The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Communications,
#14451
Hollis Dann
1861 - 1939 (78 years)
Hollis Ellsworth Dann was an American music educator and choral director during the early twentieth century. Early life Dann was born in Canton, Pennsylvania to a musical family and studied music in Boston before returning to his hometown to teach music lessons and lead a church choir and community chorus. In 1886, he became principal of the academy at Havana, New York .
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Gustav Schreck
1849 - 1918 (69 years)
Gustav Ernst Schreck was a German music teacher, composer and choirmaster of St. Thomas School, Thomasschule zu Leipzig, in Leipzig from 1893 to 1918. Life Schreck was born in 1849, the son of a hosier, which was at that time a usual profession in the region of Vogtland where his family lived. The children were required to actively contribute to the maintenance of the family household. The monotonous activity was interspersed with singing while performing works in the Schreck home. The musical abilities of the young Gustav were encouraged by early piano lessons. From 1863 to 1867 he attended the teacher training college in Greiz and was a member of the student choir.
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Franz Wüllner
1832 - 1902 (70 years)
Franz Wüllner was a German composer and conductor. He led the premieres of Wagner's Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, but was much criticized by Wagner himself, who greatly preferred the more celebrated conductors Hans von Bülow and Hermann Levi.
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Hermann Keller
1885 - 1967 (82 years)
Hermann Keller was a German Protestant church musician and musicologist. Life Born in Stuttgart the son of an architect, he followed his father's profession by also studying architecture in Stuttgart and Munich. During his studies he became a member of the Stuttgart " Swabia" in 1903. Max Reger, with whom Keller took private lessons, advised him to make music his profession. Keller followed this advice and thereupon studied additionally in Munich, Stuttgart and Leipzig. From 1910 he worked as a teacher at the Grand Ducal Music School and organist at the Stadtkirche in Weimar. In 1916, however, he moved back to his home town of Stuttgart, where he worked as organist at the Markuskirche.
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Michel-Antoine Carré
1865 - 1945 (80 years)
Michel-Antoine Carré or Michel Carré was a French actor, stage and film director, and writer of opera librettos, stage plays and film scripts. Career He was the son of the librettist Michel Carré and cousin of the theatre director Albert Carré . His libretto for André Messager's 1894 opera Mirette was never performed in France but was performed in an English adaptation in London at the Savoy Theatre.
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Charles Lynch
1906 - 1984 (78 years)
Charles Edgeworth Cagney Lynch was an Irish pianist who premiered works by several important 20th-century composers. Background and early life Charles Lynch was born in Parkgariff, County Cork, Ireland. His father was a British army colonel and his mother came from a well-known Cork business dynasty, the Suttons. Novelist Maria Edgeworth was a direct ancestor. While Lynch was still a young boy, the family moved to Greenock in western Scotland and it was there, at the Tontine Hotel, that the young pianist gave his first public recital at the age of nine. When he was fifteen, he won a scholarsh...
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John Bennet
1575 - 1615 (40 years)
John Bennet was a composer of the English madrigal school. Little is known for certain of Bennet's life, but his first collection of madrigals was published in 1599. Life Bennet's madrigalss include "All Creatures Now" as well as "Weep, O Mine Eyes". The latter is an homage to John Dowland, using part of Dowland's most famous piece, "Flow My Tears", also known in its pavane form as Lachrymae Antiquae. John Bennet's life is mostly undocumented. Bennet did however leave behind evidence that his impact is great. Bennet dedicated his madrigal volume, These First Fruits of My Simple Skill The Endeavors of a Young Wit to Ralph Assheton in 1599.
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August Wilhelm Bach
1796 - 1869 (73 years)
August Wilhelm Bach was a German composer and organist. He is unrelated to the family of Johann Sebastian Bach. He studied with his father, Gottfried, as well as with Carl Friedrich Zelter and Ludwig Berger as well as at the Berlin Singing Academy. In 1816 he served as an organist at St Mary's Church and from 1820 he taught organ and music theory at the Institute of Church Music set up by Zelter. In 1832, Bach succeeded Zelter as the director of the Royal Institute of Church Music in Berlin. He also taught at the Prussian Academy of Arts. His compositions largely consist of sacred works and works for keyboard.
