February Composer

Franz Liszt


A Romantic icon and one of the first proponents of the orchestral tone poem, Franz Liszt was an unparalleled keyboard virtuoso and a supremely talented and innovative composer. He was also renowned as a mercurial personality and bandit of love; in short, like the flamboyant violinist Niccolo Paganini, Liszt lived the Romantic ideal to the hilt.



He was born in Hungary in 1811, and began to study the piano at the age of six. He exhibited unusual talent on the instrument, and gave a number of successful concerts while still a child. After continuing his piano studies with the help of Hungarian nobility, he moved with his family to Vienna, where he studied with Carl Czerny and the now-infamous Antonio Salieri. He made more concert appearances, and audiences took to his passionate and technically immaculate playing. Next was Paris, where, at the age of 16, he decided to take up long-term residence.



Liszt's fame as a piano virtuoso grew; in 1831 he was lucky enough to see the violinist Paganini in performance, and that experience (Paganini's gifts on the violin were so breathtaking that many people believed he was in league with the devil) made a profound impact on the young pianist; he resolved to apply Paganini's showmanship and pyrotechnics to the piano, and in so doing revolutionized the piano as a virtuosic instrument.



Liszt's life reads a bit like a chapter out of Don Juan. Flamboyant in dress and manner, he carried out innummerable minor love affairs and two major ones - first with the Countess Marie d'Agoult, and later with the Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, who worked with him while he was Court Music Director at Weimar. At the age of 48, after living the high life for three decades, he suddenly entered the priesthood, thereafter splitting his musical activities between Rome, Weimar and Budapest; he was conferred the religious title of Abbé in 1866 by Pope Pius IX. Wherever he went, even in later years, he was surrounded by throngs of admirers, imitators and hangers-on.



One might think that all of this adulation and personality-worship would color Liszt's approach to the music that had vaulted him to such overwhelming fame. But this never happened; rather, Liszt always adhered strictly to his core musical values, and considered the directions of the composer the ultimate authority in interpretation. He revered composers from Beethoven to Berlioz to Wagner, and always tried to expand upon their work to create new musical forms. And he succeeded...his transcriptions of orchestral works for the piano (Schumann's Widmung, Verdi's Rigoletto and Aida, Beethoven's symphonies and Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique are only a few) led to a completely new style of piano composition, and his orchestral tone poems, written mostly during his stint at Weimar, are revolutionary in their use of harmonic progression and programmatic elements.



Liszt is perhaps best-known, however, for his piano music, and much of it is utterly magnificent. His monumental one-movement Sonata in B minor (1853) is one of the masterpieces of instrumental solo music, and his numerous tone poems, showpieces and smaller works for piano are brilliant examples of a restless, Romantic imagination, informed but quite removed from the rigor of Classical forms.

January Composer

Rachmaninoff, Sergey Vasilyevich (1873-1943), Russian-American composer, pianist, and conductor, one of the most brilliant pianists of the 20th century, whose compositions are considered the last major musical expression of the romantic era. Rachmaninoff was born on April 1, 1873, near Novgorod. In Moscow his piano teachers included the stringent disciplinarian Nikolay Zverov and Rachmaninoff's cousin Aleksandr Siloti, who gave him the heritage of his own teacher, the Hungarian pianist-composer Franz Liszt. There also, Rachmaninoff studied with three eminent Russian composers Anton Arensky, Sergey Taneyev, and his most important musical mentor, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky.


Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor (1892), for piano and orchestra, and his opera Aleko (1893) established his reputation as a composer. Also written in 1893 was his Trio élégiaque, in memory of Tchaikovsky. In 1897 his Symphony No. 1 in D Minor was performed. Its disastrous reception caused him to stop composing, and for three years he worked solely as a pianist and conductor. His Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor (1900) marked his return to composition. From the next 17 years come his Symphony No. 2 in E Minor (1906); the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead (1909); the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (1910), for choir; the choral symphony The Bells (1913), based on a poem by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe; and many highly admired songs. Except for a period in Dresden, Germany (1906-8), he worked mainly in Moscow; in 1904-6 he conducted at the Bolshoi Theatre.


After leaving Russia in 1917, Rachmaninoff settled in the United States the following year. In exile he concentrated on his piano and conducting careers, making recordings in both fields. His few compositions after 1917 include the Variations on a Theme of Corelli (1934), for piano; Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1936), for piano and orchestra; the Symphony No. 3 in A Minor (1936); and the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Minor (1937). He died in Beverly Hills, California, on March 28, 1943.

December Composer

Edward Alexander MacDowell (December 18, 1860[1] - January 23, 1908) was an American composer and pianist of the Romantic period. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites "Woodland Sketches", "Sea Pieces", and "New England Idylls". "Woodland Sketches" includes his most popular short piece, "To a Wild Rose". In 1904 he was one of the first seven Americans honored by membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

November Composer

Clara Schumann (née Clara Josephine Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German musician and composer, considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era. She exerted her influence over a 61-year concert career, changing the format and repertoire of the piano recital and the tastes of the listening public. Her husband was the composer Robert Schumann. She and her husband encouraged Johannes Brahms, and she was the first pianist to give public performances of some of Brahms' works, notably the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel.

