… and all the rest of February.
So it marks actually more than a year now that we’ve been doing these weekly posts, and so I’ve decided that I’ll just be posting them monthly. Here’s how it’ll go.
I started on February 11, 2014. I was NOT going to spend my weekend a few weeks ago (1/31) preparing two weeks of this stuff, so starting today (from the first weekly post of last year), they’ll be monthly: on the first day of the month for the entire month, divided up by week. That’s how it’s going to go now. I may change it later. So here we go: February 16-28, 2015.
Feb 17:
Births:
1653 – Arcangelo Corelli, Italian violinist and composer
1820 – Henri Vieuxtemps, Belgian violinist and composer
1887 – Leevi Madetoja, Finnish composer (I like the Finns. Should check this guy out)
1925 – Ron Goodwin, English composer and conductor
Deaths:
1652 – Gregorio Allegri, Italian composer
1732 – Louis Marchand, French organist and composer
1841 – Ferdinando Carulli, Italian guitarist and composer
1943 – Armand J. Piron, American violinist and composer
1970 – Alfred Newman, American composer and conductor
1982 – Thelonious Monk, American pianist and composer (Not so classical, but it’s Thelonius Monk)
Feb 18:
Births:
1632 – Giovanni Battista Vitali, Italian composer and violinist
1732 – Johann Christian Kittel, German organist and composer
1850 – George Henschel, German-English opera singer, conductor, and composer
1902 – Walter Herbert, German-American conductor
1921 – Oscar Feltsman, Ukrainian-Russian composer
1939 – Marek Janowski, Polish-German conductor
1956 – Gustave Charpentier, French composer
Feb 19:
1878 – Thomas Edison patents the phonograph (I find this to be musically significant)
Births:
1671 – Charles-Hubert Gervais, French composer
1743 – Luigi Boccherini, Italian cellist and composer
Deaths:
1605 – Orazio Vecchi, Italian composer
1927 – Robert Fuchs, Austrian composer
1973 – Joseph Szigeti, Hungarian violinist
1975 – Luigi Dallapiccola, Italian composer (On the original post, I’d left a note to myself to check out this guy’s music, and then didn’t. Completely forgot about him until I discovered one of his pieces and the name never rang a bell. How interesting. We’ll get there.)
Feb 20:
1816 – Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville premieres at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.
1877 – Tchaikovsky‘s ballet Swan Lake receives its première performance at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
Good day for premieres. Now onto births:
1705 – Nicolas Chédeville, French musette player and composer
1761 – Ludwig Abeille, German pianist and composer
1763 – Adalbert Gyrowetz, Bohemian composer
1942 – Arbo Valdma, Estonian pianist
1943 – Moshe Cotel, American pianist and composer (and his cat, I think)
Deaths:
1626 – John Dowland, English lute player and composer
1653 – Luigi Rossi, Italian composer
1961 – Percy Grainger, Australian-American pianist and composer (What a nut this man was, but he’s one of my favorites)
1963 – Ferenc Fricsay, Hungarian-Austrian conductor
1963 – Jacob Gade, Danish violinist and composer
1969 – Ernest Ansermet, Swiss conductor
1974 – David Monrad Johansen, Norwegian composer
1992 – Pierre Dervaux, French conductor and composer
1996 – Toru Takemitsu, Japanese composer
Feb 21:
Births:
1556 – Sethus Calvisius, German astronomer, composer, and theorist
1791 – Carl Czerny, Austrian pianist and composer
1836 – Léo Delibes, French composer
1844 – Charles-Marie Widor, French organist and composer
1927 – Pierre Mercure, Canadian bassoon player and composer
Deaths:
1996 – Morton Gould, American pianist and composer (played a piece of his I seem to recall; Also, Wikipedia has him listed as “pianist, composer and composer. His article says “composer and conductor.”
Feb 22:
Births:
1645 – Johann Ambrosius Bach, German composer
1645 – Johann Christoph Bach, German pianist
1761 – Erik Tulindberg, Finnish composer
1961 – Lowell Liebermann, American composer, pianist, and conductor
Deaths:
1727 – Francesco Gasparini, Italian composer
1934 – Willem Kes, Dutch violinist and conductor
1983 – Adrian Boult, English conductor
1985 – Efrem Zimbalist, Russian violinist, composer, and conductor
2013 – Claude Monteux, American flute player and conductor
2013 – Wolfgang Sawallisch, German pianist and conductor
Feb 23:
Births:
1664 – Georg Dietrich Leyding, German composer and organist
1685 – George Frideric Handel, German-English composer
1975 – Robert Lopez, American composer
Deaths:
1572 – Pierre Certon, French composer
1897 – Woldemar Bargiel, German composer
1934 – Edward Elgar, English composer
1983 – Herbert Howells, English organist and composer
2004 – Neil Ardley, English pianist and composer
Feb 24:
1607 – L’Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi, one of the first works recognized as an opera, receives its première performance.
