Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice, Italy, March 4, 1678. Sunny Venice was the ideal city for a composer. Its bustling social climate offered paid work at festivals, theaters, parties, and religious services, all of whom required a constant supply of fresh music.

His father taught him to play the violin, got him a job as a violinist, then made him enter the Catholic priesthood at 15 – the best way for a poor family’s son to get a free education. Father and son often played duets at church. By the time he was 25, he took a job teaching violin at the Pieta, an orphanage for girls, where he spent much of his life. The orphans were given a home and taught to play music. Their concerts were the highlight of the Venetian musical scene. Prior to his ordination in 1703, Vivaldi was already earning 4 times as much as his father, and the Pieta had the best-disciplined orchestra in Italy for its time. The girls were said to sing like angels, although they were hidden from view behind an iron gate, possibly because some were deformed.

Though typically portrayed in a powdered wig, Vivaldi had curly red hair and red robes – thereby earning him the nickname “The Red Priest”. Not particularly “priestly”, Vivaldi didn’t say mass, insisting a “tightness” in his chest (possibly athsma) prevented him from staying the duration of a service. Others say he often left the altar to jot down musical ideas in the sacristy. In 1720, he cohabitated with singer Anna Giraud, though maintained she was merely his housekeeper.

Vivaldi was energetic, agreeable, and playful. He deferred easily to authority, but was sensitive to criticism and notoriously vain. He boasted about the number of his patrons, the money he made, and possibly lied about the number of works he wrote – he insisted ninety-four, but only forty-nine have ever been found.

He died of a bronchial condition in 1741. By then he was poor, and his music was out of fashion, yet in 1989, 2 of England’s top-ten best-selling CD’s were of his music.

Franz Liszt – Hungarian Pianist and Composer

Born October 22, 1811, Franz Liszt learned to play piano from his father, a capable amateur musician. Franz was just nine when he gave his first impressive recital in a small Hungarian town. Noblemen were so inspired by his potential that the organized a fund to enable the lad to study with virtuoso Czerny in Vienna.

Liszt was a remarkable student, and two years later, made his concert debute. Though not a brilliant prodigy in the Mozartian fashion, he was composing at age 12, touring as a pianist at 14, and by sixteen, showed early symptoms of neurosis that would complicate his life and leave him alternating between bouts of depression and religious fanaticism, torn between notions of suicide and a desire to become a monk. It’s no coincidence that Franz’ emotional torment began shortly after the death of his father, when he went to live with his mother in a small apartment to assist her, both financially and emotionally. He had to give up his lucrative touring to perform locally in taverns and local theater venues to earn money. Merely a teenager at the time, it is understandable that his economic pursuits led him early to a lifestyle with unusual hours, and adult trappings. Is it any wonder he took up drinking and smoking at that time, two habits he would adopt for his lifetime?

His creative self was dulled for a time, then in 1831, he heard Paganini give one of his stupendous violin recitals and saw women throwing themselves at his feet. This awakened a desire in him to become a virtuoso capable of similar accolades. His brooding good looks set women’s hearts ablaze, and his playing made them shriek and swoon. “Groupies” of Liszt’s time, his fans would rushed the stage eager for souvenirs; strings from his piano, or strands of his hair. Vendors in the lobby sold gold-plated tweezers for specifically that purpose. He played it to the hilt, strewing his stage with flowers and garlands. He practiced the sensuous removal of his doeskin glove. He was the “Michael Jackson” of his era.

Igor Stravinsky is widely considered the most influential composer of the 20th Century, yet his was not an easy professional debute. A riot broke out at the premiere of “The Rite of Spring” in Paris on May 29, 1913. Half the Parisian audience stood and cheered; the other half screamed and booed. Igor, who’d written the music, fled the theater in a taxi and retreated to a local park. “I have never again been that angry,” he said.

Born in Oranienbaum, Russia, June 17, 1882, his best childhood memory was of the coming of spring. “The violent spring that seemed to begin in an hour and was like the whole earth cracking.” Otherwise, he didn’t care to remember his childhood. “I never came across anyone who had any real affection for me,” he said. His father, an opera singer, had an abusive temper, and his mother, a perfectionist reprimanded him for not being a better composer.

Stravinsky saw Tchaikovsky’s “The Sleeping Beauty” at age 8, and soon started piano lessons, spending as many as six nights a week at the theater. Later, when his parents insisted he attend law school, a music teacher encouraged him otherwise, and his music prevailed. He married his cousin and childhood sweeheart, Katerina Nosenko. One of their four children, Soulima, was a pianist who later toured with his father. After Katarina died, he married Vera Sudeikin, a painter.

“My music is best understood by children and animals, “ he claimed. When in a new city, he always visited the zoo first. He smoked cigarettes in a long loder made of an albatross beak. His house was full of birds. His work habits were meticulously neat – his writing desk carefully arranged with erasers, five different colored inks, glittering steel rulers, writing instruments, and a pile of dictionaries. (He was fluent in four languages). There, he wrote the ballets Petrushka, The Firebird, and The Rite of Spring. He was one of few composers whose complete works were recorded mostly under his own supervision, thus telling us precisely how he wish his music to be played.

