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In a world without recorded music, talent with an instrument was a valuable gift. But even more admired were the people who actually composed the music others would play; those so endowed could aspire to attain unending renown...and if not, at least a lucrative career.
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Charles Theodore Pachelbel

aka: Karl Theodor
borndied
1690, Nov1750, Sep
a German composer, organist and harpsichordist of the late Baroque era. He was the son of the more famous Johann Pachelbel, composer of the popular Canon in D. He was one of the first European composers to take up residence in the American colonies, and was the most famous musical figure in early Charleston, South Carolina.
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Johann Pachelbel

borndied
16531706
a German composer, organist and teacher who brought the south German organ tradition to its peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secular music, and his contributions to the development of the chorale prelude and fugue have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque era.
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Wilhelm Hieronymus Pachelbel

borndied
16851764
a German composer and organist, the elder son of Johann Pachelbel. Only six pieces by Wilhelm Hieronymus survive, all of them for keyboard. While three show the influence of his father, in the remaining works Pachelbel shows a preference for technique that is harmonically and contrapuntally simpler, influenced be the emerging Classical style. Two such pieces...
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Giovanni Pacini

borndied
17961867
an Italian composer, best known for his operas. His first 25 or so operas were written when Gioachino Rossini dominated the Italian operatic stage. But Pacini's operas were "rather superficial", a fact which, later, he candidly admitted. Later, retiring to Vi...
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Charles Sandys Packer

borndied
18101883


Frederick Augustus Packer

borndied
18391902


Cornelis Thymenszoon Padbrue

aka: Cornelis Thymanszoon, Padbrué
borndied
1592 ca1670
a Dutch composer who published several collections of madrigals and motets on texts by, among others, the poets Jacob Westerbaen and by the Haarlem painters Salomon de Bray and Pieter de Grebber. He also composed theatre music for the plays of Joost van den Vondel.
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Ferdinando Paer

borndied
17711839
an Italian composer known for his operas and oratorios. Paer wrote a total of 55 operas, in the Italian Classical styles of Paisiello and Cimarosa. His other works, including several religious compositions, cantatas, many songs and a short list of orchestral chamber pieces, are worthy of further study and performance. Some consider his music highly imaginati...
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Niccolo Paganini

aka: Niccolò
bornactivedied
17821800-18361840
an Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. He was the most celebrated violin virtuoso of his time, and left his mark as one of the pillars of modern violin technique. His 24 Caprices for Solo Violin Op.1 are among the best known of his compositions, and have served as an inspiration for many prominent composers.
Timeline (1)Links (16)


Giovanni Paisiello

borndied
17401816
an Italian composer of the Classical era and one of the most successful and influential opera composers of his time. He composed more than 80 operas, including a very popular Barber of Seville.
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Antonio Palella

borndied
16921761
an Italian composer and harpsichordist. Almost nothing is known about his life. He studied music at the Conservatory of Sant'Onofrio a Porta Capuana , where in the summer of 1721 represented his oratory Li jokes of Grace, his first known work. Later he was active as a second harpsichordist at the Teatro San Carlo , where he also took care to review the works...
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Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

borndied
1525/261594
an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. He had a lasting influence on the development of church music, and his work has often been seen as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony.
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Mme Papavoine

bornactivedied
1735 ca17551761
a French composer. She married violinist Louis-August Papavoine some time before 1755. Nothing else is known about Madame Papavoine; even her first name is a mystery. After 1761, her name is no longer mentioned.
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Carl Marianus Paradeiser

borndied
17471775


Domenico Paradies

aka: Pietro Domenico Paradisi
borndied
17071791
an Italian composer, harpsichordist and harpsichord teacher. His reputation is due to his music for the harpsichord, esteemed by music historians. His musical style was influenced by Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti. Especially celebrated above all were his twelve sonatas for clavicembalo (London, 1754). He was also the author of concertos for organ and for...
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Maria Theresa von Paradis

borndied
17591824
an Austrian musician and composer who lost her sight at an early age, and for whom Mozart may have written his Piano Concerto No. 18 in B flat major. During her tour of Europe, Paradis began composing solo music for piano as well as pieces for voice and keyboard.
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Cross-listed in Performers

Maria Hester Park

borndied
1760, Sep 291813, Jun 7
a British composer, pianist, and singer. She was also a noted piano teacher who taught many students in the nobility, including the Duchess of Devonshire and her daughters. It has been said of Maria Hester Park that she was "hugely popular in the elegant drawing rooms of eighteenth century England" and that she "made her living composing the sort of music pe...
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Cross-listed in Performers

