Happy Birthday is a song that I like to have each of my students learn at various levels appropriate to their level. When a friend or family member has a birthday, it’s great to be able to sit down and play.
It’s only been fairly recently that piano students could have this music in their books.
“Happy Birthday to You”, more commonly known as simply “Happy Birthday”, is a song that is traditionally sung to celebrate the anniversary of a person’s birth. According to the 1998 Guinness World Records, “Happy Birthday to You” is the most recognized song in the English language, followed by “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”.
The melody, or part you sing, of “Happy Birthday to You” comes from the song “Good Morning to All”, which has traditionally been attributed to American sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill in 1893, although the claim that the sisters composed the tune is disputed.
Patty Hill was a kindergarten principal and her sister Mildred was a pianist and composer. The sisters used “Good Morning to All” as a song that young children would find easy to sing. The combination of melody and lyrics in “Happy Birthday to You” first appeared in print in 1912, and probably existed even earlier.
“Happy Birthday” in the style of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Dvorak, and Stravinsky. Find the melody!
Lots of legal stuff below which you can skip…
None of the early appearances of the “Happy Birthday to You” lyrics included credits or copyright notices. The Summy Company registered a copyright in 1935, crediting authors Preston Ware Orem and Mrs. R. R. Forman. In 1988, Warner/Chappell Music purchased the company owning the copyright for US$25 million, with the value of “Happy Birthday” estimated at US$5 million. Based on the 1935 copyright registration, Warner claimed that the United States copyright will not expire until 2030, and that unauthorized public performances of the song are illegal unless royalties are paid to Warner. In one specific instance in February 2010, these royalties were said to amount to US$700. By one estimate, the song is the highest-earning single song in history, with estimated earnings since its creation of US$50 million.In the European Union, the copyright for the song expired on January 1, 2017.
The American copyright status of “Happy Birthday to You” began to draw more attention with the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998. When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Act in Eldred v. Ashcroft in 2003, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer specifically mentioned “Happy Birthday to You” in his dissenting opinion. American law professor Robert Brauneis, who extensively researched the song, concluded in 2010 that “It is almost certainly no longer under copyright.”
In 2013, based in large part on Brauneis’s research, Good Morning to You Productions, a company producing a documentary about “Good Morning to All”, sued Warner/Chappell for falsely claiming copyright to the song. In September 2015, a federal judge declared that the Warner/Chappell copyright claim was invalid, ruling that the copyright registration applied only to a specific piano arrangement of the song, and not to its lyrics and melody.
In 2016, Warner/Chappell settled for US $14 million, and the court declared that “Happy Birthday to You” was in the public domain.
Legal stuff is finished and people can now sing and play “Happy Birthday to You” whenever and wherever they want.
Students in Wunderkeys may play this version from Remix: Teen Hits from Kids Tunes
One of my all-time versions of Happy Birthday, in duet form – and I have the music if you want to tackle it.
. 1687 ~ Jean-Baptiste Lully, French composer, died. He was an Italian-born French composer, instrumentalist, and dancer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French baroque style.
. 1840 ~ Clara Wieck wrote a letter dated today to Robert Schumann. Part of it said: “When I heard Liszt for the first time…I was overwhelmed and sobbed aloud, it so shook me.”
. 1842 ~ Carl August Nicolas Rosa, German violinist and composer. In 1873 he founded the Carl Rosa Opera Company.
. 1865 ~ Theophile Ysaye, Belgian composer and pianist
. 1911 ~ Herman Jadlowker became the first opera singer to perform two major roles in the same day at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.
. 1920 ~ Fanny Waterman, DBE is a piano teacher and the founder, Chairman and Artistic Director of the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition. She is also president of the Harrogate International Music Festival.
. 1925 ~ The first Japanese radio station, Tokyo Shibaura, began broadcasting.
. 1930 ~ Stephen Sondheim, American composer and lyricist of musicals More information about Sondheim
. 1936 ~ Glen Campbell, Singer and studio guitarist
. 1937 ~ Johnny Ferguson, Singer
. 1943 ~ Keith Relf, Recording artist of The Yardbirds
. 1943 ~ George Benson, American jazz and pop guitarist and singer
. 1944 ~ Jeremy Clyde, Singer with Chad & Jeremy
. 1947 ~ Harry Vanda, Guitarist with The Easybeats
. 1948 ~ Andrew Lloyd Webber, British composer More information about Lloyd Webber
. 1948 ~ Randy Hobbs, Bass with The McCoys
. 1948 ~ The Voice of Firestone was the first commercial radio program to be carried simultaneously on both AM and FM radio stations.
. 1956 ~ Sammy Davis, Jr. starred in the play, Mr. Wonderful, in New York City. The critics were unkind, saying that they didn’t care for the production. Audiences, however, gave it ‘thumbs up’ and the show went on to be one of Broadway’s more popular musicals — catapulting Davis into the limelight. His father had already launched him into the vaudeville spotlight when Sammy was just three years old. By the time he was Mr. Wonderful, Sammy Davis, Jr. had played vaudeville and the nightclub circuit singing and dancing his way to the top over a twenty-eight-year period. He entertained us for sixty-two years!
. 1956 ~ Perry Como became the first major TV variety-show host to book a rock and roll act on his program. The ‘Incomparable Mr. C.’ booked Carl Perkins for the show and Perkins sang Blue Suede Shoes. 1962 ~ The play, I Can Get It For You Wholesale, opened on Broadway. It featured a 19-year-old named Barbra Streisand. She stopped the show at the famed Shubert Theatre in New York City. Streisand starred as Miss Marmelstein. Audiences kept coming back for more of Barbra for 300 performances.
