News archive – Musical anniversaries
500 Years of the Protestant Reformation
Reformation Day is celebrated by Protestants and is an important religious holiday in German-speaking countries. In Germany and Austria, October 31 marks the beginning of the Protestant Reformation by Martin Luther. The first Sunday in November is celebrated as Reformation Sunday in Switzerland. Tomorrow, 31 October 2017, marks the 500th...
30 October 2017
Sterkel 200
The following is a guest post by Dr. Joachim Fischer, president of the J. F. X. Sterkel-Gesellschaft e.V. and editor of the Sterkel thematic catalog: Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel (1750-1817). Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis (StWV), Neustadt an der Aisch: Sterkel Gesellschaft, 2014. Composer Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel, who died on 12 October...
12 October 2017
Happy 430th Birthday, Francesca Caccini!
Francesca Caccini (1587 – ca. 1640), along with Barbara Strozzi, was the most influential and famous woman composer and musician of the early seventeenth century. Caccini’s output is strongly marked by her own creative family, the Medicis, and the artistic atmosphere surrounding the Florentine court. Her career as a singer...
18 September 2017
Nancy Storace (1765-1817)
Nancy Storace (1765-1817) was a celebrated English soprano, perhaps most famous for originating the role of Susanna in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Storace—and there is evidently no consensus whether to pronounce her name the English or the Italian way—was in the headlines last year when a long-lost joint composition...
24 August 2017
Amélie-Julie Candeille at 250
Child prodigy, singer, actress, composer, librettist, harpist, pianist, playwright, comedian, or maybe simply polymath…few of the people in the RISM database can lay claim to so many roles. Amélie-Julie Candeille (1767-1834), who was born 250 years ago today, found success on a number of fronts in Parisian musical life and...
31 July 2017
Timothy Swan (1758-1842): An Early American Composer
We might be able to call Timothy Swan one of the first American composers. Born on July 23, 1758, in the British colony of Massachusetts, Swan initially worked as a merchant in his youth and learned the trade of hatmaking. He had very little music training (three weeks of vocal...
20 July 2017
A Century of John Milton Ward
The following is a guest post by Andrea Cawelti, Ward Music Cataloger at Harvard University’s Houghton Library, with contributions concerning the Ward materials in RISM by Christina Linklater, Keeper of the Isham Memorial Library and Houghton Music Cataloger. Today, John Milton Ward, the donor of the Harvard Theatre Collection’s Ward...
6 July 2017
The 250th Anniversary of the Death of Georg Philipp Telemann
In 2017 all roads lead to Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), who died 250 years ago on 25 June. This major anniversary has set in motion numerous projects. At the end of last year, the cities in which Telemann lived and worked—including Magdeburg, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Hildesheim, Leipzig, Żary, Pszczyna, Eisenach, Frankfurt am...
22 June 2017
Johann Stamitz at 300
The appointment of Johann Wenzel Stamitz (baptized 19 June 1717 in Havlíčkův Brod, died 27 March 1757 in Mannheim) as first violinist of the court orchestra of the Elector Palatine Carl Theodor likely took place in 1741, and from 1750 until his death he was director of instrumental music there....
16 June 2017
Mathias Georg Monn at 300
Not much is known about Mathias Georg Monn, a composer of the Viennese Early Classic period who was born 300 years ago this Sunday. Monn (9 April 1717 – 3 October 1750) is named in the records of the Klosterneuburg Monastery as Discantist for the years 1731/32. In 1738 or...
6 April 2017
