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(b Paris, France, c1762; d Washington, DC, April 11, 1841). American dancing master, choreographer, and composer of dance music. He was born into a family named Landrin with close connections to the court of Louis XVI. He was a pupil of Maximilien Gardel (1741–87), and for six years he was dancing master for the Paris Opéra. He left Paris three days after the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and arrived in Philadelphia in mid-1790. He changed his name, placing advertisements for his dancing schools as Mr. De Duport. Chiefly a choreographer and teacher of social dancing, Duport blended amateur and professional dancing with theatrical standards of content and performance. He wrote music and created hornpipes and other solo dances for his students, as well as duos such as figured minuets, allemandes, and waltzes; group dances, including complex French contredanses, cotillions, and English country dances; and ballets for his classes to perform at recitals. A music copybook in Duport’s hand traces his creative career from ...

(b Pittsburgh, PA, Sept 18, 1960). American composer, dance arranger, and vocal arranger. He completed the B.Mus. at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and pursued graduate studies at New York University. Flaherty later enrolled in the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, where, in 1982, he met Lynn Ahrens (b New York, NY, 1 Oct 1948), who would become his longtime book- and lyric-writing collaborator. In 1988 the songwriting team arrived on the New York theater scene with the Off-Broadway musical Lucky Stiff and, two years later, introduced Once on This Island, which moved to Broadway for a modest run and received eight Tony Award nominations. Flaherty and Ahrens are best known for Ragtime (1998 and 2009 revival), adapted from E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel. For the musical Flaherty and Ahrens won Broadway’s triple crown—Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards—as well as two Grammy nominations. Flaherty’s evocative score blends ragtime, early jazz, gospel, marches, and other American musical styles. In ...

[l’aîné]

Member of Leclair family

(b Lyons, May 10, 1697; d Paris, Oct 22, 1764). French composer, violinist, and dancer. He is considered the founder of the French violin school.

Before his 19th year, Leclair mastered violin playing, dancing, and lacemaking. He was then listed among the dancers at the Lyons opera, together with Marie-Rose Casthagnié whom he married on November 9, 1716. He may also have been active as a dancer and violinist in Rouen, where according to Gerber his patron was Mme Mezangère (La Laurencie however doubted the Rouen connection).

Leclair was in Turin in 1722, where he may have been drawn by employment at royal wedding festivities; he was evidently active there as a ballet-master, though he did not hold an official position. Possibly he received violin lessons from G.B. Somis.

Going to Paris in 1723, Leclair came under the patronage of one of the richest men in France, Joseph Bonnier, while he prepared his op.1 for publication. These sonatas were recognized for their originality and, according to one contemporary, they ‘appeared at first a kind of algebra capable of rebuffing the most courageous musicians’. Another wrote: ‘Le Clair est le premier qui sans imiter rien, Créa du beau, du neuf, qu’il peut dire le sien’ (‘Le Clair is the first person who, without imitating anything, created beautiful and new things, which he could call his own’)....

Austrian family of dance music composers and musicians of Hungarian origin. Through a combination of melodic invention and masterly orchestral technique, allied to an astute sense of the commercial, they elevated 19th-century popular music, and especially the Viennese Waltz, to a consummate form.

Strauss, Johann (i) (b Vienna, March 14, 1804; d Vienna, Sept 25, 1849)

Strauss, Johann (ii) (b Vienna, Oct 25, 1825; d Vienna, June 3, 1899)

Strauss, Josef (b Vienna, Aug 20, 1827; d Vienna, July 22, 1870)

Strauss, Eduard (i) (b Vienna, March 15, 1835; d Vienna, Dec 28, 1916)

Strauss, Johann (iii) (b Vienna, Feb 16, 1866; d Berlin-Schöneberg, Jan 9, 1939)

Strauss, Eduard (ii) (b Vienna, March 24, 1910; d Vienna, April 6, 1969)

(Fyodorovich)

(b Oranienbaum [now Lomonosov], nr St Petersburg, 5/June 17, 1882; d New York, April 6, 1971). Russian composer, later of French (1934) and American (1945) nationality. One of the most widely performed and influential composers of the 20th century, he remains also one of its most multi-faceted. A study of his work automatically touches on almost every important tendency in the century's music, from the neo-nationalism of the early ballets, through the more abrasive, experimental nationalism of the World War I years, the neo-classicism of the period 1920–51 and the studies of old music which underlay the proto-serial works of the 1950s, to the highly personal interpretation of serial method in his final decade. To some extent the mobile geography of his life is reflected in his work, with its complex patterns of influence and allusion. In another sense, however, he never lost contact with his Russian origins and, even after he ceased to compose with recognizably Russian materials or in a perceptibly Slavonic idiom, his music maintained an unbroken continuity of technique and thought....

(b Boskovice, 19 Jan 1984).Czech composer and performer (voice, accordion, and tap dance). She studied the accordion (2004–10) and composition (2007–8) at the Brno Conservatory, and composition at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts (with martin smolka and Peter Graham[1]). She also studied as an exchange student at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, the California Institute of the Arts (with michael pisaro), the Universität der Künste Berlin (with Marc Sabat), and Columbia University (with george e. lewis).

While she often works with elements outside of music, there is almost always an intense engagement with direct listening, often arrived at through intense focus on very limited material. Sources for her work include Morse code, maps of garments which she turns into scores (Shirt for Harp, Oboe, and Accordion; Jacket for Ensemble), field recordings which she notates descriptively and then asks musicians to interpret the notation (...