Oscar G. C.

Hammerstein II (1895 1960) was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director
of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and two Academy Awards for Best
Original Song. Many of his songs are standard repertoire for singers and jazz musicians. He co-wrote 850
songs. Hammerstein was the lyricist and playwright in his partnerships; his collaborators wrote the music.
Hammerstein collaborated with numerous composers, such as Jerome Kern, with whom he wrote Show Boat,
Vincent Youmans, Rudolf Friml, Richard A. Whiting and Sigmund Romberg; but he is best known for his
collaborations with Richard Rodgers, which include Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and
The Sound of Music.

Richard Charles Rodgers (1902 1979) was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for
43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting
partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. His compositions have had a significant
impact on popular music up to the present day, and have an enduring broad appeal.
Rodgers was the first person to win what are considered the top show business awards in television, recording,
movies and Broadwayan Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tonynow known collectively as an EGOT. He
has also won a Pulitzer Prize, making him one of two people to receive each award.
Leonard Bernstein (1918 1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist.
He was among the first conductors born and educated in the US to receive worldwide acclaim.

His fame derived from his long tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, from his conducting
of concerts with most of the world's leading orchestras, and from his music for West Side Story, Peter Pan,
Candide, Wonderful Town, On the Town, On the Waterfront, his Mass, and a range of other compositions,
including three symphonies and many shorter chamber and solo works.

Bernstein was the first conductor to give numerous television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954 and
continuing until his death. He was a skilled pianist, often conducting piano concertos from the keyboard.

As a composer he wrote in many styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre
music, choral works, opera, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are regularly performed
around the world, although none has matched the tremendous popular and critical success of West Side Story.
Robert Schumann (1810 1856) was a German composer and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as
one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career
as a virtuoso pianist. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist
in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing.
Schumann's published compositions were written exclusively for the piano until 1840; he later composed works
for piano and orchestra; many Lieder (songs for voice and piano); four symphonies; an opera; and other
orchestral, choral, and chamber works. Works such as Carnaval, Symphonic
Studies, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, and the Fantasie in C are among his most famous. His writings about
music appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik (New Journal for Music), a Leipzig-based publication
which he jointly founded.
In 1840, Schumann married Friedrich Wieck's daughter Clara, against the wishes of her father, following a long
and acrimonious legal battle, which found in favor of Clara and Robert. Clara also composed music and had a
considerable concert career as a pianist, the earnings from which, before her marriage, formed a substantial part
of her father's fortune.
Schumann suffered from a mental disorder, first manifesting itself in 1833 as a severe melancholic
depressive episode, which recurred several times alternating with phases of exaltation and increasingly also
delusional ideas of being poisoned or threatened with metallic items. After a suicide attempt in 1854, Schumann
was admitted to a mental asylum, at his own request, in Endenich near Bonn. Diagnosed with
"psychotic melancholia", Schumann died two years later in 1856 without having recovered from his mental
illness.

Heinrich Heine (1797 1856) was a German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known
outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder (art songs)
by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose are distinguished by
their satirical wit and irony. He is considered part of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views
led to many of his works being banned by German authorities. Heine spent the last 25 years of his life as an
expatriate in Paris.
Gabriel Faur (1845 1924) was a French Romantic composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of
the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century
composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, nocturnes for piano and the songs "Aprs
un rve" and "Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his
earlier ones, Faur composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a
more harmonically and melodically complex style. By his last years, Faur was recognised in France as the
leading French composer of his day. An unprecedented national musical tribute was held for him in Paris in
1922, headed by the president of the French Republic. Outside France, Faur's music took decades to become
widely accepted, except in Britain, where he had many admirers during his lifetime.

Faur's music has been described as linking the end of Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter
of the 20th century. When he was born, Chopin was still composing, and by the time of Faur's death, jazz and
the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were being heard. The Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, which describes him as the most advanced composer of his generation in France, notes that his
harmonic and melodic innovations influenced the teaching of harmony for later generations. During the last
twenty years of his life, he suffered from increasing deafness. In contrast with the charm of his earlier music, his
works from this period are sometimes elusive and withdrawn in character, and at other times turbulent and
impassioned.

Paul-Marie Verlaine (1844 1896) was a French poet associated with the Decadent movement. He is
considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de sicle in international and French poetry. He began
writing poetry at an early age, and was initially influenced by the Parnassien movement and its leader, Leconte
de Lisle.
Verlaine's private life spills over into his work, beginning with his love for Mathilde Maut de Fleurville.
Mathilde became Verlaine's wife in 1870. At the proclamation of the Third Republic in the same year, Verlaine
joined the 160th battalion of the Garde nationale, turning Communard on March 18, 1871.

His poetry was admired and recognized as ground-breaking, and served as a source of inspiration to
composers. Gabriel Faur composed many mlodies, such as the song cycles Cinq mlodies "de Venise" and La
bonne chanson, which were settings of Verlaine's poems.[6] Claude Debussy set to music Clair de lune and six
of the Ftes galantes poems, forming part of the mlodie collection known as the Recueil Vasnier. Reynaldo
Hahn set several of Verlaine's poems as did the Belgian-British composer Poldowski (daughter of Henryk
Wieniawski).
Amde-Ernest Chausson (French: [os]; 20 January 1855 10 June 1899) was a French romantic
composer who died just as his career was beginning to take off. In 1879, at the age of 24, he began attending the
composition classes of Massenet at the Paris Conservatoire; Massenet came to regard him as 'an exceptional
person and a true artist'. Chausson had already composed some piano pieces and songs. Nevertheless, the
earliest manuscripts that have been preserved are those corrected by Massenet. At the Paris Conservatoire,
Chausson also studied with Csar Franck, with whom he formed a close friendship that lasted until Franck's
death in 1890. Chausson interrupted his studies in 1881, after a failed attempt to win the Prix de Rome. During
1882 and 1883, Chausson, who enjoyed travel, visited Bayreuth to hear the operas of Wagner. On the first of
these journeys, Chausson went with d'Indy for the premiere of Wagner's Parsifal, and on the second trip he went
with his new spouse Jeanne Escudier mwith whom he was to have five children.

