Offenbach: Orphée aux enfers

Orphée aux enfers is an opéra bouffe or opéra féerie in its revised version. Its score was composed by Jacques Offenbach to a French text written by Ludovic Halévy and later revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux.

The work, first performed in 1858, is said to be the first classical full-length operetta. Offenbach's earlier operettas were small-scale one-act works since the law in France did not allow full-length works of certain genres. Orpheus was not only longer, but more musically adventurous than Offenbach's earlier pieces.

This also marked the first time that Offenbach used Greek mythology as a background for one of his pieces. The operetta is an irreverent parody and scathing satire on Gluck and his Orfeo ed Euridice and culminates in the risqué Galop infernal ("Infernal Galop") that shocked some in the audience at the premiere. Other targets of satire, as would become typical in Offenbach's burlesques, are the stilted performances of classical drama at the Comédie-Française and the scandals in society and politics of the Second French Empire.

The "Infernal Galop" from Act 2, Scene 2, is famous outside classical circles as the music for the "can-can" (to the extent that the tune is widely, but erroneously, called "can-can"). Saint-Saëns borrowed the Galop, slowed it to a crawl, and arranged it for the strings to represent the tortoise in The Carnival of the Animals.

Wagner: Tannhäuser

Tannhäuser, full title Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg, is an 1845 opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on two German legends; Tannhäuser, the legendary medieval German Minnesänger and poet, and the tale of the Wartburg Song Contest. The story centres on the struggle between sacred and profane love, and redemption through love, a theme running through much of Wagner's mature work.

Wagner made a number of revisions of the opera throughout his life and was still unsatisfied with its format when he died. The most significant revision was made for the opera's premiere in Paris in 1861; the production there was, however, a failure, partly for political reasons.

Velasco: La púrpura de la rosa

La púrpura de la rosa is an opera in one act, composed by Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco to a Spanish libretto by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, the last great writer of the Spanish Golden Age.

It is the first known opera to be composed and performed in the Americas and is Torrejón y Velasco's only surviving opera. La púrpura de la rosa was first performed in Lima in 1701 to celebrate the 18th birthday of Philip V and the first anniversary of his succession to the Spanish throne. The libretto, in polymetric verse and filled with lush mythological imagery, is a re-telling of the Ovidian tale of the loves of Venus and Adonis. Torrejón y Velasco was not the first to use Calderón's libretto. Juan Hidalgo de Polanco, composer and master of music at the court of Madrid, had previously used the text for a theatrical pageant in honour of the marriage of Louis XIV and Maria Teresa of Spain in 1660. With its erotic poetry and music, the Hidalgo version was very popular at the Spanish court and had several revivals.

Stephen Paulus

Stephen Paulus (August 24, 1949 – October 19, 2014) was a Grammy winning American composer, best known for his operas and choral music.

His best-known piece is his 1982 opera The Postman Always Rings Twice, one of several operas he composed for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, which prompted The New York Times to call him "a young man on the road to big things".

His style is essentially tonal, and melodic and romantic by nature. He received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim Foundation and won the prestigious Kennedy Center Friedheim Prize. He was commissioned by such notable organizations as the Minnesota Opera, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus, the American Composers Orchestra, the Dale Warland Singers, the Harvard Glee Club and the New York Choral Society.

Paulus was a passionate advocate for the works and careers of his colleagues. He co-founded the American Composers Forum in 1973, the largest composer service organization in the U.S., and served as the Symphony and Concert Representative on the ASCAP Board of Directors from 1990 until his death (from complications following a stroke in July 2013) in 2014.

Étienne Méhul

Étienne Nicolas Méhul (22 June 1763 – 18 October 1817) was a French composer, "the most important opera composer in France during the Revolution". He was also the first composer to be called a "Romantic".

Méhul's most important contribution to music was his operas. He led the generation of composers who emerged in France in the 1790s, which included his friend and rival Luigi Cherubini and his outright enemy Jean-François Le Sueur. Méhul followed the example of the operas which Christoph Willibald Gluck had written for Paris in the 1770s and applied Gluck's "reforms" to opéra comique (a genre which mixed music with spoken dialogue and was not necessarily at all "comic" in mood). But he pushed music in a more Romantic direction, showing an increased use of dissonance and an interest in psychological states such as anger and jealousy, thus foreshadowing later Romantic composers such as Weber and Berlioz. Indeed, Méhul was the very first composer to be styled a Romantic; a critic used the term in La chronique de Paris on 1 April 1793 when reviewing Méhul's Le jeune sage et le vieux fou.

Besides operas, Méhul composed a number of songs for the festivals of the Republic (often commissioned by Emperor Napoleon), cantatas, and five symphonies in the years 1797 and 1808 to 1810.

Heinrich Schütz

Heinrich Schütz (18 October 1585 – 6 November 1672) was a German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach and often considered to be one of the most important composers of the 17th century. He wrote what is traditionally considered to be the first German opera, Dafne, performed at Torgau in 1627, the music of which has since been lost.

He is commemorated as a musician in the Calendar of Saints of some North American Lutheran churches on 28 July with J.S. Bach and George Frideric Handel.

Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric François Chopin (1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era who wrote primarily for the solo piano. He gained and has maintained renown worldwide as a leading musician of his era, whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation." Chopin was born in what was then the Duchy of Warsaw and grew up in Warsaw, which in 1815 became part of Congress Poland. A child prodigy, he completed his musical education and composed his earlier works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at the age of 20, less than a month before the outbreak of the November 1830 Uprising.

All of Chopin's compositions include the piano. Most are for solo piano, though he also wrote two piano concertos, a few chamber pieces, and some songs to Polish lyrics. His keyboard style is highly individual and often technically demanding; his own performances were noted for their nuance and sensitivity. Chopin invented the concept of the instrumental ballade. His major piano works also include mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, études, impromptus, scherzos, preludes and sonatas, some published only after his death. Influences on his composition style include Polish folk music, the classical tradition of J. S. Bach, Mozart and Schubert, as well as the Paris salons where he was a frequent guest. His innovations in style, musical form, and harmony, and his association of music with nationalism were influential throughout and after the late Romantic period.

Chopin's music, his status as one of music's earliest superstars, his association (if only indirect) with political insurrection, his love life and his early death have made him a leading symbol of the Romantic era in the public consciousness. His works remain popular, and he has been the subject of numerous films and biographies of varying degrees of historical accuracy.

Through most of his life, Chopin suffered from poor health. He died in Paris in 1849, at the age of 39, probably of tuberculosis.

Copland: Billy the Kid

Billy the Kid is a 1938 ballet written by the American composer Aaron Copland on commission from Lincoln Kirstein. It was choreographed by Eugene Loring for Ballet Caravan. Along with Rodeo and Appalachian Spring, it is one of Copland's most popular and widely performed pieces. The ballet is most famous for its incorporation of several cowboy tunes and American folk songs and, although built around the figure and the exploits of Billy the Kid, is not so much a biography of a notorious but peculiarly appealing desperado as it is a perception of the pioneer West, in which a figure such as Billy played a vivid role.

It was premiered on 16 October 1938 in Chicago by the Ballet Caravan Company, with pianists Arthur Gold and Walter Hendl performing a two-piano version of the score. The first performance of Billy the Kid in New York City occurred on 24 May 1939, with an orchestra conducted by Fritz Kitzinger.

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (April or May 1562 – 16 October 1621) was a Dutch composer, organist, and pedagogue whose work straddled the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras. He was among the first major keyboard composers of Europe, and his work as a teacher helped establish the north German organ tradition.

Sweelinck represents the highest development of the Dutch keyboard school and indeed represented a pinnacle in keyboard contrapuntal complexity and refinement before J.S. Bach. However, he was a skilled composer for voices as well and composed more than 250 vocal works (chansons, madrigals, motets and Psalms).

Some of Sweelinck's innovations were of profound musical importance, including the fugue—he was the first to write an organ fugue which began simply, with one subject, successively adding texture and complexity until a final climax and resolution, an idea which was perfected at the end of the Baroque era by Bach.

Sweelinck was a master improviser, and acquired the informal title of the "Orpheus of Amsterdam". More than 70 of his keyboard works have survived, and many of them may be similar to the improvisations that residents of Amsterdam around 1600 were likely to have heard. In the course of his life, Sweelinck was involved with the musical liturgies of three distinctly different traditions: Catholic, the Calvinist, and Lutheran—all of which are reflected in his work. Even his vocal music, which is more conservative than his keyboard writing, shows a striking rhythmic complexity and an unusual richness of contrapuntal devices.

Sweelinck's influence spread as far as Sweden and England, carried to the former by Andreas Düben and to the latter by English composers such as Peter Philips, who probably met Sweelinck in 1593. Sweelinck, and Dutch composers in general, had evident links to the English school of composition. Sweelinck's music appears in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, which otherwise only contains the work of English composers. He wrote variations on John Dowland's famous Lachrimae Pavane. John Bull, who was probably a personal friend, wrote a set of variations on a theme by Sweelinck after the death of the Dutch composer.

Vittorio Gui

Vittorio Gui (14 September 1885 – 16 October 1975) was an Italian conductor, composer, musicologist and critic.

Gui was born in Rome in 1885. He graduated in humanities from the University of Rome and also studied composition at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; his principal composition teachers were the noted composers Giacomo Setaccioli and Stanislao Falchi. His style was "impressionistic with characteristic Italian traits".

Gui's opera David premiered in Rome in 1907; later that year, he made his professional conducting debut at the Teatro Adriano in Rome, leading Ponchielli's La Gioconda as a substitute. This led to invitations to conduct in Naples and Turin (he met Claude Debussy in Turin in 1911). In 1923, Arturo Toscanini invited him to conduct Salome by Richard Strauss as the season opener at La Scala in Milan. He conducted the Teatro Regio in Turin from 1925 to 1927; in his last year in Turin, he premiered his fairy-tale opera Fata Malerba there. (Other notable compositions included the cantata Cantico dei cantici ("Song of Songs") from 1921, and the symphonic poem Giulietta e Romeo (with voices, from 1902).)

In 1928, Gui founded and conducted the Orchestra Stabile; he developed the organization of the orchestra into the 1933 Maggio Musicale Fiorentino or "Florence May Music Festival", which he led until 1943. At the festival, he conducted unusual operas such as Verdi's Luisa Miller, Spontini's La vestale, Cherubini's Médée and Gluck's Armide.

Gui was particularly known for his conducting of the works of Brahms, of which he was said to be a leading conductor in Italy. In 1947, the 50th anniversary of Brahms's death, Gui conducted a complete cycle of Brahms's orchestral and choral works in that country.[1] He was also known for conducting contemporary music and first performances; among works he premiered was Dallapiccola's first major composition, his Partita, in 1933.

Vittorio Gui was also a prolific author and critic. Notable writings include his 1924 study of Boito's opera Nerone, an article on "Mozart in Italy" from 1955, and his collected essays, Battute d'aspetto (1946).

Fumio Hayasaka

Fumio Hayasaka, 早坂 文雄, (August 19, 1914 – October 15, 1955) was a Japanese composer of classical music and film scores.

Hayasaka won a number of prizes for his early concert works; in 1935, his piece Futatsu no sanka e no zensōkyoku won first prize in a radio competition, and another concert piece, Kodai no bukyoku, won the 1938 Weingartner Prize. Other early works include a Nocturne (1936) for piano and the orchestral Ancient Dance (1938). In 1939, Hayasaka moved to Tokyo to begin a career as a film composer. By early 1940, Hayasaka was seen as "a major composer for Japanese Cinema".

