Songwriters biography for kids

from the MMF Music Library

Learn about famous composers with a biography for kids highlighting the composer's composer's life, music and culture. Then check out our related resources for music students, private lesson teachers, elementary music classroom teachers and homeschooling teachers.

Famous Composer Biographies for Students, Music Teachers and Homeschool Teachers

Baroque Era Composers (1600-1750)

Hey Kids, Meet Johann Sebastian Bach | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet George Frideric Handel | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Johann Pachelbel | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Barbara Strozzi | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Antonio Vivaldi | Biography

Classic Era Composers (1750-1820)

Hey Kids, Meet Ludwig van Beethoven | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Franz Joseph Haydn | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | Biography

Romantic Era Composers (1820-1910)

Hey Kids, Meet Johannes Brahms | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Cécile Chaminade | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Frederic Chopin | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Antonin Dvorak | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Edvard Grieg | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Modest Mussorgsky | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Gioachino Antonio Rossini | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Camille Saint-Saëns | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Clara Schumann | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Johann Strauss II | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Richard Wagner | Biography

Impressionist Era Composers (1820-1910)

Hey Kids, Meet Claude Debussy | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Lili Boulanger | Biography

Modern Era Composers (1910-Present)

Hey Kids, Meet Leonard Bernstein | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Aaron Copland | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Duke Ellington | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet George Gershwin | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Scott Joplin | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Dmitri Kabalevsky | Biography
Hey Kids, Meet Sergei P

From today's perspective, the category seems almost odd. Singer-Songwriter? If you wrote it, you may as well sing it, right? But this is, in many ways, a line of thought that started with the Beatles and hit a high point with the Singer-Songwriters. Go back a few years before the Beatles and the tasks of writing, singing, and playing the instruments on a recording were typically divided amongst distinct groups. Buddy Holly, singing and performing his own material, was an anomaly; the Beatles helped make Holly's approach the norm. In their wake came a group of artists who made the fact that they "did their own stuff" the defining feature.

James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, John Prine — these names are among the many that recur in lists of the Singer-Songwriters. Different from the Beatles, they didn't tend to present as a group. They often had groups, but when one went to see them perform, it was to see the individual — that's where the focus was. Sometimes their voices were idiosyncratic, often their visions were uniquely their own. Randy Newman certainly offered a case study in just that.

From a perspective of social context, the Singer-Songwriters emerged out of the idealism of the 1960s but marked a shift away from utopian ideas of collectivity. These artists embodied the "inward turn" of the 1970s. Their songs were often intimate, very personal reflections on their internal experiences. More often than not, they came into the room as poets. Their performances were subdued, eschewing changes of clothes or dance moves. Things got quiet.

The lessons in this chapter will explore all of these changes, isolating a few musicians to explore their work and their historical moment in some detail. In addition, what might be called a post-Singer-Songwriter class, including Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Tom Petty, Bob Seger, and others, will allow students to consider how Rock

A songwriter is a writer who creates songs. A songwriter generally writes songs for popular music, rather than art songs or classical music. Many songwriters are also singers, and perform the songs they write - they are called singer-songwriters. Other songwriters have their songs performed by other singers.

History

The history of writing songs is thousands of years old. Scholars believe that men and women may have created and sung songs even at the time of prehistory. Many modern bands have one or two members who write songs for the band. Others have more members contribute songs, or give the whole band credit for writing. Others perform songs by outside writers.

Famous songwriters

Related pages

Images for kids

• Songwriting partners Rodgers and Hart working on a song in 1936

See also

In Spanish: Compositor de canciones para niños