Celebrating October Musicians Birthdays with Stamps

It is time to celebrate October Musicians Birthdays with stamps. A lot of musicians and composers appear on stamps. You can read about many of them on this blog, from classical composers to American pop stars. Yet, in order to highlight a few more of these stamps and the musicians on them, I am sharing a monthly calendar of musicians birthdays. It will not even be close to complete. Yet, each moth I will select a few stamps from my collection and share them with links to relevant articles elsewhere on my blog. If you are looking for more musician birthdays you can check out this site.

October Musicians Birthdays

October is Country Music Month!

October 3, 1860 – The opening of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia
October 3, 1967 – Woody Guthrie dies in New York City

October 4, 1970 – Janis Joplin dies of a heroin overdose in Los Angeles

October 6
Theodore Steinway (1883-1997), member of the famed Steinway family and chairman of the board of the company for many years. He was also a famous philatelist, including collecting covers related to the Steinway company.

Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) was a Polish composer and pianist. He is perhaps the most important Polish composer of the twentieth century and was part of the modernist movement known as “Young Poland.” He was from a wealthy landowning family and first studied music with his father. He later studied at the conservatory in Warsaw. Later, in Berlin, he started a publishing company for young Polish composers. He is known for his four symphonies, two violin concertos, two ballets, two operas, and numerous smaller pieces.

October 8
Ustad Allauddin Khan (1862-1972) was an Indian sarod player and composer. He began his music studies with members of his family, before running away to learn folk styles of music. Khan learned many styles of Indian music, but also western music, and played such instruments as the mandolin and banjo. He became the court musician for the Maharagja of Maihar, where he set up an entire orchestra. In 1935, he went on a tour of Europe. Khan later became well-known through recordings he made for All India Radio.

October 9
John Lennon (1940-1980) was a British musician and member of The Beatles. Born in Liverpool, he began performing skiffle music as a teenager in a band called the Quarrymen. There, he met his songwriting partner Paul McCartney. The band eventually became known as The Beatles and the rest is history. Lennon was shot and killed in 1980 at the age of 40.

October 10, 1935 – Porgy & Bess premiers on Broadway at the Alvin Theater

October 10
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) was an Italian opera composer. Verdi was born in a village near Busseto. He began school at the age of four and his interest in music led him to learn the organ for the local parish church. He began composing music as a teenager. Although he failed to gain admittance to the conservatory in Milan, he moved there to study as a private pupil. He completed his first opera, Oberto, in 1837. He went on to become one of the greatest opera composers of all times with such masterpieces as Rigoletto, La traviata, Don Carlos, and Aida, among many others.

Thelonious Monk (1917-1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Born in North Carolina, his family moved to New York when he was five years old and the next year he began learning to play stride piano. He became one of the greatest pianists in Harlem and regularly played with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian, Charlie Parker, and others. He became one of the most recorded jazz composers in history.

October 12
Healey Willan (1880-1968) was a Canadian organist and composer. Willan was born in England and began musical training at the age of eight. He was trained in English choir school tradition and learned singing and organ, in addition to studying harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration. In 1913, Willan moved to Toronto and became the organist and choirmaster of the largest church in the City. As a composer, he wrote more than 800 works including operas, symphonies, and chamber music. He is best known for his religious music.

October 17
Frederick Chopin (1810-1849) was a Polish pianist and composer. Chopin was recognized as a child prodigy and completed his music education by the age of 20. He left Polan following the 1830 uprising, settling in Paris for the remainder of his life. He wrote almost solely for the solo piano and earned a living through the publication of his music and through teaching lessons. He died in 1849 at the age of 39.

Chiquinha Gonzaga (1847-1935) was a Brazilian pianist and composer. Gonzaga was born in Rio de Janeiro. Her father was in the military, which allowed Chiquinha to acquire a good education, including to play the piano. At the age of eleven she wrote her first piece. She entered an arranged marriage at the age of 16, and eventually fought with her husband over whether she could pursue a musical career. Quite scandalously, they divorced. In 1829, she lived in Rio de Janeiro and supported herself by demonstrating pianos in music stores and teaching lessons. She also wrote polkas, waltzes, tangoes, and other dance music which were published and became popular in Brazil. This allowed her to begin writing larger scale works, including her most popular work, the operatta Forrobodó. Her fame allowed her to travel in Europe and she became a popular composer in Portugal. Her last work was the opera Maria composed when she was 87.

