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| Johann Sebastian Bach was born into a large family of German musicians in 1685. During his lifetime, J.S. Bach was known more as a harpsichord player and organist than a composer. He played and composed his music during a time known as the Baroque period. His most famous and popular works are called the Bradenburg Concertos.
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John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were all self-taught musicians and song writers who were the world’s most popular musical group from about 1964 until 1970. Originally from Liverpool, England, The Beatles made popular rock and roll music as important as classical or symphonic music.
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| Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn Germany in 1770. He came up with a new, ways of putting musical sounds together that let people feel the joy, sadness, and stress of life. Beethoven began to lose his hearing, just as he was starting to do his greatest work.
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Leonard Bernstein was born in Lawrence Massachussettes in 1918. He not only composed music, but was known as a great conductor and pianist. Leonard Bernstein spent much of his time teaching children and adults about the joy of music. He became best known for the musical play “West Side Story”, which he wrote in 1957.
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| Johannes Brahms was born in the busy German city of Hamburg in 1833. He wrote all kinds of music, from lively songs and dances to powerful symphonies. For more than 100 years, kids all over the world have fallen asleep to “Brahm’s Lullaby”.
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Frederic Chopin was born in 1810 in Zelazowa-Wola, Poland. By the time Chopin was eight years old, some of his musical pieces had been published, and he had even given a public concert. Chopin wrote beautiful music most often for the piano and invented new ways of playing it.
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| Aaron Copeland was born in 1900, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He got a chance to study music in Europe, where he learned about jazz. Since Aaron was interested in writing American-sounding music, he thought it might be a good idea to add some jazz sounds to modern classical music.
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Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was born in Washington D.C. in 1899. He and his family moved to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance. Famous for jazz music, Duke Ellington surrounded himself with the best musicians he could find. He played his band like an instrument, giving his players a chance to do their own special things, called solos.
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| George Gershwin was born in New York City in 1898. He is known for his beautiful, exciting concert pieces, as well as for the popular music he wrote for plays and movies. He wrote a lot of music with his brother Ira. George Gershwin’s favorite musical piece, was his opera, “Porgy and Bess”.
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George Handel was born in the German town of Halle in 1685. At 27, he moved to London, England where he spent the rest of his life. His most famous musical pieces often combined the different styles of choir and organ music, opera, and royal music that he had studied. His most popular piece is called “The Messiah”.
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| Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria in 1756. A child prodigy in classical music, he wrote his first concerto when he was six. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote more than 800 pieces of music, including most famous operas “The Marriage of Figaro”, “Don Giovanni” and “The Magic Flute”.
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John Philip Sousa was born in 1854 in Washington, D.C.,where he was able to listen to the many military bands that played there. These military bands made such an impression on John Philip Sousa that he ended up leading the U.S. Marine Band. He is best known for composing thrilling marches like his most famous, “The Stars and Stripes Forever”.
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| Igor Stravinsky was born in the Russia in 1882. Igor’s best known musical pieces are “The Firebird”, “The Rite of Spring”, and “Petrushka”. The startling, new rhythmic sounds he invented led music into the 20th century and changed the way people thought about music forever.
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Peter Tchaikovsky was born in the Russian town of Votkinsk in 1840. He used his great imagination to create beautiful music that was sometimes very happy and sometimes very sad. Tchaikovsky’s three ballets, “Swan Lake”, “Sleeping Beauty” and “The Nutcracker” all came from popular stories.
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