Obscure Music Mondays

Chiquinha Gonzaga (born Francisca Edwiges Neves Gonzaga) was a Brazilian composer, pianist, and conductor, born October 17, 1847 and died February 28, 1935.  Since Gonzaga was born in to a military family, she received an excellent education. In addition to learning how to read and write, she was taught piano, and fell in love with it at a young age...

ldskjScott Joplin (c. 1867/68 - April 1, 1917) was an African-American composer and pianist, who came to be known as the "King of Ragtime Writers". Joplin was born in to a family of railroad laborers in Texas, but got as much musical knowledge as he could from local teachers, and ended up  forming a vocal quartet, and teaching mandolin and...

Louise Farrenc (May 31, 1804 - Sept. 15, 1875) was a French pianist, teacher, and composer. Born in Paris, she started the piano at an early age, and later on also showed a knack for composition. At the age of fifteen, her parents let her study composition with Anton Reicha at the Paris Conservatory. Later on she embarked upon a...

Hedwige Chrétien (July 15 - 1859 - 1944) was a French composer, and not a great deal is known about her.  She studied at the Paris Conservatory with Ernest Guiraud starting in 1874, and became a professor there in 1889. While she was a student, she won several awards for piano, counterpoint, harmony, and fugue, and she would go on to...

Edwin York Bowen (Feb. 22, 1884 - Nov. 23, 1961) was an English composer and conductor who played several instruments, including viola, horn, organ, and piano. He started piano lessons with his mother when he was very young, and his talent was recognized immediately. His musical education continued at the North Metropolitan College of Music, and then Blackheath Conservatoire of...

Amanda Maier (February 19, 1853 - July 15, 1894) was born in the Swedish town of Landskrona, and was quite an accomplished violinist, cellist, organist, and composer. Her initial studies in piano and violin were with her father, and later studied at the Royal School of Music at Stockholm, and was their first female music graduate.  While she was there, she won...

Samuel Colderidge-Taylor (Aug. 15, 1875 - Sept. 1, 1912) was born in London, England, to Alice Hare Martin, an English woman, and Dr. Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, from Sierre Leone. They weren't married, and Daniel Taylor returned to Africa before 1875, unaware he had a son. Martin named her child after the poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and was raised in Croydon...

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (Sept. 5, 1867 - December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist.  Extremely gifted from a young age, Beach's talents seemed to run in the family, with various members playing instruments or singing, and showing great aptitude for music. Beach was exceptionally talented, having learned 40 songs around the age of one, and at two...

Clara Schumann (Sept. 13, 1819 - May 20, 1896) was a German composer and pianist, born to musical parents in Leipzig. Her father was well-known throughout Leipzig, where he sold and repaired pianos, and gave piano lessons. She took lessons from him, and he also made sure she was educated in music theory, counterpoint, harmony, and composition. She had her first recital...

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (Jan. 6, 1872 - April 27, 1915) was a composer and pianist, born in Moscow to a Russian noble family. He was exposed to the piano at a young age, as his mother was a concert pianist. He went on to serve as a military attaché, and later attended the Moscow Conservatory, studying both piano and composition...