Year 1889 (MDCCCLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar.

Paavo Järvi (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈpɑːʋo ˈjærʋi]) (born December 30, 1962) is an Estonian-Americanconductor, and current Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris.

Järvi was born in Tallinn, Estonia, to conductor Neeme Järvi and Liilia Järvi. His siblings, Kristjan Järvi and Maarika Järvi, are also musicians. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Max Rudolf and Otto-Werner Mueller, and at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute with Leonard Bernstein.

From 1994-97 Järvi was principal conductor of the Malmö Symphony Orchestra. He was named music director of the Cincinnati Symphony in January 2000, and assumed the post with the 2001-2002 season. In April 2007, the orchestra announced Järvi's contract with the CSO would be extended through 2011, at which point the contract would become an "evergreen" agreement. In addition to his American position, since 2004, he has been the artistic director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Bremen and an Artistic Advisor to Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. In January 2010, however, it was announced that Järvi, who will by then hold three directorships on top of his Cincinnati position, would terminate his tenure with the expiration of his current contract in 2011. In May 2011 he was named Music Director Laureate of the Cincinnati Symphony.

Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.

Browning was born in Camberwell - a district now forming part of the borough of Southwark in South London, England - the only son of Sarah Anna (née Wiedemann) and Robert Browning. His father was a well-paid clerk for the Bank of England, earning about £150 per year. Browning’s paternal grandfather was a wealthy slave owner in Saint Kitts, West Indies, but Browning's father was an abolitionist. Browning's father had been sent to the West Indies to work on a sugar plantation, but revolted by the slavery there, he returned to England. Browning’s mother was a daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee, and his Scottish wife. Browning had one sister, Sarianna. Browning's paternal grandmother, Margaret Tittle, who had inherited a plantation in St Kitts, was rumoured within the family to have had some Jamaican mixed race ancestry but there is little evidence for this. It seems to be only an anecdotal family story. Robert's father, a literary collector, amassed a library of around 6,000 books, many of them rare. Thus, Robert was raised in a household of significant literary resources. His mother, to whom he was very close, was a devout nonconformist and a talented musician. His younger sister, Sarianna, also gifted, became her brother's companion in his later years, after the death of his wife in 1861. His father encouraged his children's interest in literature and the arts.

Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet (27 February 1848 – 7 October 1918) was an English composer, teacher and historian of music.

Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is best known for the choral song "Jerusalem", the coronation anthem "I was glad" and the hymn tune "Repton", which sets the words "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind". He was director of the Royal College of Music from 1895 until his death and was also professor of music at the University of Oxford from 1900 to 1908. He also wrote several books about music and music history. Some contemporaries rated him as the finest English composer since Henry Purcell, but his academic duties prevented him from devoting all his energies to composition.

Parry was born in Bournemouth, the youngest of six children of Thomas Gambier Parry (1816–1888) of Highnam Court, Gloucestershire, a painter, art collector and inventor of the "spirit fresco" process, and his first wife, Isabella née Fynes-Clinton (1816–1848). Three of their children died in infancy, and Isabella Parry died twelve days after the birth of her sixth child. Parry grew up at Highnam Court with his surviving siblings, (Charles) Clinton and Lucy. Thomas Parry remarried in 1851, and had a further six children.

Georgy Lvovich Catoire (Russian: Георгий Львович Катуар, Georgiy L'vovič Katuar; French: Georges Catoire) (Moscow, April 27, 1861–May 21, 1926) was a Russian composer of French heritage.

He studied piano in Berlin with Karl Klindworth (a friend of Richard Wagner) from whom he learned to appreciate Wagner. Catoire became one of the few Russian 'Wagnerite' composers, joining the Wagner society in 1879. It is partially due to his steadfast loyalty to Wagner that Catoire's works are relatively unknown today: most of Rimsky-Korsakov's circle strongly disliked Wagner, which explains why Wagner's music was barely known by the Russian public or musicians. Rimsky-Korsakov and his circle were less supportive of Catoire than they might have been had Catoire been less enthusiastic about Wagner.

Catoire graduated from Moscow University in mathematics in 1884 with outstanding honours. Upon graduating, Catoire worked for his father's commercial business, only later becoming a full-time musician. It was at this time that Catoire began taking lessons in piano and basic harmony from Klindworth's student, V. I. Willborg. These lessons resulted in the composition of a piano sonata, some character pieces, and a few transcriptions. The most famous of these transcriptions was the piano transcription of Tchaikovsky's Introduction and Fugue from the First Orchestral Suite (which Jurgenson later published at the recommendation of Tchaikovsky).