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Boris Khaikin
1904 - 1978 (74 years)
Boris Emmanuilovich Khaikin was a Soviet and Russian conductor who was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1972. Biography Khaikin was born in Minsk, then part of the Russian Empire. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Nicolai Malko and Konstantin Saradzhev. He was artistic director of the Little Leningrad Opera Theatre in 1936-43 and the principal conductor at the Kirov Theatre in 1944-53, where he conducted the première of Sergei Prokofiev's Betrothal in a Monastery on 3 November 1946. He moved to the Bolshoi Theatre in 1954.
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Frank London Brown
1927 - 1962 (35 years)
Frank London Brown was an American writer, activist, and union leader known for his significant contributions to literature, civil rights, and workers' rights. Born in Kansas City Missouri, to an African-American family, and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Brown's upbringing in a racially charged environment greatly influenced his later work and activism. He played a crucial role in advancing the causes of racial equality and social justice through his writings, civil rights activities, and leadership in labor unions. His writings include two novels, Trumbull Park and The Myth Maker , recognized as contributions in literary realism and literary existentialism.
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Lula Mysz-Gmeiner
1876 - 1948 (72 years)
Lula Mysz-Gmeiner was a German concert contralto and mezzo-soprano born in Transylvania, who performed lieder recitals in Europe and the United States. She was an academic voice teacher in Berlin and taught both Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Peter Anders.
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Ludwig van Beethoven
1712 - 1773 (61 years)
#14463
Harold Williams
1893 - 1976 (83 years)
Harold John Williams MBE was an Australian baritone and music teacher. Born in Sydney, he had a career in England and his native country, performing in opera, oratorio and concerts and giving radio broadcasts.
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Sam Brown
1939 - 1977 (38 years)
Sam Brown was an American jazz guitarist. History Sam T. Brown's playing style was unusual in that he performed in a generally jazz-rock format, while performing in Keith Jarrett's ensembles that sometimes veered close to a free jazz style. His initial recording success included membership of the jazz rock group Ars Nova during the 1967-1969 period.
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Conrad Bernier
1904 - 1988 (84 years)
Conrad Bernier was a French-Canadian organist, composer, conductor and teacher. For many years he was a professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Early life and education Born into a family of musicians in Quebec City, Bernier was the brother of pianist Gabrielle Bernier and cellist/journalist Maurice Bernier, and the uncle of musicians Françoys Bernier, Madeleine Bernier, and Pierre Bernier. His first teacher was his father Joseph-Arthur Bernier, who introduced him to solfège, organ, and piano. He continued his keyboard studies with Berthe Roy, and became proficient enough to inaugurate the organ of the church at Bienville when he was 13 years of age.
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Thomas Bentley
1884 - 1966 (82 years)
Thomas Bentley may refer to:Thomas Bentley , British film directorThomas Bentley , English manufacturer of porcelain, known for his partnership with Josiah WedgwoodThomas John Bentley , Canadian politician, agrologist, farmer and organizerThomas Whitefield Bentley , life insurance company manager and political figure on Prince Edward IslandThomas Bentley, editor of The Monument of Matrones Tom Bentley, author and policy analyst based in Australia
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Luchino Visconti
1287 - 1349 (62 years)
Luchino Visconti was lord of Milan from 1339 to 1349. He was also a condottiero, and lord of Pavia. Biography Ruler of Pavia from 1315, five years later he was podestà of Vigevano, where he erected the castle that is still visible. In 1323, along with all his family, he was excommunicated with the charge of heresy. The charges of heresy and excommunication were later withdrawn and he became a Papal Vicar in 1341.
