Happy Birthday
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The Life You Give: Arthur Honegger *1892
Born in France to Swiss parents, Arthur Honegger was a major twentieth century composer whose musical style was more cosmopolitan than either French or Swiss. An almost exact contemporary of Prokofiev (1891-1953), he rivaled Poulenc as the most successful member of Les Six and was without doubt among the greatest French composers of his day.…
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Happy Birthday, Gary Numan! *1958
Gary Numan is an influential English singer, composer, and musician. Most widely known for his chart-topping 1979 hits “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” (when in Tubeway Army) and “Cars”, Numan achieved his peak of mainstream popularity in the late 70s and early 80s but maintains a loyal cult following. Numan, whose signature sound consists of heavy synthesizer…
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The Life You Give: Maurice Ravel *1875
Maurice Ravel, born Joseph-Maurice Ravel, on March 7 1875, Ciboure, France, was the composer of Swiss-Basque descent, noted for his musical craftsmanship and perfection of form and style in such works as Boléro (1928), Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899; Pavane for a Dead Princess), Rapsodie espagnole (1907), the ballet Daphnis et Chloé (first performed…
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La Vida Que Das / The Life You Give: Gabriel García Márquez *1927
Gabriel José García Márquez nació en Aracataca (Colombia) en 1928. Cursó estudios secundarios en San José a partir de 1940 y finalizó su bachillerato en el Colegio Liceo de Zipaquirá, el 12 de diciembre de 1946. Se matriculó en la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad Nacional de Cartagena el 25 de febrero de 1947,…
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The concept of The Life You Give, and why Frédéric Chopin
As a pianist, Chopin was unique in acquiring a reputation of the highest order on the basis of a minimum of public appearances—few more than 30 in the course of his lifetime. His original and sensitive approach to the keyboard allowed him to exploit all the resources of the piano of his day. He was…
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The Life You Give: Rudolf Steiner *1861
Rudolf Steiner, born February 27 1861, in Kraljević, Austria, was a spiritualist, lecturer, and founder of anthroposophy, a movement based on the notion that there is a spiritual world comprehensible to pure thought but accessible only to the highest faculties of mental knowledge. Attracted in his youth to the works of Goethe, Steiner edited that…
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The Life You Give: Victor Hugo *1802
Victor Hugo, born Victor-Marie Hugo, on February 26 1802, in Besançon, France, is the poet, novelist, and dramatist who was the most important of the French Romantic writers. Though regarded in France as one of that country’s greatest poets, he is better known abroad for such novels as Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) and Les Misérables…
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The Life You Give: Renata Scotto *1934
Renata Scotto’s long and successful operatic career was marked by a rare combination of dramatic intensity and vocal flexibility, which allowed her to traverse a wide variety of styles. She believed strongly in the theatrical elements of performing and always focused her energies on the meaning of a text. She also felt much of the…
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The Virtuous Black XXI: Nina Simone
Nina Simone, born Eunice Waymon on February 21, 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina, U.S.A., is the singer who created urgent emotional intensity by singing songs of love, protest, and Black empowerment in a dramatic style, with a rough-edged voice. A precocious child, Simone played piano and organ in girlhood. She became sensitive to racism when…
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The Life You Give: Bertolt Brecht *1898
Bertolt Brecht, born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, on February 10 1898, in Augsburg, Germany, is the poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer whose epic theatre departed from the conventions of theatrical illusion and developed the drama as a social and ideological forum for leftist causes. Until 1924 Brecht lived in Bavaria, where he was born, studied…
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“Whenever Leontyne Price sang, it was an event.”
“Whenever Leontyne Price sang, it was an event.” Peter Clark, Met’s Director of Archives
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The Life You Give: Alban Berg *1885
Alban Berg, born Alban Maria Johannes Berg, on February 9 1885, in Vienna, Austria, is the composer who wrote atonal and 12-tone compositions that remained true to late 19th-century Romanticism. He composed orchestral music (including Five Orchestral Songs, 1912), chamber music, songs, and two groundbreaking operas, Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (1937). Apart from a few…
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The Life You Give: Claudio Arrau *1903
Claudio Arrau, born February 6 1903, in Chillán, Chile, was one of the most-renowned pianists of the 20th century. Arrau’s father, an eye doctor, died when Arrau—the youngest of three children—was one year old. His mother supported the family by giving piano lessons and must have been gratified when her own son proved to be…
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The Life You Give: Virginia Woolf *1882
Virginia Woolf, born Adeline Virginia Stephen, on January 25, 1882, in London, England, is the writer whose novels, through their nonlinear approaches to narrative, exerted a major influence on the genre. While she is best known for her novels, especially Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), Woolf also wrote pioneering essays on artistic…
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