1711 – The London première of Rinaldo by George Frideric Handel, the first Italian opera written for the London stage.
Births:
1842 – Arrigo Boito, Italian journalist, author, and composer
1846 – Luigi Denza, Italian composer
1877 – Rudolph Ganz, Swiss pianist, conductor, and composer
1932 – Michel Legrand, French pianist, composer, and conductor
Deaths:
1666 – Nicholas Lanier, English composer and painter
1674 – Matthias Weckmann, German composer
1704 – Marc-Antoine Charpentier, French composer
1929 – André Messager, French pianist, composer, and conductor
2001 – Theodore Marier, American composer and educator, founded the Boston Archdiocesan Choir School
2002 – Leo Ornstein, Ukrainian-American pianist and composer. I covered his fourth piano sonata in the post here.
Feb 25:
Births:
1651 – Johann Philipp Krieger, German organist and composer
1708 – Felix Benda, Bohemian organist and composer
1727 – Armand-Louis Couperin, French organist and composer
1906 – Boris Papandopulo, Croatian composer and conductor
1918 – Rena Kyriakou, Greek pianist and composer
1971 – Peter Jablonski, Swedish Concert Pianist. Heard him play Liszt’s first piano concerto last year here in Taipei.
Deaths:
1643 – Marco da Gagliano, Italian composer
1682 – Alessandro Stradella, Italian composer
1906 – Anton Arensky, Russian pianist and composer (we will eventually be talking about this guy, too. And his teacher).
2006 – Thomas Koppel, Danish pianist and composer (this guy apparently also had a pop music career, as well, but wrote string quartets, a piano concerto, a ballet, and operas. Dunno about his pop music endeavors.)
Feb 26:
Births:
1587 – Stefano Landi, Italian composer
1677 – Nicola Fago, Italian composer and educator
1879 – Frank Bridge, English violist and composer. Check out his piano sonata; it is a killer piece of music.
1910 – Olav Roots, Estonian pianist and composer (that is his real name. It struck me as odd).
1924 – Mark Bucci, American composer and playwright
1930 – Lazar Berman, Russian pianist (This guy’s good, but he refuses to play Chopin. He entered a Chopin competition in Warsaw years ago and didn’t even qualify. Pride was hurt and he vowed never to play Chopin again. Interesting career choice.).
1969 – Hitoshi Sakimoto, Japanese composer (for video games, I know, but that stuff is getting popular. A dubious inclusion)
Deaths:
1552 – Heinrich Faber, German composer
1630 – William Brade, English violinist and composer
1770 – Giuseppe Tartini, Italian violinist and composer
1889 – Karl Davydov, Russian cellist and composer
1913 – Felix Draeseke, German composer
1981 – Howard Hanson, American composer
2013 – Marie-Claire Alain, French organist
Feb 27:
Nothing of interest in history. Births:
1702 – Johann Valentin Görner, German composer
1848 – Hubert Parry, English composer and historian
1870 – Louis Coerne, American composer and educator
1877 – Adela Verne, English pianist and composer
1943 – Morten Lauridsen, American composer and conductor
1947 – Gidon Kremer, Latvian violinist and conductor
1954 – JoAnn Falletta, American conductor
1965 – Frank Peter Zimmermann, German violinist
1975 – Evgenia Manolidou, Greek composer and conductor (young!)
Lots of those today, with not a single person I know of. Deaths:
1887 – Alexander Borodin, Russian composer and chemist (Composer and chemist; how cool is that?)
1978 – Vadim Salmanov, Russian composer
2003 – John Lanchbery, English-Australian composer and conductor
Feb 28:
Births:
1616 – Kaspar Förster, German singer and composer
1619 – Giuseppe Felice Tosi, Italian organist and composer
1878 – Artur Kapp, Estonian composer
1916 – Svend Asmussen, Danish violinist
1943 – Charles Bernstein, American composer (film and television music, and, no, they’re not related. I checked. (Also a dubious entry…)
1971 – Junya Nakano, Japanese composer (of video game music… I included the other guy, too).
Deaths:
1935 – Chiquinha Gonzaga, Brazilian pianist, composer, and conductor (Wikipedia article doesn’t say much about her classical career, but it certainly sounds like she fought hard for it)
2002 – Helmut Zacharias, German violinist and composer
2013 – Armando Trovajoli, Italian pianist and composer
We are skipping 2/29 this year, because there isn’t one. Moving on to March.
Fugue for Thought 