Maria Frances Parke

borndied
1772, Aug 261822, Jul 31
an English soprano, pianist and composer of keyboard works. Parke was born in London. Her father was the oboist John Parke, while her uncle was the oboist and composer William Thomas Parke. She made her debut as a pianist and singer at the age of nine. In 1815 she married John Beardmore. She died in London.
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J. C. D. Parker

borndied
18281916


Robert Parsons

borndied
1535 ca1572
an English composer. Although little is known about the life of Robert Parsons, it is likely that in his youth he was a choir boy, as until 1561 he was an assistant to Richard Bower, Master of the Children Choristers of the Chapel Royal.Parsons was appointed Gentleman of the Chapel Royal on 17 October 1563. His work consisted of a number of sacred and secula...
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Vasily Pashkevich

borndied
1742 ca1797, Mar 20
a Russian composer, singer, violinist and teacher who lived during the time of Catherine the Great. Pashkevich wrote important comic operas, often re-working them at length. His style is similar to Italian opera buffa, but unlike them, the comic situation...
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Georg von Pasterwitz

borndied
1730, Jun 71803, Jan 26
an Austrian composer and teacher. His surviving oeuvre comprises some 500 works, mostly liturgical pieces and dramatic works for the church. He composed a large number of short contrapuntal pieces for keyboard: 324 were published between 1790 and 1803, and were the only works published during the composer's lifetime. They show him as a competent master of bo...
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Cross-listed in Writers

Robert Lucas de Pearsall

borndied
1795, Mar 141856, Aug 5
an amateur English composer. Many of his compositions were not published until after his death, and even now, many remain in manuscript. He was also the author of several articles and letters that contributed to scholarly understanding of early music in the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions and helped to re-establish plainsong, Renaissance polyphony, a...
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Martin Peerson

borndied
1571/731650
an English composer, organist and virginalist. Despite Roman Catholic leanings at a time when it was illegal not to subscribe to Church of England beliefs and practices, he was highly esteemed for his musical abilities and held posts at St Paul's Cathedral and, it is believed, Westminster Abbey. His output included both sacred and secular music in forms such...
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Johann Christoph Pepusch

aka: John Christopher Pepusch
borndied
16671752
a German-born composer who spent most of his working life in England. Although best known for his arrangement of the music for The Beggar's Opera (1728) -- to the libretto of John Gay—he composed many other works including stage and church music as well as concertos and continuo sonatas.
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Davide Perez

borndied
17111778, Oct 30
an Italian opera composer born in Naples of Italian parents, and later resident court composer at Lisbon from 1752. He staged three operas on librettos of Metastasio at Lisbon with huge success in 1753, 1754, and 1755. Following the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, Perez turned from opera more to church music.
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Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

borndied
17101736
an Italian composer, violinist and organist whose intermezzo La serva padrona 1733) was one of the most celebrated stage works of the 18th c. Though Pergolesi also composed opera serias, his most influential work was the short opera buffa, La serva padrona.
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Cross-listed in Performers

Jacopo Peri

borndied
15611633
an Italian composer and singer of the transitional period between the Renaissance and Baroque styles, and is often called the inventor of opera. He wrote the first work to be called an opera today, Dafne (around 1597), and also the first opera to have survived to the present day, Euridice (1600).
Links (9)


Francois-Louis Perne

aka: François-Louis
borndied
1772, Oct 41832, May 26
a French composer and musicographer, known both for his writings on the history of music, and also for being a director of the Paris Conservatoire. François-Louis Perne was born in Paris. He started his musical training as a choirboy in the parish of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie.
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Giacomo Antonio Perti

borndied
1661, Jun 61756, Apr 10
an Italian composer of the Baroque era. He was mainly active at Bologna, where he was Maestro di Cappella for sixty years. He was the teacher of Giuseppe Torelli and Giovanni Battista Martini.
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Giovanni Battista Pescetti

borndied
1704 ca1766, Mar 20
an organist and composer, director of the Opera of the Nobility, Second Organist at St Mark's Basilica. Although his output consists mainly of operatic works, a considerable amount of Pescetti's compositions were written for harpsichord, some intended to be performed on pipe organ, including his Six Sonatas. Pescetti was also active as a teacher of compositi...
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Johann Friedrich Peter

borndied
1746, May 191813, Jul 13
an American composer of German origin, and was educated in Holland and Germany before coming to America with his brother Simon. He began to compose music for the church shortly after his arrival in American and for a time served as an organist and violinist in the Moravian congregations of Nazareth, Bethlehem and Lititz in Pennsylvania before eventually goin...
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David Petersen

