#14801
Agustín Lara
1897 - 1970 (73 years)
Ángel Agustín María Carlos Fausto Mariano Alfonso del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Lara y Aguirre del Pino , known as Agustín Lara, was a Mexican composer and performer of songs and boleros. He is recognized as one of the most popular songwriters of his era. His work was widely appreciated not only in Mexico but also in Central and South America, the Caribbean and Spain. After his death, he has also been recognized in the United States, Italy and Japan.
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Edmund Kean
1787 - 1833 (46 years)
Edmund Kean was a celebrated British Shakespearean stage actor born in England, who performed, among other places, in London, Belfast, New York, Quebec, and Paris. He was known for his short stature, tumultuous personal life, and controversial divorce.
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Gjergj Pekmezi
1872 - 1938 (66 years)
Gjergj Pekmezi was an Albanian linguist, philosopher, folklorist and diplomat. In 1916, he became a member of the Literary Commission of Shkodër, which established the first standard form of the Albanian language.
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Stoyko Stoykov
1912 - 1969 (57 years)
Stoyko Ivanov Stoykov was a Bulgarian linguist, Slavist. Biography Graduated Slavic Philology at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", . Specialized phonetics, dialectology, and Slavic linguistics in Prague, Czech Republic . Was granted PhD by the Univerzita Karlova . Worked at the Institute for Bulgarian Language of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences as an assistant , as a head of the Section for Bulgarian Dialectology with Linguistic Atlas and as a deputy director of the same institute . Also, worked in the Sofia University as an assistant , associate professor , and professor . Was Dean of the Phylological Faculty and Deputy Rector of the same university .
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François-Adrien Boieldieu
1775 - 1834 (59 years)
François-Adrien Boieldieu was a French composer, mainly of operas, often called "the French Mozart". His date of birth was also cited as December 15 by his biographer and writer Lucien Augé de Lassus and as September 15 by some local press releases.
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Robert Calvert
1945 - 1988 (43 years)
Robert Newton Calvert was a South African-British writer, poet, and musician. He is principally known for his role as lyricist, performance poet and lead vocalist of the space rock band Hawkwind. Early life Calvert was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and moved with his parents to England when he was two. He attended school in London and Margate, living in a flat in Arlington House. Having finished school he joined the Air Training Corps, in which he became a corporal and played trumpet for the 438 Squadron band. He then went on to college in Canterbury. After leaving college, and having been ...
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Konstantinas Sirvydas
1579 - 1631 (52 years)
Konstantinas Sirvydas was a Lithuanian religious preacher, lexicographer, and one of the pioneers of Lithuanian literature from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, at the time a confederal part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was a Jesuit priest, a professor at the Academia Vilnensis, and the author of, among other works, the first grammar of the Lithuanian language and the first trilingual dictionary in Lithuanian, Latin, and Polish . Famous for his eloquence, Sirvydas spent 10 years of his life preaching sermons at St. Johns' Church in Vilnius .
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Abraham Ecchellensis
1605 - 1664 (59 years)
Ibrahim al-Haqilani was a Maronite Catholic philosopher and linguist involved in the translation of the Bible into Arabic. He translated several Arabic works into Latin, the most important of which was the Chronicon orientale attributed to Ibn al-Rahib.
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William Hartnell
1908 - 1975 (67 years)
William Henry Hartnell was an English actor. He is best remembered for his portrayal of the first incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who from 1963 to 1966. In film, Hartnell notably appeared in Brighton Rock , The Mouse That Roared and This Sporting Life . He was associated with military roles, playing Company Sergeant Major Percy Bullimore in the ITV sitcom The Army Game and Sergeant Grimshaw, the title character in the first Carry On film Carry On Sergeant .
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Walter Damrosch
1862 - 1950 (88 years)
Walter Johannes Damrosch was a Kingdom of Prussia-born American conductor and composer. He was the director of the New York Symphony Orchestra and conducted the world premiere performances of various works, including Aaron Copland's Symphony for Organ and Orchestra, George Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F and An American in Paris, and Jean Sibelius' Tapiola. Damrosch was also instrumental in the founding of Carnegie Hall. He also conducted the first performance of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the composer himself as soloist.
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Munis Tekinalp
1883 - 1961 (78 years)
Moiz Cohen was a Turkish writer, philosopher, and journalist of Jewish heritage. He became an ideologue of different movements at different times: Ottomanism, Pan-Turkism, and Kemalism. Born to a Jewish family, he later changed his name to Munis Tekinalp.
