#14101
Meredith Willson
1902 - 1984 (82 years)
Robert Reiniger Meredith Willson was an American flutist, composer, conductor, musical arranger, bandleader, playwright, and writer. He is perhaps best known for writing the book, music, and lyrics for the 1957 hit Broadway musical The Music Man and "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" . Willson wrote three other Broadway musicals and composed symphonies and popular songs. He was twice nominated for Academy Awards for film scores.
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Luigi Nono
1924 - 1990 (66 years)
Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music. Biography Early years Nono, born in Venice, was a member of a wealthy artistic family; his grandfather was a notable painter. Nono began music lessons with Gian Francesco Malipiero at the Venice Conservatory in 1941, where he acquired knowledge of the Renaissance madrigal tradition, amongst other styles. After graduating with a degree in law from the University of Padua, he was given encouragement in composition by Bruno Maderna. Through Maderna, he became acquainted with Hermann Scherchen—then Maderna's conducting teacher—wh...
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Bud Powell
1924 - 1966 (42 years)
Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell was an American jazz pianist and composer. A pioneer in the development of bebop, jazz critics have commented that his compositions and playing style "greatly extended the range of jazz harmony," and his application of complex bebop phrasing to the piano influenced both his contemporaries and later pianists including Walter Davis, Jr., Toshiko Akiyoshi, and Barry Harris. Although a severe beating by police in 1945, followed by years of electroconvulsive therapy treatments and hospitalization, impacted his health during the latter half of his career, he continued to compose, record, and perform until shortly before his death in 1966.
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Kai Winding
1922 - 1983 (61 years)
Kai Chresten Winding was a Danish-born American trombonist and jazz composer. He is known for his collaborations with fellow trombonist J. J. Johnson. His version of "More", the theme from the movie Mondo Cane, reached in 1963 number 8 in the Billboard Hot 100 and remained his only entry here.
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Don Ellis
1934 - 1978 (44 years)
Donald Johnson Ellis was an American jazz trumpeter, drummer, composer, and bandleader. He is best known for his extensive musical experimentation, particularly in the area of time signatures. Later in his life he worked as a film composer, contributing a score to 1971's The French Connection and 1973's The Seven-Ups.
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Patsy Cline
1932 - 1963 (31 years)
Patsy Cline was an American singer. She is considered one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century and was one of the first country music artists to cross over into pop music. Cline had several major hits during her eight-year recording career, including two number-one hits on the Billboard Hot Country and Western Sides chart.
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Lionel Tertis
1876 - 1975 (99 years)
Lionel Tertis, CBE was an English violist. He was one of the first viola players to achieve international fame and a noted teacher. Career Tertis was born in West Hartlepool, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants. He first studied violin in Leipzig, Germany and at the Royal Academy of Music in London. There he was encouraged by the principal, Alexander Mackenzie, to take up the viola instead. Under the additional influence of Oskar Nedbal, he did so and rapidly became one of the best known violists of his time, touring Europe and the US as a soloist.
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Tache Papahagi
1892 - 1977 (85 years)
Tache Papahagi was an Aromanian folklorist and linguist. He was born into an Aromanian family in Avdella , a village that formed part of the Ottoman Empire's Manastir Vilayet and is now in Greece. He attended primary school in his native village, followed from 1902 to 1912 by studies at the Romanian high schools in Ioannina and Bitola. From 1912 to 1916, he went to the literature and philosophy faculty of the University of Bucharest in Romania. In 1925, he obtained a doctorate in philology from the same institution; his thesis dealt with the Maramureș dialect and folklore. He was a high school teacher at Târgu Neamț from 1916 to 1918.
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Richard Theodore Greener
1844 - 1922 (78 years)
Richard Theodore Greener was a pioneering African-American scholar, excelling in elocution, philosophy, law and classics in the Reconstruction era. He broke ground as Harvard College's first Black graduate in 1870. Within three years, he had also graduated from law school at the University of South Carolina, only to also be hired as its first Black professor, after briefly serving as associate editor for the New National Era, a newspaper owned and edited by Frederick Douglass.
