Curated playlist
Lieder composers
- 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…
- 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…
- Arnold SchoenbergArnold Schoenberg was born on the 13th of September 1874 at Obere Donaustraße 5 in Vienna's Leopoldstadt, a district that had historically served as a Jewish ghetto. He died on the 13th of July 1951, a Friday, shortly before midnight. That…
- Gustav MahlerGustav Mahler was born on the 7th of July 1860 in a village in Bohemia, the second son of a coachman-turned-innkeeper who had clawed his way up from nothing. By the time Mahler died on the 18th of May 1911, he had run the greatest opera…
- 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…
- 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…
- Richard StraussRichard Strauss died on the 8th of September 1949 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen with the words "dying is just as I composed it in Tod und Verklärung" on his lips. He was speaking to Alice, his Jewish daughter-in-law, the woman he had spent…
- Anton RubinsteinAnton Rubinstein once told a young Josef Hofmann, "When you are as old as I am, you may do as I do. If you can." That final dare captures the man entirely. Rubinstein was a Russian pianist who moved audiences to go home limp, who played…