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Frank Martin
1890 - 1974 (84 years)
Frank Martin was a Swiss composer, who spent much of his life in the Netherlands. Childhood and youth Born into a Huguenot family in the Eaux-Vives quarter of Geneva, the youngest of the ten children of a Calvinist pastor named Charles Martin, Frank Martin started to improvise on the piano prior to his formal schooling. At the age of nine he had already written a few songs, without external musical instruction. At age 12, he attended a performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion and was deeply affected by it.
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Roberto Rossellini
1906 - 1977 (71 years)
Roberto Gastone Zeffiro Rossellini was an Italian film director, screenwriter and producer. He was one of the most prominent directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing to the movement with films such as Rome, Open City , Paisan , and Germany, Year Zero . He is also known for his films starring Ingrid Bergman, Stromboli , Europe '51 , Journey to Italy , Fear , and Joan of Arc at the Stake .
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Pierre Fournier
1906 - 1986 (80 years)
Pierre Léon Marie Fournier was a French cellist who was called the "aristocrat of cellists" on account of his elegant musicianship and majestic sound. Biography Pierre Fournier was born in Paris, the son of a French Army general. His mother taught him to play the piano, but he had a mild case of polio as a child and lost dexterity in his feet and legs. Having difficulties with the piano pedals, he turned to the cello.
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Richard Armour
1906 - 1989 (83 years)
Richard Willard Armour was an American poet and prose writer who wrote more than 65 books. Life and works Armour was born in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California the only child of Harry W. and Sue Wheelock Armour. His father was a druggist, and Armour's autobiographical Drug Store Days recalls his childhood in both San Pedro and Pomona. He attended Pomona College and Harvard University, where he studied with the eminent Shakespearean scholar George Lyman Kittredge and obtained a Ph.D. in English philology. He was married to Kathleen Stevens and they had two children, Geoffrey and Karin, and he...
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Louis Spohr
1784 - 1859 (75 years)
Louis Spohr , baptized Ludewig Spohr, later often in the modern German form of the name Ludwig was a German composer, violinist and conductor. Highly regarded during his lifetime, Spohr composed ten symphonies, ten operas, eighteen violin concerti, four clarinet concerti, four oratorios, and various works for small ensemble, chamber music, and art songs. Spohr invented the violin chinrest and the orchestral rehearsal mark. His output spans the transition between Classical and Romantic music, but fell into obscurity following his death, when his music was rarely heard. The late twentieth centu...
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Frank Loesser
1910 - 1969 (59 years)
Frank Henry Loesser was an American songwriter who wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musicals Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, among others. He won a Tony Award for Guys and Dolls and shared the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for How to Succeed. He also wrote songs for over 60 Hollywood films and Tin Pan Alley, many of which have become standards, and was nominated for five Academy Awards for best song, winning once for "Baby, It's Cold Outside".
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Harl McDonald
1899 - 1955 (56 years)
Harl McDonald was an American composer, conductor, pianist and teacher. McDonald was born in Boulder, Colorado, and studied at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Redlands, and the Leipzig Conservatory. He was appointed a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania in 1927 and enjoyed other appointments at the University including the Director of the Music Department and Director of the University's Choral Society and the University of Pennsylvania Glee Club. Among his students there was Ann Wyeth McCoy. In addition to his administrative duties with the University, McDona...
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Harry Bloom
1913 - 1981 (68 years)
Harry Saul Bloom was a South African journalist, novelist, activist and lecturer. Early life and career Solomon Harris Bloom was born into a Jewish South African family. He was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand, obtaining his law degree in 1937. He subsequently became an advocate in Johannesburg. In 1940, he married Beryl Cynthia Gordon, after knowing her three weeks, and they moved to London, living in Old Compton Street during the Blitz. Writing under the pseudonyms Walter and Beryl Storm , they worked as war correspondents during the Second World War, and covered the Nurember...
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Mack Reynolds
1917 - 1983 (66 years)
Dallas McCord "Mack" Reynolds was an American science fiction writer. His pen names included Dallas Ross, Mark Mallory, Clark Collins, Dallas Rose, Guy McCord, Maxine Reynolds, Bob Belmont, and Todd Harding. His work focused on socioeconomic speculation, usually expressed in thought-provoking explorations of utopian societies from a radical, sometime satiric perspective. He was a popular author from the 1950s to the 1970s, especially with readers of science fiction and fantasy magazines.
