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Sadly, we have received word from his wife that HoosierHawk has died: Can you please place hoosierhawk on your memorial wall. Robert V. McNear Born February 17th, 1958 died October 28th 2009. As you know hoosierhawk was famous for his First Sunday Music Post, loved by everyone. Sincerely, Mrs. Hoosierhawk

Carl Orff Orff was born in Munich on July 10, 1895. His family was Bavarian and active in the German military. Orff started studying the piano at age five and also took organ and cello lessons. By the time he was a teenager, Orff was writing songs, although he had not studied harmony or composition. His mother helped him set down his first works in musical notation. Orff wrote his own texts and he learned the art of composing, without a teacher, by studying classical masterworks on his own. In 1911-12, Orff wrote a large work for baritone voice,...

Johann Pachelbel Johann Pachelbel Johann Pachelbel was born on September 1, 1653 in Nuremburg, which, at the time, was a great center of learning and culture. He studied music with Heinrich Schwemmer and G. C. Wecker, attended lectures at the Auditorium aegidianum and entered the university at Altdorf in 1669, where he also served as organist at the Lorenzkirche. He was forced to leave the university after less than a year due to lack of funds, and became a scholarship student at the Gymnasium poeticum at Regensburg, taking private instruction under Kaspar Prentz. While at Regensburg, he began to...

Robert Schumann Introduction Robert Schumann was born June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Saxony, (Germany). He died July 29, 1856, Endenich, near Bonn, Prussia, (Germany). He was a German Romantic composer renowned particularly for his piano music, songs (lieder), and orchestral music. Many of his best-known piano pieces were written for his wife, the pianist Clara Schumann. His Early Years Schumann’s father was a bookseller and publisher. After four years at a private school, the boy entered the Zwickau Gymnasium (high school) in 1820 and remained there for eight years. He began his musical education at the age of six,...

Sergey Rachmaninov Rachmaninoff was born in 1873 in Semyonovo, near Novgorod, in north-western Russia. His parents were both amateur pianists. He began studying piano at an early age and in 1885 entered the Moscow Conservatory. There his piano teachers included the stringent disciplinarian Nikolay Zverov and Rachmaninoff's cousin Aleksandr Siloti, who gave him the heritage of his own teacher, Hungarian pianist and 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...

Giuseppe Verdi Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (October 10, 1813 - January 27, 1901) was born in Roncole into a family of small landowners and taverners. When he was seven he was helping the local church organist; at 12 he was studying with the organist at the main church in nearby Busseto, whose assistant he became in 1829. In 1832, because he was over the age limit, he was refused placement at the conservatory in Milan and, instead, studied with Vincenzo Lavigna, composer and former La Scala musician, from 1932 to 1835. While in Busseto, Verdi lived with Antonio Barezzi,...

Hector Berlioz Louis Hector Berlioz was born in La Côte-Saint-André in the French province of Isère on December 11, 1803. He began studying music at age 12 by writing small compositions and arrangements. His father, a physician, sent him to Paris to study medicine. Berlioz was horrified by the process of dissection, and, despite his father's disapproval, abandoned medicine to pursue a career in music. He studied music from 1823 to 1825 at the Paris Conservatoire under the French composer Jean François Le Sueur and the Czech composer Anton Reicha. When he was twenty-three, Berlioz was overwhelmed with the...

Johann Sebastian Bach Bach was born on March 21, 1685, in Eisenach, Thüringen, into a family that over seven generations produced at least 53 prominent musicians, from Veit Bach to Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach. Johann Sebastian received his first musical instruction from his father, Johann Ambrosius, a town musician. When his father died, he went to live and study with his elder brother, Johann Christoph, an organist in Ohrdruf. In 1700 Bach began to earn his own living as a chorister at the Church of Saint Michael in Lüneburg. In 1703 he became a violinist in the chamber orchestra...

Edward Elgar Elgar was born June 2, 1857, near Worcester. As a young man he filled several musical posts before succeeding his father as organist at Saint George's Roman Catholic Church, Worcester, in 1885. In 1889 he married and resigned his position to devote himself to composing. Elgar then lived alternately in London and near Worcester. The 1890 performance of his overture Froissart brought Elgar some recognition, but he did not become well known until 1899, when the Hungarian conductor Hans Richter performed Elgar's Variations on an Original Theme in London. That composition, better known as the Enigma Variations...

Maurice Ravel Born on March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, Ravel studied at the Paris Conservatoire from 1899 to 1905, where his most influential teacher was the French composer Gabriel Fauré. Because of the tonal color, harmonies, mood, and extramusical associations of much of his music, Ravel is often associated with the French impressionistic composer Claude Debussy. Unlike Debussy, however, he was strongly attracted to abstract, logical musical structures. His vivid, transparent orchestral colors rank him as one of the modern masters of orchestration. Ravel's impressionistic leanings are foremost in the piano suites Miroirs and Gaspard de la nuit,...

