British conductor who traveled the world and met many of the other greats of his day particularly noted as a friend of Sibelius. Held various prestigious posts around Great Britain including chairman of the Tower in New Brighton, principal of the Birmingham School of Music, and a Doctor of Music from Edinburgh. Was knighted in 1930.
Australian Jazz musician. Don studied in London and Florence before returning to Canberra to become the chairman of the Australian Council for the Arts, the head of composition at Canberra School of Music, the Composers' Guild of Australia, and the School of Composition Studies at Sydney Conservatorium. Today the highest music honor awarded by the Australian Council for the Arts is the Don Banks award.
Irish opera singer and composer, met Rossini and Cherubini while traveling in Italy. Wrote a large collection of Operas, the most famous of which was The Bohemian Girl which debuted at Drury Lane theater in 1843.
A Russian composer who founded the Russian Free School of Music and was the educational father of "The Five" - Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Glazounov, and Cui. He was also the conductor of the Russian Music Society and the director at the Imperial Chapel. Represents the shift of Russian classical music into the Romantic period.
An able musician, violinist, singer, organ player, and obviously composer, Bach got caught in Lutheran politics and spent much of his time bouncing from job to job. Eventually, he latched onto the Court of King Leopold and enjoyed a measure of stability. His first wife died in 1720 and he remarried fairly quickly and ended up with 20 children, 11 of which survived to adulthood. He attempted to meet Handel but it never happened. He settled in the Netherlands for a brief time but went back to Germany because as a Lutheran he didn't want his children in Calvinist schools. His grave was lost for nearly 150 years but was rediscovered in the 1890s.
"The" Bach's youngest son (of his 11), JC Bach is also known as "the English Bach" as he served as the court musician for Queen Charlotte Sophia (George III's wife). He studied with his half-brother C.P.E. Bach, served as the Organist in the Cathedral in Milan, and was generally pretty successful in carrying on the lineage. Is also credited with introducing Mozart to the English court.
CPE Bach was Johann Bach's 2nd oldest surviving son, a very prolific classical composer, CPE wrote a ton of Symphonies, cantatas, sonatas, oratorios, etc. He lived in Hamburg most of his life and studied at Thomasschule in Leipzig. He is sometimes called the founder of modern piano-playing and is also credited with the invention of the sonata-symphony form.