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Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke
1878 - 1965 (87 years)
Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke was a German graphical designer, typographer and illustrator. Born in Inowrocław, Prussia , Ehmcke was educated as a lithographer in Berlin during 1893–1897. In 1900, he was a co-founder of Steglitzer Werkstatt. From 1903, he taught at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Düsseldorf, from 1913 to 1938 in Munich, during 1920-1921 also in Zürich. During 1946 to 1948, he was professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich.
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Robert Shackleton
1919 - 1986 (67 years)
Robert Shackleton CBE was an English French language philologist and librarian. Shackleton was born in Todmorden, West Riding of Yorkshire. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, and taught French at Brasenose College, Oxford, from 1946 to 1966. He also served as college librarian from 1948 to 1966. From 1966 to 1979 he served as Bodley's Librarian, the director of the Bodleian Library. From 1979 to 1986 he was Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the university, a position that carried with it a Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford.
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Celia Johnson
1908 - 1982 (74 years)
Dame Celia Elizabeth Johnson, was an English actress, whose career included stage, television and film. She is especially known for her roles in the films In Which We Serve , This Happy Breed , Brief Encounter and The Captain's Paradise . For Brief Encounter, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. A six-time BAFTA Award nominee, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie .
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Harold Williams
1876 - 1928 (52 years)
Harold Whitmore Williams was a New Zealand journalist, foreign editor of The Times and polyglot who is considered to have been one of the most accomplished polyglots in history. He is said to have known over 58 languages, naturally including his native English. He "proved to know every language of the Austrian Empire", Hungarian, Czech, Albanian, Serbian, Romanian, Swedish, Basque, Turkish, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, Coptic, Egyptian, Hittite, Old Irish, and other dialects.
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Alessandro Blasetti
1900 - 1987 (87 years)
Alessandro Blasetti was an Italian film director and screenwriter who influenced Italian neorealism with the film Quattro passi fra le nuvole. Blasetti was one of the leading figures in Italian cinema during the Fascist era. He is sometimes known as the "father of Italian cinema" because of his role in reviving the struggling industry in the late 1920s.
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Lester Young
1909 - 1959 (50 years)
Lester Willis Young , nicknamed "Pres" or "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and occasional clarinetist. Coming to prominence while a member of Count Basie's orchestra, Young was one of the most influential players on his instrument. In contrast to many of his hard-driving peers, Young played with a relaxed, cool tone and used sophisticated harmonies, using what one critic called "a free-floating style, wheeling and diving like a gull, banking with low, funky riffs that pleased dancers and listeners alike".
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Flavius Mithridates
1445 - 1489 (44 years)
Flavius Mithridates was an Italian Jewish humanist scholar, who flourished at Rome in the second half of the 15th century. He is said to be from Sicily, and was a Christian convert, known for preaching impressively if tendentiously. He also had a knowledge of Arabic.
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Gene Krupa
1909 - 1973 (64 years)
Eugene Bertram Krupa , was an American jazz drummer, bandleader and composer. Krupa is widely regarded as one of the most influential drummers in the history of popular music. His drum solo on Benny Goodman's 1937 recording of "Sing, Sing, Sing" elevated the role of the drummer from an accompanist to an important solo voice in the band.
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Françoise Rosay
1891 - 1974 (83 years)
Françoise Rosay was a French opera singer, diseuse, and actress who enjoyed a film career of over sixty years and who became a legendary figure in French cinema. She went on to appear in over 100 movies in her career.
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Lupe Vélez
1908 - 1944 (36 years)
María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez , known professionally as Lupe Vélez, was a Mexican actress, singer, and dancer during the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Vélez began her career as a performer in Mexican vaudeville in the early 1920s. After moving to the United States, she made her first film appearance in a short in 1927. By the end of the decade, she was acting in full-length silent films and had progressed to leading roles in The Gaucho , Lady of the Pavements and Wolf Song , among others. Vélez made the transition to sound films without difficulty. She was one of the first successful Mexican actresses in Hollywood.
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Luigi Russolo
1885 - 1947 (62 years)
Luigi Carlo Filippo Russolo was an Italian Futurist painter, composer, builder of experimental musical instruments, and the author of the manifesto The Art of Noises . Russolo completed his secondary education at Seminary of Portograuro in 1901, after which he moved to Milan and began gaining interest in the arts. He is often regarded as one of the first noise music experimental composers with his performances of noise music concerts in 1913–14 and then again after World War I, notably in Paris in 1921. He designed and constructed a number of noise-generating devices called Intonarumori.
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George Pal
1908 - 1980 (72 years)
George Pal was a Hungarian-American animator, film director and producer, principally associated with the fantasy and science-fiction genres. He became an American citizen after emigrating from Europe.
