The Anniversary Composers
Pianists are first and forward musicians. A knowledge and awareness of music is essential to any meaningful development beyond the first few months of learning. It is with this in mind that I introduced leaflets promoting the music lessons which featured composers whose birth or death anniversary is a multiple of 50 years away. Unfortunately it is no longer possible to have different flyers so instead I have a gallery of selected composers.
Eight composers have occurred each year since 2011. In 2011 they were numbers 1-8, 2012 9-16 &c so that 2025's composers are nos 113-120.
These are:
113 Coleridge Taylor 1875 – 1911
Samuel Coleridge Taylor is a London born composer of West African descent. Famous for three cantatas on Longfellow’s Poem ‘Hiawatha’. He wrote much music for various forces including the piano. He spent his life and career in the UK and in the US. His composer daughter Avril died as recently as 1998.
114 Trabaci 1575 – 1647
Giovanni Maria Trabaci is an Italian composer, organist and harpsichord player. He was the composer of several important books of keyboard pieces and well as sacred vocal music and madrigals. Much of his early adulthood was spent advising on and maintaining organs.
115 Farrenc 1804 – 1875
Louise Farrenc was born in Paris and is a virtuoso pianist and composer. In the 1820s and 1830s her whole output was for piano solo, writing for other instruments and orchestra as well after that. Opened publishing house ‘Editions Farrenc’ with her husband in the 1830s.
116 Sterndale Bennett 1816 -1875
William Sterndale Bennett is a music education, conductor, composers and pianist. He was admitted to the London Royal Academy of Music at age 10 – the institution which he was head of at the time of his death, having rescued it from closure. Composed and performed throughout his life and actively promoted chamber music.
117 Peterson 1925 – 2007
Oscar Peterson is a Canadian jazz pianist and composer. Played in thousands of concerts and made hundreds of recordings. The Oscar Peterson Trio started in the early 1950s. Considered among the best jazz pianists and jazz improvisers of the twentieth century.
118 Ravel 1875 – 1937
Maurice Ravel is a French composer with Spanish influences. Wrote many works for piano solo as well as concertos. Ravel liked to experiment with musical form as exemplified in his best known work ‘Bolero’ where repetition takes the place of musical development.
119 Boulez 1925 – 2016
Pierre Boulez is a French Avante Garde composer, conductor and writer. He was an important leader in the development of integral serialism and controlled chance music. Boulez wrote several works for piano and prepared piano on the 1940s, 1950s and beyond that reflect these developments in music.
120 Satie 1866 – 1925
Erik Satie is the son of a French father and British mother. His early studies at the Paris Conservatoire were uneventful revealing him as undistinguished. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in a Paris café. His first solo piano pieces such as the ‘Gymnopedies’ and ‘Gnossiennes’ were from around that time.
2025 also marks the centenary of the death of Marie Jaell a French pianist, composer and pedagogue .