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Edwin Fischer
1886 - 1960 (74 years)
Edwin Fischer was a Swiss classical pianist and conductor. He is regarded as one of the great interpreters of J.S. Bach and Mozart in the twentieth century. Biography Fischer was born in Basel and studied music first there with Hans Huber, and later in Berlin at the Stern conservatory under Martin Krause. He first came to prominence as a pianist following World War I. In 1926, he became conductor of the Lübeck Musikverein and later conducted in Munich. In 1932, he formed his own chamber orchestra, and was one of the first to be interested in presenting music of the Baroque and Classical periods in a historically accurate way.
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Alan Freed
1921 - 1965 (44 years)
Albert James "Alan" Freed was an American disc jockey. He also produced and promoted large traveling concerts with various acts, helping to spread the importance of rock and roll music throughout North America.
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Francesco Geminiani
1687 - 1762 (75 years)
Francesco Xaverio Geminiani was an Italian violinist, composer, and music theorist. BBC Radio 3 once described him as "now largely forgotten, but in his time considered almost a musical god, deemed to be the equal of Handel and Corelli."
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Jacob Alting
1618 - 1679 (61 years)
Jacob Alting studied in Groningen and was ordained as a Church of England priest. He was named professor of theology at Groningen University in 1667 after holding the chair of oriental languages since 1641. His publications were overseen in 1687 by Balthasar Bekker, and argued with Maresius on biblical exegesis when the latter accused him of heterodoxy .
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Vince Guaraldi
1928 - 1976 (48 years)
Vincent Anthony Guaraldi was an American jazz pianist best known for composing music for animated television adaptations of the Peanuts comic strip. His compositions for this series included their signature melody "Linus and Lucy" and the holiday standard "Christmas Time Is Here". He is also known for his performances on piano as a member of Cal Tjader's 1950s ensembles and for his own solo career. His 1962 composition "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" became a radio hit and won a Grammy Award in 1963 for Best Original Jazz Composition. He died of a sudden heart attack on February 6, 1976, at age ...
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Pearl Bailey
1918 - 1990 (72 years)
Pearl Mae Bailey was an American actress, singer and author. After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946. She received a Special Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968. In 1986, she won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance as a fairy godmother in the ABC Afterschool Special Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale. Her rendition of "Takes Two to Tango" hit the top ten in 1952.
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Ludwig Tobler
1827 - 1895 (68 years)
Johann Ludwig Tobler was a Swiss philologist and folklorist. Born in Hirzel in Zürich, Switzerland, he was an older brother of philologist Adolf Tobler . Ludwig Tobler died in Zürich. He studied theology, philosophy and philology at the universities of Zürich and Leipzig, receiving his doctorate at the latter institution in 1851. In 1864 he obtained his habilitation from the University of Bern and in 1866 became an associate professor of linguistics and German philology. In 1873 he returned to the University of Zürich, where in 1893 he was named a full professor of German language and literat...
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William Henry Reed
1876 - 1942 (66 years)
William Henry Reed MVO was an English violinist, teacher, composer, conductor and biographer of Sir Edward Elgar. He was leader of the London Symphony Orchestra for 23 years , but is best known for his long personal friendship with Elgar and his book Elgar As I Knew Him , in which he goes into great detail about the genesis of the Violin Concerto in B minor.
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Tito Gobbi
1913 - 1984 (71 years)
Tito Gobbi was an Italian operatic baritone with an international reputation. He made his operatic debut in Gubbio in 1935 as Count Rodolfo in Bellini's La sonnambula and quickly appeared in Italy's major opera houses. By the time he retired in 1979 he had acquired a repertoire of almost 100 operatic roles. They ranged from Mozart's mid-range baritone roles through Rossini's Barber through Donizetti and the standard Verdi and Puccini baritone roles to Alban Berg's Wozzeck. He had a worldwide career as operatic baritone, appearing in for over 25 films and, from the mid-1960s onward, was the s...
