Clara Wieck Schumann was a fine pianist and composer. She married Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann was born in Zwickau, June 8, 1810 and died in Endenich, near Bonn, July 29, 1856. He was a German composer and pianist. With Chopin and Liszt he developed much of the technique of Romantic piano music.

He was a child prodigy, but his parents wanted him to become a lawyer. He did attend law school for a while but soon left to become a musician.

His earliest compositions were piano pieces, but he also wrote a popular piano concerto, several symphonies, and chamber music.

A master of the more intimate forms of musical compostitions, Schumann is unique in music history as being one of the great composers who concentrated on one musical genre at a time, with the bulk of his earliest compositions being for the piano. Schumann's piano music (and later his songs) remain supreme examples of the Romantic style of the second quarter of the nineteenth-century. Immensely influenced by literature and poetry, it is the dreamy nature of his music which most affects the listener, as can be heard in the fifth movement from the piano suite entitled Carnaval. Aside from three piano sonatas, most of his work for the instrument is in the form of suites comprising short, poetic pieces, each expressing a different mood.

Schumann composed his 13-piece collection Scenes from Childhood in 1838, shortly after he became engaged to Clara Wieck, who also was a fine musician and the most celebrated woman pianist of her time. Clara Wieck was the daughter of his first music teacher, who had opposed their union.

In 1840, Schumann was finally able to marry Clara Wieck. Schumann's happiness found an outlet in the great number of Lieder he wrote during that year. The first number from his song cycle Dichterliebe, Im wunderschönen Monat mai (A Poet's Love: "In the beautiful month of May" ) is another example of the composer's harmonic and melodic style.

In order to publicize his own music and to stimulate and improve the musical tastes of the burgeoning concert-going public, Schumann founded Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (The New Journal for Music) in 1834, and remained active as its editor for ten years. In the pages of this publication, Schumann considerably raised the standards of music criticism and did much to promote the careers of young composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Hector Berlioz, and especially Johannes Brahms, who was to become a very close friend of Schumann. Throughout his life, Schumann felt himself divided by two contrasting natures: the gentle, poetic, Apollonian side, which he called "Eusebius"; and the more forthright, dramatic and stormy side he named "Florestan". Because of this rift in his personality, he feared insanity for much of his life, and eventually did spend his last years in an asylum.

James Scott (1886 to 1938) was a Ragtime composer along with Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb.

Although an extremely important figure in ragtime, Scott was always viewed as second to Scott Joplin in terms of musical expertise and prowess. However, Scott developed a very unique sound within the form of ragtime. He received lessons as a boy from John Coleman, a Missouri pianist, who recognized the boy's genius. Soon after, he gained the attention of both the respected composer Charles Dumars, and the ragtime master himself, Scott Joplin, and the rest is history.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 to 1975) was a Russian composer renowned for his brilliant symphonies. His daring and experimental style brought him often in conflict with authorities.

Shostakovich's Piano Concerto number 2 is featured in Disney's newly released Fantasia 2000.

Heinrich Schuetz (1585- 1672) was a German composer who was born in Koestritz, Germany. Schuetz travelled to Italy to study in Venice. After his return he played an important role in bringing the Italian baroque style of music to Germany.

His compositions include church music, psalms, motets, passions, a German requiem, and the first German opera, Dafne, produced in Torgau in 1627. As a German Protestant Schuetz contributed greatly to German cultural unity after the 30-year war.

Cyril Meir Scott lived from 1879 until 1970. He was a composer, born in Oxton, Cheshire, NWC England, UK. As a child he studied the piano in Frankfurt, later returning there to study composition. His works won a hearing in London at the turn of the century, and in 1913 he was able to introduce his music to Vienna. His opera, The Alchemist, had its first performance in Essen in 1925. He composed three symphonies, piano, violin, and cello concertos, and numerous choral and orchestral works, but is best known for his piano pieces and songs.

Andrés Segovia lived from 1894 until 1987. He was a guitarist who was born in Linares, Spain. Largely self-taught, he gave his first concert in 1909, and quickly gained an international reputation. Influenced by the Spanish nationalist composers, he evolved a revolutionary guitar technique permitting the performance of a wide range of music, and many modern composers wrote works for him. He was created Marquis of Salobrena by royal decree in 1981.

Jean Sibelius (1865 until 1957) was the most famous composer in Finland. He is the best known of the Finnish composers chiefly remembered for his seven symphonies (Finlandia). In 1897, at the age of 32, Sibelius was awarded a lifelong pension by the Finnish government so that he could devote all his time to composing.

Bedrich Smetana lived from 1824 until 1884. He wrote national music based on Bohemian folk tunes. Smetana was a child prodigy, playing is a string quartet by the age of 5 and composing by the age of 8.

He had to teach to support himself, but he maintained his Like Beethoven, Smetana did not allow his loss of hearing to stop him from composing. One of his greatest works was composed after his hearing was gone.

In The Bartered Bride he produced one of the greatest of all comic operas.

Bessie Smith (1894 to 1937) was perhaps the most influential female blues singer to ever live, so much so that she was given the nickname "the Empress of the Blues". She was born into poverty in the 1890s, and started her singing career young. She was blessed with a deep, expansive voice that was powerful yet still had a very expressive quality to it. She rose to fame in the 1920s during the Depression, after she moved to New York City and began recording with jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. Sadly, she was killed in a tragic automobile accident in 1937, after her career was in shambles, and she had began turning to alcohol.