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Bruno Zwintscher
1838 - 1905 (67 years)
Bruno Zwintscher was a German piano educator. Life Born in Ziegenhain in the Kingdom of Saxony, Zwintscher attended the Dresdener Kreuzschule before he became a student of Louis Plaidy at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig in 1856. From 1875 to 1896, Zwintscher himself worked as a piano teacher at this conservatory. His students there included Anna Diller Starbuck. Afterwards he worked as a private teacher in Dresden. His Klavier-Technik is an extension of Plaidy's work. He also published Musikalische Verzierungen.
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Georg Trexler
1903 - 1979 (76 years)
Georg Max Trexler was a German composer. Originally a student of economics at the University of Leipzig, he switched to music under the influence of Karl Straube, and became a choirmaster and organist at the St. Trinitatis church in Leipzig in 1930, continuing his work there for forty years.
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Valeria Barsova
1892 - 1967 (75 years)
Valeria Vladimirovna Barsova , PAU, was a Russian operatic soprano, one of the leading lyric-coloratura sopranos of the first half of the 20th century in Russia. Life and career Valeria Barsova first studied the piano with Estonian composer Artur Kapp. She then studied singing at the Moscow Conservatory with Mazetti. In 1915, she was singing in a Moscow cabaret when she was noticed by Sergei Zimin, director of the Zimin Opera, where she made her operatic debut in 1917, as Gilda in Rigoletto. Other roles at this theatre included; Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, Constance in Die Entführung aus de...
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Felix Berber
1871 - 1930 (59 years)
Karl Heinrich Felix Berber was a German violinist. Life Born in Jena, Berber was the youngest child of music and art-loving parents. He spent the first part of his childhood in Weimar, where the family moved soon after his birth. In Dresden, where his parents had moved again, he received violin lessons from the age of 7. Already at the age of nine, he made his first public appearance as a child prodigy in 1880. He was then a pupil at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber and with Adolph Brodsky at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig. He gave his first major concerts at the age of 13.
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Gustave Gagnon
1842 - 1930 (88 years)
Gustave Adolphe Mathurin Gagnon was a Canadian organist, composer, and music educator. Family background and education Born in Louiseville, Gagnon was from a prominent family of musicians in Québec City. He is the younger brother of composer Ernest Gagnon and the father of composer Henri Gagnon. His sister Élisabeth was married to pianist Paul Letondal with whom he studied the piano in Montreal from 1960 to 1964. In 1870 he studied in Paris with Charles-Alexis Chauvet , Antoine François Marmontel , and Marie-Auguste Durand , and under Félix-Etienne Ledent and Jean-Théodore Radoux in Liège. ...
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Alvin Etler
1913 - 1973 (60 years)
Alvin Derald Etler was an American composer and oboist. Career A student of Paul Hindemith, Etler is noted for his highly rhythmic, harmonically and texturally complex compositional style, taking inspiration from the works of Bartók and Copland as well as the dissonant and accented styles of jazz.
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Václav Smetáček
1906 - 1986 (80 years)
Václav Smetáček was a Czech conductor, composer, and oboist. He studied in Prague among others with Jaroslav Křička, conducting with Metod Doležil and Pavel Dědeček, musicology, aesthetics, and philosophy at Charles University, receiving his doctorate in musicology in 1933. He was the founder and member of the Prague Wind Quintet , with whom he performed, composed and arranged compositions for it. From 1930 to 1933, he was a member of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and from 1934 to 1943, he worked on Czech Radio as conductor and editor. From 1945 to 1966 he worked as a pedagogue at the Pra...
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Tudor Ciortea
1903 - 1982 (79 years)
Tudor Ciortea was a Romanian composer, musicologist, and music educator. Life and career Ciortea was born in Brașov and began his music studies under Gheorghe Dima in Cluj. He went on to study at the Bucharest Conservatory under Ion Nonna Otescu and in Paris under Nadia Boulanger and Paul Dukas. He lived most of his life in Bucharest where he taught for over thirty years at the Bucharest Conservatory. Amongst his students there were the composers Liana Alexandra, Irina Odagescu, Maya Badian, and Carmen Petra Basacopol.
