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Significant Anniversaries

Classical Music Daily launches a series of pages featuring a selection of each year's notable music anniversaries

 

It would be easy to say that the classical music world is obsessed with anniversaries. This year, for example, Arvo Pärt, Terry Riley and Aulis Sallinen will all, hopefully, celebrate their ninetieth birthdays, while Itzhak Perlman, Victoria Bond and Judith Lang Zaimont are all to reach the milestone of eighty, and those yet to become seventy in 2025 include Bob Chilcott, Nikolai Demidenko, Toshio Hosokawa and Ian Venables.

Ian Venables. Photo © Graham Wallhead
Ian Venables. Photo © Graham Wallhead

The classical music world is also celebrating some major anniversaries of those no longer with us ... Orlando Gibbons died four hundred years ago, Alessandro Scarlatti died three hundred years ago, Antonio Salieri died two hundred years ago, and Johann Strauss the Younger was born that same year. The big one, probably, as we don't know the exact date, is the five hundred years since the birth of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (circa 1525-1594)
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (circa 1525-1594)

It's also apparent, looking at a list of more recent deaths, that 2015, ten years ago, was a very bad year for this magazine's previous incarnation, as we said our final goodbyes to five former contributors: Robert Anderson, Julia Ionides, John McCabe, Bill Newman and Howard Smith.

These are just a few of the many - nearly six thousand - names stored in our database, most of which are now available, for the first time, for you to browse here:

CLASSICAL MUSIC DAILY'S
2025 SIGNIFICANT ANNIVERSARIES

When you visit this page, via the link above, there are also links to several other similar pages, allowing you to view anniversaries for (currently) any year between 2023 and 2034. This could be useful if you're planning festivals, concerts and other events, or if you'd just like to keep ahead of what promoters might be sending your way.

Posted 15 February 2025 by Keith Bramich

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There are more articles here about women composers, Austria, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, UK, USA, sixteenth century, seventeenth century, eighteenth century, nineteenth century, twentieth century, 21st century, contemporary classical music, and you can read further recent classical music news items here.

The background image on this page has been derived from the frontispiece of the 1554 Missal Book of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, depicting the composer presenting to Pope Julius III a work dedicated to him.

 

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