October 18
Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) was a German organist and composer. He was born in the town of Köstritz in Thuringia. His talent as a singer led to his professional training as a musician, eventually leading him to Venice where he studied with Giovanni Gabrielli between 1609 and 1612. Upon returning to Germany, he moved to Dresden where he became the court composer for the Elector of Saxony. He is largely credited with bringing the Italian style of the early Baroque to Germany, and many consider him the greatest Germany composer before Johann Sebastian Bach.

October 19 – Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser premieres in Dresden

October 20
Charles Ives (1874-1954) was an American composer. He was born in Danbury, Connecticut to a prominent family. Ives was never a professional musician, working instead in the Insurance industry. However, he was a lifelong organist and wrote tremendous amounts of music. He was the first American composer to gain international prominence and he experimented with early modernism including polytonality and aleatory elements.

Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941) was an American ragtime and jazz pianist. Born in New Orleans, he first played piano in brothels in the Storyville neighborhood of the City. There, he learned ragtime and jazz styles. He later began writing music, and some of his pieces are amongst the earliest jazz pieces published. Morton traveled across the United States and lived in both New York City and D.C., where he played with many of the leading figures of early jazz. He was later a controversial figure as he claimed (incorrectly) to have invented jazz music.

October 21
Janos Bihari (1764-1827) was a Hungarian Romani violinist. Bihari was born to a Romani family in Hungary and learned to play the violin from his father. He formed a small orchestra that included violins and a cimbalom and its popularity allowed him to travel throughout the country and elsewhere in Europe. His compositions were also popular and some of his melodies were used by other composers, perhaps most notably Franz Liszt, in their compositions.

October 22
Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was a Hungarian pianist and composer. As a young man, Liszt became a star pianist. After hearing Paganini play the violin, Liszt decided that he wanted to become a similar type of phenomenon, but on the piano. He became a European-wide sensation and was famous for his great skill as a pianist and for the difficulty of his original compositions. He set the model for later piano virtuoso soloists.

October 24
Sonny Terry (1911-1986) was an American folk musician. Born in Greensboro, Georgia, Terry learned to play basic blues harp (harmonica) from his father. Injuries caused Terry to go blind at the age of 16 and he was forced to make a living playing music. He formed a duo with Brownie McGhee and produced recordings of numerous southern folk songs. They found success with white audiences during the folk revival of the 1950s and 60s.

October 25
Georges Bizet (1838-1875) was a French operatic composer. Bizet was an award-winning pianist and stood out among the students at the Paris conservatory, even winning the Prix de Rome. At the time, music by new composers was not valued, and he made a living arranging and transcribing the music of others. He began composing operatic music. In 1873, he received a commission to write the music for an opera with the libretto written by the estalblished duo of Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. The play would become Carmen. Perhaps the most popular opera of all times, Bizet died following the 33rd performance in Paris and never knew of its widescale international population.

Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825-1899) was an Austrian composer. He was particularly known as a composer of light music, including dances and operettas. The popularity of his waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other dance music earned him the nickname of “The Waltz King.” His most famous work is the waltz, “The Blue Danube.”

October 26
Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972) was an American gospel singer. Born to a poor family in New Orleans, Jackson began singing in her local church and where she learned the repertoire and gospel styles of the Black Church. She left New Orleans to go to Chicago and john the Johnson Singers. She became a soloist in many local Chicago churches, earning a living singing for funerals, revivals, and other events. In 1947, she recorded “Move On Up a Little Higher,” a gospel song that sold two million copies and became a national hit. This led to other recordings and tours throughout the United States and Europe. After gaining international success, she became active as a performer in the Civil Rights Movement.

October 28, 1971 – the Khedevial Opera House in Cairo is destroyed by fire

October 31
Ethel Waters (1896-1977) was an American singer and actress. She began her career in the 1920s, during the height of the popularity of blues singers. She went on to appear on the Broadway stage in New York City. This led to a successful recording career with many big hits. She was the second African-American to be nominated for an Academy Award and the first to star on her own television show.