Antonio Vivaldi His Life Vivaldi was born March 4, 1678, in Venice, and was trained by his father, a violinist at Saint Mark's Cathedral. Ordained a priest in 1703, Vivaldi began teaching that year at the Ospedale della Pietà, a conservatory for orphaned girls. He was associated with the Pietà, usually as music director, until 1740, training the students, composing concertos and oratorios for weekly concerts, and meanwhile establishing an international reputation. From 1713 on, Vivaldi was also active as an opera composer and producer in Venice and traveled to Rome, Mantua (Mantova), and elsewhere to oversee performances of...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart His Childhood Born January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, and baptized Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, he was educated by his father, Leopold Mozart, who was concertmaster in the court orchestra of the archbishop of Salzburg and a celebrated violinist, composer, and author. By the age of six Mozart had become an accomplished performer on the clavier, violin, and organ and was highly skilled in sight-reading and improvisation. Five short piano pieces composed by Mozart when he was six years old are still frequently played. Leopold took Wolfgang on the first of many successful concert tours through...

Joseph Haydn His Life Born in Rohrau in 1732, the son of a wheelwright, he was trained as a chorister at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, where he made his early living, before appointment to the small musical establishment of Count Morzin in 1759. In 1760 he entered the service of the Esterházy Princes, and succeeded to the position of Kapellmeister on the death of his predecessor and immediate superior Gregorius Werner in 1766. Much of Haydn's life now centred on the magnificent palace and estate at Esterháza, where his employer Prince Nikolaus Esterházy had moved his entourage for...

Anton Bruckner His Life Anton Bruckner was born in Ansfelden, Austria in 1824 to a schoolmaster and organist father with whom he first studied music. He worked for a few years as a teacher's assistant, fiddling at village dances at night to supplement his income. He studied at the Augustinian monastery in St. Florian, becoming an organist there in 1851. He continued his studies to the age of 40, under Simon Sechter and Otto Kitzler, the latter introducing him to the music of Richard Wagner, which Bruckner studied extensively from 1863 onwards. Soon after ending his studies, he wrote...

Celebrating Music in Religion Some History Several types of Christian chant, which is often called plainsong, developed during the first 1000 years of the Christian era. A repertory called Ambrosian chant developed at Milan, Italy; named after St. Ambrose, it is still used in some Roman Catholic services in Milan. In Spain, until about the 11th century, there was a chant repertory called Mozarabic chant, named after the Mozarab Christians who lived in Arab-dominated Spain during the Middle Ages. Today Mozarabic chant survives in a few Spanish cathedrals. Until the 9th century, France had its own chant repertory, called...

Johannes Brahms Introduction Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg on May 7, 1833. After studying the violin and cello with his father, a double bass player in the city theater, Brahms mastered the piano and began to compose under the guidance of the German music teacher Eduard Marxsen, whose conservative tastes left a lasting imprint on him. In 1853 Brahms went on a concert tour as accompanist to the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi. In the course of the tour he met the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, who introduced him in turn to the German composer Robert Schumann. Schumann was...

Celebration Music Water Music After a stay in England, George Frideric Handel returned to Germany in 1710 and became court composer for the Elector of Hanover, George Ludwig, who would later become King George I of Great Britain and Ireland. Late in 1712, Handel asked George for permission to return to England and overstayed his visit while receiving a severance from Queen Anne of England, the last of the House of Stuart. After the passing of Queen Anne, Handel composed "Water Music," in an effort to regain the favor of the Elector of Hanover (now King George I), his...

Gustav Mahler His Life Mahler was born in Kalist (Kalischt, Kaliste), Bohemia. His parents moved to Jihlava, Moravia in the first year of his life, where Mahler spent his childhood. In 1875 he was admitted to the Vienna Conservatoire where he studied piano under Julius Epstein. Subsequently, Mahler attended lectures given by Anton Bruckner at Vienna University. His first major attempt at composition came with Das Klagende Lied which he entered in a competition as an opera (he later turned it into a cantata). However, he was unsuccessful, and turned his attention to conducting. After his first conducting job...

Giacomo Puccini Giacomo Puccini, (1856-1924), was born in Lucca (Italy), a member of a large family of musicians going back to the early 18th century. His first job, at age 14, was as organist to the two churches of Lucca; but he quickly became more interested in opera (especially Verdi) than church music. He studied at the musical conservatory in Milan (1880-83), and there he came into contact with a group of Milanese artists, called the Scapigliati, who lived the Bohemian lifestyle. This group included the great librettist Arrigo Boito (himself a composer whose opera Mefistofele is still popular...

Johann Sebastian Bach EISENACH: 1685-1695 Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685, the son of Johann Ambrosius, court trumpeter for the Duke of Eisenach and director of the musicians of the town of Eisenach in Thuringia. For many years, members of the Bach family throughout Thuringia had held positions such as organists, town instrumentalists, or Cantors, and the family name enjoyed a wide reputation for musical talent. The family at Eisenach lived in a reasonably spacious home just above the town center, with rooms for apprentice musicians, and a large grain store. (The pleasant and informative "Bach...