Ludwig van Beethoven

Born: December 1770

Died: 26 March 1827 (cirrhosis of the liver, plus dropsy)
Birthplace: Bonn, Germany
Best known as: The composer of Beethoven's Fifth
Mozart aside, Ludwig van Beethoven is the most famous classical composer of the western world.
Beethoven is remembered for his powerful and stormy compositions, and for continuing to
compose and conduct even after he began to go deaf at age 28. The ominous four-note beginning to
his Fifth Symphony -- bom bom bom bommmmm -- is one of the most famous moments in all of
music. (Beethoven supposedly described the notes as "Fate knocking at the door.") He wrote nine
numbered symphonies in all: his Third Symphony ("Eroica") and Sixth Symphony ("Pastoral") are
especially famous. Beethoven also wrote the popular "Moonlight" sonata (1801).
Extra credit: Beethoven never married. After his death his friends found letters to a lover he called
"Immortal Beloved," whose identity has never been discovered. The English phrase "Immortal
Beloved" is a translation of the German, "Unsterbliche Geliebte"... Beethoven's precise date of birth
is unknown; he was baptized on 17 December 1770, and it is presumed he was born on 16
December.

Franz Liszt

Composer / Pianist
Born: 22 October 1811
Died: 31 July 1886
Birthplace: Raiding, Hungary (now Austria)
Best known as: Romantic composer known for his Hungarian Rhapsodies
Hungarian composer Franz Liszt was major figure in Romantic music who was celebrated during
his lifetime as Europe's greatest pianist. He began playing for the public as a child, studied in Vienna
and Paris and became a performer whose presence and dramatic playing made him an
international star of the stage. He went to Weimar in 1848 and his teaching, composing and
performing helped make it Germany's musical center. It's said that Liszt taught most of the next
generation's greatest pianists. He wrote several piano pieces and became known for a distinctive,
sometimes experimental style. His program music included what were called "symphonic poems"
(1856's Les Prludes, for example) and his interest in Gypsy culture influenced his many Hungarian
Rhapsodies. He became increasingly religious as he got older and in the 1860s received orders from
the Catholic Church (he became known as Abb). Liszt was also famously involved with two
married women during his career, the Countess Marie d'Aguoult in the late 1830s and Princess
Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein after 1847.
Extra credit: With Countess d'Aguoult he had three children, one of whom, Cosima, went on to
marry composer Richard Wagner in 1870.

Peter Tchaikovsky

Composer
Born: 7 May 1840
Died: 6 November 1893
Birthplace: Votkinsk, Russia
Best known as:
The Russian composer who wrote The Nutcracker
Russian composer Peter (Pyotr) Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most-recognized melodies in
classical music, and his ballet The Nutcracker endures as a winter holiday favorite. Peter
Tchaikovsky began composing in St. Petersburg in the 1860s, while studying and teaching music at
the Conservatory there. By the 1870s he was gaining public notice, and after 1878 he devoted
himself to composing full time. Tchaikovsky's expressive melodies and orchestrations made him an
audience favorite in Russia and beyond; his international travels included an American tour in
1891. Many of his works are part of the canon of classical music of the Romantic era, including the
opera Eugene Onegin, the ballet Swan Lake, the overtures Romeo and Juliet and the 1812
Overture and his Sixth Symphony, known asPathtique.
Peter Tchaikovsky had a personal reputation for being emotionally fragile. His brief 1877 marriage
to a woman he barely knew is now considered an ill-fated attempt to mask his homosexuality, and
possibly led to what has been called a nervous breakdown. The issue of his sexuality is also
considered by some modern scholars to have played a part in his untimely death. Originally it was
held that Tchaikovsky died from cholera, a result of drinking tainted water. Further research a
century later led to the suggestion that he may have deliberately poisoned himself, having been
forced to do so by a "court of honor" as punishment for his relationship with a young male
aristocrat.

Frederic Chopin

Composer / Pianist
Born: 1 March 1810
Died: 17 October 1849
Birthplace: Zelazowa Wola, Warsaw, Poland
Best known as:

Name at birth: Frederic Francois Chopin

Frederic Chopin was one of the great Romantic composers of the 19th century, known especially for
his pieces for solo piano. Of French parents, Chopin was born and raised in Poland, near Warsaw. A
child prodigy on the piano, he composed and performed publicly from the time he was seven years
old. Even when he was a teenager, Chopin wowed critics with his distinctive compositions and
light-handed magic on the piano keys. After formal studies in Warsaw, Chopin traveled Europe, and
eventually settled in Paris in 1831. He flourished there as a composer and teacher, becoming a
salon favorite and hobnobbing with the elite. His promoters included Robert and Clara Schumann,
and through Franz Liszt he met George Sand (Aurore Dupin), the flamboyant novelist who raised
eyebrows by dressing like a man and taking on various lovers -- including Chopin. They were
together from 1838 until 1847, with Sand ending up more as a caretaker than a lover. Chopin had
tuberculosis and was plagued in his last years with illness. He and Sand separated in 1847 and were
estranged when he died a year later, at the age of 39. Although he performed publicly rarely, Chopin
was famous during his lifetime for his unique melodies and intricate musical forms -- many of them
based on Polish folk tunes. Although his life was short, his output was substantial. He composed
more than 50 mazurkas, dozens of preludes and nocturnes, at least 13 waltzes, 12 polonaises and
one memorable funeral march.

