The courante, corrente, coranto and corant are some of the names given to a family of triple metre dances from the late Renaissance and the Baroque era.

Modern usage will sometimes use the different spellings to distinguish types of courante (Italian spelling for the Italian dance, etc.), but in the original sources spellings were inconsistent. (In the Partitas of the Clavierübung, Bach use the different spellings courante and corrente to differentiate between the French and Italian styles, respectively.) However, in Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach by Meredith Little and Natalie Jenne, the courante and corrente are given separate chapters and treated as distinct dances. The courante had the slowest tempo of all French court dances, and was described by Mattheson, Quantz and Rousseau as grave and majestic. In Bach's unaccompanied Partita for Violin No. 2 the first movement (titled Allemanda) begins as if in 3/4 time in a manner one might initially perform and hear as a courante. The second movement is titled corrente and is rather lively. On the other hand, many "courante" movements by Bach are actually correntes as well: in the original engraving of the keyboard Partitas, movements are clearly labelled either "corrente" or "courante", but editors have frequently ignored the distinction. Although an indication of faster tempo appears to exist in Baroque composer Georg Muffat's instructions on Lullian bowing, his reference to the "rapid tempo of courantes" is a confusion in translation. A more literal translation of the text indicates only "the speed of the movement of the notes."

Jason Vieaux (born July 17, 1973) is an American virtuoso guitarist. He began his musical training in Buffalo, New York at the age of eight, after which he continued his studies in the Cleveland Institute of Music. In 1992, he became the youngest winner of the Guitar Foundation of America International Competition. He followed this success with a 53-city recital tour of the United States and France. His debut album, released by Naxos Records in 1996, won the rosette in its rating in the Penguin Guide to Compact Discs. Since then, he has had more than 10 CDs with Azica Records. He has collaborated with the Escher String Quartet , flutist Gary Schocker, harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, and bandoneon/accordion virtuoso Julien Labro.

Recent and upcoming career highlights include solo performances at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Spivey Hall, the Chautauqua Festival, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Severance Hall, Music@Menlo, the Strings Music Festival, the Grand Teton Festival, and New York's 92nd Street Y and Merkin Hall, as well as concertos with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra the Jupiter Chamber Players, and the Ft. Wayne Philharmonic. Vieaux has fostered premieres of works by Dan Visconti, Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, Eric Sessler, José Luis Merlin and Gary Schocker. Currently he serves on the faculties of the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music.

Angela Hewitt, OC OBE (born July 26, 1958) is a Canadian classical pianist. She holds British nationality through her father, Godfrey, who was the organist and choirmaster at Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa, Ontario for almost fifty years.

Angela Hewitt began her piano studies at the age of three with her mother, performed in public at four, and won her first scholarship at five. In addition to the piano, she studied violin with Walter Prystawski, recorder with Wolfgang Grunsky, and ballet with Nesta Toumine in Ottawa. Her first full-length recital was in The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto at the age of nine where she studied from 1964 to 1973 with Earle Moss and Myrtle Guerrero. She then went on to be the student of French pianist, Jean-Paul Sevilla at the University of Ottawa. She placed first in the Gian Battista Viotti competition in 1978 and also in that year won the piano category of the CBC Talent Festival. She was also a prize-winner in the Bach Competitions of Leipzig (1976) and Washington, DC (1975), the Schumann Competition in Zwickau (1977), the Casagrande Competition in Terni (1976), the Dino Ciani Competition at La Scala in Milan (1980), and the Casadesus Competition in Cleveland (1979). In 1985 her international career was launched when she was awarded First Prize in the Toronto International Bach Piano Competition, a unique event held in memory of Glenn Gould. Part of her win was a recording with Deutsche Grammophon of works by J.S. Bach which was nominated for a Gramophone Award.

Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, KBE (Russian: Мстисла́в Леопо́льдович Ростропо́вич, Mstislav Leopol'dovič Rostropovič, pronounced [rəstrɐˈpɔvʲɪtɕ]; March 27, 1927 – April 27, 2007), was a Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. He is widely considered to have been the greatest cellist of the second half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest of all time. In addition to his outstanding interpretations and technique, he was well known for both inspiring and commissioning new works which enlarged the cello repertoire more than any cellist before or since. He gave the premieres of over 100 pieces, forming long-standing friendships and artistic partnerships with composers including Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Henri Dutilleux, Witold Lutoslawski, Alfred Schnittke, Andreas Makris and especially Benjamin Britten.

Rostropovich was internationally recognized as a staunch advocate of human rights, and was awarded the 1974 Award of the International League of Human Rights.

Michael Praetorius (probably February 15, 1571 – February 15, 1621) was a German composer, organist, and music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of musical forms based on Protestant hymns, many of which reflect an effort to make better the relationship between Protestants and Catholics.

He was born Michael Schultze, the youngest son of a Lutheran pastor, in Creuzburg, in present-day Thuringia. After attending school in Torgau and Zerbst, he studied divinity and philosophy at the University of Frankfurt (Oder). After receiving his musical education, from 1587 he served as organist at the Marienkirche in Frankfurt. From 1592/3 he served at the court in Wolfenbüttel, under the employ of Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. He served in the duke's State Orchestra Brunswick first as organist and later (from 1604) as Kapellmeister.

His first compositions appeared around 1602/3. Praetorius had begun writing some of them when Regensburg was the parliamentary seat of the Holy Roman Empire. Their publication primarily reflects the care for music at the court of Gröningen. The motets of this collection were the first in Germany to make use of the new Italian performance practices; as a result, they established him as a proficient composer.