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Howard Hanson
1896 - 1981 (85 years)
Howard Harold Hanson was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music. As director for 40 years of the Eastman School of Music, he built a high-quality school and provided opportunities for commissioning and performing American music. In 1944, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 4, and received numerous other awards including the George Foster Peabody Award for Outstanding Entertainment in Music in 1946.
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Frederick Lonsdale
1881 - 1954 (73 years)
Frederick Lonsdale was a British playwright known for his librettos to several successful musicals early in the 20th century, including King of Cadonia , The Balkan Princess , Betty , The Maid of the Mountains , Monsieur Beaucaire and Madame Pompadour . He also wrote comedy plays, including The Last of Mrs. Cheyney and On Approval and the murder melodrama But for the Grace of God . Some of his plays and musicals were made into films, and he also wrote a few screenplays.
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Maurice Chevalier
1888 - 1972 (84 years)
Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French singer, actor, and entertainer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including "Livin' In The Sunlight", "Valentine", "Louise", "Mimi", and "Thank Heaven for Little Girls", and for his films, including The Love Parade, The Big Pond, The Smiling Lieutenant, One Hour with You, and Love Me Tonight. His trademark attire was a boater hat and tuxedo.
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Vivian Vance
1909 - 1979 (70 years)
Vivian Vance was an American actress best known for playing Ethel Mertz on the sitcom I Love Lucy , for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, among other accolades. She also starred alongside Lucille Ball in The Lucy Show from 1962 until she left the series at the end of its third season in 1965. In 1991, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She is most commonly identified as Lucille Ball’s longtime comedic foil from 1951 until her death in 1979.
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César Chesneau Dumarsais
1676 - 1756 (80 years)
César Chesneau, sieur Dumarsais or Du Marsais was a French philosophe, grammarian and contributor to the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. He was a prominent figure in what became known as the Enlightenment, and contributed to Diderot's Encyclopédie. After his death, Jacques-Philippe-Augustin Douchet and Nicolas Beauzée, who were both teachers at the École royale militaire, took over his work.
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Sammy Fain
1902 - 1989 (87 years)
Sammy Fain was an American composer of popular music. In the 1920s and early 1930s, he contributed numerous songs that form part of The Great American Songbook, and to Broadway theatre. Fain was also a popular musician and vocalist.
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A. E. Meeussen
1912 - 1978 (66 years)
Achille Emile Meeussen, also spelled Achiel Emiel Meeussen, or simply A.E. Meeussen was a distinguished Belgian specialist in Bantu languages, particularly those of the Belgian Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. Together with the British scholar Malcolm Guthrie he is regarded as one of the two leading experts in Bantu languages in the second half of the 20th century.
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Vsevolod Pudovkin
1893 - 1953 (60 years)
Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin was a Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage. Pudovkin's masterpieces are often contrasted with those of his contemporary Sergei Eisenstein, but whereas Eisenstein utilized montage to glorify the power of the masses, Pudovkin preferred to concentrate on the courage and resilience of individuals. He was granted the title of People's Artist of the USSR in 1948.
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Big Bill Broonzy
1893 - 1958 (65 years)
Big Bill Broonzy was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s, when he played country music to mostly African-American audiences. In the 1930s and 1940s, he navigated a change in style to a more urban blues sound popular with working-class black audiences. In the 1950s, a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century.
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Morita Sōhei
1881 - 1949 (68 years)
Morita Yonematsu , known under pen name Morita Sōhei , was a novelist and translator of Western literature active during the late Meiji, Taishō and early Shōwa periods of Japan. Early life Morita was born into a farming family what is now Gifu, Gifu Prefecture. At the age of 15, he was selected for the Imperial Japanese Navy's preparatory course, and sent to boarding school in Tokyo. He managed to avoid conscription into the military, and attended what is now Kanazawa University, where he met his future wife, and then went on to graduate from Tokyo Imperial University. He returned to Gifu, but...
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Rutland Boughton
1878 - 1960 (82 years)
Rutland Boughton was an English composer who became well known in the early 20th century as a composer of opera and choral music. He was also an influential communist activist within the Communist Party of Great Britain .