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Eric Wollencott Barnes
1907 - 1962 (55 years)
Eric Wollencott Barnes was an American educator, diplomat, actor, and writer. Education Barnes attended public schools in Little Rock. He entered UCLA in 1925, and in 1926 transferred to L'École des Sciences Politiques in Paris, where he graduated in 1930. He received a diplome d'études superieures from the University of Paris in 1931, followed by a fellowship at the Sorbonne, then obtained a teaching post at the University of Paris in 1932.
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Evgeny Golubev
1910 - 1988 (78 years)
Yevgeny Kirillovich Golubev was a Soviet and Russian composer. Golubev was born and died in Moscow. He was taught by Nikolai Myaskovsky, and his students included Iosif Andriasov from 1958 till 1963, Alfred Schnittke, who studied with him from 1953 until 1958, Asya Sultanova, and Michael L. Geller. His own compositions included at least twenty-four string quartets, seven symphonies, three piano concertos - the last dedicated to and recorded by Tatiana Nikolayeva -, concertos for violin, cello and viola, ten piano sonatas , sonatas for violin, cello and for trumpet , and quintets for strings with piano and with harp, among other works.
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Alexander Chuhaldin
1892 - 1951 (59 years)
Alexander Gregorovitch Chuhaldin was a Russian violinist, conductor, composer, and music educator who later emigrated to Canada. He spent his early career working in his native country but after 1927 he was active in Canada. His compositional output includes over 30 works for string orchestra; many of which were published by Carl Fischer Music. He also composed five pieces for solo violin which were published by Paling & Co in Australia and more recently by Thompson Publishing Group in Canada.
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Henri Verbrugghen
1873 - 1934 (61 years)
Henri Adrien Marie Verbrugghen was a Belgian musician, who directed orchestras in England, Scotland, Australia and the United States. Born in Brussels, Verbrugghen made his first appearance as a violinist when only eight years old, and was a successful student at the Brussels Conservatorium under Hubay and Ysaÿe, winning many prizes. He visited England with Ysaÿe in 1888, and in 1893 settled in Scotland as a member of the Scottish Orchestra. During the summer he led the orchestra at Llandudno under Jules Riviere. For a time he was a member of the Lamoureux Orchestra at Paris and then for three years was deputy-conductor at Llandudno.
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Henry Thomas
1874 - 1930 (56 years)
Henry Thomas was an American country blues singer, songster and musician. Although his recording career, in the late 1920s, was brief, Thomas influenced performers including Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal, the Lovin' Spoonful, the Grateful Dead, and Canned Heat. Often billed as "Ragtime Texas", Thomas's style is an early example of what later became known as Texas blues guitar.
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Leone Giraldoni
1824 - 1897 (73 years)
Leone Giraldoni was a celebrated Italian operatic baritone. He created the title roles of Gaetano Donizetti's Il duca d'Alba and Verdi's Simon Boccanegra as well as the role of Renato in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera .
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Ray Copeland
1926 - 1984 (58 years)
Ray Copeland was an American jazz trumpet player and teacher. Early life Copeland was born in Norfolk, Virginia. He studied at Boys High School in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Career Copeland's active career spanned from the 1940s to the 1980s. Throughout his career he participated on many swing and hard bop dates, appearing on the well known Monk's Music by Thelonious Monk recorded in June 1957. Copeland played with a swinging, upbeat approach, but was undoubtedly overshadowed by other top trumpeters of the era such as Lee Morgan and Clifford Brown. He toured with Thelonious Monk in 1968, and appeared at the 1973 Newport Jazz Festival.
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Jules Irving
1925 - 1979 (54 years)
Jules Irving was an American actor, director, educator, and producer, who in the 1950s co-founded the San Francisco Actor's Workshop. When the Actor's Workshop closed in 1966, Irving moved to New York City and became the first Producing Director of the Repertory Company of the Vivian Beaumont Theater of Lincoln Center.
