composer
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Charlie Parker *VIII 29 1920 / The Life You Give
Charlie Parker, born Charles Parker, Jr., also called Bird or Yardbird, on August 29, 1920, in Kansas City, Kansas, U.S.A., is the alto saxophonist, composer, and bandleader, a lyric artist generally considered the greatest jazz saxophonist. Parker was the principal stimulus of the modern jazz idiom known as bebop, and—together with Louis Armstrong and Ornette…
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The Life You Give: Hermann Nitsch *VIII 29 1938
Hermann Nitsch was an Austrian 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…
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The Life You Give: Karlheinz Stockhausen *VIII 22 1928
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…
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The Life You Give: Enrique Granados *VII 27 1867
Enrique Granados, born July 27, 1867, in Lérida, Spain, is the pianist and composer who was a leader of the movement toward nationalism in late 19th-century Spanish music. Granados made his debut as a pianist at 16. He studied composition in Barcelona with Felipe Pedrell, the father of Spanish nationalism in music. He studied piano…
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The Life You Give: Carl Orff *VII 10 1895
Carl Orff, born July 10, 1895, in Munich, Germany, is the composer known particularly for his operas and dramatic works and for his innovations in music education. Orff studied at the Munich Academy of Music and with the German composer Heinrich Kaminski and later conducted in Munich, Mannheim, and Darmstadt. His Schulwerk, a manual describing…
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The Life You Give: George Walker *VI 27 1922
Although he started out as a highly promising concert pianist in a grand style (some of his most prominent concerts featured concertos by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, and Brahms), George Walker was writing substantial music from his mid-twenties. By the time he was 40, he had solidly established himself as a flexible, fully contemporary composer and it…
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The Life You Give: Paul McCartney *1942
Paul McCartney, born James Paul McCartney, June 18, 1942, in Liverpool, England, is the vocalist, songwriter, composer, bass player, poet, and painter whose work with the Beatles in the 1960s helped lift popular music from its origins in the entertainment business and transform it into a creative, highly commercial art form. He is also one…
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The Life You Give: Igor Stravinsky *1882
Igor Stravinsky, born Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, June 5 [June 17, New Style], 1882, Oranienbaum [now Lomonosov], near St. Petersburg, Russia, is the composer whose work had a revolutionary impact on musical thought and sensibility just before and after World War I, and whose compositions remained a touchstone of modernism for much of his long working…
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The Life You Give: Charles Gounod *1818
Charles Gounod, born Charles-françois Gounod, June 17, 1818, in Paris, France, is a composer noted particularly for his operas, of which the most famous is Faust. Gounod’s father was a painter, and his mother was a capable pianist who gave Gounod his early training in music. He was educated at the Lycée Saint-Louis, where he…
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The Life You Give: Edvard Grieg *1843
Edvard Grieg, born Edvard Hagerup Grieg, June 15, 1843, in Bergen, Norway, is the composer who was a founder of the Norwegian nationalist school of music. His father, Alexander Grieg, was British consul at Bergen. The Grieg (formerly Greig) family was of Scottish origin, the composer’s grandfather having emigrated after the Battle of Culloden. His…
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The Life You Give: Richard Strauss *1864
Richard Strauss, born Richard Georg Strauss, June 11, 1864, Munich, Germany, is an outstanding Romantic composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His symphonic poems of the 1890s and his operas of the following decade have remained an indispensable feature of the standard repertoire. Strauss’s father, Franz, was the principal horn player of…
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The Life You Give: Robert Schumann *1810
Robert Schumann, born Robert Alexander Schumann, June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Saxony [Germany], is the Romantic composer renowned particularly for his piano music, songs (lieder), and orchestral music. Many of his best-known piano pieces were written for his wife, the pianist Clara Schumann. Schumann’s father was a bookseller and publisher. After four years at a…
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The Life You Give: Prince *1958
Prince, born Prince Rogers Nelson, on June 7 1958, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A., is the singer, guitarist, songwriter, producer, dancer, and performer on keyboards, drums, and bass who was among the most talented American musicians of his generation. Like Stevie Wonder, he was a rare composer who could perform at a professional level on virtually…
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The Life You Give: Laurie Anderson *1947
Laurie Anderson, born June 5, 1947, in Wayne, Illinois, U.S.A., is the performance artist, composer, and writer whose work explores a remarkable range of media and subject matter. Anderson began studying classical violin at five years of age and later performed with the Chicago Youth Symphony. In 1966 she moved to New York City, where…
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The Life You Give: Iannis Xenakis *1922
Iannis Xenakis, born May 29, 1922, in Brăila, Romania, is the Romanian-born French composer, architect, and mathematician who originated musique stochastique, music composed with the aid of electronic computers and based upon mathematical probability systems. Xenakis was born to a wealthy family of Greek ancestry, and he moved to Greece in 1932. He fought in…
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