composer
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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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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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David Bowie *I 8 1947 — The Life You Give
David Bowie, born David Jones on January 8 1947, in London, England, is the singer, songwriter, and actor who was most prominent in the 1970s and best known for his shifting personae and musical genre hopping. To call Bowie a transitional figure in rock history is less a judgment than a job description. Every niche…
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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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Mauricio Kagel *XII 24 1931 — The Life You Give
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Kagel proved to be one of the most versatile, creative, and witty composers to come of age in the second half of the twentieth century. He studied piano, theory, violoncello, organ, singing, and conducting, and was self-taught as a composer. Kagel also studied philosophy and literature extensively during his college…
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Ludwig van Beethoven *XII 17 1770 — The Life You Give
Ludwig van Beethoven, born on December 17, 1770, in Bonn, Germany, is the composer, and predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras. Widely regarded as the greatest composer who ever lived, Ludwig van Beethoven dominates a period of musical history as no one else before or since. Rooted in…
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Hector Berlioz *XII 11 1803 — The Life You Give
Hector Berlioz, born Louis-Hector Berlioz on December 11, 1803, in La Côte-Saint-André, France, is the composer, critic, and conductor of the Romantic period, known largely for his Symphonie fantastique (1830), the choral symphony Roméo et Juliette (1839), and the dramatic piece La Damnation de Faust (1846). His last years were marked by fame abroad and…
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Olivier Messiaen *XII 10 1908 — The Life You Give
Olivier Messiaen, born Olivier-Eugène-Prosper-Charles Messiaen, December 10, 1908, in Avignon, France, is the influential composer, organist, and teacher noted for his use of mystical and religious themes. As a composer he developed a highly personal style noted for its rhythmic complexity, rich tonal colour, and unique harmonic language. Messiaen was the son of Pierre Messiaen,…
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César Franck *XII 10 1822 — The Life You Give
César Franck, born César Auguste Jean Guillaume Hubert Franck, on December 10, 1822, in 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…
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Jean Sibelius *XII 8 1865 — The Life You Give
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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Gaetano Donizetti *XI 29 1797 — The Life You Give
Gaetano Donizetti, born on Nov. 29, 1797, in Bergamo, Cisalpine Republic, was an Italian opera composer whose numerous operas in both Italian and French represent a transitional stage in operatic development between Rossini and Verdi. Among his major works are Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), La fille du régiment (1840), and La favorite (1840). In his…
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Helmut Lachenmann *XI 27 1935 — The Life You Give
“Expression is created on the reverse face of that on which the composer is working…destruction, deflation, and disintegration. But during this process expressive energy radiates out in the first instance like a creative serenity — freedom even.” Helmut Lachenmann musicus, organicuscelebrates the life in music ofHelmut LachenmannNovember 27 at 1 pm ESTon Clubhouse To scratch…
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Virgil Thomson *XI 25 1896 — The Life You Give
Virgil Thomson, born November 25, 1896, in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, is the composer, conductor, and music critic whose forward-looking ideas stimulated new lines of thought among contemporary musicians. Thomson studied at Harvard University and later in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, a noted teacher of musical composition. There he was influenced by early 20th-century French…
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Scott Joplin *XI 24 1868 — The Life You Give
Scott Joplin, born November 24 1867 or 1868, in Texas, USA, is the composer and pianist known as the “king of ragtime” at the turn of the 20th century. Joplin spent his childhood in northeastern Texas. By 1880 his family had moved to Texarkana, where he studied piano with local teachers. Joplin traveled through the…
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Alfred Schnittke *XI 24 1934 — The Life you Give
Alfred Schnittke, born Nov. 24, 1934, Engels, Volga German Autonomous S.S.R. [now in Saratov oblast, Russia], is the postmodernist Russian composer who created serious, dark-toned musical works characterized by abrupt juxtapositions of radically different, often contradictory, styles, an approach that came to be known as “polystylism.” Schnittke’s father was a Jewish journalist who had been…
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