Musicians

Giovanni Pierluigi was born in the town of Palestrina and first trained in music at the church of S. Maria Maggiore in Rome, where he was listed as a choirboy. At 19, he was hired as an organist at the cathedral of S. Agapito in the town of Palestrina. At 26, Pierluigi left S. Agapito to accept the position as Master of the Boys in the Cappella Giulia at S. Pietro in Rome. His first book of masses had been published and he was admitted to the Cappella Sistina, the pope’s official musical chapel. Palestrina moved on to the church of S. Giovanni Laterano, where he published his first book of madrigals. Palestrina returned to the basilica of S. Maria Maggiore, where he had been trained. Here he did his “most enduring” work, earning the reputation as the champion of church music. His publications proliferated, yet he returned to S. Pietro and reclaimed his position as choirmaster of the Cappella Giulia. His later years were plagued by personal tragedies. Towards the end of the 1580s he published volumes of secular madrigals (1586), Lamentations (1588), hymns (1589), Magnificat settings (1591), offertories (1593) and litanies (1593). In 1594 he published two more books of masses and a second volume of spiritual madrigals. Palestrina passed away in 1594 while still in the post of choirmaster of the Cappella Giulia at S. Pietro.

ittle is known of John Merbecke’s youth. By 1531 he was a member of St George’s Chapel, Windsor and from 1541 served as chapel organist. In 1543, with two of his colleagues, Merbecke was arrested for heresy and condemned to death at the stake. The composer was accused of keeping and writing heretical documents (at this time he near completed a concordance of the English Bible, and authored a number of studies on Calvinism), and expressing disdain for the Catholic Mass. However, with the intervention of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and others, Merbecke was reprieved by Henry VIII. Upon his release in 1545 he returned to his post at Windsor where, once the political climate had cooled, he happily remained to the end of his days. He died at a presumably ripe age in 1585, when John Mundy succeeded him as organist of St George’s. Merbecke is today best remembered as the composer of the Booke of Common Praier Noted, published in 1550. This was an offering to the newly reformed English church of simple musical settings for the 1549 Prayer Book, based on traditional plainsong melodies but adapted to the vernacular. Merbecke’s tunes are still sung today in several Anglican, Methodist, and other Protestant churches throughout the world.

Born in Eisenach, Germany, Johann Sebastian Bach had a prestigious musical lineage and took on various organist positions during the early 18th century, creating famous compositions like "Toccata and Fugue in D minor." He began religious instruction when he was 7, and his life and compositions were ever influenced by his Lutheran background. As Kantor of the Thomas School, he composed most of his well-known religious and secular cantatas. He was apparently an arrogant man, both to his students and his associates. His compositions drew from many different music styles, and he was a master at invoking and maintaining emotions. Bach married twice, and fathered 20 children, though more than half died as children. He's considered one of the greatest Western composers.

Born in Austria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the second child in the family of Leopold Mozart of Salzburg. Like his older sister Marian he showed great musical talent beginning at a very young age. By age five he began to compose pieces of music for the piano , with his father writing down the notes as he played them. Eventually Wolfgang learned to write music notation and his writing flourished.  The prolific Mozart family traveled extensively throughout Austria, Germany, Italy, and England beginning in 1762 when Wolfgang was only six years old. He played for Louis XV in Versailles where he played with young Marie Antoinette. In his travels, he met Johann Christian Bach and Haydn. Mozart tried to fill his father’s shoes as court musician but his difficult nature jeopardized his work. Late in his life, Mozart was commissioned to write a Requiem—he was deep in debt and ill. In his feverous state some say that Mozart believed the man who commissioned the work was Death himself, and that the Requiem he was writing was to be his own. In the end, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart never completed this Requiem. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, perhaps the most perfect musical mind ever to put quill to paper, died penniless and forgotten as a casualty of Rheumatic Fever and was buried in an unmarked grave in 1791.

