October 2009
21 posts
Dmitri Shostakovich
Date/Place of Birth: 25 September, 1906 in St. Peterburg, Russia Personality: A not-very-tall, slim, shy and serious man with reputedly habits: chain-smoking and extreme nervousness. There are two descriptions of the composer’s personality as following:
“…He (Shostakovich) is thinner, taller, younger than expected - boyish looking; he is the shyest and most nervous man...
Sergey Seryeyevich Prokofiev
Date/Place of Birth: 23 April, 1891 in Sontsovka, Ukraine. Personality: A stubborn, ill-tempered but very talented man. Prokofiev was unpleasant to everyone and always disturbed people around him with his rude speaking; with a irritating chuckle and a cunning look. If he disliked somebody, he could be crude and behaved brutally.
As a disobedient but confident student, he was not impressed...
Alberto Ginastera
Date/Place of Birth: 11 April, 1916 in Buenos Aires Personality: One of the most prominent Argentine composers in 20th Century. Besides that, he also attained his prestige as one of the most sought-after music professors. His indefatigable didactic efforts in nurturing young talented musicians & composers and promoting Argentine musical culture were indubitably shown by his hectic ...
Belá Bartók
Date/Place of Birth: 25 March, 1881 in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (now Rumania). Personality: A tiny, slim man but with a strong and stubborn integrity. Bartók was a determined and industrious man - he would strive to achieve anything he needed desperately.
Because of his strong ambitious attitude, Bartók was therefore the world’s outstanding specialist on Hungarian folk music. He...
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin
Date/Place of Birth: 6 January, 1872 in Moscow, Russia. Personality: A slim, elegant and talented composer. He considered alcohol as poison since he drank so much when he was young that he stayed drunken for the rest of his life. Scriabin was obsessively religious and mystical.
Some of his strange habits are: washing hands compulsively; wearing gloves before touching money; spending...
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff
Date/Place of Birth: 2 April, 1873 in Novgorod, Russia. Personality: A tall, grim, serious man with rather Mongalian features and the haircut of a convict. He was uncommunicative and open only to a very few close friends. As a student, he was stubborn and dared to contradict his teachers.
Rachmaninoff always avoided publicity and interviewers. In other words, he never felt comfortable...
Bedrich Smetana
Date/Place of Birth: 2 March, 1824 in Litomysl, Bohemia Personality: A bespectacled, slender, grim and stoic-looking man, Smetana was one of the greatest Bohemian composers, a piano virtuoso, conductor and highly respected teacher.
During his early adulthood, Smetana was hardly recognized as a musician and composer in his homeland. Most of his concerts were poorly attended and...
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky
Date/Place of Birth: 21 March 1839 in Karevo, Pskov district Personality: A member of ‘The Mighty Handful’. Mussorgsky never received any formal musical education during his childhood. After he graduated from the Cadet School of the Imperial Guards in 1856, he joined the Preobrazhensky Imperial Life Guards. Later, he resigned and was then appointed as a clerk in the civil...
Edvard Grieg
Date/Place of Birth: 15 June, 1843 in Bergen, Norway. Personality: A humble, highly imaginative composer. Being a workaholic, under the influence of his admirable teacher, E.F. Wenzel, he studied music so enthusiatically and compulsively that he ruined his health. He suffered a severe attack of pleurisy - a life-long breathing problem.
Though Grieg used to travel widely, he was always...
Johannes Brahms
Date/Place of Birth: 7 May, 1833 in Hamburg, Germany. Personality: A handsome bachelor. Although Brahms was a serious, sensitive man, like Schubert, he still managed to keep in touch with a wide circle of friends and enjoyed such a warm friendship. Besides that, when Brahms had achieved wide fame, he was very generous and often helped the new composers like Dvorák.
However, Brahms had...
