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Jean-Philippe Rameau
…and Education Jean-Philippe Rameau was born into a musical family on September 25, 1683, in Dijon, France. His father, Jean Rameau, was an organist, and his mother, Claudine Demartinécourt, came…
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Richard Strauss
Early Life and Education Richard Georg Strauss was born on June 11, 1864, in Munich, Germany, into a musical family. His father, Franz Strauss, was a renowned horn player in…
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Hector Berlioz
…flute and guitar since there was no piano in the family home. Despite his love for music, his father pressured him to study medicine. At the age of nineteen, Berlioz…
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Jacques Offenbach
…and Arthur Sullivan. Early Life and Musical Beginnings Born on June 20, 1819, in Cologne, Prussia, Jacques Offenbach, originally named Jacob Offenbach, hailed from a deeply musical family. His father,…
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Georges Bizet
Born into a family of musicians, Georges Bizet was a French composer whose music has become synonymous with the romantic era. Despite a life cut short by an early death,…
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Felix Mendelssohn
…Mendelssohn was the son of Abraham and Lea Mendelssohn. He hailed from a notable Jewish family, with his grandfather being the esteemed philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. However, the family converted to…
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Frédéric Chopin
…Warsaw (now Poland). His father, Nicholas, was a French émigré who was working as a bookkeeper, and his mother, Justyna, was a relative of the Skarbeks, a prominent Polish family….
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Sergei Rachmaninoff
…loss of the family fortune. Following this, his father abandoned the family, leaving them in a precarious financial state. However, Rachmaninoff’s talent for music was recognized early in his life….
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Johann Pachelbel
…and Education Johann Pachelbel was born in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1653 into a middle-class family. His father, Johann (Hans) Pachelbel, was a wine dealer, and his mother was Anna Maria…
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Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
…Rimsky-Korsakov and Sofya Vasilievna Rimskaya-Korsakova, belonged to the Russian nobility. The Rimsky-Korsakov family had a long-standing tradition of military and naval service, and unsurprisingly, the young Nikolai was to follow…
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Aaron Copland
…and Education Born into a family of Lithuanian Jewish descent, Copland was the youngest of five children. Although his father did not harbor any musical interests, his mother played the…
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Gustav Mahler
…7, 1860, in Kaliště, a small village in Bohemia (part of the present-day Czech Republic), Gustav Mahler was part of a German-speaking Jewish family in the Austrian Empire. The second…
