Short answer review question 55 asks
What are the birth-death dates of the following: Shakespeare, Bach, Beethoven, Frederick Douglass, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Elgar, and Stravinsky?
This, for me, is an enormously important question. We have spent the summer focusing very closely on individual artists and their achievements; however, you can only get a scope of the work we have done these past six weeks if you see everything lined up by date. Here, then, is a very partial list:
- Shakespeare: 1564–1616
- Bach: 1685–1750
- Beethoven: 1770–1827
- Balzac: 1799–1850
- Dickens: 1812–1870
- Douglass: ca. 1818–1895
- Turgenev: 1818–1883
- Tchaikovsky: 1840–1893
- Dvořák: 1841–1904
- Maupassant: 1850–1893
- Perkins Gilman: 1860–1935
- Joyce: 1882–1941
- Stravinsky: 1882–1971
- Porter: 1890–1980
- J. Renoir: 1894–1979
- Borges: 1899–1986
- Hemingway: 1899–1961
- Hitchcock: 1899–1980
- Berke (Jungle Jim): 1903–1958
- Welles: 1915–1985
- O’Connor: 1925–1964
- Updike: 1932–2009
- Jin: 1956–
- Bourne: 1960–
- Wallace: 1962–2008
- Packer: 1973–
Isn’t it fascinating that Turgenev and Douglass were born in the same year, and both spent their careers fighting slavery in their home countries? And that Borges and Hemingway were exact contemporaries––and Stravinksy and Joyce? And that Shakespeare, the earliest of all these figures, reads in a way that is nearly as modern as anyone who came after?
Tags: 2009, Antonín Dvořák, Edward Elgar, Final exam, Frederick Douglass, Igor Stravinsky, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, William Shakespeare
