celebration
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Olivier Messiaen *XII 10 1908 — The Life You Give
Olivier Messiaen, born Olivier-Eugène-Prosper-Charles Messiaen, December 10, 1908, in Avignon, France, is the influential composer, organist, and teacher noted for his use of mystical and religious themes. As a composer he developed a highly personal style noted for its rhythmic complexity, rich tonal colour, and unique harmonic language. Messiaen was the son of Pierre Messiaen,…
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César Franck *XII 10 1822 — The Life You Give
César Franck, born César Auguste Jean Guillaume Hubert Franck, on December 10, 1822, in Liège, Neth.—died Nov. 8, 1890, Paris, France), Belgian-French Romantic composer and organist who was the chief figure in a movement to give French music an emotional engagement, technical solidity, and seriousness comparable to that of German composers. Franck was born of a…
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Elisabeth Schwarzkopf *XII 9 1915 — The Life You Give
Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, born December 9 1915, in Jarotschin, near Posen, Germany, [now Poznań, Poland] is the soprano who performed in the major opera houses of the Western world, and is remembered especially for her mastery of German songs known as lieder. Schwarzkopf studied at the Berlin High School for Music from 1934, winning various…
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Jean Sibelius *XII 8 1865 — The Life You Give
Jean Sibelius was born in Hämeenlinna, Finland, on 8th December 1865, the second of three children. His father died when ‘Janne’ was only two. Although the language spoken at home was Swedish, Janne attended Hämeenlinna’s pioneering Finnish-speaking grammar school. Music was encouraged at home, and before long Janne was improvising and composing pieces of his…
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Tom Waits *1949 — The Life You Give
Tom Waits, born December 7, 1949, in Pomona, California, is a singer-songwriter and actor whose gritty, sometimes romantic depictions of the lives of the urban underclass won him a loyal if limited following and the admiration of critics and prominent musicians who performed and recorded his songs. Born into a middle-class California family but enamoured…
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Rainer Maria Rilke *XII 4 1875 — The Life You Give / Das Leben das Du Gibst
Rainer Maria Rilke, born December 4 1875, in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now in Czech Republic] was the poet who became internationally famous with such works as Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Rilke was the only son of a not-too-happy marriage. His father, Josef, a civil servant, was a man frustrated in his career; his…
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Jean-Luc Godard *XII 3 1930 — The Life You Give
Jean-Luc Godard, born December 3, 1930, Paris, France, is a French Swiss film director who came to prominence with the New Wave group in France during the late 1950s and the ’60s. Godard’s first feature film, À bout de souffle (1960; Breathless), which was produced by François Truffaut, his colleague on the journal Cahiers du…
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C. S. Lewis *XI 29 1898 — The Life You Give
Clive Staples Lewis, born November 29, 1898, in Belfast, Ireland [now in Northern Ireland] was scholar, novelist, and author of about 40 books, many of them on Christian apologetics, including The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity. His works of greatest lasting fame may be The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven children’s books that…
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Stefan Zweig *XI 28 1881 — The Life You Give
Stefan Zweig, born November 28, 1881, Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire [now in Austria], is the writer who achieved distinction in several genres—poetry, essays, short stories, and dramas—most notably in his interpretations of imaginary and historical characters. Zweig was raised in Vienna. His first book, a volume of poetry, was published in 1901. He received a doctorate…
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Jimi Hendrix *Nov 27 1942 — The Life You Give
Though his active career as a featured artist lasted a mere four years, Hendrix altered the course of popular music and became one of the most successful and influential musicians of his era. An instrumentalist who radically redefined the expressive potential and sonic palette of the electric guitar, he was the composer of a classic…
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Helmut Lachenmann *XI 27 1935 — The Life You Give
“Expression is created on the reverse face of that on which the composer is working…destruction, deflation, and disintegration. But during this process expressive energy radiates out in the first instance like a creative serenity — freedom even.” Helmut Lachenmann musicus, organicuscelebrates the life in music ofHelmut LachenmannNovember 27 at 1 pm ESTon Clubhouse To scratch…
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Tina Turner *XI 26 1939 — The Life You Give
Tina Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock, November 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tennessee, U.S.A., is the singer who found success in the rhythm-and-blues, soul, and rock genres in a career that spanned five decades. Turner was born into a sharecropping family in rural Tennessee. She began singing as a teenager and, after moving to St. Louis,…
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Virgil Thomson *XI 25 1896 — The Life You Give
Virgil Thomson, born November 25, 1896, in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, is the composer, conductor, and music critic whose forward-looking ideas stimulated new lines of thought among contemporary musicians. Thomson studied at Harvard University and later in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, a noted teacher of musical composition. There he was influenced by early 20th-century French…
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Manuel de Falla *XI 23 1876 — La Vida Que Das / The Life You Give
Read English biography at the bottom Manuel de Falla Matheu, nacido en Cádiz, el 23 de Noviembre del 1876, es el compositor y la figura musical más trascendente de todo el siglo xx español, tanto por la importancia de sus obras como por las secuelas que su trabajo ha creado en generaciones posteriores. Es el…
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Benjamin Britten *XI 22 1913 — The Life You Give
Benjamin Britten, born Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten Of Aldeburgh, November 22, 1913, in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England, is the composer of the mid-20th century, whose operas were considered the finest English operas since those of Henry Purcell in the 17th century. He was also an outstanding pianist and conductor. Britten composed as a child and…
Sila Blume 