March 9

Composer Samuel Barber was born on March 9, 1910, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, into a family that included musical artists. He became deeply interested in music at a young age and studied the piano at age 6. At 14 he entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he met Gian Carlo Menotti, who became a major composer of operas and also Barber’s life partner. In his late teen years Barber started to compose seriously. Major works include the highly expressive “Adagio for Strings” (1936), inspired by Virgil’s Georgics, which has earned him a permanent place in the concert repertory; “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” (1947), for soprano and orchestra, set to prose text by James Agee; and the lyrical, rhapsodic Violin Concerto (1939). The 1938 world premiere recording of the “Adagio,” conducted by Arturo Toscanini, was selected for permanent preservation by the U.S. Library of Congress in 2005.

March 9

On March 9, 1959, Mattel Inc.’s Barbie doll was introduced at the American International Toy Fair in New York. This date is also used as the doll’s official birthday in its “biography,” which claims that her full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts and her favorite color is pink. The fashion-model plastic doll was the creation of Ruth Handler, wife of the co-founder of the Mattel toy company, who noticed that her pre-teen daughter preferred to give adult roles to her paper dolls. Sensing a market niche and seeking an idea for an adult-bodied doll, she encountered a blonde-bombshell doll named Bild Lilli (a gag gift for adults, based on a comic strip) on a trip to Germany in 1956. She reworked the design but retained distinct breasts, and named it after her daughter, Barbara. The first Barbie, with averted eyes and topknot ponytail, cost $3.00 and wore a black and white zebra-striped swimsuit hand-stitched by Japanese homeworkers.

March 8

On March 8, 1817, a group of New York stockbrokers drafted a constitution and called themselves the "New York Stock & Exchange Board." The name became the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 1863. The group originated with the Buttonwood Agreement, signed in May 1792 by 24 stockbrokers outside of 68 Wall Street under a buttonwood tree (aka American sycamore). Major transactions were speculation in Revolutionary War bonds and First Bank of the United States stock. Under the pact, the brokers would deal only with each other, thereby eliminating manipulative auctioneers, and commissions would be 0.25%. In 1793, the brokers built the Tontine Coffee House on Wall Street, which became a tumultuous meeting place for trading, gambling, political activities and occasional violence. For many decades the exchange was located at 10-12 Broad Street, and then moved to its current neoclassical building at 18 Broad in 1903.

March 7

French composer Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, 1875, in the Basque region of France. He grew up entirely in Paris, where he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at age 14 and studied with Gabriel Fauré. His music is known for memorable, often haunting melodies and the interplay of instrumental textures and effects. With Claude Debussy he is a key figure in Impressionist music, focusing on suggestiveness and atmosphere. In his 20s Ravel composed several key works, including “Pavane for a Dead Princess” (1899) and “Jeux d'eau” (“Fountains,” 1901). His masterpiece, the ballet “Daphnis et Chloé” (1912), was composed for Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev. Two orchestral works, “La Valse” (1920) and the famous “Boléro” (1928), show Ravel’s mastery in restyling and reinventing dance. Oddly, he considered the latter work trivial, describing “Boléro” as "a piece for orchestra without music."

March 6

March 6, 1475, is the birthdate of sculptor, painter, architect and poet Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. Born in Caprese, Italy, he was apprenticed to the painter Ghirlandaio before studying in an academy of Lorenzo de' Medici, the de facto ruler of Florence. In 1499 at age 24 he carved his acclaimed Pietà, which was hailed as “perfection,” and then triumphed in 1504 with his statue of David, more than 14 feet tall, a symbol of Florentine freedom and the first nude carved on a colossal scale since antiquity. The marble block from which the sculpture emerged had been abandoned 40 years earlier by another sculptor and had been damaged by exposure. Schooled in Renaissance humanism, Michelangelo portrayed David as a protector imbued with the sensibility of force tempered by intellect and an inner strength superior to brute force. In his lifetime Michelangelo was often called Il Divino ("the divine one").

