Personalities
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Antonin Dvořák *IX 8 1841 / The Life You Give
Antonín Dvořák, born Antonín Leopold Dvořák, September 8, 1841, in Nelahozeves, Bohemia, Austrian Empire [now in Czech Republic], is the first Bohemian composer to have achieved worldwide recognition, noted for turning folk material into 19th-century Romantic music. Dvořák was born, the first of nine children, in Nelahozeves, a Bohemian village on the Vltava River north…
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Angela Gheorghiu *IX 7 1965 / The Life You Give
Angela Gheorghiu, born Angela Burlacu on September 7, 1965, in Adjud, Romania, is an operatic lyric soprano noted for her powerful voice and commanding stage presence. Gheorghiu early realized her love of singing, and she was supported by her family in working toward a career in opera. She left home at age 14 to study…
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Amy Beach *IX 5 1867 — The Life You Give
Amy Marcy Beach, born Amy Marcy Cheney, on September 5, 1867, in Henniker, New Hampshire, U.S.A., is the pianist and composer known for her Piano Concerto (1900) and her Gaelic Symphony (1894), the first symphony by an American woman composer. Amy Cheney had already demonstrated precocious musical talent when the family moved to Boston in…
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Caspar David Friedrich *IX 5 1774 — The Life You Give
Caspar David Friedrich, born September 5, 1774, in Greifswald, Pomerania [now in Germany], is one of the leading figures of the German Romantic movement. His vast, mysterious, atmospheric landscapes and seascapes proclaimed human helplessness against the forces of nature and did much to establish the idea of the Sublime as a central concern of Romanticism.…
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John Cage *IX 5 1912 / The Life You Give
John Cage, born John Milton Cage, Jr., September 5, 1912, in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., is the avant-garde composer whose inventive compositions and unorthodox ideas profoundly influenced mid-20th-century music. The son of an inventor, Cage briefly attended Pomona College and then traveled in Europe for a time. Returning to the United States in 1931, he…
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Giacomo Meyerbeer *IX 5 1791 — The Life You Give
Giacomo Meyerbeer, born Jakob Liebmann Meyer Beer, September 5, 1791, in Tasdorf, near Berlin, Germany, is the opera composer who established in Paris a vogue for spectacular romantic opera. Born of a wealthy Jewish family, Meyerbeer studied composition in Berlin and later at Darmstadt, where he formed a friendship with C.M. von Weber. His early…
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Freddie Mercury *IX 5 1946 / The Life You Give
Freddie Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara on September 5, 1946, in Stone Town, Zanzibar [now in Tanzania], is the rock singer and songwriter whose flamboyant showmanship and powerfully agile vocals, most famously for the band Queen, made him one of rock’s most dynamic front men. Bulsara was born to Parsi parents who had emigrated from India…
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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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Hermann Nitsch *VIII 29 1938 — The Life You Give
Hermann Nitsch is an avant-garde painter, composer, and performance artist who worked in experimental and multimedia modes. He was a co-founder of the notorious art movement known as the Viennese Aktionists. With his project Orgien Mysterien Theater (“the Orgiastic Mystery Theater”), Nitsch immersed his audiences in scenes and symbols heavily charged with meaning: religious imagery,…
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe *VIII 28 1749 — The Life You Give
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born August 28, 1749, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is the poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, critic, and amateur artist, considered the greatest German literary figure of the modern era. Goethe is the only German literary figure whose range and international standing equal those of Germany’s supreme philosophers (who…
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Rebecca Clarke *VIII 27 1886 — The Life You Give
Rebecca Helferich Clarke, born on August 27 1886, is the classical composer and violist, internationally renowned as a viola virtuoso who also became one of the first female professional orchestral players in London. In many respects, Rebecca Clarke had a troubled childhood. Her father maintained a strict sense of Victorian morals and could be quite…
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Leonard Bernstein *VIII 25 1918 / The Life You Give
Leonard Bernstein, born August 25, 1918, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, is the conductor, composer, and pianist noted for his accomplishments in both classical and popular music, for his flamboyant conducting style, and for his pedagogic flair, especially in concerts for young people. Bernstein played piano from age 10. He attended Boston Latin School; Harvard University (A.B.,…
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Elvis Costello *VIII 25 1954 / The Life You Give
Elvis Costello, born Declan Patrick McManus, on August 25, 1954, in London, England, is the singer-songwriter who extended the musical and lyrical range of the punk and new wave movements. The son of musicians, Costello was exposed to a mix of British and American styles—dance-hall pop to modern jazz to the Beatles—from an early age.…
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Jorge Luis Borges *VIII 24 1899 — The Life You Give
Jorge Luis Borges, born Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo, August 24, 1899, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the poet, essayist, and short-story writer whose works became classics of 20th-century world literature. Borges was reared in the then-shabby Palermo district of Buenos Aires, the setting of some of his works. His family, which had been…
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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…
Sila Blume 