Curated playlist
Choral composers
- Benjamin BrittenBenjamin Britten was born on the 22nd of November 1913 in the fishing port of Lowestoft, Suffolk, and that birth date is no accident: it fell on the feast day of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. By the time he died on the 4th of…
- Ludwig van BeethovenLudwig van Beethoven could no longer hear the applause his own music had earned. At the premiere on the 7th of May 1824, the contralto Caroline Unger had to turn him around so he could see the audience cheering behind his back. He had…
- Friedrich NietzscheOn the 3rd of January 1889, in the streets of Turin, Friedrich Nietzsche caused a public disturbance and two policemen approached him. An often-repeated tale holds that he had watched a horse being flogged across the Piazza Carlo Alberto,…
- Richard WagnerRichard Wagner was born on the 22nd of May 1813 in Leipzig, in the Jewish quarter of the city, at a house known as the House of the Red and White Lions. His father died of typhoid fever just six months after his birth. His mother then…
- Robert SchumannRobert Schumann was born on the 8th of June 1810 in Zwickau, in the Kingdom of Saxony, into a family of booksellers and translators with no particular musical connections. His father August made his fortune selling German translations of…
- Johannes BrahmsJohannes Brahms once interrupted a friend's toast in Berlin with five blunt words: "Quite right; here's Mozart's health." It was January 1896, near the end of a life spent measuring himself against the dead. He had been called the heir to…
- Franz SchubertFranz Peter Schubert was born in the Himmelpfortgrund suburb of Vienna on the 31st of January 1797, the twelfth child of a parish schoolmaster and a housemaid's daughter. He was dead by the age of 31. In those three decades, he produced…
- Edward ElgarEdward Elgar told a friend that he had a tune that would "knock 'em - will knock 'em flat." The tune became the trio of his first Pomp and Circumstance March. When it was played at a London Promenade Concert in 1901, the audience rose and…
- Felix MendelssohnFelix Mendelssohn was born on the 3rd of February 1809 in Hamburg, in the same house where, exactly one year later, the violinist Ferdinand David would be born. That coincidence would prove fitting: David would one day give the world…
- Hector BerliozHector Berlioz was born on the 11th of December 1803 in the commune of La Cote-Saint-Andre, in south-eastern France, the son of a physician who had never heard of him becoming a composer. His father was a progressive, agnostic doctor…