Hungarian composer Bela Bartok's musical training began at the family piano, where his mother gave him lessons after realizing that the boy was a musical prodigy: he had perfect rhythm at the age of two, and could play dozens of folk tunes by heart at the age of four. As a young man, Bartok traveled
The nebbish persona of Woody Allen's early 1960s stand-up shtick proved to be the springboard that took this most unlikely New York neurotic into a serious career as a leading auteur of international cinema. In his first film, "What's New, Pussycat?" which he wrote and acted in, Allen presented the i
America's premier poet of twentieth-century theater dominated the stage for almost 20 years. Despite his fall into ignominy and artistic disfavor in the final years of his career, Tennessee Williams is still considered one of the world's finest dramatists. Together with Arthur Miller, Williams pionee
Vincent Van Gogh's life was one of tragedy, pain, loneliness, and misunderstanding. But it also contained a deep sense of compassion for others, powerful feelings of love, ecstatic reactions to nature, and an abiding passion for beauty. Although he was unacknowledged during his lifetime, very few peo