For Johann Sebastian Bach, music was not so much a choice as a birthright. Most of his male relatives were musicians – seventy-six in all, fifty-three named Johann.

He was born in Eisenach, Germany, March 31, 1685. An accomplished composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist and violinist of the Baroque period, his works were only widely recognized after his death in 1750.

Orphaned by age 10, he moved in with his oldest brother, Johann Christof, where he copied music and learned to perform on the clavichord. By age 15, he was able to support himself by performing in towns within walking distance of his home. He once walked 200 miles to hear the great organist Dietrich Buxtehude play.

He married twice, first to his cousin Maria Barbara, and after she died, to Anna Magdalena, an talented singer and keyboard player who assisted his writing. He fathered 20 children, though only 10 would reach adulthood. Perhaps music was a coping tool, for his life was certainly fraught with frequent loss, from an early age.

He was a dazzling organist with strong legs for pumping the pedals, and big hands that danced like acrobats on the keys. He’d use a stick in his mouth to reach some of the notes, yet said of his playing, “There’s nothing remarkable about it. All you have to do is hit the right key at the right time and the instrument plays itself.”

He was used to getting his own way, circumstances having forced him to man-up so early in life, therefore sometimes hard to get along with. He once tried to quit a job, and his employer, a Duke, was so insistent he stay that they argued, and the Duke had him arrested. During the month he was in jail, he wrote 46 pieces of music. Three hundred years later, we are still listening to it.

At night, Bach enjoyed his pipe, often with a beer and a baby in his lap while his family played and sang. Late in life, he grew blind, probably from years of working in poor light. He was 65 when he died of a stroke.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk – American composer and piano virtuoso

Born in New Orleans, May 8th 1829, Gottschalk was, according to Chopin, destined to become “the king of pianists” for his delightful compositions based on Creole rhythms and folk tunes. Gottschalk toured extensively outside the U.S., earning him fame in France, Switzerland, and Spain, where the Queen bestowed on him the honor of the Order of Isabella Cross. He returned to America as a celebrity.

He was known as a ladies man. His large dark eyes and good looks made him a hit with the ladies, and he was not known to turn away their advances, the downside of which gave him cause to grumble that the distraction of pretty young girls made him hit wrong notes during his concerts.

Gottschalk and his father left the United States and headed for Paris when he was 13. His father realized that in order for his son to succeed, he would need formal classical training. However, The Paris Conservatoire initially rejected Gottschalk’s application based upon his nationality. His examiner reportedly stated that “America is a country of steam engines.” Eventually, through the connections of family friends, he was able to gain access to the Conservatory.

Gottschalk spent about five years touring extensively in Central and South America, then in 1862, he returned to the United States to begin a 3 year tour that took him from New York to California. There, a love affair with a young lady from a seminary in San Francisco earned him the scorn of bad press, causing him to flee the U.S., never again to return. He went to South America, and continued to compose and perform until felled by a mysterious disease, possibly yellow fever, cholera, or peritonitis, which typically plagued that region due to the climate, creating a perfect breeding ground for mosquitos, which transmit such diseases. He reportedly collapsed on stage during the performance of his own piece “Morte – A Lamentation”, which translated means “She is dead!” He died a month later at age 40, and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, in Brooklyn.

When French soldiers invaded the small Italian village of Le Roncole in 1813, Luigia Verdi snatched her baby and ran up the steps to the bell tower of the town’s church to hide. It was a smart move, and the right one. The soldiers killed everyone in the church but Luigia and her infant son, Giuseppe. She couldn’ have known that her baby would become one of the most celebrated Italian opera composers in the world, or that in rescuing him, she’d be rescuing opera itself.

Years later, Giuseppe served as an altar boy in that same church. Upon first hearing the church organ play, he was so awestruck that he didn’t hear the priest, who lost his temper and pushed the 8 year old down the stairs. When Giuseppe came to, he begged his parents to let him take music lessons. By age 13, he was the assistant conductor of the Basseto orchestra.

The love of his life was his childhood sweetheart, Margherita, whom he married, and they had two children. While writing his second opera, “Un Giomo Di Regno”, an illness befell his wife, son, and daughter. Within a period of weeks, he lost all three. Intended to be a comedy, Un Giomo Di Regno was anything but lighthearted. Every scene was infused with Verdi’s sadness and earned the hissing disapproval of the crowd. Not until his third opera, Nabucco, did he receive the roar of approval, so loud that at first, Verdi thought they were booing him.

He’s most renown for later operas, such as Aida and La Traviata. With his ensuing wealth, he bought a farm in the country where he cultivated vegetables, raised livestock, and planted a tree upon completion of every opera.

Verdi led a simple life. He awoke at five, walked his estate or sailed across his lake. He loved poetry, history, and Shakespeare, and he went to bed early. He served for a time as a senator and married a second time to a soprano named Giuseppina. They never had children. He lived to the ripe old age of 87.