Understanding Music Composers - Need to Know

Clara Schumann

• 1819-1896 - Romantic period

• German

• Famous pianist at age 15

• Career lasting over 60 years

• One of the first musicians to play from memory and perform solo programs

• Studied theory, harmony, counterpoint and fugue, composition, orchestration, voice, violin with best teachers in Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin

Louise Farrenc

• 1804-1875 - Romantic period

• Women were not allowed to take composition classes at the Conservatoire until 1870

• First female tenured prof. at Paris Conservatoire

• Only allowed to teach piano, not composition

• Won equal pay

Robert Schumann

• Romantic period

• German

• Composer, pianist, and music critic

• Went mad

Franz Schubert

• Romantic period

• Austrian

• Made lieder, symphonies, and chamber music

Giuseppe Verdi

• 1813-1901 - Romantic period

• Romantic operas

• Italian

• Rigoletto

Lili Boulanger

• 1893-1918

• French

• Winner of the Prix de Rome in 1913

George Gershwin

• 1898-1938

• Born in NYC to Russian-Jewish immigrants

• Composer of jazz, opera, and popular songs for stage and screen

• Worked as a “song plugger” in Tin Pan Alley

• Elevation of American popular theater (first musical comedy Pulitzer Prize in Drama)

Florence Price

• 1887-1953

• Born in Little Rock, AK

• Of mixed heritage: African, European, Native American

• Prodigy, performing in public at age 4

• Degrees in piano teaching and organ composition from New England Conservatory

• Used African American folk music in her compositions

Edgar Varese

• 1883-1965

• Postmodernist composer

• Began career in Paris and Berlin

• Emigrated to United States in 1915

• Radical composer of the 1920s

  • Unique approach to rhythm, sonority

  • Manipulation of “noises” into music

• Vision outstepped technology

• Came into his own in 1950s

• Poeme electronique

Steve Reich

• Born 1936 in New York City

• Majored in philosophy at Cornell before studying composition at Juilliard and Mills College, CA

• Performs his work with his own group

• Has collaborated with wife, video artist Beryl Korot

• Studied Ewe drumming in West Africa in 1970

• Influenced by Judaism

John Adams

• Born 1947, raised in New England; attended Harvard University

• Moved to San Francisco in 1971

• Influenced by minimalism at first

• Developed more wide-ranging style: new-Romanticism, post-Minimalism

• Many works have American themes

  • Nixon in China

Caroline Shaw

• Youngest recipient of Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 at age 30

• Jury citation: “a highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects”