Page Category: Composer Biographies

This Turkish composer gets at least four different spelling variations at Last.fm; an astonishing twenty two if you allow for all mentions of something approximating his name! The one shown here, however, is the only correct spelling, as per his rather short entry in New Groves (to be fair, he was still alive when my edition of New Groves was printed, so maybe they were keeping it brief to avoid libel lawsuits!)

He was born in 1907 and died in 1991 and is often thought of in relation to Turkey as Sibelius is to Finland (i.e., in a quasi-nationalist 'champion of local music idioms' way). You could equally well, however, regard him as Turkey's Bartók or Vaughan Williams: he was a keen ethnomusicologist and studied traditional Turkish folk music at length. Indeed, on one occasion in 1936, he travelled through Anatolia collecting examples of Turkish folk tunes with Bartók himself! Much of his own music therefore tends to be a bit of a fusion of standard Western European techniques with Turkish folk influences. He wrote operas (five of them), symphonies (five numbered ones), and various orchestral works in addition to the usual slew of chamber, piano and choral pieces. He also has an oratorio to his name: Yunus Emre, written in 1946, based on the writings of the Anatolian mystic of the same name and depicting a spiritual journey from contemplating death to reuniting with God. It was the widespread success of this oratorio throughout Europe and elsewhere (Stokowski performed it at the UN in 1956, for example) that persuaded Saygun to write additional large-scale works. [...] 

A Holding Page.

Back to the Music Listings [...] 

In the New Grove, his middle name is given in bold, in brackets. So you can drop it if you feel the need for brevity, but it's not actually displayed as optional, so I'm retaining all of it. He was born in what is now Norway (in Christiana, now Oslo) in 1840, and is listed accordingly in New Grove as 'Norwegian'. However, he died in Copenhagen (Denmark) and ended up living much of his life there, from 1883 until his death in 1911. His later-life reputation was mostly as a conductor, and his compositions after 1883 are few and relatively minor.

Back to the Music Listings [...] 

From a Puritanical American point of view, I guess this composer has an unfortunate name. In the same way that Americans are responsible for converting the standard British 'Titbit' into 'Tidbit', so as to avoid even the passing thought of mammary glands in the vernacular, so this composer is often rendered as 'Anton Ferdinand Tietz'. The New Grove gives this short shrift, however: their entry for him under that name simply says 'See TITZ, ANTON FERDINAND'. The main entry for him, under that shorter surname spelling, offers Tietz, Dietz and Dietzsch as alternative spellings, but in square brackets, indicating their inferiority. It also mentions that he had an additional first name: Anton August Ferdinand Titz. The 'August' is again in square brackets, however, so may be dropped.

However you spell him, he was born in approximately 1742 (there seems to be doubt about the specifics), and died in 1810, so he spans the time of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, Mozart, Haydn and much of Beethoven. His music is thus thoroughly 'Classical', with a capital C! He is a fairly minor composer, all things considered, with a fairly small output of chamber music, some string quartets and quintets and the occasional symphony. He suffered mental problems from 1805 onwards, which curtailed his composing activities. He was born German, in Nuremburg -but he lived and worked, professionally, in Russia (specifically, in St. Petersburg) from 1771 onwards. [...] 

Born in the Ukraine (around 1745), died in St. Petersburg in 1777: both the Russians and the Ukrainians can claim him as their own (and hence the claims seen on some CDs that he wrote 'the first Russian Symphony').

His name is listed in full in the New Grove, complete with patronymic: no part of it is marked as optional. Last.fm surpass themselves with eleven possible matches against his name, one of which is actually correct! The one used by most listeners there, however, is spelled in Cyrillic, so it's completely not the right one for native English speakers to be using! [...] 

Ifukube was born in Japan in 1914 and died there at the advanced age of 91 in 2006. Musically, he was self-taught, composing in his spare time found during his full-time studies in forestry at Hokkaido University. He had decided to become a composer after having heard a radio performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. He was a forestry worker during the Second World War, and a researcher into the nature of wood for the Imperial Army as that conflict ended. After the war, he took his first professional job in music, teaching at the Tokyo University of the Arts. It was at this point that he composed the first of more than 250 film scores, which became his principal source of income for the rest of his life. He never stopped composing 'real' classical music, though, with numerous ballets and symphonic and other orchestral works to his credit.

He is nevertheless most famous as the man who wrote the scores for films like 'Godzilla' -and, indeed, of creating the roar of the eponymous monster (a leather glove rubbed against the loosened strings of a double bass! [...] 

A Holding Page.

Back to the Music Listings [...] 

A Holding Page.

Back to the Music Listings [...] 

This composer's full complement of names was José Manuel Joly Braga Santos, with the first two being bracketed by Grove -indicating their optionality- and the article about him therein continually referring to him as 'Braga Santos', so that the 'Braga' bit is essentially considered part of his surname, rather than just another first name. So, he's Joly by nature, but Braga Santos for short.

Back to the Music Listings [...] 

There are only two examples I can think of where including someone's title in the Composer tag is probably appropriate: Lord Berners and Sir John Blackwood McEwan, since no-one ever seems to mention their names without the title.

If you wanted to strictly apply the normal rules of title-less tagging, you'd really have to refer to the second example as “John Blackwood McEwan”, which sounds fine and works quite well (apart from the fact that it means there's one more 'J' to add to the enormous list of composers whose names begin with 'J'!) [...] 

A Holding Page.

Back to the Music Listings [...] 

A Holding Page.

Back to the Music Listings [...]