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Boris Unbegaun
1898 - 1973 (75 years)
Boris Ottokar Unbegaun was a Russian-born German linguist and philologist, expert in Slavic studies: Slavic languages and literature. He worked in universities of France, Great Britain and the United States.
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Fedor Polikarpov-Orlov
1665 - 1731 (66 years)
Fedor Polikarpov-Orlov was a Russian writer, translator, and printer. He is most noted for his Slavonic Bukvar that was widely used by Slavic-speakers both in Europe and throughout the Russian Empire. The historic significance of the 1701 Primer as a sample of book-printing trade lies in the fact that it was the first time in the history of Moscow book-printing that it was attempted to teach students the elements of not only one language but of three at the same time: Slavic, Greek and Latin.
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William Alwyn
1905 - 1985 (80 years)
William Alwyn , was an English composer, conductor, and music teacher. Life and music William Alwyn was born William Alwyn Smith in Northampton, the son of Ada Tyler and William James Smith. He showed an early interest in music and began to learn to play the piccolo. At the age of 15 he entered the Royal Academy of Music in London where he studied flute and composition. He was a virtuoso flautist and for a time was a flautist with the London Symphony Orchestra. Alwyn served as professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music from 1926 to 1955.
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Carl Marstrander
1883 - 1965 (82 years)
Carl Johan Sverdrup Marstrander was a Norwegian linguist, known for his work on the Irish language. His works, largely written in Norwegian, on the Celtic and Norse components in Norwegian culture, are considered important for modern Norway.
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Kirsten Flagstad
1895 - 1962 (67 years)
Kirsten Malfrid Flagstad was a Norwegian opera singer, who was the outstanding Wagnerian soprano of her era. Her triumphant debut in New York on 2 February 1935 is one of the legends of opera. Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the longstanding General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera said, “I have given America two great gifts — Caruso and Flagstad.”
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Jill Ireland
1936 - 1990 (54 years)
Jill Dorothy Ireland was an English actress and singer. She appeared in 16 films with husband Charles Bronson, and was involved in two of Bronson’s other films as a producer. Early life Born in Hounslow, Ireland was the daughter of a wine importer.
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Moritz Moszkowski
1854 - 1925 (71 years)
Moritz Moszkowski was a German composer, pianist, and teacher of Polish-Jewish descent. His brother Alexander Moszkowski was a famous writer and satirist in Berlin. Ignacy Paderewski said: "After Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano, and his writing embraces the whole gamut of piano technique." Although less known today, Moszkowski was well respected and popular during the late nineteenth century.
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Wakamatsu Shizuko
1864 - 1896 (32 years)
Wakamatsu Shizuko was a Japanese educator, translator, and novelist best known for translating Little Lord Fauntleroy written by Frances Hodgson Burnett. She is also known for introducing literature with Christianity for children's novels.
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Barbu Solacolu
1897 - 1976 (79 years)
Barbu Solacolu was a Romanian poet, translator, civil servant and social scientist. Born into a prosperous and intellectual family, he became a late affiliate of the Symbolist movement, bringing to it his own leftist sympathies and agrarianism. Despite spending the early stages of World War I among non-interventionists such as Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești and Ioan Slavici, he eventually servd with distinctions as a cavalry commander, and also participated in the Hungarian–Romanian War. Solacolu trained as an economist in Weimar Germany, returning to serve the Romanian state as a civil servant. He...
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William Castle
1914 - 1977 (63 years)
William Castle was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. Orphaned at 11, Castle dropped out of high school at 15 to work in the theater. He came to the attention of Columbia Pictures for his talent for promotion and was hired. He learned the trade of filmmaking and became a director, acquiring a reputation for being able to churn out competent B-movies quickly and on budget. He eventually struck out on his own, producing and directing thrillerss, which, despite their low budgets, he effectively promoted using gimmicks, a trademark for which he is best known. He was als...