After the war, Hayasaka continued working on films, quickly winning recognition for his abilities. In 1946, he received the film music award for An Enemy of the People (Minshū no Teki, 1946) at the first annual Mainichi Film Awards. The year after, 1947, Hayasaka received the Mainichi film music award for Teinosuke Kinugasa's Actress (Joyu).

In the late 1940s, Hayasaka invited his friend Akira Ifukube to write film music with him at Toho Studios. Ifukube's first film score for Toho was for Senkichi Taniguchi's Snow Trail (Ginrei no hate) in 1947. Toshirō Mifune, the famous actor who later starred in most of Kurosawa’s films, first met Kurosawa at a pre-screening of this movie.

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (14 August 1892 – 15 October 1988) was an English composer, music critic, pianist and writer. He was one of the 20th century's most prolific piano composers.

As a composer and pianist, Sorabji was largely self-taught, and he distanced himself from the main currents of contemporary musical life early in his career. He developed a highly idiosyncratic musical language, with roots in composers as diverse as Busoni, Debussy and Szymanowski, and he dismissed large portions of the established and contemporary repertoire.

A reluctant performer, Sorabji played a few of his works in public between 1920 and 1936, thereafter "banning" performances of his music until 1976. Since very few of his compositions were published during those years, he remained in public view mainly by writing essays and music criticism, at the centre of which are his books Around Music and Mi contra fa: The Immoralisings of a Machiavellian Musician. He had a tendency to seclusion, and in the 1950s he moved from London to the village of Corfe Castle, Dorset, where he spent most of the rest of his life quietly.

Sorabji's music is characterised by the frequent use of polyrhythms, complex juxtaposition of tonal and atonal elements, and copious ornamentation. Many of his works contain sections employing strongly contrasting approaches to musical architecture; some of them use baroque forms, while others are athematic. His musical output consists of over 100 compositions, ranging from aphoristic pieces to works spanning several hours. Most are for piano solo or feature an important piano part, but he also composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles, organ and other instruments. Partly because of this, Sorabji has been described as a descendant of a tradition of composer-pianists such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt and Charles-Valentin Alkan.

Debussy: La mer

La mer, trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre, or simply La mer, L. 109, is an orchestral composition by French composer Claude Debussy.

Composed between 1903 and 1905, the piece was initially not well received, but soon became one of Debussy's most admired and frequently performed orchestral works.

The work was started in 1903 in France and completed in 1905 at Grand Hotel Eastbourne (Eastbourne was also where Frank Bridge was to complete his suite The Sea in 1911) on the English Channel coast. The premiere was given on 15 October 1905 in Paris, by the Orchestre Lamoureux under the direction of Camille Chevillard. Debussy arranged the piece for piano for four hands in 1905 and in 1909 his publisher Durand presented a second edition of La mer with the composer's revisions.

Lully: Le Bourgeois gentilhomme

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme is a five-act comédie-ballet written by Molière, first presented on 14 October 1670 before the court of Louis XIV at the Château of Chambord by Molière's troupe of actors. Subsequent public performances were given at the theatre of the Palais-Royal beginning on 23 November 1670. The music was composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully, the choreography was by Pierre Beauchamp, the sets were by Carlo Vigarani and the costumes were done by Laurent d’Arvieux.

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme satirizes attempts at social climbing and the bourgeois personality, poking fun both at the vulgar, pretentious middle-class and the vain, snobbish aristocracy. The title is meant as an oxymoron: in Molière's France, a "gentleman" was by definition nobly born, and thus there could be no such thing as a bourgeois gentleman. The play is in prose (except for the ballet openings which are in verse)./

Antonio Cesti

Pietro Marc'Antonio Cesti (baptism 5 August 1623 – 14 October 1669), known today primarily as an Italian composer of the Baroque era, was also a singer (tenor), and organist. He was "the most celebrated Italian musician of his generation".

Cesti is known principally as a composer of operas. The most celebrated of these were La Dori (Venice, 1663), Il pomo d'oro (Vienna, 1668) and Orontea (1656). Il pomo d'oro (The Golden Apple) was written for the wedding in Vienna of Emperor Leopold I in 1666, and first performed in 1668, in a famously lavish production. It was far more elaborate than contemporary Venetian operas, including a large orchestra, numerous choruses, and various mechanical devices used to stage things like gods descending from heaven (deus ex machina), naval battles, and storms.

Orontea was revived seventeen times in the next thirty years, making it one of the most frequently performed operas on the continent in the mid-17th century. Even Samuel Pepys owned a copy of the score. It includes a well-known soprano aria "Intorno all'idol mio" (English: "Around my idol").

Cesti was also a composer of chamber cantatas, and his operas are notable for the pure and delicate style of their airs, more suited to the chamber than to the stage. He wrote in the bel canto style of the 17th century, and his compositions were heavily influenced by his career as a professional singer. Cesti's musical writing owes much to the emerging tonality of the time.

La Monte Young

La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works are cited as notable examples of post-war experimental and contemporary music and were tied to New York's downtown music and Fluxus art scenes.

Initially inspired by sources such as Indian classical music, serialism and jazz, Young is perhaps best known for his pioneering work in Western drone music (originally referred to as "dream music"), prominently explored in the 1960s with the experimental music collective the Theatre of Eternal Music. He has engaged in musical and multimedia collaborations with a wide range of artists, including Tony Conrad, Pandit Pran Nath, John Cale, Terry Riley and visual artist Marian Zazeela, with whom he developed the Dream House sound and light installation.

