Calendar Search Results: i he w
October 22, 1832 Conductor and composer Leopold Damrosch is born in Posen, King of Prussia. The violinist would earn a PhD in medicine to appease his parents before turning his focus completely to music.
May 14, 1832 German composer Felix Mendelssohn's "The Hebrides Overture" also known as "Fingal's Cave" is premiered in London.
November 19, 1828 Austrian composer Franz Schubert dies in Vienna, Austria, at age 31. The cause is listed as typhoid fever, though some scholars believe it was syphilis.
November 20, 1820 Whaling ship The Essex is rammed and sunk by a whale in the South Pacific, later inspiring the song "Nantucket Sleighride."
February 22, 1819 Composer Joseph Philbrick Webster, who wrote the song "Lorena," is born in Manchester, New Hampshire.
December 24, 1818 A church choir in Austria introduces a new Christmas song for their Midnight Mass: "Stille Nacht!" better known as "Silent Night."
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February 20, 1816 Gioachino Rossini's opera "The Barber of Seville" premiers in Rome with disastrous results. A guitar string snaps, a cat walks on stage and there are protestations by rival composer Giovanni Paisiello. The audience hiss and jeer throughout the performance.
May 8, 1810 Sir Walter Scott publishes the poem "The Lady of the Lake," which later provides the title for the song "Hail to the Chief."
April 7, 1805 Beethoven's 3rd Symphony (Eroica) is premiered in Vienna's Theater-an-der-Wien. Innovative in length and size of orchestra, many criticize the first movement for its dissonant chords.
April 2, 1805 Hans Christian Andersen is born in Odense, Denmark. The author is later the subject of a song by Danny Kaye.
December 11, 1803 Composer Louis-Hector Berlioz is born in Isere, France. Known for his Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts.
April 29, 1798 Joseph Haydn's oratorio The Creation is first performed in Vienna in a concert for the city's aristocrats. The oratorio depicts and celebrates the creation of the world as described in the Book of Genesis and Paradise Lost.
March 29, 1795 Beethoven makes his Vienna public debut at the city's Burgtheater when he is the soloist at the premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 2. Prior to that, the German composer had performed only in the private salons of the Viennese nobility.
June 16, 1792 Francis Johnson, an African American musician and composer during the Antebellum era, is born in Martinique in the West Indies.
March 24, 1786 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completes his Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491. Beethoven hears the work in rehearsal and remarks in admiration to a colleague that "[we] shall never be able to do anything like that."
May 16, 1767 A piano is played for the first time in public in the UK. In a playbill for a performance of The Beggar's Opera at Covent Garden Theatre, London, it is announced a Miss Brickler sings "accompanied by Mr. Dibdin on a new instrument called piano-forte."
April 27, 1749 George Frederick Handel's "Music For The Royal Fireworks" debuts in London's Green Park.
March 23, 1743 George Frideric Handel's "Messiah" has its London premiere at the Covent Garden Theatre. It is not well received as the press feels that the work's subject matter is too exalted to be performed in a theatre, particularly by secular singer-actresses such as Susanna Cibber and Kitty Clive.
April 11, 1727 Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion is performed for the first time in Leipzig's St. Thomas Church.
March 24, 1721 Johann Sebastian Bach dedicates his Brandenburg Concertos to Christian Ludwig, the margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Bach wrote the pieces for the margrave to gain extra support for his work.
February 24, 1711 George Frideric Handel's Rinaldo, the first Italian language opera written specifically for the London stage, premieres at the Queen's Theatre in London's Haymarket.
February 27, 1675 The oldest surviving English opera, Matthew Locke's Psyche, is first performed at Dorset Garden Theatre, London by the Duke's Company.
April 23, 1564 William Shakespeare, whose works inspire centuries of song lyrics, is born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. (The date is a best estimate; it's known that he was baptized on April 26.)
February 2, 1525 Italian Renaissance composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina is born in the town of Palestrina near Rome.
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