Deaths
- January 3 – Alexander Gretchaninov, composer, 91
- January 5 – Mistinguett, entertainer, 80
- January 9 – Paul de Maleingreau, organist and composer, 68
- January 20 – Lucy Isabelle Marsh, soprano and early recording artist, 77
- January 27 – Erich Kleiber, conductor, 65
- February 2 – Charles Grapewin, vaudeville performer, 86
- February 4 – Peder Gram, organist and composer, 74
- February 17 – John N. Klohr, composer of band music, 86
- February 18 – Gustave Charpentier, composer, 95
- February 21 – Edwin Franko Goldman, band composer, 78
- February 26 – Elsie Janis, singer, songwriter and actress, 66
- March 5 – Erich Itor Kahn, composer, 50 (brain haemorrhage)
- March 11 – Sergei Vasilenko, Russian composer, 83
- March 16 – Joseph John Richards, conductor, composer and music teacher, 77
- March 28 – Thomas de Hartmann, composer, 70
- April 9 - Little Jack Little, composer, actor, singer and songwriter
- April 15 – Kathleen Howard, opera singer, character actress, 71
- May 20 – Harry Stewart, comedian, singer, and songwriter, 47 (car accident)
- June 11 – Frankie Trumbauer, US saxophonist, bandleader and sometime singer, 55 (heart attack)
- June 23 – Reinhold Glière, composer, 81
- June 25 - Michio Miyagi, blind Japanese composer and inventor of musical instruments, 62 (fall from train)
- June 26 (in a car accident):
- Clifford Brown, jazz trumpeter, 25
- Richie Powell, jazz pianist, 24
- July 18 – Violet Loraine, musical theatre star, 69
- August 14
- May Brahe, songwriter, 71
- Jaroslav Řídký, composer, 58
- August 31 – Yves Nat, pianist and composer, 65
- September 6 – Felix Borowski, composer and music teacher, 84
- September 21 – Rigoberto López Pérez, composer and poet, 35 (shot)
- September 27 – Gerald Finzi, composer, 55 ("severe brain inflammation")
- October 1 – Albert Von Tilzer, songwriter, 78
- October 12 – Don Lorenzo Perosi, composer, 83
- October 18 – Harry Parry, jazz musician, 44
- October 19 – Isham Jones, US bandleader and composer, 62
- October 22 – Valda Valkyrien, ballerina, 61
- October 26 – Walter Gieseking, pianist, 60
- November 1 – Tommy Johnson, blues musician, 60
- November 5 – Art Tatum, jazz pianist, 47 (kidney failure)
- November 10 – Victor Young, violinist, conductor and composer, 56 (brain haemorrhage)
- November 24 – Guido Cantelli, conductor, 36 (plane crash)
- November 26 – Tommy Dorsey, bandleader, 51 (choking)
- November 30
- Ludvík Kuba, artist and musician, 93
- Jean Schwartz, songwriter, 78
- December 7 – Henry Fillmore, composer and publisher, 75
- date unknown - Rupert Hughes, composer
Read more about this topic: 1956 In Music
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier’s sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb.”
—Philip Caputo (b. 1941)
“This is the 184th Demonstration.
...
What we do is not beautiful
hurts no one makes no one desperate
we do not break the panes of safety glass
stretching between people on the street
and the deaths they hire.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)