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Bix Beiderbecke
1903 - 1931 (28 years)
Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke was an American jazz cornetist, pianist and composer. Beiderbecke was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s, a cornet player noted for an inventive lyrical approach and purity of tone, with such clarity of sound that one contemporary famously described it like "shooting bullets at a bell”. His solos on seminal recordings such as "Singin' the Blues" and "I'm Coming, Virginia" demonstrate a gift for extended improvisation that heralded the jazz ballad style, in which jazz solos are an integral part of the composition. Moreover, his use of extende...
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Girolamo Frescobaldi
1583 - 1643 (60 years)
Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi was an Italian composer and virtuoso keyboard player. Born in the Duchy of Ferrara, he was one of the most important composers of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. A child prodigy, Frescobaldi studied under Luzzasco Luzzaschi in Ferrara, but was influenced by many composers, including Ascanio Mayone, Giovanni Maria Trabaci, and Claudio Merulo. Girolamo Frescobaldi was appointed organist of St. Peter's Basilica, a focal point of power for the Cappella Giulia , from 21 July 1608 until 1628 and again from 1634 until his death.
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Edgar Bergen
1903 - 1978 (75 years)
Edgar John Bergen was an American ventriloquist, comedian, actor, vaudevillian and radio performer. He was best known for his characters Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. Bergen pioneered modern-day ventriloquism and has been described by puppetry organization UNIMA as the “quintessential ventriloquist of the 20th century”. He was the father of actress Candice Bergen.
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Jorge A. Suárez
1927 - 1985 (58 years)
Jorge Alberto Suárez was an Argentinian linguist specializing in Mexican indigenous languages. He was born in Villa María in the province of Córdoba in Argentina, and was educated in Buenos Aires, first as a high school teacher. Along with his first wife, Emma Gregores, from 1959 to 1961 he finished a doctorate at Cornell University, studying with Charles Hockett. In 1968, he published his first book, a grammar of the Guaraní language, coauthored with Emma Gregores, a reworking of his doctoral dissertation. He subsequently taught in Argentina until 1969 when he moved to Mexico where he married Mexican linguist Yolanda Lastra, his second wife.
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Jane Ingham
1897 - 1982 (85 years)
Rose Marie "Jane" Ingham was an English botanist and scientific translator. She was appointed research assistant to Joseph Hubert Priestley in the Botany Department at the University of Leeds, and together, they were the first to separate cell walls from the root tip of broad beans. They analysed these cell walls and concluded that they contained protein. She carried out experiments on the cork layer of trees to study how cells function under a change of orientation and found profound differences in cell division and elongation in the epidermal layer of plants.
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Alice Guy-Blaché
1873 - 1968 (95 years)
Alice Ida Antoinette Guy-Blaché was a French pioneer filmmaker. She was one of the first filmmakers to make a narrative fiction film, as well as the first woman to direct a film. From 1896 to 1906, she was probably the only female filmmaker in the world. She experimented with Gaumont's Chronophone sync-sound system, and with color-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects.
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Franchot Tone
1905 - 1968 (63 years)
Stanislaus Pascal Franchot Tone was an American actor, producer, and director of stage, film and television. He was a leading man in the 1930s and early 1940s, and at the height of his career was known for his gentlemanly sophisticate roles, with supporting roles by the 1950s. His acting crossed many genres including pre-Code romantic leads to noir layered roles and World War I films. He appeared as a guest star in episodes of several golden age television series, including The Twilight Zone and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour while continuing to act and produce in the theater and movies throughout...
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Gregor Reisch
1467 - 1525 (58 years)
Gregor Reisch was a German Carthusian monk and humanist scholar. He is best known for his compilation Margarita Philosophica, one of the earliest printed encyclopedias of general knowledge. Life Reisch was born at Balingen in Württemberg, about 1467. He became a student at the University of Freiburg in 1487 and received the degree of magister in 1489. He remained at the university as a teacher and became a Carthusian monk around 1500 but continued his teaching and scholarly work. From 1500 to 1502 he was prior at Kleinbasel and from 1503 to shortly before his death he was prior at Freiburg Charterhouse.
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John Blow
1649 - 1708 (59 years)
John Blow was an English composer and organist of the Baroque period. Appointed organist of Westminster Abbey in late 1668, his pupils included William Croft, Jeremiah Clarke and Henry Purcell. In 1685 he was named a private musician to James II. His only stage composition, Venus and Adonis , is thought to have influenced Henry Purcell's later opera Dido and Aeneas. In 1687, he became choirmaster at St Paul's Cathedral, where many of his pieces were performed. In 1699 he was appointed to the newly created post of Composer to the Chapel Royal.
