Giovanni Maria Trabaci (ca. 1575 – 31 December 1647) was an Italian composer and organist. He was a prolific composer, with some 300 surviving works preserved in more than 10 publications; he was especially important for his keyboard music.
John Reading (c. 1645–1692) was an English composer and organist. His son, also John Reading (c. 1685–1764), was another composer and organist, who is now remembered as an important music copyist.
Little of Reading's life is known. He was born in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, and became Master of the Choristers at Lincoln Cathedral in 1670, and in 1675 at Chichester Cathedral and at Winchester Cathedral. From 1681 until his death he was organist at Winchester College. Here he set the college's Latin graces to music as well as the school song Dulce domum. Several of his organ works were included in a collection which was completed by Daniel Roseingrave. He also composed songs, theatre music, and part of a set of responses (now in the Anglican church repertoire in a form completed by modern editors). He died in Winchester.
View the full Wikipedia page for John Reading (composer, died 1692)The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert, first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, sound was created from rotating a metal tonewheel near an electromagnetic pickup, and amplifying the electric signal into a speaker cabinet. The organ is commonly used with the Leslie speaker.
Around two million Hammond organs have been manufactured. The organ was originally marketed by the Hammond Organ Company to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, or instead of a piano. It quickly became popular with professional jazz musicians in organ trios—small groups centered on the Hammond organ. Jazz club owners found that organ trios were cheaper than hiring a big band. Jimmy Smith's use of the Hammond B-3, with its additional harmonic percussion feature, inspired a generation of organ players, and its use became more widespread in the 1960s and 1970s in genres such as rhythm and blues, rock (especially progressive rock), and reggae.
View the full Wikipedia page for Hammond organA music director, musical director or director of music is a person responsible for the musical aspects of a performance, production, or organization. This would include the artistic director and usually chief conductor of an orchestra or concert band, the director of music of a film, the director of music at a radio station, the person in charge of musical activities or the head of the music department in a school, the coordinator of the musical ensembles in a university, college, or institution (but not usually the head of the academic music department), the head bandmaster of a military band, the head organist and choirmaster of a church, or an organist and master of the choristers (the title given to a director of music at a cathedral, particularly in England).
View the full Wikipedia page for Music directorJohn Stafford Smith (bapt. 30 March 1750 – 21 September 1836) was an English composer, church organist, and early musicologist. He was one of the first serious collectors of manuscripts of works by Johann Sebastian Bach and a friend of his son Johann Christian Bach.
Smith is best known for writing the music for "The Anacreontic Song", which became the tune for the American patriotic song "The Star-Spangled Banner" following the War of 1812, and in 1931 was adopted as the national anthem of the United States.
View the full Wikipedia page for John Stafford SmithGilles de Bins dit Binchois (also Binchoys; c. 1400 – 20 September 1460) was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of early Renaissance music. A central figure of the Burgundian School, Binchois is renowned a melodist and miniaturist; he generally avoided large scale works, and is most admired for his shorter secular chansons. Contemporary musicologists generally rank his importance below his colleague Guillaume Du Fay and the English composer John Dunstaple, but together the three were the most celebrated composers of the early European Renaissance.
Binchois was born in Mons (modern-day Belgium) to an upper-class family from Binche. His youth is largely unknown, although early chorister training is likely; by late 1419 he had obtained a local organist post. By 1423 he was in Lille and probably a soldier under the Englishman William de la Pole, eventually in Paris and Hainaut. Sometime during the 1420s, Binchois settled in the culturally thriving court of Burgundy under Philip the Good, where he became a subdeacon and was awarded numerous prebends. He retired to Soignies in 1453 amid a substantial courtly pension, dying in 1460.
View the full Wikipedia page for Gilles BinchoisSidney Clopton Lanier (February 3, 1842 – September 7, 1881) was an American musician, poet and author. He served in the Confederate States Army as a private, worked on a blockade-running ship for which he was imprisoned (resulting in his catching tuberculosis), taught, worked at a hotel where he gave musical performances, was a church organist, and worked as a lawyer. As a poet he sometimes used dialects. Many of his poems are written in heightened, but often archaic, American English. He became a flautist and sold poems to publications. He eventually became a professor of literature at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and is known for his adaptation of musical meter to poetry. Many schools, other structures and two lakes are named for him, and he became hailed in the South as the "poet of the Confederacy". A 1972 US postage stamp honored him as an "American poet".
View the full Wikipedia page for Sidney LanierMarie Alphonse Nicolas Joseph Jongen (14 December 1873 – 12 July 1953) was a Belgian organist, composer, and music educator.
View the full Wikipedia page for Joseph JongenCésar Auguste Jean Guillaume Hubert Franck (French: [sezaʁ oɡyst ʒɑ̃ ɡijom ybɛʁ fʁɑ̃k]; 10 December 1822 – 8 November 1890) was a French Romantic composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher born in present-day Belgium.
