1
The son of a distinguished Russian singer, Stravinsky spent his earlier years in Russia, either in St Petersburg or at the country estates of his relatives. He studied music briefly with Rimsky–Korsakov but made a name for himself first in Paris with commissions from the impresario Diaghilev, for whom he wrote a series of ballet scores, forming one of the most important artistic collaborations of the century.
2
Lutosławski was born on 25 January 1913. The years of World War One were spent in and around Moscow, where his father and uncle were executed by the Bolsheviks for alleged counter–revolutionary activities.
3
Johan Halvorsen, violinist, conductor and composer, continued the nationalist Norwegian traditions established by Grieg, serving for 30 years as conductor of the Christiania National Theatre.
4
Born in the Argentine, the composer, conductor and bandoneon. player Astor Piazzolla spent much of his childhood and adolescence in New York, where he was taken by his family in 1925.
5
Jean Sibelius grew to maturity at a time of fervent Finnish nationalism, as the country broke away from its earlier Swedish and later Russian overlords. Brought up in a Swedish–speaking family, Sibelius acquired a knowledge of Finnish language and traditional literature at school; early Finnish sagas proved a strong influence on his subsequent work as a composer.
6
Debussy was born in 1862 in St Germain–en–Laye, the son of a shop–keeper. In 1872 he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he abandoned his plan of becoming a virtuoso pianist, turning his attention instead to composition. In 1880 he was employed by Tchaikovsky’s patroness Nadezhda von Meck.
7
Richard Strauss enjoyed early success as both conductor and composer, in the second capacity influenced by the work of Wagner.
8
Webern, was a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna, moving in style to atonalism (music without tonality or key centre) and then serialism (music based on a series of the 12 semitones of the modern scale). He wrote music of brief concision and often of extreme.
9
At first largely without formal training, the American composer Henry Cowell wrote a great deal of music, often using new techniques. He was helped by Charles Seeger to acquire further technical knowledge, and did much to promote the music of Charles Ives.
10
The German composer Carl Orff is widely known for his work in music education, particularly in the exploration of the connections between music and movement.
Crear