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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, an 18th-century Austrian classical composer and one of the most famous musicians of all time, came from a family of musicians that included his father and sister. Mozart wrote masses, oratorios, symphonies, concertos, sonatas, and more, but he is best known for his operas. These include Don Giovanni (1787), Così fan tutte (All Women Do So, 1790), and Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute, 1791).

CORBIS-BETTMANN

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Austrian composer, who is considered one of the most brilliant and versatile composers ever. He worked in all musical genres of his era, wrote inspired works in each genre, and produced an extraordinary number of compositions, especially considering his short life. By the time Mozart died at age 35, he had completed 41 symphonies, 27 piano concertos, 23 string quartets, 17 piano sonatas, 7 major operas, and numerous works for voice and other instruments.

As a child prodigy Mozart toured Europe and became widely regarded as a miracle of nature because of his musical gifts as a performer of piano, harpsichord, and organ and as a composer of instrumental and vocal music. His mature masterpieces begin with the Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major (Jeunehomme, 1777), one of about a dozen outstanding concertos he wrote for piano. Also successful as an opera composer, Mozart wrote three exceptional Italian operas to texts by Italian librettist Lorenzo da Ponte: Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, 1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (All Women Do So, 1790). They were followed in 1791 by his supreme German opera, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute).

Mozart’s works were catalogued chronologically by Austrian music bibliographer Ludwig von Köchel, who published his catalog in 1862. The numbers he assigned, which are called Köchel numbers and are preceded by the initial K, remain the standard way of referring to works by Mozart. The Jeunehomme Concerto, for example, is K. 271.

Mozart is one of the most universal of composers and one of the greatest geniuses of Western civilization. His output was huge (more than 600 works). Drawing on various national traditions, he brought the classical style to its highest development. This style, which evolved from about 1750 to 1800 when Vienna was the center of European music, is characterized by lively contrasts of themes and by symmetry of forms. In the dramatic genres of opera and concerto, Mozart enjoyed unique success. The richness of musical characterization and the psychological insights of his operatic masterpieces find parallels in much of his purely instrumental music. In the concertos he demonstrates that powerful expressive forces can coexist with serene formal structures.

Although Mozart has been viewed as the quintessential composer of the classical period, early-19th-century critics such as German romantic writer and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann regarded him as an archromantic, much in their own image. (Elements of the supernatural and fantastic figure in Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute, as they do in romanticism.) Mozart’s music also influenced innovative German composers of the romantic period, including Ludwig van Beethoven and Richard Wagner, as well as the 20th-century creator of the twelve-tone chromatic tone system, German composer Arnold Schoenberg. Mozart’s influence stems not just from the graceful beauty of his music, but also from its flexible phrasing, startling contrasts, and unstable chromaticism. At the time of their first performance, many of his works were regarded as difficult, with “too many notes,” as Austrian emperor Joseph II purportedly said. If Mozart’s music embodies something of the elegance and refinement of the privileged aristocratic world before the French Revolution (1789-1799), it also affirms values subversive to that world. He lodged this critique in the depiction of flawed aristocrats in Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, and in the glorification in The Magic Flute of the ideals of the Freemasons, who were deemed dangerous by Vienna’s aristocracy. Many of his finest instrumental works in their beauty and perfection also acknowledge the darker sides of human experience.




LIFE

* Salzburg and Germany

* Vienna

MUSIC

* Musical Expressiveness
*
Instrumental Innovation
*
Chromaticism and Keys
*
Stylistic Resourcefulness

Tomaso Albinoni

Tomaso Albinoni

Tomaso Albinoni (1671-1750), Italian composer and violinist, known today for his instrumental music. He was born and lived in Venice, where he produced most of his nearly 50 operas. His instrumental works, frequently played by modern chamber musicians, were admired by Johann Sebastian Bach. They include trio sonatas, concertos for one and for two oboes, and the 1710concerto for solo violin.