He was born in Liège (which at the time of his birth was part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands). He gave his first concerts there in 1834 and studied privately in Paris from 1835, where his teachers included Anton Reicha. After a brief return to Belgium, and a disastrous reception of an early oratorio Ruth, he moved to Paris, where he married and embarked on a career as teacher and organist. He gained a reputation as a formidable musical improviser, and travelled widely within France to demonstrate new instruments built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.
View the full Wikipedia page for César FranckJohn Reading (c. 1685/86 – 2 September 1764) was an English composer, organist and copyist (his name, like the town, is pronounced "Redding"—a spelling variant of his name which occurs in several documents). His greatest importance lies in his work as a transcriber, arranger, and copyist of a wide variety of music.
View the full Wikipedia page for John Reading (copyist)Johann Peter Heuschkel (4 January 1773 – 5 December 1853) was a German oboist, organist, music teacher and composer.
Heuschkel was born in Harras (Eisfeld) near Eisfeld. From 1792 he was oboist and later also organist in Hildburghausen. He is best remembered for being the teacher of Carl Maria von Weber (1796). He also taught music to the children of Duke Frederic. In 1818 he became court music teacher at Biebrich, where in later years he taught his grandson Wilhelm Dilthey. As a composer, Heuschkel wrote mostly wind music, oboe concertos, piano sonatas, and songs. He died, aged 80, in Biebrich.
View the full Wikipedia page for Johann Peter HeuschkelGeorg Joseph Vogler, also known as Abbé Vogler (15 June 1749 – 6 May 1814), was a German composer, organist, teacher and theorist. In a long and colorful career extending over many more nations and decades than was usual at the time, Vogler established himself as a foremost experimenter in baroque and early classic music. His greatest successes came as performer and designer for the organ at various courts and cities around Europe, as well as a teacher, attracting highly successful and devoted pupils such as Carl Maria von Weber. His career as a music theorist and composer however was mixed, with contemporaries such as Mozart believing Vogler to have been a charlatan. Despite his mixed reception in his own life, his highly original contributions in many areas of music (particularly musicology and organ theory) and influence on his pupils endured, and combined with his eccentric and adventurous career, prompted one historian to summarize Vogler as "one of the most bizarre characters in the history of music".
View the full Wikipedia page for Georg Joseph VoglerMichał Szostak (born 1980 in Poland) is an international concert organist, improviser, and musicologist, as well as manager, university professor, and scientific researcher, a habilitated Doctor (Associate Professor) in Management, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Organ Performance.
He studied organ performance at Warsaw's Fryderyk Chopin Music University under Professor Andrzej Chorosiński, and organ improvisation at Milan's Pontificio Istituto Ambrosiano di Musica Sacra under Maestro Davide Paleari, as well as management and marketing (Master and Ph D studies) at Warsaw's Leon Koźmiński Academy.
View the full Wikipedia page for Michał SzostakVanilla Fudge is an American rock band from New York City, formed in 1967 and originally active until 1970, during which time they released five albums. They became known for their hard rock arrangements of contemporary pop songs, particularly with their cover of "You Keep Me Hangin' On", a Motown song originally recorded by the Supremes, which became a hit single in 1968. After occasional reunions during the 1980s and early 1990s, the band reformed full time in 1999.
The group's foundational lineup remained consistent during 1967–1970, comprising vocalist/organist Mark Stein, bassist/vocalist Tim Bogert, guitarist/vocalist Vince Martell, and drummer/vocalist Carmine Appice. Bogert retired from live music in 2009, whereafter Pete Bremy joined on bass; Bogert died from cancer in 2021. "The Fudge", as members call the group, is currently touring with Stein, Martell, Appice, and Bremy, with concert dates scheduled through 2026.
View the full Wikipedia page for Vanilla FudgeAntonio Squarcialupi (27 March 1416 – 6 July 1480) was a Florentine organist and composer. He was the most famous organist in Italy in the mid-15th century.
View the full Wikipedia page for Antonio SquarcialupiOrganist and master of the choristers is the title given to a director of music at a cathedral, particularly a Church of England cathedral. The tradition dates back to the Middle Ages. They are often both the organist and the choirmaster.
The organist and master of the choristers is usually responsible for planning and producing all musical aspects of the cathedral work. That includes training and conducting of the cathedral choir. The sub-organist or assistant organist usually plays at cathedral services, although they will also be expected to take over the choral duties if the organist is unavailable.
View the full Wikipedia page for Organist and master of the choristersChristian Friedrich Daniel Schubart (24 March 1739 – 10 October 1791) was a German poet, organist, composer, and journalist. He was repeatedly punished for his social-critical writing and spent ten years in severe conditions in jail.
View the full Wikipedia page for Christian Friedrich Daniel SchubartLuzzasco Luzzaschi (c. 1545 – 10 September 1607) was an Italian composer, organist, and teacher of the late Renaissance. He was born and died in Ferrara, and despite evidence of travels to Rome it is assumed that Luzzaschi spent the majority of his life in his native city. He was a skilled representative of the late Italian madrigal style, along with Palestrina, Wert, Monte, Lassus, Marenzio, Gesualdo and others.
View the full Wikipedia page for Luzzasco Luzzaschi