Young's work has called into question the nature and definition of music. Despite having released very little recorded material throughout his career—much of it currently out of print — Vulture described him as the most influential living composer today. The Observer wrote that his work has had "an utterly profound effect on the last half-century of music." His evolving composition The Well-Tuned Piano, first conceived in 1964, has been characterized as "one of the great achievements of 20th-century music" by The Guardian.

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the US to receive worldwide acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history."

His fame derived from his long tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, from his conducting of concerts with most of the world's leading orchestras, and from his music for West Side Story, Peter Pan, Candide, Wonderful Town, On the Town, On the Waterfront, his Mass, and a range of other compositions, including three symphonies and many shorter chamber and solo works.

Bernstein was the first conductor to give a series of television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954 and continuing until his death. He was a skilled pianist, often conducting piano concertos from the keyboard.

As a composer, he wrote in many styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are regularly performed around the world, although none has matched the tremendously popular and critical success of West Side Story.

Henri Berger

Henri Berger (August 4, 1844 – October 14, 1929) was a Prussian Kapellmeister composer and royal bandmaster of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi from 1872 to his death.

Berger was born 'Heinrich August Wilhelm Berger in Prussia and became a member of Germany's imperial army band. He worked under the composer and royal bandmaster of Germany, Johann Strauss, Jr. Originally, Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany loaned Berger from his Potsdam station to King Kamehameha V to conduct the king's band. He arrived in Honolulu in June 1872, fresh from service in the Franco-Prussian War. In 1877, King Kalākaua appointed Berger to full leadership of the Royal Hawaiian Band. In 1879, he became a naturalized citizen of the Kingdom of Hawaii.

Rebecca Clarke

Rebecca Clarke (27 August 1886 – 13 October 1979) was an English classical composer and violist best known for her chamber music featuring the viola. She was born in Harrow and studied at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music in London, later becoming one of the first female professional orchestral players. Stranded in the United States at the outbreak of World War II, she settled permanently in New York City and married composer and pianist James Friskin in 1944. Clarke died at her home in New York at the age of 93.

Although Clarke wrote little, due in part to her ideas about the role of a female composer, her work was recognised for its compositional skill. Most of her works have yet to be published (or have only recently been published) and were largely forgotten after she stopped composing. Scholarship and interest in her compositions revived in 1976. The Rebecca Clarke Society was established in 2000 to promote the study and performance of her music.

Webber - Jesus Christ Superstar

Jesus Christ Superstar is a 1970 rock opera with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice. The musical started as a rock opera concept album before its Broadway debut on October 12, 1971. The musical is sung-through, with no spoken dialogue. The story is loosely based on the Gospels' accounts of the last week of Jesus's life, beginning with the preparation for the arrival of Jesus and his disciples in Jerusalem and ending with the crucifixion. It depicts political and interpersonal struggles between Judas Iscariot and Jesus that are not present in the Bible.

Luciano Pavarotti

Luciano Pavarotti, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (12 October 1935 – 6 September 2007) was an Italian operatic tenor who also crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most commercially successful tenors of all time. He made numerous recordings of complete operas and individual arias, gaining worldwide fame for the quality of his tone, and eventually established himself as one of the finest tenors of the 20th century.

As one of the Three Tenors, Pavarotti became well known for his televised concerts and media appearances. From the beginning of his professional career as a tenor in 1961 in Italy to his final performance of "Nessun dorma" at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Pavarotti was at his best in bel canto operas, pre-Aida Verdi roles, and Puccini works such as La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. Pavarotti was also noted for his charity work on behalf of refugees and the Red Cross, amongst others. He died from pancreatic cancer on 6 September 2007.

Willy Hess

Willy Hess (12 October 1906 – 9 May 1997) was a Swiss musicologist, composer, and famous Beethoven scholar. He achieved fame after compiling and publishing a catalogue of works of Beethoven that were not listed in the "complete" edition. He orchestrated the Piano Concerto No. 0 (Beethoven), in E-flat from a piano score.

He was born in Winterthur, where he attended primary and high school, and later studied at the Zurich Conservatory (merged in 1999 into the School of Music, Drama, and Dance (HMT), itself merged in 2007 into the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)) and at the University. He also taught piano, counterpoint, composition, and wrote about music. He wrote "3 ländler op.28" for 4 hand piano duet.

He was a bassoonist with the Winterthur Stadtorchester from 1942 to 1971.

Among his compositions is the Sonata for Viola & Bassoon, the only classical-style chamber work written for that combination of instruments.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams, OM (12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over nearly fifty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century.

Vaughan Williams is among the best-known British symphonists, noted for his very wide range of moods, from stormy and impassioned to tranquil, from mysterious to exuberant. Among the most familiar of his other concert works are Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) and The Lark Ascending (1914). His vocal works include hymns, folk-song arrangements and large-scale choral pieces. He wrote eight works for stage performance between 1919 and 1951. Although none of his operas became popular repertoire pieces, his ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing (1930) was successful and has been frequently staged.

Juilliard School

The Juilliard School informally referred to as Juilliard and located in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, is a performing arts conservatory established in 1905. The school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the world's leading music and dance schools, with some of the most prestigious arts programs. In 2016, QS Quacquarelli Symonds ranked it as the world's best institution for Performing Arts in their inaugural global ranking of the discipline.

