helped and encouraged him.

George Frideric Handel

2005-03-17T05:24:00.001-08:00

George Frideric Handel was born in Halle Germany February 23 1685, died in London, April 14, 1759. At first he practiced music but hi sfather encouraged him to study and become a pupil of Zachow (the principal organist in Halle). When he was 17 he became an organist of the Calvinist Cathedral, but a year later he left for Hamburg. There he played the violin and harpsichord in the opera house, where Almira was given at the beginning of 1705, soon followed by his Nero. The next year he accepted an invitation to Italy, where he spent more than three years in Florence, Rome, Naples, and Venice.

Edvard Grieg

2005-03-17T05:24:00.000-08:00

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) is the greatest composer Norway has fostered. In retrospect one may wonder how a country with neither national freedom nor a long tradition of art music could have produced a man of such genius. Up to 1814 Norway had been totally subject to Denmark, with Copenhagen as its cultural center. From 1814 to 1905 it was forced into a union with Sweden. In the autumn of 1858, Edvard Grieg, then only 15 years old, went to the Leipzig Conservatory to study music.

Charles Gounod

2005-03-17T05:13:00.000-08:00

Charles Gounod was born in France in June 1818. He was one of the countrys best composers of the late nineteenth century. He studies at the Paris conservatoireand after his studies, he won the Prix de Rome in 1838. Gounod developed an interest in 16th century polyphonic music during the period of his Prix de Rome, and while in Rome Gounod composed a mass and a Requiem. After his interest in religion music declined he began his career as an opera composer.

Antonin Dvorák

2004-12-09T05:40:00.000-08:00

Antonin Dvorák was born Nelahozeves, 8 September 1841; died Prague, 1 May 1904. He studied with Antonin Liehmann and at the Prague Organ School. A capable viola player, he joined the band that became the nucleus of the new Provisional Theatre orchestra, conducted from 1866 by Smetana.

Claude Debussy

2004-12-09T05:37:00.000-08:00

Claude Debussy was born in St. Germain-en-Laye, on the 22 of August 1862 and died in Paris, 25 March 1918. He studied with Guiraud and others at the Paris Conservatoire and as prizewinner went to Rome, though more important Impressions came from his visits to Bayreuth and from hearing Javanese music in Paris.

Frédéric Chopin

2004-12-09T05:34:00.000-08:00

Frédéric Chopin was born in Zelazowa Wola, on the 1 of March in 1810 and then died in Paris, 17 October 1849. The son of French émigré father who was a schoolteacher working in Poland and a cultured Polish mother, he grew up in Warsaw, taking childhood music lessons from Wojciech Zywny and Jósef Elsner before entering the Conservatory.

Johannes Brahms

2004-12-09T05:30:00.000-08:00

Johannes Brahms was born Hamburg, 7 May 1833 and died in Vienna, 3 April 1897. He studied the piano at the age of 7 and theroy and composition and from 13, gaining experience as an arranger for his father's light orchestra while absorbing the popular alla zingarese style associated with Hungarian folk music.

Georges Bizet

2004-12-09T05:23:00.000-08:00

Georges Bizet born in Paris, 25 October 1838 and died in Bougival, 3 June 1875. He was trained by his parents, who were musical, and admitted to the Paris Conservatoire just before his tenth birthday. There he studied counterpoint with Zimmerman and Goundog and composition with Halvely. In 1857 Bizet shared with Lecocq a prize offered by Offenbach for a setting of the one act operetta Le Docteur Miracle; later that year he set out for Italy as holder of the coveted Prix de Rome.

Ludwig van Beethoven

2004-12-09T05:19:00.000-08:00

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Ludwig born Bonn, baptized 17 December 1770 and died in Vienna on the, 26 March 1827. He studied first with his father, Johann, a singer and instrumentalist in the service of the Elector of Cologne at Bonn, but mainly with C.G. Neefe, court organist. 1802, was a year of crisis for Beethoven, with his realization that the impaired hearing he had noticed for some time was incurable and sure to worsen. The years after 1812 were relatively unproductive. He seems to have been seriously depressed, by his deafness and the resulting isolation, by the failure of his marital hopes and (from 1815) by anxieties over the custodianship of the son of his late brother, which involved him in legal actions. But he came out of these trials to write his profoundest music, which surely reflects something of what he had been through.

Johann Sebastian Bach

2004-12-09T05:08:00.000-08:00

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, 21 March 1685 and he died in Leipzig, on the 28th of July, 1750. He was the youngest son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, a town musician, were he probably learned the violin and the rudiments of musical theory from. After competing unsuccessfully for an organist's post in Sangerhausen in 1702, Bach spent the spring and summer of 1703 as 'lackey' and violinist at Weimar and took up the post of organist at the Neukirche in Arnstalt. In June 1707 he move to Saint Blasius , Muhlhausen, and four months later married his cousin Maria Barbara Bach in nearby Dornheim. Bach was appointed organist and chamber musician to the Duke of Saxe-Weimar in 1708, and in the next nine years he became known as a leading organist and composed many of his finest works for the instrument.

Ludwig Beethoven

2004-11-18T05:33:00.000-08:00

Ludwig Beethoven was born in Bon, Germany to Johann van Beethoven. Beethoven's first music teacher was his father, an alcoholic who beat him and attempted to exhibit him in child prodigy. Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792, where he studied with Joseph hayden and other teachers. Around age 28 he started to become deaf. In 1827 he died at the age of 56.

Josquin Des Prez

2004-11-18T05:11:00.000-08:00

little is know about his life but they say that he was either born in Hainat or in Belgium or immediatly across the border from France. By 1474 was a singer at the court chapel of the Sforza family in Milan durin the period when it was one of the most famouse in Europe. From 1486 to 1494 Des Prez was a member of the papal choir under Pope Innocent VIII. In the later 149o's he was in France, probaly in the service of Louis XII for the most of the time, and he had stayed there until 1503, when Duke Ercole I of Ferrara hired him for the chapel there; so Josquin returned to Italy.