March 5

Italian painter and printmaker Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was born on March 5, 1696, in the Republic of Venice. A prolific fresco artist in the “Grand Manner,” he was a painter to the Doge at a young age, then embarked on a long career of painting frescoes for royalty and the wealthy in Italy, Spain, Germany, Sweden and Russia. He became an international star by adorning the walls and ceilings of palaces, churches and villas with immense, theatrical scenes inhabited by gods, saints and historical and mythological figures that tell their stories in costumed splendor, often set against dramatic, light-filled skies. His artistic legacy consists of more than 800 paintings, 2,400 drawings, two sets of etchings, and acre upon acre of luminous frescoes, the actions and settings of which often seem to spill out of their frames and into the room. Pictured: “The Banquet of Cleopatra” (1747), Palazzo Labia, Venice, and detail.

March 4

Baroque composer and virtuoso violinist Antonio Vivaldi was born on March 4, 1678, in the Republic of Venice. He was ordained a priest in 1704 and was called “il prete rosso" ("the red priest") because of his red hair. But he declined priestly duties and became a violin teacher at a Venetian girls' orphanage, composing trio sonatas and violin sonatas. By 1711 his concertos for one or more violins with orchestra had become popular throughout Europe. His vast body of work includes operas and other stage pieces, sacred music, concertos, and chamber and vocal works. He boasted that he could compose a concerto faster than a copyist could prepare orchestral parts for musicians. Vivaldi’s concertos “The Four Seasons” (1725) are among the brightest and most beautiful in all of Baroque music. J.S. Bach was deeply influenced by his concertos and arias, transcribing many of them for keyboard and other instruments.

March 3

Inventor Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Known as “Aleck,” he was groomed to carry on the family vocation of speech correction and elocution. Though he had other interests, he promoted his father’s Visible Speech (a phonetic technique) for the deaf. In 1870 the Bells emigrated to Canada for health reasons, and later, while teaching at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes, Aleck became involved with concepts for multiple-signal telegraph transmissions using audio frequencies, which led to Bell’s experiments in acoustic telegraphy to transmit sound. In 1874-1875, Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, worked on an electrical voice-transmitting device and applied for a patent for the concept, granted in 1876. Electrical engineer Elisha Gray also filed for a similar patent. AT&T, the long-distance unit of Bell Telephone Co., was incorporated on Bell’s birthday in 1885. Pictured: Bell calling Chicago from New York, 1892.

March 2

March 2, 1769, is the birthdate of politician DeWitt Clinton, “Father of the Erie Canal.” Born north of New York City, he was educated at King’s College, now Columbia University. He was briefly a U.S. Senator from New York (1802-03) but he resigned because of living conditions in newly built Washington, D.C. He was appointed Mayor of New York City (through 1815), lost the 1812 presidential race to James Madison, and was Governor of New York through 1828. As a member of the Erie Canal Commission, he surveyed the canal’s route from Albany to Lake Erie, secured $7 million to build it, and endured fierce attacks for what opponents called “Clinton’s Ditch.” Completed in 1825, the canal was North America’s most important work of civil engineering. It hastened the nation’s westward expansion, bringing riches to the Empire State and glory to Clinton, who opened the waterway with a 10-day boat trip from Buffalo to New York Harbor.

March 1

Composer and virtuoso pianist Frédéric Chopin was born on March 1, 1810, near Warsaw in what is now Poland. His father was a French émigré. A child prodigy, he composed many piano works before fleeing to Paris in 1831 ahead of the Polish Uprising against Russia. He carried on a turbulent, 10-year affair with French writer George Sand (Amandine Dupin), during which his health deteriorated. Every one of his works was written for the piano, either as solo instrument or in combination with other instruments, including 20 nocturnes, 25 preludes, 17 waltzes, 15 polonaises, 58 mazurkas (folk dances) and 27 etudes. He invented the ballade and reinvented the scherzo. His passionate yet lyrical Sonatas in B-flat minor and B minor are among his greatest creations. He is viewed as an immortal of music “by reason of his insight into the secret places of the heart” and the magical sonorities he drew from the piano. Pictured: 1849 photo, his piano.