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Alwin Schroeder
1855 - 1928 (73 years)
Alwin Schroeder was a German-American cellist. He was well known for playing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra . He was the cellist of the Kneisel Quartet from 1891 to 1907. Alwin was the youngest of four sons of Carl Schroeder , the music director in Neuhaldensleben. He had three older brothers that were also musicians: Hermann Schroeder became a composer and violin professor in Berlin, Germany; Carl Karl Schröder II II became a cello professor in the Leipzig Conservatory before being appointed as court conductor to the Prince of Sondershausen in 1881; and Franz would work as a conductor in St.
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Millicent Silver
1905 - 1986 (81 years)
Millicent Irene Silver was an English harpsichordist, who began her career as a pianist and violinist. Early life Born in South London, her father, James Brand Silver, was a violinist and oboist, and had been a boy chorister at St. George's Chapel, Windsor where his singing attracted the attention of Queen Victoria. Her mother Amelia Argyle Silver was a piano teacher. Millicent was the second of four children. Her musical talent was discovered at the age of three, when she imitated her elder brother's practising.
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Robert Johnson
1583 - 1633 (50 years)
Robert Johnson was an English composer and lutenist of the late Tudor and early Jacobean eras. He is sometimes called "Robert Johnson II" to distinguish him from an earlier Scottish composer. Johnson worked with William Shakespeare providing music for some of his later plays.
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Peter Olrog Schjøtt
1833 - 1926 (93 years)
Peter Olrog Schjøtt was a Norwegian philologist and politician. Personal life Peter Olrog Schjøtt was born in 1833 to priest and politician Ole Hersted Schjøtt and his wife Anna Jacobine, née Olrog, in Dybvaag where his father was stationed as vicar. He was named after his maternal grandfather Peter Olrog. He was the brother of philologist Steinar Schjøtt, who was born Stener Johannes Stenersen Schjøtt, named after professor of theology Stener Johannes Stenersen, but later adhered to Landsmål and Norwegianized his name.
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Buddy Johnson
1915 - 1977 (62 years)
Woodrow Wilson "Buddy" Johnson was an American jump blues pianist and bandleader active from the 1930s through the 1960s. His songs were often performed by his sister Ella Johnson, most notably "Since I Fell for You", which became a jazz standard.
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Archie Camden
1888 - 1979 (91 years)
Archie Camden was a British bassoonist; he was a pedagogue and soloist of international acclaim. His career began in 1906 when he joined the Hallé Orchestra, where he became principal bassoonist in 1914. In 1933 he moved to the BBC Symphony Orchestra, where he stayed until 1946 when he took up the same position in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Camden was also one of the first bassoonists to experiment with recording. His record of the Mozart bassoon concerto still remains one of the most popular today.
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Walter Bache
1842 - 1888 (46 years)
Walter Bache was an English pianist and conductor noted for his championing the music of Franz Liszt and other music of the New German School in England. He studied privately with Liszt in Italy from 1863 to 1865, one of the few students allowed to do so, and continued to attend Liszt's master classes in Weimar, Germany regularly until 1885, even after embarking on a solo career. This period of study was unparalleled by any other student of Liszt and led to a particularly close bond between Bache and Liszt. After initial hesitation on the part of English music critics because he was a Liszt p...
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William Murdoch
1888 - 1942 (54 years)
William David Murdoch was an Australian pianist, composer and author. Early life and education Murdoch was born at Sandhurst , the son of Andrew Murdoch, an engineer, and his wife Annie, née Esler. At 11 years of age William began piano lessons and soon won several solo competitions. In 1903 he was awarded the first Bendigo Austral Scholarship. This entitled him to three years' tuition at the University of Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, where he continued his studies under William Adolphus Laver, later Ormond Professor of Music. In 1906 Murdoch won the Clarke Scholarship, which entitled him to three years' tuition at the Royal College of Music, London.
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Prince Lucien Campbell
1861 - 1925 (64 years)
Prince Lucien Campbell was an American academic who served as the fourth president of the University of Oregon from 1902–1925. He had been president of the Oregon State Normal School in Monmouth, Oregon, a precursor of Western Oregon University, from 1890–1902. He was educated at Christian College in Monmouth, and at Harvard College, graduating in 1886. As president of the University of Oregon, he led expansion of financial and physical resources, increased student enrollment, and developed the university's curricular offerings by establishing multiple new departments and programs.
