Inspired by this xkcd comic, write a short biography for every composer you study using only the ten hundred most used words in English (you can use musical terminology).
The point of this exercise is to:

1. Focus on the facts, not big words. Waste no time writing filler and empty fluff.
2. Tell the composer’s story and put the facts into context.
3. Practice regurgitating recalling information and writing sentences with the information until this becomes second nature.

Remember, this isn’t English class! Your goal is to communicate in the simplest way possible exactly what you need to know on the test. If your bios look like they’re for a fourth grader, you’re doing it right. Do not underestimate the difficulty of short and simple writing.

Finally, try not to make them boring. Composers have interesting lives!

Use this tool as a guide, but you don’t have to be too strict about the words you don’t use.

Here’s an example:

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany. His mom and dad died after he was born. He learned to play the organ and was very good at it. Playing the organ was his job. He worked in a town called Arnstadt in 1703 and a town called Mulhausen in 1707. He also got married to Maria Barbara. Then the Duke of Weimar gave Bach a job as the court organist in the city of Weimar. He started to work there in 1708, when he was 23 years old.

In 1717 Bach got a better job as the kappelmeister of Prince Leopold, in the city of Cöthen. Prince Leopold liked music a lot, so Bach got paid more. Bach couldn’t write church music though, because Prince Leopold was a Calvinist. Calvinists didn’t want any music in church at all. Bach wrote lots of chamber music and music for orchestras. He wrote book one of the Well-Tempered Clavier. This book had a prelude and fugue in every key. Bach’s wife died and he married a new one. Her name was Anna Magdelena.

Prince Leopold got married too. His new princess didn’t like music. This was bad news for Bach! He got a new job in 1723 in the town of Leipzig as cantor of St. Thomas school. He had to teach all the boys of the church choir, and write and play music for all of the town’s churches. This was a lot of work! Bach got paid less and his job was less important, but that was okay. Bach believed in God a lot. He signed a lot of his music with the letters S.D.G., meaning “Glory to God” in Latin. Bach could write lots of church music in Leipzig.

Bach also got a job as the director of the collegium musicum. They were students in the town college who played music. By then Bach had lots of kids. Four of his sons were very good at music like their dad. In 1742, Bach got to visit his son Carl Philip Emanuel (C.P.E. Bach) at the court of King Frederick the Great. The King asked Bach to make up a fugue. Bach did that. The King asked for more. Bach went home and wrote lots of canons and fugues and sent them to the King as the Musical Offering. Bach wrote book two of the Well-Tempered Clavier and the Mass in B minor. At the end of his life Bach was going blind. He wrote more great music like the Art of Fugue. Bach died in 1750. He was only an organ player when he lived, but later, people got to know him as a great composer. He is so famous now that we use the year he died as the the end of the Baroque era.