Curated category
Composers awarded knighthoods
- Andrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd Webber walked into Her Majesty's Theatre on the 11th of February 2012 to mark a milestone that no Broadway show had ever reached: the 10,000th…
- Charlie ChaplinCharlie Chaplin was sent to a workhouse twice before the age of nine. By 14, he had taken his own mother to an infirmary, watched her return to a mental…
- Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart was four years old when his father began teaching him minuets at the clavier, treating it as a game.
- Paul McCartneyPaul McCartney wrote his first song, "I Lost My Little Girl", on a £15 Framus Zenith acoustic guitar he had traded for a nickel-plated trumpet his father…
- 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.
- John WilliamsJohn Williams played two notes for Steven Spielberg, alternating, low and ominous, and Spielberg laughed because he thought it was a joke. The film was Jaws.
- Charles Villiers StanfordCharles Villiers Stanford was born in Dublin on the 30th of September 1852, into a family where music was not a hobby but a way of life.
- Ringo StarrRingo Starr was born on the 7th of July 1940 at 9 Madryn Street in Dingle, one of the oldest and poorest inner-city districts in Liverpool.
- George MartinGeorge Martin stood at a mixing desk on the 26th of November 1962, listening to the Beatles run through "Please Please Me" for a third time.
- Ravi ShankarRavi Shankar was "horrified." At the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, he watched Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar on stage.
- Christoph Willibald GluckChristoph Willibald Gluck sat down to lunch with friends in Vienna on the 15th of November 1787, and within a few hours he was dead.