In 1905, the Institute of Musical Art, Juilliard's predecessor institution, was founded on the premise that the United States did not have a premier music school and too many students were going to Europe to study music.[5] The Institute opened in the former Lenox Mansion, Fifth Avenue and 12th Street, on October 11. It moved in 1910 to 120 Claremont Avenue in the Morningside Heights neighbourhood of Manhattan, onto a property purchased from Bloomingdale Insane Asylum.[6] In 1920, the Juilliard Foundation was created, named after textile merchant Augustus D. Juilliard, who bequeathed a substantial amount of money for the advancement of music in the United States. In 1924, the foundation purchased the Vanderbilt family guesthouse at 49 E. 52nd Street, and established the Juilliard Graduate School.[7] In 1926, the Juilliard School of Music was created through a merger of the Institute of Musical Art and the Juilliard Graduate School. The two schools shared a common Board of Directors and President (Columbia University professor John Erskine) but retained their distinct identities. The conductor and music-educator Frank Damrosch continued as the Institute's dean, and the Australian pianist and composer Ernest Hutcheson was appointed dean of the Graduate School. In 1937, Hutcheson succeeded Erskine as president of the two institutions, a job he held until 1945. In 1946, the Institute of Musical Art and the Juilliard Graduate School completely merged to form a single institution. The president of the school at that time was William Schuman, the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Schuman established the Juilliard String Quartet in 1946 and the Dance Division in 1951, under the direction of Martha Hill.

Simon Sechter

Simon Sechter (11 October 1788 – 10 September 1867) was an Austrian music theorist, teacher, organist, conductor and composer. He may have been the most prolific composer who ever lived, outdoing even Georg Philipp Telemann in the quantity of his output.

Carl Christian Müller (1831–1914) compiled and adapted Sechter's Die richtige Folge der Grundharmonien as The Correct Order of Fundamental Harmonies: A Treatise on Fundamental Basses, and their Inversions and Substitutes (Wm. A. Pond, 1871; G. Schirmer, 1898).

Sechter had strict teaching methods. In the three-volume treatise on the principles of composition, Die Grundsätze der musikalischen Komposition, Sechter wrote a seminal work that influenced many later theorists. Sechter's ideas are derived from Jean-Philippe Rameau's theories of the fundamental bass, always diatonic even when the surface is highly chromatic; music theory historians strongly associate Sechter with the Viennese conception of fundamental bass theory. Sechter was an advocate of just intonation over well-tempered tuning.

Sechter was also a composer, and in that capacity, he is mostly remembered for writing about 5,000 fugues (he tried to write at least one fugue every day), but he also wrote masses and oratorios. In addition, h​e wrote five operas Das Testament des Magiers (1842), Ezzeline, die unglückliche Gegangene aus Deli-Katesse (1843), Ali Hitsch-Hatsch (1844), Melusine (1851) and Des Müllers Ring (?). In 1823–24, he was one of the 51 composers who composed a variation on a waltz by Anton Diabelli for Vaterländischer Künstlerverein.

Anton Bruckner

Josef Anton Bruckner (4 September 1824 – 11 October 1896) was an Austrian composer best known for his symphonies, masses, and motets.

The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, strongly polyphonic character, and considerable length. Bruckner's compositions helped to define contemporary musical radicalism, owing to their dissonances, unprepared modulations, and roving harmonies.

Unlike other musical radicals such as Richard Wagner and Hugo Wolf who fit the enfant terrible mould, Bruckner showed extreme humility before other musicians, Wagner in particular. This apparent dichotomy between Bruckner the man and Bruckner the composer hampers efforts to describe his life in a way that gives a straightforward context for his music. Hans von Bülow described him as "half genius, half simpleton".

His works, the symphonies, in particular, had detractors, most notably the influential Austrian critic Eduard Hanslick, and other supporters of Johannes Brahms who pointed to their large size and use of repetition, as well as to Bruckner's propensity for revising many of his works, often with the assistance of colleagues, and his apparent indecision about which versions he preferred. On the other hand, Bruckner was greatly admired by subsequent composers including his friend Gustav Mahler.

Paul Creston

Paul Creston, born Giuseppe Guttoveggio (October 10, 1906 – August 24, 1985) was an Italian American composer of classical music.

Creston was one of the most performed American composers of the 1940s and 1950s. Several of his works have become staples of the wind band repertoire. Zanoni, Prelude and Dance and the Celebration Overture have been and still are on several state lists for contests across the USA.

Creston was also a notable teacher, with the composers Irwin Swack, John Corigliano, Elliott Schwartz, Frank Felice and Charles Roland Berry, accordionist/composer William Schimmel and the jazz musicians Rusty Dedrick and Charlie Queener among his pupils. He wrote the theoretical books Principles of Rhythm (1964) and Rational Metric Notation (1979).

In 2008 Marco Ciccone had done a version for saxophone and orchestra of the Sonata op.19 (© 2008 by Templeton Publishing, a div. of Shawnee Press, Inc.).

Sebastian Knüpfer

Sebastian Knüpfer (6 September 1633 – 10 October 1676) was a German composer, conductor and educator. He was the Thomaskantor, cantor of the Thomanerchor in Leipzig and director of the towns' church music, from 1657 to 1676.

Knüpfer’s output consisted almost entirely of sacred works to Latin or German texts. Many are lost, and of those that survive few have been published in modern editions. Most are in the traditional style and form of the 17th-century vocal concerto, incorporating many of the characteristics of similar works by Heinrich Schütz - though with no traces of the latter's uniquely personal style. Large choral forms are enhanced by an orchestra of substantial size (most commonly two violins, three violas, bassoon with continuo, clarinos, trombone and timpani), which supports the choral parts as well as interjecting all manner of colourful concerted effects.

Knüpfer’s music is primarily serious and profoundly devout, though he did publish a collection of the secular madrigals and canzonettas (1663) that he wrote for the university student with whom he worked in the collegium musicum at Leipzig. His contrapuntal mastery, the powerful drama of his thematic ideas, his brilliant instrumentation and the variety of his vocal scoring all contribute to the impression of him as a worthy predecessor of Bach, many of whose Leipzig church cantatas belong to a tradition first developed by Knüpfer.

Webber: The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera is a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe.

Lloyd Webber and Stilgoe also wrote the musical's book together. Based on the French novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux, its central plot revolves around a beautiful soprano, Christine Daaé, who becomes the obsession of a mysterious, disfigured musical genius living in the subterranean labyrinth beneath the Opera Garnier.