borndied
1651 ca1737, May
a violinist and composer of north German origin active in the Netherlands. He is notable for a collection of twelve sonatas for violin and basso continuo published in 1683 entitled Speelstukken. It is the only Dutch publication of its type in this period. Petersen's other compositions include a large number of song settings with continuo in Dutch.
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Claude Petit-Jehan

borndied
unknownunknown
musician and composer Lorraine, active between 1562 and 1592, died before 1603. Jean Claude Petit appeared for the first time in 1562 in the accounts of the St George Collegiate Nancy. It is mentioned as master of choristers and choir master of the college (1565), master of the choristers at the cathedral of Metz (1571), then choirmaster at Verdun (1575). Th...
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Andreas Pevernage

borndied
1542/15431591
a Flemish composer of the late Renaissance. He was one of the minority of composers from the Low Countries who stayed in his native land throughout the turbulent period of religious conflict in the late 16th century, and was a skilled composer of chansons, motets and madrigals.
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Johann Pfeiffer

borndied
16971761


Cross-listed in Writers

Francois-Andre Danican Philidor

aka: François-André
borndied
17261795
a French composer and chess player. He contributed to the early development of the opéra comique. He was also regarded as the best chess player of his age; his book Analyse du jeu des Échecs was considered a standard chess manual for at least a century, and a well-known chess opening and a checkmate method are both named after him.
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Peter Philips

borndied
1560 ca1628
an eminent English composer, organist, and Catholic priest exiled to Flanders. He was one of the greatest keyboard virtuosos of his time, and transcribed or arranged several Italian motets and madrigals by such composers as Lassus, Palestrina, and Giulio Caccini for his instruments. Some of his keyboard works are found in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Phili...
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Giovanni Antonio de Piani

aka: Jean-Antoine Desplanes
borndied
16781760


Niccolo Piccinni

aka: Niccolò
borndied
17281800
an Italian composer of symphonies, sacred music, chamber music, and opera (more than 100). Although he is somewhat obscure, even to music lovers today, Piccinni was one of the most popular composers of opera—particularly the Neapolitan opera buffa—of his day.
Timeline (1)Links (1)


Vaclav Pichl

aka: Václav, Wenzel
borndied
17411805
a classical Czech composer of the 18th Century. He was also a violinist, music director and writer. He was appointed to the post of first violinist of the Týn Church in 1762 and studied counterpoint with the organist J. N. Seger. In 1765 he was engaged by the composer Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf as a violinist for the private orchestra of Bishop Adam Patac...
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Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini

borndied
1720, Oct 171795, Jan 19
an Italian composer. Though she was most famous for her compositions, she was also an accomplished harpsichordist and singer, and the majority of her surviving compositions were written for keyboard, the voice, or both.
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George Pinto

borndied
17851806
an English composer and keyboard virtuoso, who also wrote for the violin. His works fall into two categories; earlier and later compositions, which are stylistically quite different. In the earlier works especially, Pinto's inventiveness and outside-of-the-box thinking leads to some musical developments which are well ahead of their time.
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Matthaeus Pipelare

borndied
1450 ca1515 ca
a Netherlandish composer, choir director, and possibly wind instrument player of the Renaissance. His style was wide-ranging; he wrote in almost all of the vocal forms current in his day: masses, motets, secular songs in all the local languages. No instrumental music has survived. In mood his music ranged from light secular songs to sombre motets related to ...
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Johann Georg Pisendel

borndied
16871755
a German Baroque musician, violinist and composer who, for many years, led the Court Orchestra in Dresden, then the finest instrumental ensemble in Europe.
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Fanny Krumpholtz Pittar

borndied
17851815
a Bohemian harpist and composer, the daughter of composer Johann Baptist Krumpholtz. She married diamond merchant Isaac Pittar and also published as Mrs. Pittar. A manuscript book of her work was published in 1811 and is available in the British Library.
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Johann Peter Pixis

borndied
1788, Feb 101874, Dec 22
a German pianist and composer born in Mannheim, Germany. Among his many musical works, he was involved with the composition in 1837 of Hexaméron (six composers contributed). An earlier collaborative work, from 1819–1823 (this time involving 51 composers) was Vaterländischer Künstlerverein, an anthology of variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli, which a...
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Joan Baptista Pla

borndied
1720 ca1773
a Spanish composer and oboist born in Catalonia, Spain, into a Catalan family of musicians. He worked in many of the principal cities of Europen along with his brother, Josep Pla i Agustí, a chamber musician. The Pla brothers left hundreds of manuscripts including about 30 trio sonatas and some concertos for flute and strings. Another brother, Manuel Pla w...
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Giovanni Benedetto Platti