. 1980 ~ The first CD (compact disc) was put on sale by RCA. The first major artist to have his entire catalog converted to CD was David Bowie, whose 15 studio albums were made available by RCA Records in February 1985, along with four greatest hits albums.
. 1980 ~ Pink Floyd started a 4-week run in the #1 slot on the pop charts with their smash, Another Brick in the Wall. When the boys popped open their gold record and threw it on the stereo, they heard Flowers on the Wall by the Statler Brothers.
. 2015 ~ Norman O. Scribner, founder and artistic director of the Choral Arts Society of Washington, one of the region’s preeminent symphonic choirs, died
. 1714 ~ Carl Phillip Emanuel (C.P.E.) Bach, German composer
More information on C. P. E. Bach
. 1857 ~ Ruggero Leoncavallo, Italian composer
More information about Leoncavallo
. 1866 ~ “It is possible to be as much of a musician as Saint-Saëns; it is impossible to be more of one!” ~ Franz Liszt on meeting fellow composer Camille Saint-Saëns in Paris.
. 1869 ~ Hector Berlioz, French composer (Symphony Fantastic), died at the age of 65
. 1889 ~ John Thompson, Piano educator
. 1911 ~ Alan Hovhaness, American composer
More information about Hovhaness
. 1922 ~ Cyd Charisse, Dancer
. 1927 ~ Dick Hyman, Pianist and music director for Arthur Godfrey
. 1945 ~ Michael Dolenz best known as the drummer vocalist of the television sitcom “The Monkeys” which appeared on American television from 1966 to 1968. He also wrote a number of the songs which later became hits including “Last Train to Clarksville” and “I’m a Believer”. He has also toured at various times since with reunion tours for “The Monkeys”. Micky stage name (“Micky Braddock” ) had TV experience prior to the formation of The Monkeys TV show from his time as the 10-year-old star of the Circus Boy series in the 1950s.
. 1961 ~ Conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham died at the age of 81.
. 1962 ~ The Beatles performed for the first time on the BBC in Great Britain. John, Paul, George and … Pete Best sang Dream Baby on the show, “Teenager’s Turn” on ‘Auntie Beeb’ (as the BBC was known).
. 1993 ~ Billy Eckstine, jazz singer (Fools Rush In), died at the age of 78 of stroke
. 1983 ~ William T Walton, English composer (Belhazzar’s feast), died at the age of 80
. 2001 ~ Ballet Legend Dame Ninette De Valois died at the age of 102. She was the founder of Britain’s Royal Ballet who launched dancer Margot Fonteyn on the road to stardom. De Valois, a strict and demanding disciplinarian with her pupils, was a gifted and theatrical choreographer who almost single-handedly put British ballet on the international stage. The doyenne of dance helped to nurture the talents of unknowns like Fonteyn and courted controversy in the 1960’s at the height of the Cold War when she invited Russian dancer Rudolph Nureyev to appear with her company. De Valois always gave credit to Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev for teaching her all she knew. “Everything,” she once said of the Ballet Russe legend. “Diaghilev just managed the whole company. He knew all about the different teachers. He knew the types of teachers he wanted, he knew the type of ballet he wanted. He was a musician.” Born Edris Stannus in 1898 in the Irish county of Wicklow, she graduated from Irish jig to the ballet, worked with the writer W.B. Yeats at Dublin’s Abbey Theater and then, almost single-handedly, brought ballet to the fore in Britain. The famed diva, who adopted her professional name from an ancestor who had married into a French family, was first inspired at the age of 11 when she watched Anna Pavlova dancing The Dying Swan. In 1923, she joined Diaghilev’s troupe in Monte Carlo and began to lay the foundations of her own ballet empire. She gave up dancing herself after discovering that she had been suffering for years from polio. “It was no tragedy. I wasn’t that great,” she once said. In 1926, she opened her own ballet school in London. From the tiniest beginnings, she built up the Sadlers Wells Ballet in less than a decade. At the end of World War II, the company moved triumphantly into the Royal Opera House. A ballet dynasty was born. De Valois retired in 1963 but remained intimately involved in the ballet school, forever the sharp-tongued martinet who could strike terror in tomorrow’s ballet hopefuls.
. 2001 ~ Maude Rutherford, a singer and dancer in the glory days of black theater during the 1920s, died. She was believed to have been 104. Rutherford was billed as the Slim Princess when she worked with entertainers such as Fats Waller, Josephine Baker and Pearl Bailey. She was a featured performer and favorite at Harlem’s Cotton Club. Rutherford’s theater credits include: “Dixie to Broadway,” (1924), “Chocolate Sandals,” (1927), and “Keep Shufflin”‘ (1928). She retired from show business in 1950 and worked as a switchboard operator at an Atlantic City hotel.
. 2003 ~ Adam Faith, a square-jawed British singer who was briefly a Cockney challenger to Elvis Presley’s rock ‘n’ roll crown, died of a heart attack. He was 62. Born Terry Nelhams in west London in 1940, Faith was a handsome teenager who was playing with a skiffle music group – a mixture of jug band, acoustic, folk, blues and country and western styles – when he was spotted by producers of a British Broadcasting Corp. music program. Adopting the stage name Adam Faith, he became – alongside Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele and Billy Fury – a pop star of the pre-Beatles era. Developing a hiccuping delivery reminiscent of Buddy Holly, Faith had more than 20 British hits, including the chart-topping What Do You Want? and Poor Me. Faith also was a versatile actor, appearing in films like Beat Girl,Mix Me A Person and 1975’s Stardust opposite David Essex. In the 1970s he played a Cockney ex-con in the TV series Budgie.
