composer
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Cécile Chaminade *VIII 8 1857 — The Life You Give
Cécile Chaminade, born Aug. 8, 1857, in Paris, France, is the composer and pianist known chiefly for her piano music, which she performed on numerous concert tours, particularly in England. Chaminade’s earliest music studies were with her mother, a pianist and singer. Because her father forbade her enrollment in a conservatory, Chaminade studied composition privately…
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Carl Orff *VII 10 1895 — The Life You Give
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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Gustav Mahler *VII 7 1860 — The Life You Give
Gustav Mahler, born July 7, 1860, in Kaliště, Bohemia, Austrian Empire, is the composer and conductor, noted for his 10 symphonies and various songs with orchestra, which drew together many different strands of Romanticism. Although his music was largely ignored for 50 years after his death, Mahler was later regarded as an important forerunner of…
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Leoš Janáček *VII 3 1854 — The Life You Give
Leoš Janáček, born July 3, 1854, in Hukvaldy, Moravia, Austrian Empire, is a composer who counts as one of the most important exponents of musical nationalism of the 20th century. Janáček was a choirboy at Brno and studied at the Prague, Leipzig, and Vienna conservatories. In 1881 he founded a college of organists at Brno,…
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Hans Werner Henze *VII 1 1926 — The Life You Give
Hans Werner Henze, born July 1, 1926, in Gütersloh, Germany, is the composer whose operas, ballets, symphonies, and other works are marked by an individual and advanced style wrought within traditional forms. Henze was a pupil of the noted German composer Wolfgang Fortner and of René Leibowitz, the leading French composer of 12-tone music. One…
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George Theophilus Walker *VI 27 1922 — The Life You Give
George Walker was one of America’s most honored composers, having had his works performed by every major orchestra in the country, and was the first African-American composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for music. He composed nearly 100 pieces in forms ranging from solo piano pieces and songs to concerti and symphonies and was also…
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Paul McCartney *VI 18 1942 — The Life You Give
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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Charles Gounod *VI 17 1818 / The Life You Give
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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Igor Stravinsky *VI 17 1882 — The Life You Give
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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Edvard Grieg *VI 15 1843 — The Life You Give
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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Richard Strauss *VI 11 1864 — The Life You Give
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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Robert Schumann *VI 8 1810 — The Life You Give
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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Prince *VI 7 1958 — The Life You Give
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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Laurie Anderson *VI 5 1947 — The Life You Give
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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Edward Elgar *VI 2 1857 — The Life You Give
Sir Edward Elgar, born Edward William Elgar, June 2, 1857, in Broadheath, Worcestershire, England, is the composer whose works in the orchestral idiom of late 19th-century Romanticism—characterized by bold tunes, striking colour effects, and mastery of large forms—stimulated a renaissance of English music. The son of an organist and music dealer, Elgar left school at…
Sila Blume 