Newman, Alfred

Alfred Newman lived from 1901 until 1970. He composed for films and was born in New Haven, Connecticut. Beginning is 1930 he scored some 200 films including Arrowsmith (1931), Wuthering Heights (1939), All About Eve (1950), and Airport (1970). He won eight Oscars.

Newman, Randy

Randy Newman was born in 1943 in Los Angeles, California. He is a composer and lyricist. The nephew of three successful Hollywood composers and conductors, he began studying the piano at age seven and was writing songs professionally when he was 17. After letting others such as Judy Collins, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, and Joni Mitchell sing his songs, he took to performing at colleges and night clubs in the late 1960s and earned a reputation for both his inimitable piano/vocal style, which combined the casual with highly mannered effects, and for his lyrics, which sardonically dissected politics and society. He composed film scores such as Cold Turkey (1970), Ragtime (1981), and The Natural (1984), and released several popular albums including Sail Away (1972) and Little Criminals (1978). A revue based on his songs played in various theaters between 1981 and 1984 and he performed his old and new songs occasionally.

Nicolai

Otto Nicolai lived from 1810 until 1849. A native of Königsberg, Nicolai was educated largely in Berlin, through the intervention of a sympathetic patron, and made a name for himself there, without great material success. A period in Rome as organist at the Prussian Embassy aroused his interest in opera, an enthusiasm he was able to pursue at the Court Opera in Vienna, finally, in the year before his death, achieving the position of director of the Berlin Cathedral choir and Kapellmeister of the Berlin Opera. His most famous work is the opera The Merry Wives of Windsor. Verdi’s opera Falstaff is based on the same Shakespearian play.

Other works by Nicolai include a symphony, a Requiem and a “Te Deum”.

Nielsen

Carl August Nielsen was born in 1865 and died in 1931. He was a Danish composer who studied at the Copenhagen Conservatory from 1884 until 1886. He became conductor at the Royal Theatre (1908 to 1914) and with the Copenhagen Musical Society (1915 to 1927). He is particularly known for his six symphonies, and he also wrote concertos, choral and chamber music, the tragic opera Saul and David (1902), the comic opera Maskarade (1906), and a huge organ work, Commotio (1931).

Norgård

Per Norgård was born in 1932 and is the most prominent Danish composer after Carl Nielsen. His signature can be found almost anywhere in Danish music as a result of his animation, teaching, thought-provoking theories and cultural criticism. For more than thirty years his widely embracing musical personality has inspired and influenced a host of Scandinavian composers.

Nureyev

Rudolf Hametovich Nureyev lived from 1938 until 1993. He was a ballet dancer, born in Irkutsk, Russia and defected to America in 1961. He studied at the Leningrad Choregraphic School, and became a soloist with the Kirov Ballet. While touring with the Ballet in 1961, he obtained political asylum in Paris, and became an Austrian citizen in 1982. He made his debut at Covent Garden with the Royal Ballet in 1962, and became Margot Fonteyn’s regular partner. His virtuosity and expressiveness made him one of the greatest male dancers of the 1960s, in both classical and modern ballets. He began to choreograph and dance for many European companies, and became ballet director of the Paris Opéra (1983 until 1989) and principal choreographer (1989 to 1992). In his later years he also began to conduct, leading orchestras in the USA, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. His autobiography, Nureyev, appeared in 1962.