The musical opened on the 9th of October in London's West End in 1986, and on Broadway in 1988. It won the 1986 Olivier Award and the 1988 Tony Award for Best Musical, and Michael Crawford (in the title role) won the Olivier and Tony Awards for Best Actor in a Musical. It is the longest running show in Broadway history by a wide margin, and celebrated its 10,000th Broadway performance on 11 February 2012, the first production ever to do so. It is thesecond longest-running West End musical, after Les Misérables, and the third longest-running West End show overall, after The Mousetrap.

Camille Saint-Saëns

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (9 October 1835 – 16 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic era.

His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Second Piano Concerto (1868), Danse macabre (1874), the opera Samson and Delilah (1877), the Third ("Organ") Symphony (1886) and The Carnival of the Animals (1886).

Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy, making his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire. After leaving the post twenty years later, he was a successful freelance pianist and composer, in demand in Europe and the Americas.

Saint-Saëns held only one teaching post, at the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse in Paris, and remained there for less than five years. It was nevertheless important in the development of French music: his students included Gabriel Fauré, among whose own later pupils was Maurice Ravel. Both of them were strongly influenced by Saint-Saëns, whom they revered as a genius.

Jānis Mediņš

Jānis Mediņš (October 9, 1890 — March 4, 1966) was a Latvian composer.

He was born in Riga. He was a vital force in musical life during the short-lived first independent Latvian Republic (1918—40). He almost single-handedly established in his country both the balletic genre – with Mīlas uzvara (‘Love's Victory’, 1934) – and the operatic with Uguns un nakts (‘Fire and Night’, 1913—19) and Dievi un cilvēki (‘Gods and Men’, 1921). Both the latter works deal with struggle against despotism, and it was as a result of multiple invasions of his country that Mediņš left Latvia 1944, eventually settling for good in Sweden.

Toru Takemitsu

Toru Takemitsu, 武満 徹, (October 8, 1930 – February 20, 1996) was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu possessed consummate skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre. He is famed for combining elements of oriental and occident philosophy to create a sound uniquely his own, and for fusing opposites together such as sound with silence and tradition with innovation.

He composed several hundred independent works of music, scored more than ninety films and published twenty books. He was also a founding member of the Jikken Kobo (experimental workshop) in Japan, a group of avant-garde artists who distanced themselves from academia and whose collaborative work is often regarded among the most influential of the 20th century.

His 1957 Requiem for string orchestra attracted international attention, led to several commissions from across the world and established his reputation as one of the leading 20th-century Japanese composers. He was the recipient of numerous awards and honours and the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award is named after him.

Jake Heggie: Dead Man Walking

Dead Man Walking is the first opera by Jake Heggie, with a libretto by Terrence McNally. Based on the book of the same name by Sister Helen Prejean, C.S.J., the work premiered on October 7, 2000, at the War Memorial Opera House, produced by the San Francisco Opera.

The 2000 premiere production was commissioned by then-General Director Lotfi Mansouri and the stage director was Joe Mantello. Sets, costumes and lighting were designed by Michael Yeargen, Sam Fleming, and Jennifer Tipton, respectively. The Australian premiere in 2003 took at the State Opera of South Australia, with Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Joseph De Rocher. The production was nominated for six Helpmann Awards, winning two: "Best Set Design" and "Best Male in an Operatic Performance". The opera has since been performed numerous times across the United States and in other countries.

William Billings

William Billings (October 7, 1746 – September 26, 1800) is regarded as the first American choral composer.

Virtually all of Billings' music was written for four-part chorus, singing a cappella. His many hymns and anthems were published mostly in book-length collections, as The New-England Psalm-Singer (1770), The Singing Master's Assistant (1778), Music in Miniature (1779) and others. Sometimes Billings would revise and improve a song, including the new version in his next volume.

Billings' music can be at times forceful and stirring, as in his patriotic song "Chester"; ecstatic, as in his hymn "Africa"; or elaborate and celebratory, as in his "Easter Anthem." "Jargon," from Singing Master's Assistant, shows his wit. Written as an answer to a criticism of his use of harmony, "Jargon" contains a tongue-in-cheek text, and jarring dissonances that sound more like those of the 20th century than of the 18th. He also wrote several Christmas carols, including "Judea" in 1778 and "Shiloh" in 1781.

Billings died in poverty in Boston on September 26, 1800, leaving behind a widow and six children. His funeral was announced in the Columbian Centinel: "Died- Mr William Billings, the celebrated music composer. His funeral will be tomorrow at 4 o'clock, PM from the house of Mrs Amos Penniman, in Chamber-street, West-Boston."

Karol Szymanowski

Karol Maciej Szymanowski (3 October 1882 – 29 March 1937) was a Polish composer and pianist, the most celebrated Polish composer of the early 20th century. He is considered a member of the late 19th-/early 20th-century modernist movement Young Poland and widely viewed as one of the greatest Polish composers.

The early works show the influence of the late Romantic German school as well as the early works of Alexander Scriabin, as exemplified by his Étude Op. 4 No. 3 and his first two symphonies. Later, he developed an impressionistic and partially atonal style, represented by such works as the Third Symphony and his Violin Concerto No. 1. His third period was influenced by the folk music of the Polish Górale people, including the ballet Harnasie, the Fourth Symphony, and his sets of Mazurkas for piano. King Roger, composed between 1918-1924, remains the most popular opera by Szymanowski. His other significant works include opera Hagith, Symphony No. 2, The Love Songs of Hafiz and Stabat Mater.

He was awarded the highest national honours, including the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland and other distinctions, both Polish and foreign.

Peri: Euridice

Euridice is an opera by Jacopo Peri, with additional music by Giulio Caccini.