Nicolò Paganini

Nicolò Paganini

Nicolò Paganini (1782-1840), Italian composer and violin virtuoso, born in Genoa, where he studied with local musicians. He made his first public appearance as a violinist at the age of 9 and toured several towns in Lombardy (Lombardia) at the age of 13. Until 1813, however, he did not actively pursue the career of a virtuoso performer. He preferred to enjoy himself in romantic liaisons, gambling, and, from 1805 to 1813, in the social pleasures of a position as musical director at the court of Maria Anna Elisa Bacciocchi, princess of Lucca, the sister of Napoleon.

In 1813 Paganini left Lucca and began touring Italy, where his technical ability as a violinist attracted wide attention. He extended his tours to Vienna in 1828 and to Paris and London in 1831. In Paris he met the Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt, who was inspired to develop the techniques of piano playing as Paganini had developed those for the violin. The violinist went into partial retirement in 1834. His playing astonished the listeners of his day, many of whom believed he was in touch with supernatural powers. He could perform complex works using only one of the four strings of the violin, and he played chords of two and three notes, creating the illusion that more than one violin was being played. His own works include 24 caprices for violin solo (1801-07), 8 concertos, and many sonatas.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven



Ludwig van Beethoven is considered possibly the greatest Western composer of all time. He wrote symphonies, concertos, chamber music, sonatas, and vocal music. His best-known composition is the Ninth Symphony with its passionate chorus, the Ode to Joy. Beethoven began to lose his hearing in the 1790s and was completely deaf by 1818.

Hulton Getty Picture Collection

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), German composer, considered one of the greatest musicians of all time. Having begun his career as an outstanding improviser at the piano and composer of piano music, Beethoven went on to compose string quartets and other kinds of chamber music, songs, two masses, an opera, and nine symphonies. His Symphony No. 9 in D minor op. 125 (Choral, completed 1824), perhaps the most famous work of classical music in existence, culminates in a choral finale based on the poem “Ode to Joy” by German writer Friedrich von Schiller. Like his opera Fidelio, op. 72 (1805; revised 1806, 1814) and many other works, the Ninth Symphony depicts an initial struggle with adversity and concludes with an uplifting vision of freedom and social harmony.

Beethoven combined the dramatic classical style of lively contrasts and symmetrical forms, which was brought to its highest development by Mozart, with the older tradition of unified musical character that he found in the music of J. S. Bach. In some early works and especially in his middle or heroic period, Beethoven gave voice through his music to the new current of subjectivity and individualism that emerged in the wake of the French Revolution (1789-1799) and the rise of middle classes. Beethoven disdained injustice and tyranny, and used his art to sing the praises of the Enlightenment, an 18th-century movement that promoted the ideals of freedom and equality, even as hopes faded for progress through political change. (His angry cancellation of the dedication of the Eroica Symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte reveals Beethoven’s refusal to compromise his principles.)

The fact that Beethoven realized his artistic ambitions in spite of his hearing impairment added to the fascination and inspiration of his life for posterity, and the extraordinary richness and complexity of his later works insured that no later generation would fail to find challenge in his music. Beethoven’s artistic achievement cast a long shadow over the 19th century and beyond, having set a standard against which later composers would measure their work. Subsequent composers have had to respond to the challenge of Beethoven’s Ninth, which appeared to have taken the symphony to its ultimate development.


Contributed By:
William Kinderman


Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn



Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn was an 18th-century classical composer. He has been called the father of the symphony, although his work really only laid the groundwork for what was to become the symphony. Friends called him “Papa Haydn” because he was so congenial and ready to help others.

Hulton Deutsch

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), Austrian composer, recognized as a dominant force in the development of the musical style of the classical era (circa 1750-circa 1820).

Of humble origins, Haydn was born in the village of Rohrau, near Vienna, on March 31, 1732. When eight years old he was accepted into the choir school of Saint Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, where he received his only formal education. Dismissed from the choir at the age of 17, he spent the next several years as a struggling freelance musician. He studied on his own the standard textbooks on counterpoint and took occasional lessons from the noted Italian singing master and composer Nicola Porpora. In 1755 Haydn was engaged briefly by Baron Karl Josef von Fürnberg, for whom he apparently composed his first string quartets. A more substantial position followed in 1759, when he was hired as music director by Count Ferdinand Maximilian von Morzin. Haydn's marriage in 1760 to Maria Anna Keller proved to be unhappy as well as childless.