From 1886 until his death in 1899, Chausson was secretary of the Socit Nationale de Musique. In his own
home (22 Boulevard de Courcelles, near Parc Monceau), he received a great many eminent artists, including the
composers Henri Duparc, Gabriel Faur, Claude Debussy, and Isaac Albniz, the poet Mallarm, the Russian
novelist Turgenev, and the impressionist painter Monet. Chausson also assembled an important collection of
paintings.

Maurice Bouchor (1855 1929) was a French poet. Born in Paris, he published in succession Chansons
joyeuses (1874), Pomes de l'amour et de la mer (1875), Le Faust moderne (1878) in prose and verse, and Les
Contes parisiens (1880) in verse. His Aurore (1883) showed a tendency to religious mysticism, which reached
its fullest expression in Les Symboles (1888; new series, 1895), the most interesting of his works. He
contributed to the satirical weekly Le Courrier franais.
Vincenzo Francesco Bellini (1801 1835) was an Italian opera composer, who was known for his long-
flowing melodic lines for which he was named "the Swan of Catania". Many years later, in 1898, Giuseppe
Verdi "praised the broad curves of Bellini's melody: 'there are extremely long melodies as no-one else had ever
made before' "

A large amount of what is known about Bellini's life and his activities comes from surviving lettersexcept for
a short periodwhich were written over his lifetime to his friend Francesco Florimo, whom he had met as a
fellow student in Naples and with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. Other sources of information come
from correspondence saved by other friends and business acquaintances. C Bellini was the quintessential
composer of the Italian bel canto era of the early 19th century.

After his initial success in Naples, most of the rest of his short life was spent outside of both Sicily and Naples,
those years being followed with his living and composing in Milan and Northern Italy, andafter a visit to
Londonthen came his final masterpiece in Paris, I puritani. Only nine months later, Bellini died in Puteaux,
France at the age of 33.
Francesco Durante (1684 1755) was a Neapolitan composer. At an early age he entered the Conservatorio
dei poveri di Ges Cristo, in Naples, where he received lessons from Gaetano Greco. Later he became a pupil
of Alessandro Scarlatti at the Conservatorio di Sant'Onofrio. He is also supposed to have studied
under Bernardo Pasquini and Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni in Rome, but there is no documentary evidence. He is
said to have succeeded Scarlatti in 1725 at Sant' Onofrio, and to have remained there until 1742, when he
succeeded Porpora as head of the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto, also in Naples. This post he held for
thirteen years, till his death in Naples. He was married three times.

His fame as a teacher was considerable, and Niccol Jommelli, Giovanni Paisiello, Giovanni Battista
Pergolesi, Niccol Piccinni and Leonardo Vinci were amongst his pupils. As a teacher, he insisted on the
unreasoning observance of rules, differing thus from Scarlatti, who treated all his pupils as individuals.
A complete collection of Durante's works, consisting almost exclusively of sacred music, was presented
by Gaspare Selvaggi, a Neapolitan art collector and music theorist, to the Bibliothque Nationale, Paris. A
catalogue may be found in Ftis's Biographie universelle. The imperial library of Vienna also preserves a
valuable collection of Durante's manuscripts. Two requiems, several masses (one of which, a most original
work, is the Pastoral Mass for four voices) and the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah are amongst his most
important settings. His Magnificat achieved popularity partly because of its misattribution to Pergolesi.
Felix Mendelssohn (1809 1847) was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the
early Romantic period. A grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn was born into a
prominent Jewish family. He was brought up without religion until the age of seven, when he was baptised as
a Reformed Christian. Mendelssohn was recognised early as a musical prodigy, but his parents were cautious
and did not seek to capitalise on his talent.

Mendelssohn enjoyed early success in Germany, where he also revived interest in the music of Johann
Sebastian Bach, and in his travels throughout Europe. He was particularly well received in Britain as a
composer, conductor and soloist, and his ten visits there during which many of his major works were
premiered form an important part of his adult career. His essentially conservative musical tastes, however, set
him apart from many of his more adventurous musical contemporaries such as Franz Liszt, Richard
Wagner, Charles-Valentin Alkan and Hector Berlioz. The Leipzig Conservatoire (now the University of Music
and Theatre Leipzig), which he founded, became a bastion of this anti-radical outlook.

Mendelssohn wrote symphonies, concerti, oratorios, piano music and chamber music. His best-known works
include his Overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Italian Symphony, the Scottish
Symphony, the overture The Hebrides, his mature Violin Concerto, and his String Octet. His Songs Without
Words are his most famous solo piano compositions. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing
musical tastes and antisemitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his creative originality has now been
recognised and re-evaluated. He is now among the most popular composers of the Romantic era.

Karl Klingemann (1798 -- 1862) was a German civil servant, diplomat and writer. Since 1825, he was known
with the Mendelssohn family, and the Hannoversche Legation had its headquarters in the Bel Etage
on Leipziger Strae. He became a close friend of Felix Mendelssohn and exchanged many letters with
him. During his visits to London, Mendelssohn always came to Klingemann. The lifelong friendship of the two
is documented by an extensive correspondence, which comprises of more than 300 letters. Klingemann wrote
the libretto for the singing games of the Camacho (1825, Op. 10) and Die Heimkehr aus der Fremde (Opus 89,
1829) for Mendelssohn.