It is the earliest surviving opera, Peri's earlier Dafne being lost. (Caccini wrote his own "Euridice" even as he supplied music to Peri's opera, published this version before Peri's was performed, in 1600, and got it staged two years later.) The libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini is based on books X and XI of Ovid's Metamorphoses[1] which recount the story of the legendary musician Orpheus and his wife Euridice.

The opera was first performed in Florence on 6 October 1600 at the Palazzo Pitti with Peri himself singing the role of Orfeo.

Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice

Orfeo ed Euridice is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck based on the myth of Orpheus, set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi.

It belongs to the genre of the azione teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing. The piece was first performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 5 October 1762 in the presence of Empress Maria Theresa. Orfeo ed Euridice is the first of Gluck's "reform" operas, in which he attempted to replace the abstruse plots and overly complex music of opera seria with a "noble simplicity" in both the music and the drama.

The opera is the most popular of Gluck's works, and one of the most influential on subsequent German opera. Variations on its plot – the underground rescue-mission in which the hero must control, or conceal, his emotions – include Mozart's The Magic Flute, Beethoven's Fidelio and Wagner's Das Rheingold.

Though originally set to an Italian libretto, Orfeo ed Euridice owes much to the genre of French opera, particularly in its use of accompanied recitative and a general absence of vocal virtuosity. Indeed, twelve years after the 1762 premiere, Gluck re-adapted the opera to suit the tastes of a Parisian audience at the Académie Royale de Musique with a libretto by Pierre-Louis Moline. This reworking was given the title Orphée et Eurydice, and several alterations were made in vocal casting and orchestration to suit French tastes.

Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach (20 June 1819 – 5 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the romantic period.

He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss Jr. and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st. The Tales of Hoffman remains part of the standard opera repertory.

In 1858, Offenbach produced his first full-length operetta, Orphée aux enfers, which was exceptionally well received and has remained one of his most played works. During the 1860s, he produced at least 18 full-length operettas, as well as more one-act pieces. His works from this period included La belle Hélène (1864), La Vie parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867) and La Périchole (1868). The risqué humour (often about sexual intrigue) and mostly gentle satiric barbs in these pieces, together with Offenbach's facility for melody, made them internationally known, and translated versions were successful in Vienna, London and elsewhere in Europe.

Offenbach became associated with the Second French Empire of Napoleon III; the emperor and his court were genially satirised in many of Offenbach's operettas. Napoleon III personally granted him French citizenship and the Légion d'Honneur. With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Offenbach found himself out of favour in Paris because of his imperial connections and his German birth. He remained successful in Vienna and London, however. He re-established himself in Paris during the 1870s, with revivals of some of his earlier favourites and a series of new works, and undertook a popular U.S. tour. In his last years he strove to finish The Tales of Hoffmann, but died before the premiere of the opera, which has entered the standard repertory in versions completed or edited by other musicians.

Sullivan: The Yeomen of the Guard

The Yeomen of the Guard (or The Merryman and His Maid) is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 3 October 1888 and ran for 423 performances. This was the eleventh collaboration of fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan.

The opera is set in the Tower of London, during the 16th century, and is the darkest, and perhaps most emotionally engaging, of the Savoy Operas, ending with a broken-hearted main character and two very reluctant engagements, rather than the usual numerous marriages. The libretto does contain considerable humour, including a lot of pun-laden one-liners, but Gilbert's trademark satire and topsy-turvy plot complications are subdued in comparison with the other Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The dialogue, though in prose, is quasi-Shakespearian, or early modern English, in style.

Critics considered the score to be Sullivan's finest, including its overture, which is in sonata form, rather than being written as a sequential pot-pourri of tunes from the opera, as in most of the other Gilbert and Sullivan overtures. This was the first Savoy Opera to use Sullivan's larger orchestra, including a second bassoon and third trombone. Most of Sullivan's subsequent operas, including those not composed with Gilbert as librettist, use this larger orchestra.

Steve Reich

Stephen Michael Reich (born October 3, 1936) is an American composer who, along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Philip Glass, pioneered minimal music in the mid to late 1960s.

Reich's style of composition influenced many composers and groups. His innovations include using tape loops to create phasing patterns (for example, his early compositions It's Gonna Rain and Come Out), and the use of simple, audible processes to explore musical concepts (for instance, Pendulum Music and Four Organs). These compositions, marked by their use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm and canons, have significantly influenced contemporary music, especially in the US. Reich's work took on a darker character in the 1980s with the introduction of historical themes as well as themes from his Jewish heritage, notably Different Trains.

Carl Nielsen

Carl August Nielsen (9 June 1865 – 3 October 1931) was a Danish musician, conductor and violinist, widely recognized as his country's most prominent composer.

Brought up by poor but musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age. He initially played in a military band before attending the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen from 1884 until December 1886. He premiered his Op. 1, Suite for Strings, in 1888, at the age of 23. The following year, Nielsen began a 16-year stint as a second violinist in the prestigious Royal Danish Orchestra under the conductor Johan Svendsen, during which he played in Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff and Otello at their Danish premieres. In 1916, he took a post teaching at the Royal Academy and continued to work there until his death.

Friedrich Ludwig

Friedrich Ludwig (8 May 1872 – 3 October 1930) was a German historian, musicologist and college instructor. His name is closely associated with the exploration and rediscovery of medieval music in the 20th century, particularly the compositional techniques of the Ars Nova and the isorhythmic motet.