borndied
16971763
an Italian oboist and composer. While in Italy he also learned to play the recently invented fortepiano and composed sonatas specially dedicated to it.
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Ignaz Pleyel

borndied
1757, Jun 181831, Nov 14
an Austrian-born French composer and piano builder of the Classical period. Among his early publications was a set of six string quartets, his Opus 1. In the early 1780s, Pleyel visited Italy, where he composed an opera (Ifigenia in Aulide) and works commissioned by the king of Naples, Ferdinand I. Pleyel was prolific, composing 41 symphonies, 70 string quar...
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Frantisek Xaver Pokorny

aka: František Xaver Pokorný
borndied
1729, Dec 201794, Jul 2
a Czech Classical era composer and violinist. Nearly 150 symphonies are attributed to him, but his authorship is disputed for more than fifty of them since after his death his surname was erased from his works and replaced by names of other authors by intendant of the Regensburg orchestra Theodor von Schacht. Furthermore, many works for wind instruments, ten...
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Nicola Porpora

borndied
16861768
a Neapolitan composer of Baroque operas and teacher of singing, whose most famous singing student was the castrato Farinelli. Other students included composers Matteo Capranica and Joseph Haydn.
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Giovanni Porta

borndied
16751755, Jun 21
an Italian opera composer, one of the masters of early 18th-century opera and one of the leading Venetian musicians. Porta made his way from Rome, to Vicenza, to Verona, then London where his opera Numitore was performed in 1720 by the Royal Academy of Music (1719), and eventually back to Venice and Verona, and finally Munich, where he spent the last 18 year...
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Marcos Portugal

aka: Marcos António da Fonseca Portugal, Marco Portogallo
borndied
1762, Mar 241830, Feb 17
a Portuguese classical composer, who achieved great international fame for his operas. He wrote mainly religious music until at least 1824, the date of his last known surviving autograph. In Portugal and Brazil, his reputation rests mainly on his religious music, a genre he cultivated throughout his life. He remained in Rio de Janeiro when the Portuguese Cou...
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Cross-listed in Educators

Cipriani Potter

borndied
1792, Oct 31871, Sep 26
a British composer, pianist and educator. There are nine extant symphonies, although the composer's numbering tells us he wrote ten. He also wrote four piano concerti, some chamber music and several piano solo pieces. His instrumental music displays the continental inheritance of his teachers in its use of instrumental forms such as sonata form. Aside from a...
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Cross-listed in WritersPerformers

Mary Ann Pownall

aka: Mary Ann Wrighten
borndied
17511796, Aug 12
an English singer, actress and composer. She wrote an autobiography entitled An Apology for he Life and Conduct of Mrs Mary Wrighten, Late a Favourite Actress and Singer, of Drury Lane Theatre, and Vauxhall Gardens.
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Michael Praetorius

bornactivedied
1571, Feb 151587-16211621, Feb 15
a German composer, organist, and music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of musical forms based on Protestant hymns, many of which reflect an effort to improve the relationship between Protestants and Catholics.
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Josquin des Prez

borndied
1450/55 ca1521
a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, and the central figure of the Franco-Flemish School. Josquin is widely considered by music scholars to be the first master of the high Renaissance style of polyphonic vocal music that was emerging during his lifetime. During the 16th century, he gradually acquired the reputation as the greatest composer of the ag...
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Gaetano Pugnani

borndied
1731, Nov 271798, Jul 15
an Italian composer and violinist. In 1754, he was very well received at the Concert Spirituel in Paris, but in 1768 he had an even more successful musical encounter in London. In 1770, Pugnani returned home to Turin and became the director of the Royal Chapel. His fame as a composer began to grow, but it would never equal his fame as a violinist.
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Joan Pau Pujol

borndied
1570, Jun1626, May 17
a Catalan and Spanish composer and organist of the late Renaissance and early Baroque. While best known for his sacred music, he also wrote popular secular music.
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Giovanni Punto

aka: Jan Václav Stich
borndied
1746, Sep 281803, Feb 16
a Czech horn player (more correctly, he played the cor basse) and a pioneer of the hand-stopping technique which allows natural horns to play a greater number of notes. He was an international celebrity in the 18th and early 19th centuries, known in London, Paris, and throughout Germany.
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Daniel Purcell

borndied
16641717
an English Baroque composer, the younger brother or cousin of Henry Purcell. His instrumental compositions published c.1710 included sets of sonatas and trio sonatas for recorder in addition to works for violin.
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Henry Purcell

borndied
16591695
an English composer. Although incorporating Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, Purcell's legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music. He is generally considered to be one of the greatest English composers.
Timeline (3)Links (1)

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