October Composer

Anton Diabelli (5 September 1781 – 8 April 1858) was an Austrian music publisher, editor and composer. Best known in his time as a publisher, he is most familiar today as the composer of the waltz on which Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his set of thirty-three Diabelli Variations.




Diabelli was born in Mattsee near Salzburg. He was trained to enter the priesthood, but also took music lessons with Michael Haydn. He moved to Vienna to teach the piano and guitar before becoming partners with Pietro Cappi in 1818 and setting up a music publishing firm with him.



The firm, Cappi & Diabelli (which became Diabelli & Co. in 1824) became well known by arranging popular pieces so they could be played by amateurs at home. The firm became well known in more serious music circles by becoming the first to publish works by Franz Schubert, a composer the firm later championed.



Diabelli produced a number of works as a composer, including an operetta called Adam in der Klemme, several masses and songs and numerous piano and classical guitar pieces. Among these are pieces for four hands (two pianists playing at one piano), which are popular among amateur pianists.



The composition for which Diabelli is now best known was actually written as part of a publishing venture. In 1819, he decided to try to publish a volume of variations on a waltz he had penned expressly for this purpose, with one variation by every important Austrian composer living at the time, as well as several significant non-Austrians. The combined contributions would be published in an anthology called Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. Fifty-one composers responded with pieces, including Beethoven, Schubert, Carl Czerny, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles, and the eight-year-old Franz Liszt (although it seems Liszt was not invited personally, but his teacher Czerny arranged for him to be involved). Czerny was also enlisted to write a coda. Beethoven, however, instead of providing just one variation, provided 33, and his formed Part I of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. They constitute what is generally regarded as one of the greatest of Beethoven's piano pieces and as the greatest set of variations of their time, and are generally known simply as the Diabelli Variations, Op. 120. The other 50 variations were published as Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein.



Diabelli's publishing house expanded throughout his life, before he retired in 1851, leaving it under the control of Carl Anton Spina. When Diabelli died in 1858, Spina continued to run the firm, and published much music by Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss. In 1872, the firm was taken over by Friedrich Schreiber, and in 1876 it merged with the firm of August Cranz, who bought the company in 1879 and ran it under his name.



He died in Vienna at the age of 76.



Diabelli's composition Pleasures of Youth: Six Sonatinas is a collection of six sonatinas depicting a struggle between unknown opposing forces. This is suggested by the sharp and frequent change in dynamics from forte to piano. When forte is indicated, the pianist is meant to evoke a sense of wickedness, thus depicting the antagonist. In contrast, the markings of piano represent the protagonist with its softer, more tranquil tones.

September Composer

Muzio Clementi (24 January 1752, Rome – 10 March 1832, Evesham, Worcestershire, England) was a celebrated Italian classical composer, pianist, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer. He is best known for his piano sonatas, sonatinas, and his collection of piano studies, Gradus ad Parnassum. Nineteenth century enthusiasts lauded Clementi as "the father of the pianoforte", "father of modern piano technique", and "father of Romantic pianistic virtuosity".



Encouraged to study music by his father, he was sponsored as a young composer by Sir Peter Beckford, a wealthy Englishman who brought him to England to advance his studies. He soon became known as one of the great piano virtuosi, touring Europe numerous times from his long time base in London. It was on one of these occasions in 1781 that he engaged in a famous piano improvisation duel with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.



Influenced by Domenico Scarlatti's harpsichord school and Haydn's classical school and by the stile galante of Johann Christian Bach and Ignazio Cirri, Clementi developed a fluent, technical legato style which he passed on to an entire generation of pianists, including John Field, Johann Baptist Cramer, Ignaz Moscheles, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Friedrich Wilhelm Kalkbrenner, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Carl Czerny. He was a notable influence on Ludwig van Beethoven.



Clementi also produced and promoted his own brand of pianos and was a notable music publisher. It was thanks to this activity that many compositions by contemporary (and earlier) artists have stayed in the repertory. Though the European reputation of Muzio Clementi was second only to Joseph Haydn in his day, his reputation has languished for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.[1]

August Composer

John Field (26 July 1782 (?), baptized 5 September 1782 – 23 January 1837) was an Irish pianist, composer, and teacher. He was born in Dublin into a musical family, and received his early education there. The Fields soon moved to London, where Field studied under Muzio Clementi. Under his tutelage, Field quickly became a famous and sought-after concert pianist; together, master and pupil visited Paris, Vienna, and St. Petersburg. The Russian capital impressed Field so much that he eventually decided to stay behind when Clementi left, and from about 1804 was particularly active in Russia.




Field was very highly regarded by his contemporaries and his playing and compositions influenced many major composers, including Chopin, Brahms, Schumann, and Liszt. He is best known today for originating the piano nocturne, a form later made famous by Chopin, as well as for his substantial contribution, through concerts and teaching, to the development of the Russian piano school