Hall of Fame Members

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

May 24, 1998 / 4:18 PM EDT / CBS

Below are brief biographies of the 26 members of the American Classical Music Hall of Fame's innaugural list.

Marian Anderson (1897-1993)

This singer was born in Philadelphia to a poor family and rose to fame in Europe and America. Refused permission to sing in Washington's Constitution Hall because of her race in 1939, Anderson performed for an audience of 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday. In 1955, Anderson became the first African-American singer to appear at the Metropolitan Opera. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963.

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, to a musical family. The composer's works include operas and symphonic works, including Adagio for Strings. In the late 1930s Barber joined the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music. His Piano Concerto won a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1963.

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

This conductor, pianist, and composer was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Bernstein rose to fame in 1943 as the conductor of the New York Philharmonic. His best known works include On the Town and West Side Story.

Elliott Carter (b. 1908)
Born in New York City, Carter's 1951 First String Quartet launched him in the international avant-garde. Carter created three additional string quartets and the 1961 Double Concerto. His second quartet won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960.

Aaron Copeland (1900-1990)

Born in New York City, the work of this composer, pianist, author, and teacher reflected jazz and American traditional and folk music. Copland's works included El Salón México, the ballets Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring, film scores, two operas, and three symphonies.

Duke Ellington (1899-1974)

This son of a White House butler was a jazz musician, composer, and orchestra conductor. He established himself as a bandleader and performed in Harlem speakeasies, earning an international reputation through radio broadcasts and many recordings. In the 1940s, Ellington introduced several works in concerts at Carnegie Hall. He remained a popular performer throughout his life. In 1971, Ellington became the first jazz musician inducted into the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, Sweden.

George Gershwin (1898-1937)

This composer of musicals, popular songs and jazz-inspired symphonic works was born in New York City to a Russian-Jewish immigrant family. An early death cut Gershwin's career short, but not before he produced an astonishing amount of music including the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Of Thee I Sing. He also pursued an ambitious goal of uniting commercial and classical genres, resulting in jazz-oriented concert works such as Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, and the "folk opera" Porgy and Bess.

Howard Hanson (1896-1981)
Born in Wahoo, Nebraska, this composer, conductor, and educator became director of the Eastman School of Music in 1924. Hanson's compositions included seven symphonies and the opera Merry Mount.

Charles Ives (1874-1954)
Born in Danbury, Connecticut, Ives was an organ prodigy as a child. However, after attending Yale he entered the insurance business. Ives' important works, many composed in his spare time, included the Concord Sonata, Three Places in New England, Holidays Symphony, and The Fourth Symphony.

Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
Largely self-taught, the pianist and composer from Texarkana, Arkansas, became a professional musician in his teens and studied music at George R. Smith College. Joplin gained fame as a pianist in bars in Chicago and St. Louis in the 1890s. His popular tunes, including the Maple Leaf Rag, made ragtime a national craze.

Serge Koussevitzky (1874-1951)
Russian by birth, this double bass player took up conducting and in 1909 founded his own orchestra and publishing company in Moscow. Koussevitzky emigrated to Paris in 1917, and presented important new works by Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Ravel, and others. In 1924 he was named conductor of the Boston Symphony, where he remained for 25 years

John Knowles Paine (1839-1906)
A composer and educator, Paine was born in Portland, Maine. Trained in Germany, Paine returned to Aerica to assume the first chair of music at Harvard, where he taught from 1862 through 1905.

Leontyne Price (b. 1927)
This soprano from Laurel, Mississippi, studied at Juilliard before finding success on Broadway in Four Saints in Three Acts and Porgy and Bess. Price went on to an international career on both operatic and concert stages, making her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1961.

Fritz Reiner (1888-1963)
Hungarian by birth, Reiner conducted opera in Europe before coming to America to lead the Cincinnati Symphony. He also taught at the Curtis Institute, and led the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Metropolitan Opera. Reiner found his greatest acclaim leading the Chicago Symphony.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
Born in Austria, early in his career Schoenberg composed a string sextet, Verklarte Nacht. Always experimental, he wrote a chamber symphony that abandoned tonality and created a public uproar. Schoenberg used a concept of "12-note" or "serial" music in his later works that was adopted by several important composers. He left Nazi Germany for California, and became an American citizen in 1941.

Gunther Schuller (b. 1925)

A composer, performer, educator, and jazz scholar, Schuller became first chair French horn player of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in his hometown of New York City at age 19. He studied composition and taught at Yale, then served as president of the New England Conservatory and director of the school of music at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Robert Shaw (b. 1916)
Born in Red Bluff, California, Shaw found fame with vocal choruses in the 1940s and 1950s before taking up instrumental conducting. Since 1967, he has led the Atlanta Symphony, and is credited with bringing that orchestra to prominence.

Roger Sessions (1896-1985)
After studying at Harvard and Yale, this Brooklyn-born composer collaborated with Aaron Copland on a series of "new-music" concerts. Sessions later taught at Princeton, Berkeley, and Juilliard. His works included eight symphonies, a violin concerto, piano and chamber music, two operas and the Concerto for Orchestra, which won a Pulitzer Prize.

Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995)
Born in Russia, this conductor, composer, and musicologist studied piano and composition before coming to America in 1923. In the US, Slonimsky embarked on a career that included conducting writing, and occasional composing. His contributions to Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Music are notewrthy.

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)

A composer, bandmaster, and inventor of the sousaphone, Sousa was known as "The King of Marches." Born in Washington, D.C., Sousa joined the U.S. Marine Band at age 13, and served as its director for 12 years. From 1892 on, Sousa toured with his own band. His compositions include ten operettas and more than 100 marches.

Isaac Stern (b. 1920)

Russian by birth, this violinist studied at the San Francisco Conservatory and made his debut as guest artist with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Stern has toured widely since the 1940s, establishing a reputation as one of the world's greatest violinists.

Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977)
Born in England, Stokowski came to American in 1905 and was conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Stokowski also conducted the NBC Symphony, the Hollywood Bowl Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony, and the American Symphony. He is the conductor seen in the classic Disney animated feature Fantasia.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Born in Russia to a musical family, he first studied law but soon turned to musical composition and was closely affiliated with the Russian ballet. He moved to America in 1939 and became a citizen in 1945. Stravinsky's works included operas, ballets, and symphonies.

Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957)
Italian by birth, Toscanini began his career as a cellist but became a conductor in 1886 after filling in for an indisposed colleague. He became conductor of Milan's La Scala in 1898, then came to America in 1909 to lead the Metropolitan Opera orchestra. Toscanini also conducted the New York Philharmonic and the NBC Symphony.

Theodore Thomas (1835-1905)
Moving to America from Germany at age ten, Thomas made his conducting debut in New York at age 25, then founded the popular Thomas Orchestra. He served as co-conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and conductor of the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Orchestra. Thomas founded the Cincinnati College of Music and served as its president. He is known as an apostle of the symphony orchestra in America.

United States Marine Band

Two hundred years old, the Marine Band is the most venerable of America's service bands. Established by an Act of Congress signed by President John Adams, the original band was a 32-member drum and fife corp. The Marine Band's defined mission is to provide music for the President -- for whom it performs more than 200 times each year -- and the Commandant of the Marine Corps. The Marine Band has performed at many presidential inaugurations and led the funeral procession for President John F. Kennedy.Search BarnesandNoble.com Books On Classical Music
Search CDNow For Classical Music CDsReturn to A Guide To American Music's Greats

Written by Joshua Platt

More from CBS News