Louis-Hector Berlioz

Berlioz, Louis- - 180369, French romantic composer. He abandoned medical study to enter the
Paris Conservatory as a composition student. In 1830 his Symphonie fantastique was first
performed in Paris, marking a bold new development in program music. This work, with its
recurring basic theme, departed from traditional symphonies in its loose form and highly
emotional, personal style. That same year Berlioz won the coveted Prix de Rome. During the next
decade in Paris he wrote the symphonies Harold in Italy and Romeo and Juliet, the opera Benvenuto
Cellini, and a requiem. In 184243 he conducted concerts in Germany, Austria, England, and Russia.
His outstanding "concert opera" The Damnation of Faust (1846) met with failure in his lifetime but
is now considered a masterpiece. Another dramatic work is the gigantic opera The
Trojans, completed in 1858 but not performed in its entirety until 1890. It was successfully revived
after 1920. The nonliturgical oratorio The Childhood of Christ, for which he also wrote the text, was
completed in 1854, and it was performed with great success for almost a century.
Some of Berlioz's works are scored for large numbers of instruments, not only for volume but for
richness of tone color even in delicate passages. His ideas of orchestration influenced many later
composers. A passionate and impetuous man, Berlioz had several love affairs and was twice
married, first to Harriet Smithson, an Irish actress. He was librarian at the Paris Conservatory and
an incisive, witty, and urbane author whose writings include music criticism, essays on the arts,
memoirs (tr. 1969; rev. ed., 2002), and the amusing Evenings with the Orchestra (tr. 1956). His
treatise on instrumentation (1843) was widely recognized as a standard text.

Robert Alexander Schumann

Schumann, Robert Alexander - 181056, German composer. Both as a composer and as a highly
articulate music critic he was a leader of the romantic movement. He studied theory with Heinrich
Dorn and piano with Friedrich Wieck, whose daughter Clara he married. Forced by a hand injury to
abandon a career as a pianist, he served as editor of the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik from its
inception in 1834 until 1844. In his articles he championed younger composers, particularly
Chopin and Brahms. Schumann's brilliant compositions for piano, including Papillons, Die
Davidsbndlertnze,
Carnaval,
Fantasiestcke,
tudes
symphoniques,
Kinderszenen, and Kreisleriana, occupied him until 1840, when he began to write songs and
orchestral music. In his lieder he set to music lyrics by such poets as Heine, Goethe, Eichendorff,
and Kerner, achieving a superb fusion of vocal melody and piano accompaniment. Among his best
song cycles are Frauenliebe und -Leben [ Woman's Love and Life, on verses by Chamisso]
and Dichterliebe [ Poet's Love, verses by Heine]. His Spring Symphony (1841), Piano Concerto in A
Minor (1846), and Third, or Rhenish, Symphony (1850) are his outstanding orchestral works. They
exemplify his infusion of classical forms with intense, personal emotion. His one
opera, Genoveva (184748), was unsuccessful. After a nervous breakdown, he entered (1854) a
sanitarium, where he died two years later.
His wife, Clara Josephine (Wieck) Schumann, 181996, was one of the outstanding pianists of her
time. After bitter opposition from her father she married Schumann in 1840 and eventually bore
him eight children. She made her debut in 1836 and later performed with great success on the
Continent, in England, and in Russia. She was noted for the intellectual brilliance and sensitivity of
her playing, and was an outstanding interpreter of Schumann's and Brahms's works. Her own
compositions were mainly piano pieces and songs. From 1878 to 1892 she taught at the Frankfurt
Conservatory.

Richard Wagner

Composer / Writer
Born: 22 May 1813
Died: 13 February 1883
Birthplace: Leipzig, Germany
Best known as:
German composer of Der Ring des Nibelungen
Name at birth: Wilhelm Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner is the 19th century German composer and poet famous for taking opera to new
dramatic heights in such works as Der Fliegende Hollnder (1841) and Der Ring des
Nibelungen (1876). Richard Wagner began his career as a music director, and by the 1840s was
gaining recognition for his musical compositions and operas. During the 1850s he lived in exile in
Zrich, unwelcome in Germany because of his associations with revolutionaries in Dresden.
Although he was composing what would become some of the most famous pieces in music history,
Wagner struggled financially until the 1860s, when Ludwig II of Bavaria began supporting him. In
1871 Wagner settled in Bayreuth, Germany and founded a theater. A critical success, he was
nonetheless forced to travel as a guest conductor and raise funds for his theater. A key figure in
classical music, Richard Wagner is known for his powerful dramatic operas based on medieval
legends and for his influential writings on music and drama. He is also a controversial figure
because of his hostile, anti-semitic writings and because some of his music and dramatic themes
were appropriated by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis during World War II. His musical works
include Tristan and Isolde (1857-59), Siegfried Idyll (1870) and Parsifal (1878-82).
Richard Wagner's second wife, Cosima, was the daughter of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt... Der
Ring des Nibelungen (The Nibelung's Ring) is a fifteen-hour cycle made up of Das Rheingold (The
Rhine Gold), Die Walkre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried and Gtterdmmerung (Twilight of the Gods).