Franz Liszt
Date/Place of Birth: 22 October, 1811 in Raiding (Doborján), Hungary. Personality: A handsome, charismatic child prodigy. He was multi-talented - piano virtuoso, composer, conductor, teacher and critic. The young Liszt was well-known for his dalliances with several aristocratic ladies - his love affairs were popular gossips during his time.
Liszt enjoyed a luxurious life since he...
Frédéric Chopin
Date/Place of Birth: 1st March, 1810 at Zelazowa Wola near Warsaw, Poland. Personality: A handsome and courteous gentleman. With his pale and frail appearance, he was physically weak as the result of the tuberculosis, a lung disease. Besides that, he was reserved and very sensitive to people’s reaction. Piano-Playing Style: There are two important features of Chopin’s...
Felix Mendelssohn
Date/Place of Birth: 3 February, 1809 in Hamburg, Germany. Personality: A brilliant child prodigy. Mendelssoh’s gifts were phenomenal - a good painter, had wide literary and philosophy knowledge, a superb pianist, an inspiring conductor, a good violinist, and a skilled organist. He was therefore an object of envy and admiration in Europe.
Came from a famous, wealthy and cultured...
Franz Peter Schubert
Date/Place of Birth: 31 January, 1797 in Vienna. Personality: A very shy, short-sighted composer. However, to his close friends, he was charming, humorous and loyal. Sometimes, he was moody and violent, especially during his illness. Even Schubert’s friend, Leopold von Sonnleithner said,”He(Schubert) never laughed fully and joyfully, but only managed a toneless...
Ludwig van Beethoven
Date/Place of Birth: 16 December, 1770 in Bonn, Germany. Personality: Gloomy and suspicious, over-sensitive like a misanthropic cobra, often imagining that everybody was plotting against him; besides that, he was bad-tempered especially when his deafness was getting serious — his grand piano was ruined by his harsh banging to hear what he played. Piano-Playing Style: Unlike...
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Date/Place of Birth: 27 January, 1756 in Salzburg, Austria. Personality: A legendary child prodigy. Mozart was multi-talented - playing piano delicately, conducting, playing violin and viola skillfully, and composing. He was not only a musical genius; by the time he was twelve years old, he could speak fluently in French, English, Italian and his native German.
Unfortunately, the...
Franz Joseph Haydn
Date/Place of Birth: 31 March, 1732 in Rohrau, Austria. Personality: Although not particularly good looking, Haydn was a very nice gentleman - modest, honest, even-tempered, hardworking, generous, had a good sense of humour - with this well-mannered attitude, he had no enemies at his time.
Came from a poor family, Haydn was not well-educated. However, his self-made genius was...
Guiseppe Domenico Scarlatti
Date/Place of Birth: 26 October, 1685 in Naples, Italy Personality: Hailed as one of the most distinguished Italian keyboard composers of Baroque period. Being brought up in a musical family, it was not uncommon that Scarlatti engaged in musical activities in his early childhood. He received his earliest musical education from his father, Alessandro who was a well-known composer during...
Johann Sebastian Bach
Date/Place of Birth: 21 March, 1685 in Eisenach, Germany Personality: A severe, modest composer with strong, ‘self-defensive’ appearance. As a young lad, Bach did well in studies and learned some instruments: clavier, organ and violin. Since his father’s death when he was only 10, his fine, penetrating voice enabled him to join a choir at church and even earn good money...
Claude-Achille Debussy
Date/Place of Birth: 22 August, 1862 at St Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. Personality: A reserved, complicated man who did not like to socialize with people around him. Debussy hated to appear in public, hated to conduct, hated to play piano at concerts (this is probably why his music is difficult to understand and is not really appreciated).
Besides that, unlike Schubert’s friendly...
Maurice Ravel
Date/Place of Birth: 7 March, 1875 in Ciboure in the Basses-Pyrénées Personality: A short, thin and dark man with the large head and prominent nose. He was a dandy throughout his life, who dressed natily and was extremely keen at the lastest fashions.
Ravel was friendly and generous among his friends. However, he did not reveal his true feelings easily - in fact, there was a darker...