. 2015 ~ Lew Soloff, American jazz trumpeter (Blood, Sweat and Tears), died at the age of 71
. 1809 ~ Johann Georg Albrechtsberger passed away. He was was an Austrian musician.
. 1824 ~ “I am convinced that the soul and spirit of Mozart have passed into the body of young Liszt” ~ Review of a concert given on this day by Franz List in Paris.
. 1875 ~ Maurice Ravel, French composer
More information on Ravel
. 1907 ~ Victor Alphonse Duvernoy, French piano virtuoso, composer and professor of piano at the Conservatoire de Paris, died at the age of 64
. 1917 ~ In the United States, RCA released the first jazz record ever: The Dixie Jazz Band One Step by Nick LaRocca’s Original Dixieland Jazz Band.
. 1917 ~ Robert Erickson, American composer
. 1939 ~ Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians recorded one of the most popular songs of the century. The standard, “Auld Lang Syne”, was recorded for Decca Records.
. 1955 ~ “Peter Pan”, with Mary Martin as Peter and Cyril Richard as Captain Hook, was presented as a television special for the first time.
. 1969 ~ The Apollo astronauts began this day of their space voyage by singing Happy Birthday.
. 1985 ~ The song We Are the World, from the album of the same name, was played on the radio for the first time. Forty-five of pop music’s top stars gathered together to combine their talents to record the music of Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson. Richie and Jackson sang, too, while Quincy Jones did the producing of the USA for Africa record. The proceeds of the multimillion-selling recording went to aid African famine victims. The project, coordinated by Ken Kragen, was deemed a huge success.
. 2001 ~ Frankie Carle, a big-band leader best known for Sunrise Serenade, at the age of 97. Carle, who died in Mesa, Ariz., reached the high point of his popularity during World War II, when he was the focus of a bidding war among bands. His repertory was wide, ranging from classics like a revival of Stephen Foster’sSwanee River, to a World War II release that anticipated the Allied victory called I’m Going to See My Baby. Although Carle’s music did not rank high on record industry charts after the 1940s, he still toured and played concerts into the 1980s, some 70 years after he began his musical career.
. 2003 ~ A four-day walkout by 325 Broadway musical orchestra members over the issue of the size of the orchestras required for Broadway shows, forcing nearly every Broadway musical to cancel performances. The Musicians claim they want to replace live music with a virtual orchestra, a couple of synthesizers and computer-generated sound.
. 2015 ~ Steve Zegree died. He was a legendary jazz educator and former Western Michigan University Gold Company director.
1791 ~ Carl Czerny, Austrian pianist and composer whose vast musical production amounted to over a thousand works.
His books of studies for the piano are still widely used in piano teaching.
More information on Czerny
Czerny is in the center top of this image. He influenced many!
At the age of fifteen, Czerny began a very successful teaching career. Basing his method on the teaching of Beethoven and Muzio Clementi, Czerny taught up to twelve lessons a day in the homes of Viennese nobility.
His ‘star’ pupils included Theodor Döhler, Stephen Heller, Sigismond Thalberg, Leopoldine Blahetka and Ninette de Belleville.In 1819, the father of Franz Liszt brought his son to Czerny.
Liszt became Czerny’s most famous pupil. He trained the child with the works of Beethoven, Clementi, Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Sebastian Bach. The Liszt family lived in the same street in Vienna as Czerny, who was so impressed by the boy that he taught him free of charge. Liszt was later to repay this confidence by introducing the music of Czerny at many of his Paris recitals.
Shortly before Liszt’s Vienna concert of 13 April 1823 (his final concert of that season), Czerny arranged, with some difficulty (as Beethoven increasingly disliked child prodigies) the introduction of Liszt to Beethoven. Beethoven was sufficiently impressed with the young Liszt to give him a kiss on the forehead. Liszt remained close to Czerny, and in 1852 his Études d’exécution transcendente (Transcendental Études) were published with a dedication to Czerny.
. 1830 ~ Hans Bronsart Von Schellendorf, classical musician, pianist and composer who studied under Franz Liszt
. 1889 ~ John Mills, Guitarist, singer, bass with The Mills Brothers. He was father of the four Mills brothers and took youngest son John, Jr.’s place after his death in 1935
. 1912 ~ Rudolf Firkušný, Czech composer, classical pianist
. 1914 ~ Matt Dennis, Pianist, singer, recorded vocals for Paul Whiteman
. 1916 ~ The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presented its first concert. The symphony was the first by a municipal orchestra to be supported by taxes.
. 1941 ~ Sergio Mendes, Brazilian jazz pianist and composer
. 1935 ~ Gene Vincent (Craddock), Singer, actor
. 1938 ~ Larry Clinton and his orchestra recorded Martha on Victor Records. Bea Wain was heard warbling the vocals on the tune.
