Performers Edition Articles

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 successful concert career, started a publishing house with her husband, and eventually became a Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatory. Continue reading →

Marie-Juliette Olga "Lili" Boulanger (Aug. 21, 1893 - March 15, 1918) was a French composer, and  the younger sister of the famed composition teacher/composer Nadia Boulanger. Born in Paris, Lili Boulanger was a child prodigy; at the age of two, it was discovered that she had perfect pitch. Her parents, both musicians, encouraged her musical education, and she would accompany her sister Nadia to classes at the Paris Conservatory, studying music theory and organ. Her sister Nadia was one of her teachers, and later on studied with Paul Vidal, George Caussade, and Gabriel Faure, who was particularly impressed by her abilities. Lili would go on to win the Prix de Rome at the age of 19; she was the first woman to ever win the composition prize. Continue reading →

Robert Nathaniel Dett (Oct. 11, 1882 - Oct. 2, 1943) was a composer, pianist, organist, and professor of music. Born in Ontario, Canada, he showed interest in music at a young age, and began piano lessons at five years old. The family moved to New York around the time Dett was ten years old, and a few years later he was playing piano for his church. He would later on study at the Oliver Willis Halstead Conservatory of Music, and continued studying piano at the Lockport Conservatory, before eventually attend the Curtis Institute of Music. At Curtis, Dett was introduced to the idea of using spirituals in classical music, like in the music of Antonin Dvorak. The music Dett heard reminded him of spirituals he'd learned from his grandmother, and he'd later on integrate folksongs and spirituals in to his music.   Continue reading →

Scott 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 guitar. He later left for the south to work as a itinerant musician, and eventually found his way up  to Chicago for the World's Fair of 1893, which contributed towards the ragtime craze. Continue reading →

Florence Beatrice Price (April 9, 1887 - June 3, 1953) was an African-American pianist and composer, and the first African-American woman to have a piece played by a major symphony orchestra. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price's first piano teacher was her mother, a music educator, and Price's first recital was at the age of 4. After high school (which she graduated top of her class), she studied piano and organ at the New England Conservatory, and pretended to be Mexican, due to the stigma that African-Americans faced during that era. She also studied composition and counterpoint with George Chadwick and Frederick Converse, and graduated in 1906 with Continue reading →

Samuel Coleridge-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 were not married, and Daniel Taylor returned to Africa before 1875, not even knowing he had a son. Martin named her son after the poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and was raised in Croydon, Surrey by his mother, and her father. Coleridge-Taylor studied violin at the Royal College of Music, and was later on appointed a professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music, and conducted the orchestra at the Croyden Conservatory. Continue reading →

Paul Lacombe (July 11, 1837 - June 4, 1927) was a French composer and pianist. He was born in to a wealthy family, and his first music lessons were with his mother, on piano. Later on his studied harmony and counterpoint with Francois Teysseyre, who graduated from the Conservatoire de Paris. Lacombe was a great admirer of George Bizet, and began a correspondence with him, asking for compositional advice, which Bizet gave, from 1866 to 1868. They would eventually become good friends, and Bizet promoted much of Lacombe's works. Lacombe music sadly never gained widespread popularity, as he was unwilling to leave his hometown of Carcassonne for Paris. Continue reading →

Franz Schreker (March 23, 1878 - March 21, 1934) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and teacher. Schreker grew up travelling across Europe, and after his father died, the family moved to Vienna in 1888. A few short years later, Schreker entered the Vienna Conservatory on violin,  but then also started taking up composition. He would go on to teach at Vienna's Imperial Academy of Music, and later on be an administrator at the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin. A vast portion on his compositional output is opera, though he wrote many orchestral work, including a one movement work entitled Chamber Symphony. Continue reading →

Arthur William Foote (March 5, 1853 - April 8, 1937) was an organist and composer, and a member of the "Boston Six", a group of composers from New England that lived in the late 19th century and early 20th century, that also included Amy Beach, George Whitefield Chadwick, Edward MacDowell. John Knowles Paine, and Horatio Parker. Foote graduated from Harvard, and was the first composer of note to be trained entirely in the United States. Continue reading →

John Alden Carpenter (Feb. 28, 1876 - April 26, 1951) was born in Park Ridge, Illinois, in to a musical family.  He attended Harvard University, and studied under John Knowles Paine, and later on traveled to England to study with Edward Elgar. After his time in England, he returned to Chicago to study with Bernhard Ziehn in 1912. Sadly, Carpenter has been overlooked as a composer, in favor of other big names from his generation, like Ives and Copland. Continue reading →