Contributed By:
Gretchen A. Wheelock

CAREER AT ESTERHÁZA


Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell

Henry Purcell (1659-1695), England's greatest native composer, who wrote with consummate skill music of virtually every kind known during the Restoration. His compositions combined elements of the French and Italian baroque and traditional English musical forms.

Born in Westminster (now London), Purcell was the son of a court musician and became a chorister in the Chapel Royal at the age of ten; when his voice broke, he was apprenticed to the keeper of the royal instruments and tuned the organ in Westminster Abbey. Purcell was appointed composer for the court violins in 1677 upon the death of Matthew Locke. Three years later he succeeded John Blow as abbey organist. He became organist at the Chapel Royal in 1682 and was appointed composer in ordinary to the King's Musick (1683), a major post, under Charles II; later he was harpsichord player to James II. Purcell also taught music to the aristocracy, wrote ceremonial odes and anthems for royal events, and composed for the stage, church, and home. He died in London on November 21, 1695, and was buried under the organ in Westminster Abbey.

Purcell is most famous for his theatrical music. His only true opera is Dido and Aeneas, a masterpiece based on a tragedy by Nahum Tate and first performed in about 1689. Other dramatic works, although called operas, are actually instrumental and vocal music written to accompany such plays as Thomas Betterton's Dioclesian (1690); John Dryden's King Arthur (1691); The Fairy Queen (1692), a masque adapted from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream (1692); and Dryden and Sir Robert Howard's The Indian Queen (1695; completed by Purcell's brother Daniel), which contains some of Purcell's most famous music. Purcell also wrote much fine sacred music, of which the anthem My Heart Is Inditing (1685), performed at the coronation of James II, is outstanding. His many songs and duets, both sacred and secular, are still highly regarded. His instrumental compositions include fantasias and sonatas, mostly for strings, and keyboard works.

Heinrich Schütz

Heinrich Schütz

Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), German composer, considered the greatest religious composer of the 17th century. Born in Köstritz, he studied in Venice with the Italian composer Giovanni Gabrieli from 1609 to 1612. From 1617 until his death he was music director to the court of the elector of Saxony, in Dresden. He traveled to Italy in 1628 to study the innovations of the Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi, and during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) he took extended leaves from his Dresden post, working mostly at the royal Danish court.

Schütz combined the influences of Italian music—the multiple choirs of Venice, the use of contrasting groups of instruments and voices, the solo vocal style of the newly invented opera—with his own North German heritages of vernacular Protestant church music and 16th-century counterpoint. His powerful, expressive fusion of these elements laid the ground for all German religious music of the baroque era. Among his major works are the Symphoniae Sacrae (3 vols., 1629, 1647, 1650), the Kleine geistliche Konzerte (Small Sacred Concertos; 2 vols., 1636, 1639), motets, and oratorios, all for voices and instruments; and the three late, austere Passions (1665-1666), for choir and solo voices.

Giuseppe Torelli

Giuseppe Torelli

Giuseppe Torelli (1658-1709), Italian composer and violinist, who influenced the development of the concerto grosso and who was one of the earliest to compose solo concertos. Born in Verona, he was trained and worked mainly in Bologna except for brief periods in Ansbach, Germany (as music director to the Brandenburg court), and in Vienna. His opus 8 (pub. posthumously, 1709) is considered one of the great achievements of baroque music; it contains six concerti grossi and six solo concertos, the first solo concertos to be published.

George Frideric HandeL

George Frideric HandeL


LIFE AND WORKS

London Operas

English Oratorios

LEGACY

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), German-born composer, who worked primarily in England, considered one of the most important masters of the baroque period (from about 1600 to 1750). Handel and his German contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach are considered the greatest composers of the early 18th century. Their music represents the culmination of musical genres of the baroque era. Whereas Bach’s output consisted chiefly of instrumental and vocal works originally conceived for Lutheran church services, Handel’s most important works are his operas and oratorios, composed for the theater. The most famous of these is Messiah, which was first performed in 1742. Handel also made important contributions to instrumental music.