Benjamin Britten, born in England into an affluent family, he composed songs before he could read or write. By the time he was 14 he had written a symphony, six string quartets, 10 piano sonatas, and several other smaller works. His "Simple Symphony", dating from 1934, contains many of the melodies and themes from these early works. Obliged to earn his living after his father’s death, Britten worked at the Government Post Office Film Unit and continued to compose and become more well known. He moved to America and traveled the country before settling in New York. There he worked on his Sinfonia da Requiem, which expressed both his grief at his father’s death and his despair at a world plunged into war. He returned to England in 1942 which he remained until his death. He believed in roots, in associations, in backgrounds, and in personal relationships. Britten led an inflexible, rigorously self-disciplined life that included long walks, driving his Alvis car at high speed, and several daily dips in his swimming pool on summer days. He stated emphatically that he wrote music for the people of Aldeburgh and for the present. Britten stated that he tried to model himself on Stravinsky, whom he regarded as a composer who had freed himself from the tyranny of the purely personal. Not surprisingly, Britten, like Stravinsky, had no set musical style; he wrote in many different ones.

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was the most prolific composer of the 20th century in terms of both number of compositions and variety of forms. His development was one of the most spectacular in the history of music, underscored by more than fifty years of sustained achievement as an artist and an entertainer. He is considered by many to be America's greatest composer, bandleader, and recording artist. He synthesized many of the elements of American music—the minstrel song, ragtime, Tin Pan Alley tunes, the blues, and American appropriations of the European music tradition—into a consistent style with which, though technically complex, has a directness and a simplicity of expression largely absent from the purported art music of the twentieth century. Ellington's first great achievements came in the three-minute song form, and he later wrote music for all settings: the ballroom, the comedy stage, the nightclub, the movie house, the theater, the concert hall, and the cathedral. His blues writing resulted in new conceptions of form, harmony, and melody, and he became the master of the romantic ballad and created numerous works that featured the great soloists in his jazz orchestra.

Ralph Vaughan Williams was perhaps the most important English composer of the 20th Century. His influence on the development of 20th Century music was immense. He created a contemporary idiom whose roots reached to Tudor and folk music. He first made a name as one of the leading collector/researcher of traditional English folk music at the turn of the century. He worked also as organist, conductor, lecturer, teacher, editor and writer. He studied under Sir Hubert Parry, Max Bruch and Maurice Ravel. He had a life-long friendship with Gustav Holst, and if one listens carefully one can hear crossover 'hommages' to their works. His professional career spanned more than six decades, with nine Symphonies, several concertos, a ballet, a few operas and countless choral works. The latter are often performed in church services, not bad for an agnostic composer. In 1941, at an age most people have retired (almost 70), he entered the movies with the score to Michael Powell's '49th Parallel'. He composed 11 motion picture scores. Out of his score to 'Scott of the Antarctic' he developed his majestic 7th Symphony.

As a boy, Luciano Pavarotti first sang in the chorus with his father. He sang solo in Italy in “La Boheme” when he was 26. His American debut was 4 years later, but his meteoric rise to stardom came when he effortlessly sang an aria containing 9 high Cs at age 37. He continued to entertain audiences and was instrumental in the collaboration with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras as the Three Tenors. Difficulties arose because he would back out of scheduled performances. He received the Kennedy Centre Honors in 2001 and holds 2 Guinness World Records. His career was marked with health issues that began with neck problems and ended with pancreatic cancer.

Moses Hogan, born in New Orleans, was a pianist, conductor, and arranger of international renown. A graduate of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, he also studied at New York's Juilliard School of Music and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Mr. Hogan's many accomplishments as a concert pianist included winning first place in the prestigious 28th annual Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition in New York. Hogan was appointed artist in residence at Dillard University in New Orleans in 1993 and served as artistic director of the internationally acclaimed Moses Hogan Chorale. The chorale evolved as an outgrowth of the New World ensemble organized by Hogan when he began his exploration of the choral music idiom in 1980. The chorale electrified audiences in the finest and most prestigious concert halls at home and abroad, ranging from Washington, DC's John F. Kennedy Center to the famed Sydney Opera House in Australia. The Chorale's high musical standards and unique repertoire consistently elicited praise from critics worldwide. Hogan was an exclusive arranger and composer for Hal Leonard Music Corporation. [copied from http://www.singers. com/arrangers.html]