Friedrich Ludwig belonged to the school of thought among cultural historians that did not ascribe to the Romantic view that Baroque Polyphony was the only type of polyphony of highest worth; rather, he sought to explore its historical development and evolution, leading to a critical reassessment of earlier music. These researches have made the practice and theory of music of the Middle Ages accessible. His research area was music before Palestrina-style polyphony; namely, the Ars Antiqua, Ars Nova, and the polyphony of the Franco-Flemish school. As a historian, Ludwig was already familiar with the cultural unity of Europe in the Late Middle Ages, and he approached it through the narrative and source-based methodology of Leopold von Ranke, of whom Ludwig's teacher Bresslau was a disciple. These methods had, for instance, moved Slavic cultures into a new perspective. In contrast to the prevailing view among music historians of the 19th century - a view epitomized in Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807) asserting that music is an art in and of itself, Ludwig followed a systematic method to explore the relationships between music and other cultural phenomena such as architecture and literature, finding in it unity through the poetry of medieval languages. For this purpose, he used the philology of High Middle German, the Romance languages, and medieval Latin, the chorale, and historic chronicles. He made stylistic comparison of primary sources to date musical works, and introduced these methods to music historiography.

ABRSM

The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) is an examinations board and registered charity based in London, UK, which provides examinations in music at centres around the world. ABRSM is one of four examination boards accredited by Ofqual to award graded exams and diploma qualifications in music within the UK's National Qualifications Framework (along with the London College of Music, Rockschool Ltd and Trinity College London). 'The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music' was founded on 1 Oktober 1889 and rebranded as ABRSM in 2009. The clarifying strapline "the exam board of the Royal Schools of Music" was introduced in 2012.

The Royal Schools referred to in ABRSM's title are:

• The Royal Academy of Music
• The Royal College of Music
• The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
• The Royal Northern College of Music

Adams: Doctor Atomic

Doctor Atomic is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars.

It premiered at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. The work focuses on the great stress and anxiety experienced by those at Los Alamos while the test of the first atomic bomb (the "Trinity" test) was being prepared. In 2007, a documentary was made about the creation of the opera, titled Wonders Are Many.

Pierre Baillot

Pierre Marie François de Sales Baillot (1 October 1771 – 15 September 1842) was a French violinist and composer born in Passy.

He studied the violin under Giovanni Battista Viotti and taught at the Paris Conservatoire together with Pierre Rode (also a pupil of Viotti) and Rodolphe Kreutzer, who wrote the conservatoire's official violin method (published in the early 19th century). He was sole author of the instructional L'art du violon (1834). Baillot's teachings had a profound influence on technical and musical development in an age in which virtuosity was openly encouraged. He was leader of the Paris Opéra, gave solo recitals and was a notable performer of chamber music. He died in Paris in 1842.

David Bedford

David Vickerman Bedford (4 August 1937 – 1 October 2011) was an English composer and musician. He wrote and played both popular and classical music. He was the brother of the conductor Steuart Bedford and the grandson of the composer, painter and author Herbert Bedford and the composer Liza Lehmann.

From 1969 to 1981, Bedford was Composer in Residence at Queen's College, London. From 1968 to 1980, he taught music in a number of London secondary schools. In 1996 he was appointed Composer in Association with the English Sinfonia. In 2001 he was appointed Chairman of the Performing Right Society, having previously been Deputy chairman.

Vladimir Horowitz

Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz (October 1 1903 – November 5, 1989) was a Russian-born American classical pianist and composer. He was acclaimed for his virtuoso technique, his tone colour, and the excitement engendered by his playing. He is recognized as one of the greatest pianists of all time.

Horowitz's uncle, Alexander, was a pupil and close friend of Alexander Scriabin. As a 10-year-old boy, it was arranged for Horowitz to play for Scriabin, who afterwards informed his parents that he was extremely talented. Horowitz received piano instruction from an early age, initially from his mother, who was herself a pianist. In 1912 he entered the Kiev Conservatory, where he was taught by Vladimir Puchalsky, Sergei Tarnowsky and Felix Blumenfeld. His first solo recital was in Kharkiv in 1920. In December 1925, Horowitz immigrated to the West, ostensibly to study with Artur Schnabel in Berlin. Privately intending not to return, the 22-year-old pianist had stuffed American dollars and British pound notes into his shoes to finance his initial concerts.

Despite rapturous receptions at recitals, Horowitz became increasingly unsure of his abilities as a pianist. On several occasions, the pianist had to be pushed onto the stage. Several times, he withdrew from public performances.

Ödön Pártos

Ödön Pártos (October 1, 1907 in Budapest – July 6, 1977 in Tel Aviv) was a Hungarian-Israeli violist and composer. A recipient of the Israel Prize, he taught and served as director of the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv.

Pártos studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, together with Antal Doráti and Mátyás Seiber, studied the violin with Jenő Hubay and composition with Zoltán Kodály.

Ödön Partos is regarded as among the most important Israeli composers. He was awarded the Israel Prize in 1954, the first honoree in the field of music.

Among the notable students of Partos: Cecylia Arzewski, Dvora Bartonov, Menahem Breuer, Ilan Gronich, Rivka Golani, Rami Bar-Niv, Yehoshua Lakner, Avraham Sternklar and Noa Blass.

André Rieu

André Léon Marie Nicolas Rieu (born 1 October 1949) is a Dutch violinist and conductor best known for creating the waltz-playing Johann Strauss Orchestra. Together they have turned classical and waltz music into a worldwide concert touring act, as successful as some of the biggest global pop and rock music acts.

Rieu created Johann Strauss Orchestra in 1987 and began with 12 members, giving its first concert on 1 January 1988. Over the years it has expanded dramatically, nowadays performing with between 80 and 150 musicians. Rieu and his orchestra have performed throughout Europe, North and South America, Japan, and Australia.

John Blow

John Blow (baptised 23 February 1649 – 1 October 1708) was an English Baroque composer and organist, appointed to Westminster Abbey in 1669.

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 (ca. 1680–1687), was thought to influence 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.

A famous page in Charles Burney's History of Music is devoted to illustrations of Blow's "crudities". These show the immature efforts in expression characteristic of English music at the time. Some of them (where Burney says "Here we are lost") have since been judged to be excellent.