. 1938 ~ Bobby”Boris” Pickett, American singer-songwriter (Monster Mash), born in Somerville, Massachusetts (d. April 25, 2007)
. 1939 ~ Gerry Goffin, Lyricist with Carole King and with Michael Masser
. 1940 ~ NBC radio presented “The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street” for the first time. The famous Blue network series included several distinguished alumni — among them, Dinah Shore and Zero Mostel. The chairman, or host, of “The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street” was Milton Cross. He would say things like, “A Bostonian looks like he’s smelling something. A New Yorker looks like he’s found it.” The show combined satire, blues and jazz and was built around what were called the three Bs of music: Barrelhouse, Boogie Woogie and Blues.
. 1968 ~ The new 20,000 seat Madison Square Garden officially opened in New York. It was the fourth arena to be named Madison Square Garden. The showplace for entertainment and sports opened with a gala show hosted by Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.
. 1973 ~ Ethan Iverson, US pianist, composer, and critic, born in Menomonie, Wisconsin
. 1982 ~ Eleanor Powell, American actress and tap dancer (Born to Dance), died of cancer at the age of 69
. 2001 ~ Dame Sonia Arova, a Bulgarian-born ballerina who danced with Rudolf Nureyev, at his request, in his American debut, died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 74. Arova was knighted by King Olaf V of Norway, only the second woman to receive that distinction. During her years as founding artistic director of the State of Alabama Ballet, Dame Sonia Arova changed the face of dance in Birmingham. Through a stage career that lasted three decades and a teaching career that occupied three more, she lived and breathed ballet. Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, Arova began dancing at age 6. By 8, she was studying ballet intensively in Paris. When war broke out in 1940, she escaped the Nazis’ advance with her English piano teacher in a harrowing flight during which their train was machine-gunned by German troops. Arriving in England, Arova was enrolled in an arts school and later joined the International Ballet. In 1965, Arova became artistic director of the Norwegian National Ballet, moved to California in 1971 to co-direct the San Diego Ballet and in 1975 accepted a teaching position at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Maintaining her position at ASFA, she took over the newly formed State of Alabama Ballet in 1981 as artistic director, with her husband, Thor Sutowski, as artistic associate and choreographer. In 1996, the couple returned to San Diego, and she spent her last years with the San Diego Ballet.
. 2003 ~ Moses G. Hogan, 45, a pianist and choral conductor known for his contemporary arrangements of spirituals, died of a brain tumor in New Orleans. He was editor of the Oxford Book of Spirituals, published in 2001 by Oxford University Press. The book has become the U.S. music division’s top seller. Mr. Hogan also toured with his own singing groups, the Moses Hogan Chorale and Moses Hogan Singers. His arrangements, more than 70 of which have been published by the Hal Leonard publishing company, were performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, soprano Barbara Hendricks and countertenor Derek Lee Ragin.
. 2003 ~ William L. “Weemo” Wubbena Jr., 72, a retired Army colonel who sang in Washington area barbershop quartets, died of cancer. Col. Wubbena was born in Marquette, Mich., and raised in Washington. He was a member of the Montgomery County chapter of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America.
. 2012 ~ Mega-star and singer Whitney Houston died at the age of 48 in a Los Angeles hotel the night before the Grammy Awards. Plagued by substance abuse in her later life, Houston had become one of the most popular and celebrated singers in her early career.
. 2018 ~ Vic Damone [Vito Farinola], American singer (On the Street Where You Live), entertainer, actor and TV presenter (Vic Damone Show), died at the age of 89
It’s Groundhog Day…again! In weather lore, if a groundhog, also known as a woodchuck, or marmot emerges from its burrow on this day and fails to see its shadow winter will soon end. If on the other hand, it is sunny and the groundhog sees its shadow, winter will continue for 6 more weeks.
. 1714 ~ Gottfried August Homilius, German composer, cantor and organist
. 1789 ~ Armand-Louis Couperin, French composer, organist, and harpsichordist died at the age of 63
. 1875 ~ Fritz Kreisler, Austrian-born American violinist and virtuoso/composer Some of his best-known works are Caprice Viennois, Tambourin Chinois, Liebesfreud and La Gitana
. 1901 ~ Jascha Heifetz, Russian-born American violinist
Read quotes by and about Heifetz
More information about Heifetz
. 1911 ~ Jussi Björling, Swedish tenor
. 1912 ~ Burton Lane (Levy), Composer of How Are Things in Glocca Morra, That Old Devil Moon, Look to the Rainbow, How About You, I Hear Music, Come Back to Me, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, How Could You Believe Me?; His Broadway musicals were Finian’s Rainbow (collaboration with Yip Harburg), On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (collaboration with Alan Jay Lerner). He contributed songs to over 30 films: Babes on Broadway, Royal Wedding, Ship Ahoy, St. Louis Blues and credited with discovering Judy Garland
. 1927 ~ Stan Getz (Stanley Gayetzby), American jazz tenor saxophonist
. 1937 ~ Tom Smothers, Entertainer, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Smothers Brothers Show, The Steve Allen Show, Dick’s Brother
. 1937 ~ Guy Lombardo and his orchestra recorded one of Guy’s most famous tunes. Boo Hoo was waxed on Victor Records and became one of the group’s all-time great hits.
. 1940 ~ Alan Caddy, Guitarist with The Tornados
. 1941 ~ Serge Alexandrovich Tcherepnin, composer
. 1942 ~ Graham Nash, Singer with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
. 1947 ~ Peter Lucia, Drummer with Tommy James and The Shondells
. 1945 ~ The first 45 RPM vinyl record was released. It was one of the most popular ways for music lovers to enjoy their favorite song without buying an entire record. The cassette single during the 1980s and 1990s was a comparable format.
