Researching the life dates of lesser-known composers is often a lengthy and tedious task. This database is intended to make it easier to put together concert programmes, particularly for conductors of plucked-string orchestras. For some composers, links lead to biographical articles. For many composers, links to the relevant articles in the German Wikipedia have also been added. The database lists composers who are relevant to plucked-string music in the broader sense. In addition to creators of original works, it therefore also includes many musicians whose works have been arranged for plucked-string orchestras. The spectrum ranges from Michael Praetorius to Carlos Santana. If you notice a name missing from the list that you think should be included, please get in touch via the contact form. Any other suggestions and ideas for improvement are of course always very welcome.
There is a universal search field that performs a full-text infix search across all rows of the database — i.e. every row in which the entered string appears in any column is returned. Upper and lower case are ignored.
Unlike in the previous version of this page, it is no longer possible to search individual columns directly.
However, you can click on any column heading to sort the results by that column. For most queries this makes it straightforward to find the information you are looking for and present it clearly.
The search can also be restricted to composers of a specific nationality, or limited to composers who have a particular anniversary (divisible by 10, 25, 50, or 100) in a chosen year. The anniversary search takes both the birth year and the death year of each composer into account.