Curated playlist
Classical composers of church music
- Wolfgang Amadeus MozartMozart finished more than 800 works in thirty-five years and died with his Requiem unfinished.
- Franz SchubertFranz Schubert gave just one public concert of his own music. He died at 31 with more than 1,500 works.
- Pyotr Ilyich TchaikovskyHearing his voice on an Edison recording in 1890, Tchaikovsky said, "This trill could be better."
- Antonín DvořákAntonín Dvořák wrote a string quartet in just three days. He did it on a 1893 holiday in Spillville, Iowa.
- Hector BerliozPaganini knelt before Hector Berlioz and kissed his hand. Days later he sent the composer 20,000 francs.
- Joseph HaydnJoseph Haydn's skull was stolen after his burial and not reunited with his body until 1954.
- Sergei RachmaninoffRachmaninoff left Russia in 1917 with one small suitcase of sketches and scores.
- Tomás Luis de VictoriaComposer Tomás Luis de Victoria left no secular song at all. Almost everything he wrote is sacred and set in Latin.
- Josef MyslivečekComposer Josef Mysliveček lost his nose to a surgeon's mistake. Mozart wept when he met him in a Munich hospital.
- Johann Nepomuk HummelMozart taught Johann Nepomuk Hummel piano for free when the boy was eight.