classical music
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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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Carl Maria von Weber *XI 18 1786 — The Life You Give
Carl Maria von Weber, born Nov. 18, 1786, in Eutin, Holstein, Germany, is the composer and opera director during the transition from Classical to Romantic music, noted especially for his operas Der Freischütz (1821; The Freeshooter, or, more colloquially, The Magic Marksman), Euryanthe (1823), and Oberon (1826). Der Freischütz, the most immediately and widely popular…
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Paul Hindemith *XI 16 1895 — The Life You Give
Paul Hindemith, born November 16, 1895, in Hanau, near Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is the one of the principal German composers of the first half of the 20th century and a leading musical theorist. He sought to revitalize tonality—the traditional harmonic system that was being challenged by many other composers—and also pioneered in the writing…
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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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Fanny Mendelssohn *XI 14 1805 — The Life You Give
Fanny Mendelssohn, born Fanny (Cäcilie) Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy, married name Fanny Hensel), on November 14, 1805, Hamburg [Germany], is the pianist and composer, the eldest sister and confidante of the composer Felix Mendelssohn. Fanny is said to have been as talented musically as her brother, and the two children were given the same music teachers. Felix…
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Thomas Quasthoff *XI 9 1959 — The Life You Give
Thomas Quasthoff, born November 9, 1959, in Hildesheim, Germany, is the singer whose powerful bass-baritone voice placed him among the preeminent classical vocalists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Quasthoff was born with severe disabilities, the result of his mother’s having taken the drug thalidomide during her early pregnancy as a treatment for…
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Joan Sutherland *XI 7 1926 — The Life You Give
Joan Sutherland, in full Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, born November 7, 1926, in Sydney, Australia, is the operatic soprano who was considered the leading coloratura of the 20th century. The daughter of a gifted singer, she studied piano and voice with her mother until 1946, when she won a vocal competition and began studying voice…
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György Cziffra *XI 5 1921 — The Life You Give
György Cziffra was one of the most celebrated and individual piano virtuosos of the postwar decades in Europe, especially noted for his powers of improvisation and as a Liszt pianist. He was born in a shantytown called Angels Court on the outskirts of Budapest to a family of gypsy musicians. The family was desperately poor,…
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Vincenzo Bellini *XI 3 1801 — The Life You Give
Vincenzo Bellini, born November 3, 1801, in Catania, Sicily [Italy], is the died operatic composer with a gift for creating vocal melody at once pure in style and sensuous in expression. His influence is reflected not only in later operatic compositions, including the early works of Richard Wagner, but also in the instrumental music of…
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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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Luciano Berio *X 24 1925 — The Life You Give
Luciano Berio, born October 24, 1925, in Oneglia, Italy, is the musician, whose success as theorist, conductor, composer, and teacher placed him among the leading representatives of the musical avant-garde. His style is notable for combining lyric and expressive musical qualities with the most advanced techniques of electronic and aleatory music. Berio studied composing 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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Renata Tarragó *X 23 1927 — The Life You Give
Renata Tarragó Fábregas is the guitarist and vihuelist (*) who was a teacher and performer, both as a solo artist and an accompanist. She was the first female guitarist to record Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, and was the editor of the first published edition of the Concierto de Aranjuez score. Tarragó was born in…
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Franz Liszt *X 22 1811 / The Life You Give
Franz Liszt, Hungarian form Liszt Ferenc, born October 22, 1811, Doborján, kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire [now Raiding, Austria], is the piano virtuoso and composer who composed many notable compositions — 12 symphonic poems, two (completed) piano concerti, several sacred choral works, and a great variety of solo piano pieces. Youth and early training Liszt’s…
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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 