Johannes Brahms

Brahms, Johannes - , 183397, German composer, b. Hamburg. Brahms ranks among the greatest
masters of the romantic period. The son of a musician, he early showed astonishing talent in many
directions; he chose as a boy to become a pianist. As accompanist to the violinist Eduard Remnyi
he attracted the notice of Johann Joachim, who introduced him to leading musical circles. Brahms
became the devoted friend of Robert and Clara Schumann, both of whom admired his
compositions. His later activities as pianist and as choral conductor were not very successful, but
after he settled in Vienna his compositions brought him enough money to support himself in
simple comfort. Brahms never married, although he had several love affairs and remained deeply
attached to Clara Schumann for years after her husband's death.
In his music the romantic impulse is restrained by a reverence for the forms of the past. This blend
of romantic feeling and classical spirit is exemplified in such works as his Variations on a Theme by
Handel (1861), for piano, and the orchestral composition Variations on a Theme by Haydn (1873). In
his day, Brahms's conservative romanticism was contrasted with Richard Wagner's dramatic
romantic style, and a controversy raged between supporters of Brahms and the followers of the
"neo-German" school led by Liszt and Wagner. His extreme self-criticism led him to destroy much of
what he composed, limiting the number of his existing works but ensuring a uniformly high quality.
Brahms wrote four symphonies, which are considered among the greatest in symphonic music.
Major choral works include Ein deutsches Requiem [a German requiem] (1866)
and Schicksalslied [song of destiny] (1868), both for chorus and orchestra. The Violin Concerto in D
(1878), the Piano Concerto in B Flat (187881), and the Piano Quintet in F Minor (1864) are staples
of the concert repertory. Brahms also composed sonatas, capriccios, intermezzosworks in almost
every genre except opera. Throughout his life he devoted attention to chamber music and songs,
which vary from simple accompaniments for folk songs to solemn compositions such as Vier ernste
Gesange [four serious songs] (1896). Many of his exquisite romantic lieder, in which the words,
melody, and piano accompaniment are inseparably blended, are favorites among singers, and his
lullaby has long been a familiar melody throughout the world.

Franz Peter Schubert

Schubert, Franz Peter - 17971828, Austrian composer, one of the most gifted musicians of the
19th cent. His symphonic works represent the best legacy of the classical tradition, while his songs
exemplify the height of romantic lyricism. Displaying remarkable talent in childhood, he was first
taught to play the violin and piano by his father and his brother, and then studied the organ and
singing at a local church. His beautiful voice gained him admittance in 1808 to the imperial chapel
choir and the Royal Seminary, where he later studied composition with Salieri. Schubert wrote his
first symphony in 1813, and in that year he left the Seminary. From 1814 to 1816 he taught at his
father's elementary school, devoting his spare hours to composing lieder that give evidence of his
inexhaustible melodic genius.
He wrote more than 600 songs, many to the lyrics of such German poets as Goethe, Schiller,
and Heine. In addition to individual lyrics, such as the famous Erlknig, set to a ballad by Goethe,
Schubert wrote such song cycles as Die schne Mllerin (1823) and Die Winterreise (1827), both to
poems of Wilhelm Mller. Schubert's symphonies are the final extension of the classical sonata
forms, and three of themthe Fifth, in B Flat (1816), the Eighth, in B Minor (the Unfinished, 1822),
and the Ninth, in C Major (1828)rank with the finest orchestral music. The Quartet in D Minor
( Death and the Maiden, 1824) and the Quintet in A Major ( The Trout, 1819) are the best known of
his mature chamber works. He also composed music for the stage, overtures, choral music, masses,
and piano music, including 21 sonatas and shorter waltzes, scherzos, and impromptus. Except for a
circle of admirers who were among the leading artists of the period, he gained little recognition
before his death. He held only one musical appointment, that of music teacher to the children of a
Hungarian nobleman, and he lived in poverty.
See O. E. Deutsch, The Schubert Reader: A Lifein Letters and Documents (tr. 1947); biographies by
M. J. E. Brown (1958, repr. 1977), A. Einstein (1951, repr. 1981), and C. H. Gibbs (2000); studies by
M. J. E. Brown (1966, repr. 1978) and B. Newbould (1992, 1997); C. H. Gibbs, ed., The Cambridge
Companion to Schubert (1997).