classical music
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Jascha Heifetz *II 2 1901 — The Life You Give
Jascha Heifetz, born February 2 [Jan. 20, Old Style] 1901, in Vilna, Lithuania, Russian Empire [now Vilnius, Lithuania] was the Russian-born American violinist noted for his conscientious musical interpretation, his smooth tone, and his technical proficiency. His name became associated with musical perfection. Heifetz studied violin from age three and at six performed Felix Mendelssohn’s…
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Renata Tebaldi *II 1 1922 — The Life You Give
Renata Tebaldi, born February 1, 1922, in Pesaro, Italy, is an operatic soprano, a star at both Milan’s La Scala and New York City’s Metropolitan Opera. Tebaldi received her early musical training from her mother, a singer, and studied at the Parma Conservatory. At age 18 she sang for Carmen Melis, of the Arrigo Boito…
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Franz Schubert *I 31 1797 — The Life You Give
Franz Schubert, born Franz Peter Schubert on January 31, 1797, in Himmelpfortgrund, near Vienna, Austria, is the composer who bridged the worlds of Classical and Romantic music, noted for the melody and harmony in his songs (lieder) and chamber music. Among other works are Symphony No. 9 in C Major (The Great; 1828), Symphony in…
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Philip Glass *I 31 1937 — The Life You Give
No other composer, no public figure has ever played consequential roles in my life like Phillip Glass. It all began with a physical, mental, perhaps even spiritual shock in 1982, when I sat in Carnegie Hall and experienced his music for the first time. That year I moved to Boston, where, not long after that,…
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart *I 27 1756 — The Life You Give
Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptized as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, born January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, is the composer widely recognized as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. With Haydn and Beethoven he brought to its height the achievement of the Viennese Classical school. Unlike any other composer…
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Jacqueline du Pré *I 26 1945 — The Life You Give
Her story is one of the most legendary of all twentieth century musicians’ stories, and also, one of the most tragic. Cellist Jacqueline Du Pré, born on January 26, 1945, in Oxford, England, to Derek and Iris Du Pré. (Despite the family name, Derek Du Pré was not French, but rather of British Channel Island…
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Witold Lutosławski *I 25 1913 — The Life You Give
Lutoslawski was the leading progressive figure in Polish music of the second half of the twentieth century. Born in Warsaw, he showed an exceptional musical talent at an early age, with his first compositions dating from 1922. He studied piano, violin, and composition (with Witold Maliszewski, a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov), graduating from the Warsaw Conservatory…
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“Parsifal” (Wagner) is completed on this day, 1882
The Poem Parzival, an epic poem, is one of the masterpieces of the Middle Ages, written between 1200 and 1210 in Middle High German by Wolfram von Eschenbach. This 16-book, 25,000-line poem is in part a religious allegory describing Parzival’s painful journey from utter ignorance and naïveté to spiritual awareness. The poem introduced the theme…
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Morton Feldman *I 12 1926 — The Life You Give
Morton Feldman, born on January 12 1926, in New York, N.Y., U.S.A., was an avant-garde composer. He studied composition with Wallingford Riegger and Stefan Wolpe. In the 1950s, much more influenced by Abstract Expressionist painters than by other composers, he began using a method of graphic notation that included such devices as indicating the length…
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Sherrill Milnes *I 10 1935 — The Life You Give
Sherrill Milnes was born on January 10, 1935, and grew up on a dairy farm in Downers Grove, Illinois. Despite a childhood devoted to daily chores, he took voice lessons and studied piano, violin, viola, double bass, clarinet, and tuba. But when it came time for college, he pursued pre-medical studies. After a year and…
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Waltraud Meier *I 9 1956 — The Life You Give
Though she has achieved much acclaim for her Wagnerian roles — and rightly so, mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier possesses a vast repertory — not to mention a consummate skill — in Italian, French, and even Russian opera, from Bizet’s Carmen and Tchaikovsky’s Jeanne d’Arc to Verdi’s Azucena (Il Trovatore) and Saint-Saëns’ Dalila (Samson and Dalila). She…
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Giacinto Scelsi *I 8 1905 — The Life You Give
Giacinto Scelsi was born on January 8th, 1905 to an aristocratic family living on an old estate in the country surrounding Naples in southern Italy. Though he had little formal musical training, he is now recognized as one of the most creative composers of our century. Scelsi’s mature music is marked by a supreme concentration…
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Aleksandr Scriabin *I 6 1871 — The Life You Give
Aleksandr Scriabin, born Aleksandr Nikolayevich Scriabin, on Jan. 6, 1872, in Moscow, Russia, was a composer of piano and orchestral music noted for its unusual harmonies through which the composer sought to explore musical symbolism. Scriabin was trained as a soldier at the Moscow Cadet School from 1882 to 1889 but studied music at the…
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Pablo Casals *XII 29 1876 — The Life You Give / La Vida Que Das
Pablo Casals, born Pau Casals i Defilló, on December 29, 1876, in Vendrell, Spain, was cellist and conductor, known for his virtuosic technique, skilled interpretation, and consummate musicianship. Biografía en español después de la foto Casals made his debut in Barcelona in 1891 after early training in composition, cello, and piano. After further study in…
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Earle Brown *XII 26 1926 — The Life You Give
Earle Brown, born Earle Appleton Brown on December 26, 1926, Lunenburg, Massachusetts, was one of the leading American composers of avant-garde music, best known for his development of graphic notation and the open-form system of composition. Brown had been trained in engineering and mathematics before he began to study music theory and composition. In 1952…
Sila Blume 