. 1949 ~ Ross Valory, Bass with Journey
. 1959 ~ The Coasters tune, Charlie Brown, was released. The tune went to #2 and stayed there for three weeks, but didn’t make it to the top spot of the charts. A catchy song (“Fee fee fi fi fo fo fum. I smell smoke in the auditorium…”), it was on the charts for a total of 12 weeks. The song at number one, preventing Charlie Brown from reaching the top, was Venus, by Frankie Avalon.
. 1996 ~ Gene Kelly, American actor and dancer (Singin’ in the Rain), died at the age of 83
. 2001 ~ French pianist Nicole Henriot, who entered the Paris Conservatory at age 7 and went on to perform around the globe with conductor Charles Munch, died at the age of 75. Emerging on the world music scene after World War II, Henriot built her reputation on interpretations of works from Liszt to Prokofiev, and especially French composers such as Ravel, Fauré and Milhaud. She was most famous for her performances with Munch, music director of the Boston Symphony from 1949 to 1962. Munch, who died in 1968, was the uncle of Henriot’s husband. Born in 1925, Henriot won the Paris Conservatory’s first prize at age 13. During the war, Henriot gave aid to her brother, a member of the French Resistance. When Gestapo agents searched her home in 1944, she managed to destroy her brother’s secret documents but was badly beaten. After the war, Henriot became the first French pianist to appear in Britain and began an international tour that took her from Scandinavia to Egypt. She made her American debut in 1948 as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic under Munch’s direction. When Munch formed the Orchestra of Paris in 1967, Henriot was one of the fledgling orchestra’s first soloists. In the 1970s and 1980s, Henriot devoted herself to teaching, and worked at the Conservatory of Liege, Belgium, and at the Walloon Conservatory of Brussels.
. 2001 ~ Victor Norman, who founded the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra and conducted the group for three decades, died at the age of 95. Colleagues said Norman was a visionary who needed to be as skilled in politics as he was in music to keep the symphony together. “He had this idea that a symphony orchestra could be created around here, when really it had been tried several times before, never with any kind of significant success,” said Charles Frink, a New London composer who studied with Norman. Norman founded the New London Civic Orchestra in 1946. It merged with the Willimantic Orchestra in 1952 to become the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra. He stepped down from the podium in 1980. In his retirement, Norman composed music. Two of his orchestral pieces were performed by the New Britain Symphony Orchestra and the Westminster Community Orchestra in Princeton, N.J. His memoirs, “Victor Norman: A Life in Music, a Lifetime of Learning,” were published in 1999.
. 2015 ~ French piano virtuoso Aldo Ciccolini died at age 89. Born on August 15, 1925, into a musical family in Naples, Aldo Ciccolini was a child prodigy, beginning composition classes in the city’s conservatory at age nine.
Lorin Maazel performed at the 1939 New York World’s Fair when he was only 9. He conducted two major symphonies before he was 13 and went on to a successful career as an adult conductor.
MacDowell
Edward MacDowell lived from 1860 until 1908. He was an American pianist and composer and was one of the first American composers to achieve any degree of international fame. He studied in Paris, eventually at the Conservatoire, before moving to study the piano with Carl Heymann at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, where he had composition lessons with Joachim Raff. There was encouragement from Liszt and further years spent in Europe until his return to the United States in 1888. There he succeeded in establishing himself as a teacher, pianist and composer, with appointment as the first Professor of Music at Columbia,a position he held until 1904. His last years were clouded by mental illness.
Piano music by MacDowell is effective if not innovative. It includes two piano concertos, four sonatas, the Tragica, Eroica, Norse and Keltic, studies and a quantity of genre pieces.
Machaut
Guillaume de Machaut was born sometime around 1300 in Rheims(?), France and died: April 13, 1377. Rheims, France He was a French poet and musician as well as a composer of monophonic and polyphonic music. He is also known as the leading representative of the Ars nova tradition.
Machaut lived his life in the higher ranks of service, first as secretary to John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, and then as a canon (a church official) at the Cathedral of Rheims. Like many in the fourteenth century, Machaut’s life and works reflect an equal measure of the sacred and secular. Most of his works were either secular (such as his many chansons) or a mix of sacred and ceremonial (including many of his motets and his hocket David, which was probably written for the coronation service of King Charles V in 1364). At the same time, he wrote what is probably the first full setting of the Mass Ordinary by a single composer (the Messe de Nostre Dame). He was a man of the cloth, having taken minor orders at an early age. Yet toward the end of his life he maintained a romantic/literary affair with a young woman named Perrone.
Much of Machaut’s polyphonic music reflects the interest that composers had in building complex structures based on the repetition and manipulation of borrowed melodies (a technique called isorhythm). In some of his works, these techniques are applied to all the voices. The harmonies found in Machaut’s pieces are built around the fifth and the octave, the primary consonances of the period. His secular music carries on the musical and textual traditions of the troubadours and trouv?res. Most are written in the fixed forms such as the virelei, rondeau and ballade.
Marchaut’s works include: Sacred/ceremonial music, including Messe de Nostre Dame, 23 motets, hocket “David” Secular music, including 42 ballades, 22 rondeaux, 33 virelais, 19 lais, 1 complainte, 1 chanson royale
Mahler
Gustav Mahler lived from 1860 until 1911. Like so many other musicians, Mahler started early, learning the piano at six and giving his first recital at the age of ten.