(Joshua) Stephen Sondheim was born in 1930 in New York City. Is is a composer, lyricist who received tutoring from family friend Oscar Hammerstein II and at age 17 was a production assistant for Richard Rodgers and Hammerstein. He wrote some music for television shows and for the play Girls of Summer (1956) before making his debut on Broadway by writing lyrics for Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957) and Jule Styne's Gypsy (1959). He first wrote music as well as words for the successful farce, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962). With producer-director Harold Prince he wrote both words and music for a string of innovative works, including A Little Night Music (1973) - which contained his best-known song, "Send in the Clowns" - and Pacific Overtures (1976), which combined elements of the Broadway musical with Japanese Kabuki theater. He won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize in drama for Sunday in the Park with George (1984). Known for their often complex wordplay, evocative music, and unconventional subject matter, his works for stage, screen, and television mark him as one of the true artists of modern musical theater, one of the few who could inspire fans to wait overnight in freezing weather for tickets to merely a revue featuring his songs. He himself remains a private person, never courting publicity, and about all the public knows of him is that he enjoys word-based puzzles and party games.

Fernando Sor lived from 1778 until 1839. He is a Catalan composer chiefly known for his many compositions for guitar, his own instrument. Although originally opposed to the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, he later accepted a position under the French government and was, in consequence, obliged to seek refuge abroad, in London, and in Paris, where he established himself as a successful performer, teacher and composer.

Sor published a quantity of music for guitar, some of it pedagogical in purpose and some of it for concert performance. His Méthode pour la guitarre, published in 1830, is among the most important books on guitar technique.

Sor wrote a number of boleros and seguidillas for voices and guitar, in addition to Spanish, Italian and English songs and duets for voice and piano.

Sor's opera Telemaco nell'isola de Calipso (Telemachus on the Island of Calypso) was staged in Barcelona in 1797. Sor's other theatre music was principally for the ballet, including a successful Cendrillon (Cinderella), a march from which he arranged for guitar.

The SPEBSQSA (Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America) was founded April 11, 1938 by 26 singing, striped-shirted gentlemen. Now we know that’s 6½ quartets worth, but that’s what it took to get the organization humming. So, let’s head for the barbershop and ask for a "shave & a haircut, two bits!" or a refrain of Sweet Adeline.

By the way, Sweet Adeline, the love song that became a favorite of barbershop quartets, was written in 1903 by Richard Gerard and Henry Armstrong and there really was a sweet Adeline. She was opera singer Adelina Patti.

Today, female barbershop quartets are called Sweet Adelines.

Heinrich Engelhard Steinway

William Grant Still lived from 1895 until 1978. He was a composer who was born in Woodville, Miss. He has been called "the dean of Afro-American composers". Still worked with W. C. Handy and graduated from Oberlin College. His music, while classical in technique, grew out of black life; his works include the Afro-American Symphony (1931).

Karlheinz Stockhausen was born in 1928 and has been among the leading avant-garde figures in German music since the 1950s. In spite of material difficulties, he studied in Cologne with Frank Martin and was subsequently strongly influenced by attendance at Darmstadt, where summer sessions contributed largely to the development of new music. He went on to study with Messiaen in Paris. Parallel to his work in electronic music, he explored the human element in performance, moving from total serialism, in which every aspect of a piece is controlled by a predetermined serial pattern, to a more flexible approach.

The numbering of Stockhausen's works allows his earlier compositions the numbering of fractions, with his Kontre-Punkte of 1952 as the first whole number, No. 1. A varied and fascinating series of compositions includes Stimmung for electronically treated voices, Mantra, for two pianos, woodblocks and crotales, the result of a visit to the Osaka World Fair, at which his music was featured. Zyklus has an important part in modern percussion repertoire, while work continues on Licht, a project divided into seven days and involving dramatic use of instrumental performance. The size of this work, calculated to reach completion in 2002, is characteristic of the composer's Wagnerian tendencies.

Of particular interest in the development of Stockhausen's ideas is Gruppen, first performed in 1958, and using three orchestras surrounding the audience. Use of short-wave radio occurs in Hymnen, Spiral and his celebration of the bicentenary of Beethoven's birth, Kurzwellen mit Beethoven (Short-Wave with Beethoven). Aus den sieben Tagen (From the Seven Days), a series of fifteen compositions, is written without notes but with verbal directions to performers, on whose particular imagination and ability he as so often relies. His continuing work Licht (Light) allows a significant dramatic element for solo trumpet in Donnerstag (Thursday), but all in all the comprehensive nature of Stockhausen's work and its development over the last forty years defy succinct summary.

Leopold (b. Antoni Stanislaw Boleslawowicz) Stokowski lived from 1882 until 1977. He was a conductor who born in London, England. After musical studies in London, Paris, and Germany, Stokowski came to America in 1905 and four years later was named conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony. He left that post in 1912 for a long and celebrated tenure as conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, in which he cultivated a popular but later dated creaminess of sound. Stokowski became the great matinee idol of conductors - that despite his bold championing of advanced composers including Varèse, Berg, and Schoenberg - and was for awhile linked with Greta Garbo. Resigning from Philadelphia in 1938, he went on to conduct for shorter periods orchestras including the NBC Symphony, Hollywood Bowl Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Houston Symphony (1955 to 1962), and American Symphony (1962 to 1973), the latter of which he founded. His popularity is reflected in the fact that he appeared in several movies, notably One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937), Fantasia (1940) and Disney's newly released Fantasia 2000.

Johann Strauss Jr. (1825 - 1899) was the most famous of a musical family. He formed his own orchestra in Vienna and became known as The Waltz King.

Although his father wanted him to become a bank clerk, the supremely talented and devastatingly handsome Johann Strauss, Jr, was drawn to music. At the age of 19 he started his own orchestra, eventually providing orchestras for 14 of Austria's ballrooms.

The Blue Danube was one of the more than 500 waltzes he composed and it became his "theme song".

When Strauss visited the United States in 1872, he conducted 20,000 musicians and singers in a huge performance of The Blue Danube at the Boston Peace Jubilee.