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Elmer Snowden
1900 - 1973 (73 years)
Elmer Chester Snowden was an American banjo player of the jazz age. He also played guitar and, in the early stages of his career, all the reed instruments. He contributed greatly to jazz in its early days as both a player and a bandleader, and launched the careers of many top musicians.
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William Turner
1651 - 1740 (89 years)
William Turner was a composer and countertenor of the Baroque era. A contemporary of John Blow and Henry Purcell, he is best remembered for his verse anthems, of which over forty survive. As a singer, he was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal from 1669 until his death.
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Charles Oberthür
1819 - 1895 (76 years)
Charles Oberthür was a German harpist and composer active in Germany, Switzerland and England. Biography The son of a violin maker, Oberthür was born in Munich and studied the harp there with Elisa Brauchle and composition with Georg Valentin Röder , music director at the Bavarian court. He was successively employed at theatres in Zürich , Wiesbaden , and Mannheim , before he settled in London in 1844, initially as harpist at the Royal Italian Opera House. In 1861, he became the first Professor of Harp at the Royal Academy of Music, London. He died in London in 1895.
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Caroline Hatchard
1883 - 1970 (87 years)
Caroline Gertrude Hatchard was a British lyric soprano, musical theatre and opera singer of the 20th-century who was the first English-born and trained soprano to be engaged by the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden where she played Sophie in the British premiere of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier on 29 January 1913 with Thomas Beecham conducting.
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Waldemar von Baußnern
1866 - 1931 (65 years)
Waldemar Edler von Baußnern was a German composer and music teacher. Life Born in Berlin, and descended from Transylvanian Saxons, Baußnern was the son of a financial official. He grew up in both Transylvania and Budapest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire . Between 1882–1886 he was a student of Friedrich Kiel and Woldemar Bargiel at the Berlin Musical Academy . He then conducted various choirs; after 1909 he became director of the Großherzoglichen Musikschule in Weimar. From 1916 to 1923 he served as director of the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main. In 1923, he became undersecretary of the Academy of Arts, Berlin.
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James Kwast
1852 - 1927 (75 years)
James Kwast was a Dutch-German pianist and renowned teacher of many other notable pianists. He was also a minor composer and editor. Biography Jacob James Kwast was born in Nijkerk, Netherlands, in 1852. After studies with his father and Ferdinand Böhme in his home country, he became a student of Carl Reinecke at the Leipzig Conservatory, and had later studies in Berlin under Theodor Kullak, and Brussels under Louis Brassin and François-Auguste Gevaert. He settled in Germany in 1883, initially as a teacher at the Cologne Conservatory, and later at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt and the Klindworth-Scharwenka and Stern conservatories in Berlin.
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Edgar Stillman Kelley
1857 - 1944 (87 years)
Edgar Stillman Kelley was an American composer, conductor, teacher, and writer on music. He is sometimes associated with the Indianist movement in American music. Life Kelley was of New England stock, his ancestors having come to America from England before 1650. He himself was born in Sparta, Wisconsin. His mother was from a musical family, and herself was skilled in music; she became his first teacher. Kelley's own college career was interrupted by bouts of poor health. He was a talented artist and writer, but he decided to devote his life to music after a performance of Felix Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream.
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G. Ramanathan
Gopalan Iyer Ramanathan was an Indian music composer for Tamil movies. He is also known as Isai Methai or Sangeetha Chakravarthy and is considered to be one of the influential Tamil music composers to take Carnatic music to the masses. Notable for his association with M. K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar. G. Ramanathan also composed for films of Salem Modern Theatres and Coimbatore Central Studios. His career lasted until his death in 1963. During the 1950s G.Ramanathan's music dominated most of the box office hits of the then leading Tamil movie stars Shivaji Ganesan and M. G. Ramachandran.
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