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Victor Young
1900 - 1956 (56 years)
Albert Victor Young was an American composer, arranger, violinist and conductor. Biography Young is commonly said to have been born in Chicago on August 8, 1900, but according to Census data and his birth certificate, his birth year is 1899. His grave marker shows his birth year as 1901. He was born into a very musical Jewish family, his father being a tenor with Joseph Sheehan's touring opera company. After his mother died, his father abandoned the family. The young Victor, who had begun playing violin at the age of six, and was sent to Poland when he was ten to stay with his grandfather and study at Warsaw Imperial Conservatory , achieving the Diploma of Merit.
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Vernon Duke
1903 - 1969 (66 years)
Vernon Duke was a Russian-born American composer and songwriter who also wrote under his birth name, Vladimir Dukelsky. He is best known for "Taking a Chance on Love," with lyrics by Ted Fetter and John Latouche , "I Can't Get Started," with lyrics by Ira Gershwin , "April in Paris," with lyrics by E. Y. Harburg , and "What Is There To Say," for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1934, also with Harburg. He wrote the words and music for "Autumn in New York" for the revue Thumbs Up! In his book, American Popular Song, The Great Innovators 1900-1950, composer Alec Wilder praises this song, writing, “The...
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François-Joseph Gossec
1734 - 1829 (95 years)
François-Joseph Gossec was a French composer of operas, string quartets, symphonies, and choral works. Life and work The son of a small farmer, Gossec was born at the village of Vergnies, then a French exclave in the Austrian Netherlands, now an ancienne commune in the municipality of Froidchapelle, Belgium. Showing an early taste for music, he became a choir-boy in Antwerp. He went to Paris in 1751 and was taken on by the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. He followed Rameau as the conductor of a private orchestra kept by the fermier général Le Riche de La Poupelinière, a wealthy amateur and patron of music.
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Judith Anderson
1897 - 1992 (95 years)
Dame Frances Margaret Anderson, , known professionally as Judith Anderson, was an Australian actress who had a successful career in stage, film and television. A pre-eminent stage actress in her era, she won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award. She is considered one of the 20th century's greatest classical stage actors.
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Jimmy Dorsey
1904 - 1957 (53 years)
James Francis Dorsey was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, composer and big band leader. He recorded and composed the jazz and pop standards "I'm Glad There Is You " and "It's The Dreamer In Me". His other major recordings were "Tailspin", "John Silver", "So Many Times", "Amapola", "Brazil ", "Pennies from Heaven" with Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, and Frances Langford, "Grand Central Getaway", and "So Rare". He played clarinet on the seminal jazz standards "Singin' the Blues" in 1927 and the original 1930 recording of "Georgia on My Mind", which were inducted into the Grammy Hall of...
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Paul Desmond
1924 - 1977 (53 years)
Paul Desmond was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer and proponent of cool jazz. He was a member of the Dave Brubeck Quartet and composed that group's biggest hit, "Take Five". In addition to his work with Brubeck, he led several groups and collaborated with Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Jim Hall, and Ed Bickert. After years of chain smoking and poor health, Desmond succumbed to lung cancer in 1977 after a tour with Brubeck.
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William Miller
1796 - 1882 (86 years)
William Miller was a Scottish Quaker line engraver and watercolourist from Edinburgh. Life Miller became an apprentice to William Archibald in 1814. His first published engraving was in that year, of an apple tree for William Archibald. This engraving appeared in Vol I of the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society. He spent four years with William Archibald, then setting up on his own account. At the end of 1819 he moved to Hackney to join the workshop of George Cooke. The premium paid for his 18-month stay with Cooke was £240. Other apprentices with Cooke included William Shotter Boys.
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Henri Sauguet
1901 - 1989 (88 years)
Henri-Pierre Sauguet-Poupard was a French composer. Born in Bordeaux, he adopted his mother's maiden name as part of his professional pseudonym. His output includes operas, ballets, four symphonies , concertos, chamber and choral music and numerous songs, as well as film music. Although he experimented with musique concrète and expanded tonality, he remained opposed to particular systems and his music evolved little: he developed tonal or modal ideas in smooth curves, producing an art of clarity, simplicity and restraint.
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Giuseppe Tartini
1692 - 1770 (78 years)
Giuseppe Tartini was an Italian composer and violinist of the Baroque era born in Pirano the Republic of Venice. Tartini was a prolific composer, composing over a hundred pieces for the violin, the majority of them violin concertos. He is best remembered for his Violin Sonata in G Minor .
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