News archive – Musical anniversaries
Happy 410th Birthday, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III!
This Friday is the 410th birthday of Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor from 1637 to 1657. Like many members of royalty, he dabbled in composition—as did his successors Leopold I and Joseph I. Andrew H. Weaver published an edition of all known motets by Ferdinand III in 2012. In a...
9 July 2018
An Extraordinary Musical Prodigy
This spaniel hasn’t just hopped on the piano stool to howl at whatever noise comes out of that wooden box. If the title of the painting is any indication, Portrait of an Extraordinary Musical Dog, this pooch has some real talent. The artist Philip Reinagle (1749-1833) depicts a dog whose...
5 July 2018
Charles Gounod at 200
Yesterday we celebrated the 200th birthday of the French composer, conductor, and organist Charles Gounod (17 June 1818 – 18 October 1893). Gounod is especially known today as the composer of the operas Faust (1859) and Roméo et Juliette (1867). But this does not do justice to his extensive oeuvre,...
18 June 2018
The 200th Anniversary of Leopold Koželuh's Death
The Bohemian composer Leopold Koželuh (1747-1818) was baptized with the names Jan Antonín, but to avoid confusion with his cousin of the same name, he added Leopold by 1774. Leopold learned composition from Jan Antonín (the cousin) and piano from František Xaver Dušek. After initial success as a composer in...
7 May 2018
100th Anniversary of Claude Debussy's Death
The following post is by Ulrike Schädel, our intern for winter 2018: This Sunday, 25 March 2018, marks the 100th anniversary of Claude Debussy’s death. He was born in a little French village in 1862 and died at the age of 56 in 1918 in Paris. The RISM database reveals...
22 March 2018
Lili Boulanger (21 August 1893–15 March 1918)
The following is a guest post by Dr. Anya Holland-Barry. She received her PhD in Musicology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her dissertation is entitled “Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) and World War I France: Mobilizing Motherhood and the Good Suffering.” Marie-Juliette Olga (“Lili”) Boulanger (21 August 1893–15 March 1918)...
15 March 2018
Musical Anniversaries in 2018
Happy New Year! It has become something of a tradition for us to kick off the year by taking a look at musical anniversaries for the next twelve months. The people whose birthdays or anniversaries of death we mark are not only composers but they can also be librettists, performers,...
8 January 2018
Music and the Court of Mary, Queen of Scots
Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587) is a complicated figure and in many ways a tragic one. After a childhood in France, Mary Stuart began her personal reign in Scotland at the age of 18 in a country that she barely knew. During her rule she showed no gift for leadership,...
8 December 2017
50th Anniversary of the Death of Otto Erich Deutsch
Otto Erich Deutsch (1883-1967), who died 50 years ago today, shares a common destiny with Ludwig von Köchel (1800-1877) and Anthony van Hoboken (1887-1983): he is remembered largely thanks to a thematic catalog. Even more connects Deutsch with Hoboken: from 1926 to 1935 Deutsch was the librarian of Hoboken’s music...
23 November 2017
The 250th Birthday of Bernhard Heinrich Romberg
Bernhard Heinrich Romberg (baptized 13 November 1767, Dinklage – 13 August 1841, Hamburg) was a German cellist and composer. Bernhard Romberg played in concerts in Münster at the young age of seven together with his cousin who was the same age, Andreas Romberg (1767–1821), who played violin. They toured together...
9 November 2017