In 1909, he became conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna Court Opera. Mahler, a Bohemian composer, used huge orchestras, the largest for his “Symphony for a Thousand”. He also completed nine symphonies and several song-cycles notably “Das Lied von der Erde.” Mahler’s music was used in the 1971 movie, Death in Venice.
Mancini
Henry Mancini (Enrico Nicola Mancini) lived from 1924 until 1994. He was an Academy Award-winning composer of movies such as Moon River in 1961, Days of Wine and Roses in 1962, Breakfast at Tiffany’s score in 1961, Victor/Victoria score in 1982. He also composed themes for The Pink Panther, Mr. Lucky, Peter Gunn, Charade, NBC Mystery Movie, NBC Nightly News, Love Theme from Romeo & Juliet and received 20 Grammy Awards.
Marriner
Sir Neville Marriner, born in 1924, is a British violinist and conductor. He was born in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, EC England, UK and he studied at the Royal College of Music and the Paris Conservatory. He first played violin with the London Philharmonia and the London Symphony Orchestra, then turned to conducting. He has held posts with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra from 1968 until 1977, the Minnesota Orchestra from 1979 until 1986, and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra 1984 until 1989. Since 1956 he has been founder-director of the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields chamber ensemble. He was knighted in 1985.
Marsalis
The Marsalis clan of New Orleans is a large one. Ellis, the head of the family, plays piano, Jason plays drums. Wynton plays trumpet and Branford plays saxophone. Together and individually, this family has done quite a lot to inspire young musicians.
Massanet
Jules Emile Frederick Massenet lived from 1842 until 1912. He was a composer who was born in Montaud, France. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where he was professor from 1878 until 1896. He made his name with the comic opera Don Caesar de Bazan. Other operas followed, including Manon (1884), considered by many to be his masterpiece, Le Cid (1885), and Werther (1892). Among his other works are oratorios, orchestral suites, music for piano, and songs.
McCartney
Sir (James) Paul McCartney was born in 1942. He is a musician, songwriter, and composer who was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, NW England, UK. He was the Beatles’ bass guitarist, vocalist, and member of the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, he made his debut as a soloist with the album McCartney (1970), heralding the break-up of the group. In 1971 he formed the band Wings (disbanded in 1981) with his wife Linda (1942–98). “Mull of Kintyre’ (1977) became the biggest-selling UK single (2.5 million). In 1979 he was declared the most successful composer of all time: by 1978 he had written or co-written 43 songs that sold over a million copies each.
His Liverpool Oratorio (written in association with Carl Davis) was performed by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at Liverpool Cathedral in 1991, and he has since continued to develop his interests as a classical composer, notably in Standing Stone (1997). He collaborated with Harrison and Starr in the retrospective Beatles’ anthology in 1995.
He wrote the books All You Need Is Love (1968) and Paul McCartney In His Own Words (1976), and wrote, produced, and composed the music for a successful animated film, Rupert and the Frog Song in 1984.
He won a Grammy Award in 1990 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 15, 1999. He was knighted in 1997.
McPartland
Marian Turner McPartland was born in Windsor, England in 1920. She is a versatile pianist and jazz musician. She moved to America in 1945 and led a trio from 1951 and founded Halcyon Records. In 1973 she began an adjunct career as the host of jazz radio programs and National Public Radio show – Marian McPartand?s Piano Jazz.
Melba
Nellie Melba, whose birth name was Helen Porter Mitchell, was an Australian singer born in Melbourne, Australia in 1861. She was taught to sing by mother, educated at Presbyterian Ladies’ College, married 1881 and decided to sing professionally. She visited London and Paris in 1886 and debuted in Brussels as Gilda in Verdi’s “Rigoletto” in 1887.
First diva of the century as Nellie Melba (from her home town), she demanded a pound more than Caruso at his peak for her three-octave voice. Upset that Escoffier named a dessert Peach Melba without paying royalties, she patented her name in the US. For WWI fundraising concerts she was made a Dame Commander of the Order for the British Empire in 1918. Her career took her to London’s Covent Garden and New York’s Metropolitan opera houses. She gave her name to Melba Toast, Peach Melba and Melba Sauce. Melba died 1931 from and infection following an unsuccessful face lift.
Melchoir
Lauritz Lebrecht Hommel Melchior was a tenor who born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1890. He died in 1973. Beginning as a baritone in 1913, he went on to become arguably the foremost Wagnerian tenor of the century. He sang in Bayreuth from 1924 until 1931 and regularly at the Metropolitan Opera from 1926 until 1950). In the late 1940s and early 1950s he appeared in several Hollywood movies.
Melchior was sometimes called ‘The Heroic Tenor’ or ‘The Premier Heldentenor of the 20th Century’.
Mendelssohn
Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn lived between 1809 and 1847. He is considered to be a romantic composer and pianist best known for his symphonies and concert overtures. Mendelssohn played the piano in public by the age of nine, so he was often compared to Mozart.
He composed works for solo instruments and orchestra, and German songs. Some of his better known works are the “Wedding March”, “Elijah” and “Fingal’s Cave”. Felix Mendelssohn, along with Hector Berlioz was one of the first conductors of a large orchestra.
Mendelssohn harmonized the works of other composers, including Johann Cruger.
Menotti
Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors” was the first opera ever written for television and is the most frequently performed opera in the United States. He won a Pulitzer prize for his opera, The Consul, in 1950.
Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin made his violin debut as a child prodigy by appearing with the San Francisco Orchestra at the age of 7 in 1923. He was wearing short pants, which were then fashionable for boys his age. He later became a music statesman by promoting music as a univeral peacemaker and as a means to realize greater global understanding. He was born in New York City in 1916 but became a British citizen in 1985.
Messiaen
Olivier (Eugène Prosper Charles) Messiaen lived from 1908 until 1992. He was a composer and organist, born in Avignon, France. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers included Paul Dukas.
His 20/21 earned him a Grammy
Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer lived from 1791 until 1864. He was a German Grand opera composer. His most famous works are “Les Huguenots” and “L’Africaine”. His Hellish Waltz from Robert du Diable, transcribed by Liszt probably caused more public commotion than any other piano piece in history.
Midori
Midori (Mi Dori Goto) is a Japanese violin virtuoso who began lessons at age four.
Milhaud
arius Milhaud, 1892 to 1974, was born in the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence. Darius Milhaud was trained at the Paris Conservatoire, originally as a violinist, before turning to composition. He enjoyed a close association with the diplomat-poet Paul Claudel, whom he accompanied to Brazil as secretary, after Claudel’s appointment as Minister at the French delegation in Rio de Janeiro. On his return to Paris in 1918, after two years abroad, Milhaud was for a time in the circle of Jean Cocteau and a member of the diverse group of French composers known as Les Six. Extremely prolific as a composer in many genres, Milhaud spent the years of the 1939 war in the United States, where he taught, combining this position with a similar post at the Paris Conservatoire after 1947.
Two works in particular have proved attractive additions to repertoire. The first, Saudades do Brasil, a suite for piano, is based on music heard in Brazil during the composer’s stay there between 1916 and 1918. Scaramouche, arranged for two pianos from incidental music for Moli?re’s Le M?decin Volant, is a lively jeu d’esprit, in the spirit of the commedia dell’arte character of the title.
Darius Milhaud wrote a considerable amount of music for the theatre, operas, ballets and incidental music, as well as film and radio scores. Collaboration with Claudel brought the opera Christophe Colombe and a number of compositions of incidental music for plays ranging from those of Shakespeare to the work of contemporaries such as Brecht, Supervielle, Giraudoux and Anouilh. With Cocteau he wrote the ballets Le Boeuf sur le Toit (The Ox on the Roof) and the jazz La Cr?ation du Monde, for the Ballets n?gres. These represent only a small fraction of his dramatic work.
Milhaud was equally prolific as a composer of orchestral music of all kinds, including twelve symphonies and a variety of concertos, some of which reflect the influence of his native Provence.
Milhaud contributed widely also to the repertoire of French song both in choral settings and in songs for solo voice and piano, with texts chosen from a great variety of sources from Rabindranath Tagore and Andre Gide to the words of Pope John XXIII, the last in a choral symphony Pacem in terris.
In addition to eighteen string quartets and useful additions to duo sonata repertoire, not least for viola, an instrument used for the Quatre Visages of 1943, representations in music of four different kinds of girls, Milhaud provided for wind quintet the charming suite La cheminée du roi René and the attractive Pastorale of 1935 for oboe, clarinet and bassoon. He shows here, as elsewhere, a characteristically French adroitness in writing for woodwind instruments.
Miller
(Alton) Glenn Miller, lived from 1904 until 1944 and was born in Clarinda, Iowa. He was a trombonist who he attended the University of Colorado before joining Ben Pollack’s orchestra in Chicago in 1924. He moved to New York in 1928, where he free-lanced for the next nine years as a studio musician and worked as a sideman with a succession of bandleaders, including Red Nichols, the Dorsey Brothers, and Ray Noble. After his first band failed in 1937, he put together a second orchestra in 1938. For the next four years, with hits such as “Moonlight Serenade” and “In the Mood,” it was the most successful dance band of the period. In 1942, he joined the U.S. Air Force, for which he organized the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band to entertain the troops. While stationed in Europe, he died on a flight from England to France in a plane that disappeared over the English Channel.
Minelli
Liza May Minnelli was born in 1946 in Los Angeles, California. She is a singer, dancer, stage and screen actress. Her parents are actress Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli and her half-sister is singer-actress Lorna Luft.
Minnelli was less than 3 years old when she made her screen debut in In the Good Old Summertime (1949), which co-starred her mother. She became the youngest-ever actress to win a Tony Award, for Flora, the Red Menace (1965), at age nineteen. She is the only singer in history to sell out Carnegie Hall for three weeks straight.
Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi lived from 1567 until 1643 and was considered to be a baroque composer. He was the first great composer of opera.
Monteverdi introduced the orchestral prelude, enlarged the orchestra, and improved its role by recognizing instrumental differences. His first opera “Orfeo” was performed in 1607.
Moog
Robert Moog was born in 1934. He invented the first music synthesizer in 1964.
Morley
Morton
Jelly Roll Morton, born Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe in 1885, was one of the most influential composers of the jazz era, bridging an important gap between ragtime, blues, and jazz. In a sense, he was the first great jazz composer.
His career began in New Orleans, where he began to experiment with a unique blend of blues, ragtime, Creole, and Spanish music in bordellows as a piano player. Along with being a musician, he also worked as a gambler, pool shark, vaudeville comedian, and was known for his flamboyant personality and diamond front tooth.
Morton became successful when he started making what would be some of the first jazz recordings in 1923 with “the New Orleans Rhythm Kings”. Whether he played on the West Coast, New Orleans, or in Chicago, his recordings were always very popular. He joined the group “the Red Hot Peppers” in 1924 and made several classic albums with the Victor label.
