Orchestra
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Aaron Copland *XI 14 1900 — The Life You Give
Aaron Copland, born November 14, 1900, in Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A., is the composer who achieved a distinctive musical characterization of American themes in an expressive modern style. Copland, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, was born in New York City and attended public schools there. An older sister taught him to play the piano, and…
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Sofia Gubaidulina *X 24 1931 — The Life You Give
Sofia Gubaidulina, born October 24, 1931, Chistopol, Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic [now Tatarstan, Russia]), is the composer whose works fuse Russian and Central Asian regional styles with the Western classical tradition. During her youth, Gubaidulina studied music in the city of Kazan, the capital of her home republic. She had lessons at the Kazan…
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Charles Ives *X 20 1874 — The Life You Give
Charles Ives, born Charles Edward Ives, October 20, 1874, in Danbury, Connecticut, U.S.A., is the significant composer known for a number of innovations that anticipated most of the later musical developments of the 20th century. Ives received his earliest musical instruction from his father, who was a bandleader, music teacher, and acoustician who experimented with…
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Camille Saint-Saëns *XI 9 1835 — The Life You Give
Camille Saint-Saëns, in full Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns, (born October 9, 1835, Paris, France—died December 16, 1921, Algiers [Algeria]), composer chiefly remembered for his symphonic poems—the first of that genre to be written by a Frenchman—and for his opera Samson et Dalila. Saint-Saëns was notable for his pioneering efforts on behalf of French music, and he was…
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Steve Reich *X 3 1936 — The Life You Give
Steve Reich, born Stephen Michael Reich, October 3, 1936, in New York, New York, U.S.A., is the composer who was one of the leading exponents of Minimalism, a style based on repetitions and combinations of simple motifs and harmonies. Reich was the son of an attorney and a singer-lyricist. He majored in philosophy at Cornell…
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Dmitri Shostakovich *IX 25 1906 — The Life You Give
Dmitri Shostakovich, born Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, on September 12 [September 25, New Style], 1906, in St. Petersburg, Russia, is the composer renowned particularly for his 15 symphonies, numerous chamber works, and concerti, many of them written under the pressures of government-imposed standards of Soviet art. Shostakovich was the son of an engineer. He entered the…
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Arnold Schönberg *IX 13 1874 — The Life You Give
Arnold Schoenberg, born Arnold Franz Walter Schönberg, September 13, 1874 in Vienna, Austria, is the composer who created new methods of musical composition involving atonality, namely serialism and the 12-tone row. He was also one of the most-influential teachers of the 20th century; among his most-significant pupils were Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Schoenberg’s father,…
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Henry Purcell *IX 10 1659 / The Life You Give
Henry Purcell, born September 10 1659, London, England, is the composer of the middle Baroque period, most remembered for his more than 100 songs; a tragic opera, Dido and Aeneas; and his incidental music to a version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream called The Fairy Queen. Purcell, the most important English composer of his…
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Anton Bruckner *IX 4 1824 / The Life You Give
Anton Bruckner, born Josef Anton Bruckner, Sept. 4, 1824, in Ansfelden, Austria, is the composer of a number of highly original and monumental symphonies. He was also an organist and teacher who composed much sacred and secular choral music. Bruckner was the son of a village schoolmaster and organist in Upper Austria. He showed talent…
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Recurring Music Series / Symphony, Mahler #7
The Recurring Music Series aims to investigate the meaning, source, and relevance of music — piece by piece, time after time, and again. Especially when it comes to music pieces, but also cinematic works, by the first viewing/listening the individual seems incapable of grasping the magnitude, and minuscule details of the work. Beyond the fact…
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Karlheinz Stockhausen *VIII 22 1928 / The Life You Give
Karlheinz Stockhausen, born Aug. 22, 1928, in Mödrath, near Cologne, Germany, is the composer, and important creator and theoretician of electronic and serial music who strongly influenced avant-garde composers from the 1950s through the ’80s. Stockhausen studied at the State Academy for Music in Cologne and the University of Cologne from 1947 to 1951. In…
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Gustav Mahler *VII 7 1860 / The Life You Give
Gustav Mahler, born July 7, 1860, in Kaliště, Bohemia, Austrian Empire, is the composer and conductor, noted for his 10 symphonies and various songs with orchestra, which drew together many different strands of Romanticism. Although his music was largely ignored for 50 years after his death, Mahler was later regarded as an important forerunner of…
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Leoš Janáček *VII 3 1854 / The Life You Give
Leoš Janáček, born July 3, 1854, in Hukvaldy, Moravia, Austrian Empire, is a composer who counts as one of the most important exponents of musical nationalism of the 20th century. Janáček was a choirboy at Brno and studied at the Prague, Leipzig, and Vienna conservatories. In 1881 he founded a college of organists at Brno,…
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Igor Stravinsky *VI 17 1882 / The Life You Give
Igor Stravinsky, born Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, June 5 [June 17, New Style], 1882, Oranienbaum [now Lomonosov], near St. Petersburg, Russia, is the composer whose work had a revolutionary impact on musical thought and sensibility just before and after World War I, and whose compositions remained a touchstone of modernism for much of his long working…
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The Life You Give: Edward Elgar *VI 2 1857
Sir Edward Elgar, born Edward William Elgar, June 2, 1857, in Broadheath, Worcestershire, England, is the composer whose works in the orchestral idiom of late 19th-century Romanticism—characterized by bold tunes, striking colour effects, and mastery of large forms—stimulated a renaissance of English music. musicus, organicuscelebrates the life in music ofEdward ElgarJune 2 at 10:30 pm…
Sila Blume 