Friedrich von Schiller

Friedrich von Schiller

Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805), German poet, dramatist, philosopher, and historian, who is regarded as the greatest dramatist in the history of the German theater and one of the greatest in European literature.

Schiller was born November 10, 1759, in Marbach, Württemberg, the son of an army officer and estate manager for the duke of Württemberg. He was educated at the duke's military school and then studied law and medicine. In 1780 he was appointed physician to a military regiment stationed in Stuttgart. As a student, Schiller wrote poetry and finished his first play, The Robbers (1781; trans. 1800), which was successfully presented in 1782 at the National Theater in Mannheim. Arrested by the duke for leaving Württemberg without permission in order to witness the production, Schiller was forbidden to publish further dramatic works, but in September 1782, he escaped from prison.

Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert (1797-1828), Austrian composer who is considered the greatest of all art song composers and who excelled at chamber music, piano music, and orchestral music. His reputation as the father of German lieder (art songs) rests on a body of more than 600 songs, which rank among the masterpieces of 19th-century romanticism. His instrumental works bridge the classical tradition of the 18th century and the romanticism of the 19th, borrowing the structures of the former and incorporating the emotionalism of the latter.


EARLY YEARS

LATER YEARS

SONGS

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

CHAMBER MUSIC

PIANO WORKS


Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt (1811-1886), Hungarian-born pianist and composer, founder of the solo piano recital and perhaps the greatest pianist of all time, as well as one of the important composers of the 19th century.

Liszt was born on October 22, 1811, in the village of Raiding, near Sopron. He studied the piano first with his father, then with the Austrian pianist Carl Czerny in Vienna, where he also studied theory with the Italian composer Antonio Salieri. In 1823 he moved with his parents to Paris, where he soon established himself as a pianist. Meanwhile, he took composition lessons from the Italian opera composer Ferdinando Paër and the Czech-French composer and theorist Anton Reicha.

Franz Grillparzer

Franz Grillparzer

Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872), Austrian playwright, whose somber tragedies and historical dramas are considered masterpieces of the 19th-century Austrian theater. Born in Vienna, the son of a lawyer, he studied law at Vienna University but left for lack of funds. He made his living as a civil servant. In 1818 he became poet to the court theater.

Grillparzer wrote many tragedies of dramatic and poetic beauty, particularly notable for their psychological insight. Sappho (1818) deals with the problematical relationship of art to life. The pessimistic trilogy Das goldene Vlies (The Golden Fleece, 1822) is concerned with the ancient Greek tale of Jason and Medea. Grillparzer's masterly The Waves of Sea and Love (1831; trans. 1947) depicts the Greek lovers Hero and Leander. A Dream Is Life (1834; trans. 1946) and The Jewess from Toledo (1872; trans. 1953) are based on classical Spanish themes. Although many of Grillparzer's works were disliked by the censors and the public, they influenced later dramatists, such as the German Gerhart Hauptmann and the Belgian Maurice Maeterlinck.

François Couperin

François Couperin

François Couperin (1668-1733), called Le Grand (French, “the great”), French composer, organist, and harpsichordist, whose works stand at the apex of French baroque music.

François, the nephew of Louis Couperin, was born in Paris on November 10, 1668. His father, Charles, had succeeded Louis as organist at the Church of Saint Gervais in Paris (a post held by Couperin family members until 1826). He died in 1679, and François was carefully trained to take his place. He assumed the position at the age of 17, a few years later also becoming organist of the royal chapel and director of music at court. His four volumes of harpsichord music (1713-30), a monument of French keyboard music that influenced J. S. Bach, are groupings of short, evocatively titled pieces cast in dance rhythms varying from elegant, to satirical, to profound. His treatise L'art de toucher le clavecin (The Art of Playing the Harpsichord,1716-17) is a major document of 18th-century performance practice.