Nothing but success came to him until 1930, when “Hot Jazz” began to die out, and big bands began to take over. Morton died in 1941, claiming that a voodoo spell was the cause of his demise.
Moscheles
Ignaz Moscheles was a Bohemian composer and piano virtuoso.
Mouret
Jean Joseph Mouret’s Rondeau was the theme for many years of TV’s Masterpiece Theater Mouret wrote his music in Paris in the early 1700’s
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Theophilus Mozart lived between 1756 and 1791. He is considered to be a classical composer. Mozart, born in Salzburg, Austria, began composing before most children go to kindergarten. By the time he was six he had played the piano and violin in public.
A Wunderkind, a prodigy of the first rank before the age of five, Mozart astounded the musical world with compositions of unsurpassed brilliance. His father Leopold had recognized his talent at the age of three and immediately set out to teach him to play the harpsichord, violin, and organ. Mozart and his sister made their debut in Munich when he was just six and traveled about Europe together, performing at courts and before royalty, always with success. While still a little child Mozart was inventing symphonies, sonatas, and his first opera. Legends abound about how Mozart could hear an entire work in his head and write everything down without making even one change.
As a child performer he was often treated as a freak. People would cover his hands as he played the piano, make him compose tunes on the spot and perform all sorts of other musical tricks.
In 1787 Mozart became court composer to Joseph II. He played for royalty, received commissions from aristocrats and in his short lifetime composed nearly a thousand masterpieces, including symphonies, operas, serenades, sonatas, concertos, masses, vocal works, and church works.
Mozart was a prolific composer writing masterpieces using every form of music, including his operas “The Marriage of Figaro” (based on a play by Pierre Beaumarchais), “Don Giovanni”, “Cosi fan tutte” and “The Magic Flute”. His mastery of instrumental and vocal forms, from symphony to concerto and opera, was unrivalled in his own time and perhaps in any other.
Composing the Requiem Mass commissioned for Count Walsegg, he felt he was writing his own requiem and he died before it was finished.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer, died in Vienna Austria at the age of 35, penniless, on December 5th, 1791, of malignant typhus. Mozart, the precocious child prodigy, composed several pieces that are deemed central to the classical era. Though he ranked as one of the greatest musical genius, he did not live a life of affluence as none of his compositions earned him a decent commission but the world is forever enriched by such works as Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the Symphonies No. 38 through 41 and the Coronation Mass. In the year 2000, there have been some new discoveries about Mozart’s death.
Munch
Charles Munch was a French composer who lived from 1891 until 1968. He was born in Strasbourg, France. After a long career as a violinist, he made his conducting debut in Paris in 1932 and three years later organized his own orchestra there. He became conductor of the Boston Symphony in 1949 and stayed until 1962. In the latter year he organized the Orchestre de Paris; he died on tour with that group in Virginia. Munch was known for allowing his players room to express themselves, producing warm and musical performances.
Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky lived from 1839 until 1881. This Russian composer, born in Karevo, Russia, was educated for the army, but resigned his commission in 1858 and began the serious study of music under Balakirev.
He is most known for his dramatic opera Boris Godunov, first performed in St Petersburg in 1874. In this opera, he emphasized that speech is made more poignant by the accompanying music.
His piano suite Pictures from an Exhibition (1874) has also kept a firm place in the concert repertoire. Other operas and large-scale works remained uncompleted as the composer sank into the chronic alcoholism which hastened his early death. His friend Rimsky-Korsakov undertook the task of musical executor, arranged or completed many of his unfinished works, and rearranged some of the finished ones.
Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain was featured in the Walt Disney movie Fantasia.
Mutter
Anne-Sophie Mutter’s remarkable career began at the age of 13 when she appeared as soloist with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic at the 1977 Salzburg Whitsun Festival. Since then she has been in demand as both a soloist and chamber music partner in major music centers throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia.
Her long list of honors for recordings includes the Grand Prix du Disque, the Grammy Award in the United States, and Holland’s Edison Award. Her most recent releases have been “The Berlin Recital” with pianist Lambert Orkis and live recordings of Brahms’ Violin Concerto and Schumann’s “Fantasy” with the New York Philharmonic and Kurt Masur. Her recording of Penderecki’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer (coupled with Bartok’s Violin Sonata No. 2) was released in early 1998. All of Beethoven’s sonatas will be recorded live during her worldwide tour and released by the autumn of 1998.
An ardent champion of contemporary music, Miss Mutter has given premiere performances of several works written especially for her by composers such as Witold Lutoslawski, Norbert Moret, Krzysztof Penderecki, Wolfgang Rihm and Sebastian Currier. Over the next few years she will participate in premiere performances of works by contemporary composers whom she especially admires.
In 1987 Miss Mutter established the Rudolf Eberle Endowment which supports talented young string musicians throughout Europe. This endowment was recently incorporated into the Munich-based Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation and Friends Circle which share the same objective.
Miss Mutter has a strong commitment to social and health problems of our time. She supports work in these fields through regular benefit concerts. The proceeds from one of her three Beethoven evenings in Munich will go to the Christiane-Herzog-Stiftung for sufferers of cystic fibrosis. In the same year she will perform a benefit concert for the German Red Cross with the proceeds going to an orphanage in Romania. In Philadelphia a concert for Temple University’s Esther Boyer College of Music will take place.
She is a holder of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
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