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Fond Farewells: Classical Musicians We Lost In 2012

By Tom Huizenga,

Published December 31, 2012 at 4:13 PM EST

We were especially heartbroken this year in bidding adieu to far too many classical musicians. There were the deaths of such colossal figures as Elliott Carter and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. But there were many other important artists who passed away — like modernist violinist and pedagogue Zvi Zeitlin, organist Carlo Curley, long-standing Metropolitan Opera tenor Charles Anthony, contralto Lili Chookasian and Judith Nelson, a soprano who helped pioneer the revival of Baroque and other early music.

Below are some of the many classical musicians who died this year. They made the world a better-sounding place.

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Tom Huizenga

Tom Huizenga is a producer for NPR Music. He contributes a wide range of stories about classical music to NPR's news programs and is the classical music reviewer for All Things Considered. He appears regularly on NPR Music podcasts and founded NPR's classical music blog Deceptive Cadence in 2010.

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Anastasia Tsioulcas

Anastasia Tsioulcas is a reporter on NPR's Arts desk. She is intensely interested in the arts at the intersection of culture, politics, economics and identity, and primarily reports on music. Recently, she has extensively covered gender issues and #MeToo in the music industry, including backstage tumult and alleged secret deals in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against megastar singer Plácido Domingo; gender inequity issues at the Grammy Awards and the myriad accusations of sexual misconduct against singer R. Kelly.

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