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Tim Hardin
1941 - 1980 (39 years)
James Timothy Hardin was an American folk and blues songwriter. As well as releasing his own material, several of his songs, including "If I Were a Carpenter" and "Reason to Believe", became hits for other artists.
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Johnnie Ray
1927 - 1990 (63 years)
John Alvin Ray was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Highly popular for most of the 1950s, Ray has been cited by critics as a major precursor to what became rock and roll, for his jazz and blues-influenced music, and his animated stage personality. Tony Bennett called Ray the "father of rock and roll", and historians have noted him as a pioneering figure in the development of the genre.
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P. L. Travers
1899 - 1996 (97 years)
Pamela Lyndon Travers was an Australian-British writer who spent most of her career in England. She is best known for the Mary Poppins series of books, which feature the eponymous magical nanny. Goff was born in Maryborough, Queensland, and grew up in the Australian bush before being sent to boarding school in Sydney. Her writing was first published when she was a teenager, and she also worked briefly as a professional Shakespearean actress. Upon emigrating to England at the age of 24, she took the name "Pamela Lyndon Travers" and adopted the pen name P. L. Travers in 1933 while writing the ...
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Henri Vieuxtemps
1820 - 1881 (61 years)
Henri François Joseph Vieuxtemps was a Belgian composer and violinist. He occupies an important place in the history of the violin as a prominent exponent of the Franco-Belgian violin school during the mid-19th century. He is also known for playing what is now known as the Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesù, a violin of superior workmanship.
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Jean Painlevé
1902 - 1989 (87 years)
Jean Painlevé was a photographer and filmmaker who specialized in underwater fauna. He was the son of mathematician and twice prime minister of France Paul Painlevé. Upbringing A few days after Painlevé was born, his mother, Marguerite Petit de Villeneuve, died from complications arising from an infection contracted during childbirth. Painlevé, an only son, was raised by his father's sister Marie, a widow.
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Beniamino Gigli
1890 - 1957 (67 years)
Beniamino Gigli was an Italian opera singer . He is widely regarded as one of the greatest tenors of his generation. Early life Gigli was born in Recanati, in the Marche, the son of a shoemaker who loved opera. His parents did not, however, view music as a secure career. Beniamino's brother Lorenzo became a well-known painter.
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Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
1895 - 1968 (73 years)
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was an Italian composer, pianist and writer. He was known as one of the foremost guitar composers in the twentieth century with almost one hundred compositions for that instrument. In 1939 he immigrated to the United States and became a film composer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for some 200 Hollywood movies for the next fifteen years. He also wrote concertos for Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky.
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Shelly Manne
1920 - 1984 (64 years)
Sheldon "Shelly" Manne was an American jazz drummer. Most frequently associated with West Coast jazz, he was known for his versatility and also played in a number of other styles, including Dixieland, swing, bebop, avant-garde jazz, and later fusion. He also contributed to the musical background of hundreds of Hollywood films and television programs.
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Michael Chekhov
1891 - 1955 (64 years)
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Chekhov , known as Michael Chekhov, was a Russian-American actor, director, author, and theatre practitioner. He was a nephew of the playwright Anton Chekhov and a student of Konstantin Stanislavski. Stanislavski referred to him as his most brilliant student.
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René Binet
1732 - 1812 (80 years)
René Binet was a French professor and translator. He was born near Beauvais and became professor of rhetoric at the collège du Plessis, rector of the Université de Paris in 1791, then proviseur of the lycée Bonaparte.
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Felix Weingartner
1863 - 1942 (79 years)
Paul Felix Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg was an Austrian conductor, composer and pianist. Life and career Weingartner was born in Zara, Dalmatia, Austrian Empire , to Austrian parents. The family moved to Graz in 1868, and his father died later that year. He studied with Wilhelm Mayer . In 1881 he went to Leipzig to study philosophy, but soon devoted himself entirely to music, entering the Conservatory in 1883 and studying in Weimar as one of Franz Liszt's last pupils. Liszt helped produce the world premiere of Weingartner's opera Sakuntala in 1884 with the Weimar orchestra. According to L...
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