celebration
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César Franck *XII 10 1822 — The Life You Give
César Franck, born César-auguste Franck, Dec. 10, 1822, 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 Walloon father and a mother…
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Emily Dickinson *XII 10 1830 — The Life You Give
Emily Dickinson, born Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.A., is the lyric poet who lived in seclusion, and commanded a singular brilliance of style and integrity of vision. With Walt Whitman, Dickinson is widely considered to be one of the two leading 19th-century American poets. Only 10 of Emily Dickinson’s nearly…
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The Life You Give: Jean Sibelius *1865
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 *XII 7 1949 — The Life You Give
Tom Waits, born Thomas Alan Waits, December 7, 1949, in Pomona, California, U.S.A., is the 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…
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C. S. Lewis *XI 29 1898 — The Life You Give
Clive Staples Lewis, born November 29, 1898, 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 have…
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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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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…
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Björk *XI 21 1965 — The Life You Give
Björk, born Björk Gudmundsdottir, November 21, 1965, in Reykjavík, Iceland, is the singer-songwriter and actress best known for her solo work covering a wide variety of music styles. Integrating electronic and organic sounds, her music frequently explored the relationship between nature and technology. Björk recorded her first solo album, a collection of cover versions of…
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Meredith Monk *XI 20 1942 — The Life You Give
Meredith Monk, born Meredith Jane Monk, November 20, 1942, New York City, New York, U.S.A., is the performance artist, a pioneer in the avant-garde, whose work skillfully integrated diverse performance disciplines and media. Monk studied piano and eurythmics from an early age. She earned a B.A. in 1964 from Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York.…
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Fyodor Dostoyevsky *XI 11 1821 — The Life You Give
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, born Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky, Dostoyevsky also spelled Dostoevsky, on November 11 [October 30, Old Style], 1821, Moscow, Russia, is the novelist and short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the darkest recesses of the human heart, together with his unsurpassed moments of illumination, had an immense influence on 20th-century fiction. Dostoyevsky is usually regarded…
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Friedrich von Schiller *XI 10 1759 The Life You Give
Friedrich Schiller, born Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller, Nov. 10, 1759, in Marbach, Württemberg [Germany], is a leading dramatist, poet, and literary theorist, best remembered for such dramas as Die Räuber (1781; The Robbers), the Wallenstein trilogy (1800–01), Maria Stuart (1801), and Wilhelm Tell (1804). Friedrich Schiller was the second child of Lieut. Johann Kaspar Schiller…
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“Don Giovanni” (Mozart) premiered X 29 1787
Don Juan is a figure which crosses boundaries: the boundary between the sexes, the boundary between the classes and the boundary between life and death showing that even cemetery walls don’t stop him. He is said to have already loved 2065 women, 1003 in Spain alone, 640 in Italy, 231 in Germany and 100 in…
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Niccolò Paganini *X 27 1782 — The Life You Give
Niccolò Paganini, born October 27, 1782, in Genoa, republic of Genoa [Italy], is the composer and principal violin virtuoso of the 19th century. A popular idol, he inspired the Romantic mystique of the virtuoso and revolutionized violin technique. After initial study with his father, Paganini studied with a local violinist, G. Servetto, and then with…
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Conlon Nancarrow *X 27 1912 — The Life You Give
Conlon Nancarrow was an iconoclastic American composer who wrote in an utterly new way using new instrumental resources. While isolated from the main currents of music, he was virtually ignored by the public and his colleagues until the 1970s. In the 1980s composer György Ligeti said Nancarrow was writing “the best music by any living…
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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…
Sila Blume 