Couperin introduced the trio sonata to France, infusing this Italian genre with a characteristically French treatment of melody and ornamentation. Especially important are the collection of Les nations (1726) and the 12 concerts for harpsichord and instruments (1714, 1724). Of his church music the three Leçons de ténèbres (Readings for Tenebrae Service, c. 1714-15), for solo voices, organ, and instruments, are outstanding. His organ masses are among the finest examples of French baroque organ music.

Couperin died on September 12, 1733, in Paris.


Contributed By:
Genevieve Vaughn

Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), German composer, one of the leading figures of early 19th-century European romanticism.

Born Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy on February 3, 1809, in Hamburg, he was the grandson of the noted Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. (The name Bartholdy was added to his surname when the family inherited property from a relative of that name, but he was always known by his original name.) As a child he converted with his family to Protestantism. Mendelssohn first appeared in public as a pianist at the age of 9 and performed his first original compositions when 11 years old. His masterly overture to A Midsummer Night's DreamIgnaz Moscheles was composed at the age of 17; the famous “Wedding March” and the rest of his incidental music to the play were written 17 years later. His teachers included the Bohemian pianist-composer and the German composer Carl Zelter. A revival of public interest in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach was directly attributable to Mendelssohn, who in 1829 conducted the first performance since Bach's death of his St. Matthew Passion.

Mendelssohn appeared as a pianist and conductor throughout Europe, making frequent trips to England. He was musical director for the city of Düsseldorf (1833-1835), conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig (from 1835), and musical director to King Frederick William IV of Prussia (from 1841). In 1842 he helped organize the Leipzig Conservatory. He suffered a physical collapse at the death of his favorite sister, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, and died a few months later in Leipzig on November 4, 1847.

In spite of an enormously strenuous schedule as pianist, conductor, and teacher, Mendelssohn was a prolific composer. Of his five symphonies, the best known are the Italian Symphony (1833) and the Scotch Symphony (1843). His organ and choral music is among the best of the 19th century and includes, for choir and orchestra, the oratorios St. Paul (1836) and Elijah (1846) and the cantata Erste Walpurgisnacht (First Walpurgis-Night, 1832; revised 1843); and his organ sonatas, preludes, and fugues. Also important are the Variations sérieuses (1841) for piano; his concert overtures, including The Hebrides (1832); his concertos for violin (1844) and for piano (1831, 1837); and the eight volumes of Songs Without Words for piano (1830-1845; some of these are by his sister Fanny).

His romanticism shows most clearly in his use of orchestral color and in his fondness for program music depicting places, events, or personalities. Structurally, Mendelssohn's music adheres to classical forms. It is lyrical and graceful, always clear, and never revolutionary.

Concerto

Concerto

Concerto, musical composition, typically in three movements, for one or more solo instruments with orchestra. The musical title concerto was first used in Italy in the 16th century, but it did not become common until about 1600, at the beginning of the baroque era in Italy. At first concerto and the related adjective concertato referred to a mixture of instrumental tone colors, voices, or both, and were applied to a wide variety of sacred and secular pieces that called for a mixed group of instruments, singers, or both. The group could be treated either as a unified but mixed ensemble, or as contrasting sounds set in opposition to one another. This “concerto style” was developed especially by the Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi, particularly in his fifth through eighth books of madrigals (1605-1638). Influenced partly by Monteverdi, the German composer Heinrich Schütz applied the new style to German sacred works. This meaning of concerto continued into the 18th century, as in the many sacred cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach entitled “Concerto.”

THE CONCERTO GROSSO AND ITS OFFSHOOTS
THE CLASSICAL CONCERTO
THE ROMANTIC ERA
THE 20TH CENTURY

Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), Italian composer, the most important figure in the transition from Renaissance to baroque music.

Born in Cremona, Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi studied music with the celebrated Veronese theoretician Marco Antonio Ingegneri. At the age of 15, Monteverdi composed his first work, a set of three-part motets, and by 1605 he had composed five books of madrigals. He became interested in the experimental musical dramas of Jacopo Peri, who was music director at the court of the Medici family, and in similar works by other early composers.

In 1607 Monteverdi's first musical drama, Orfeo, was produced. This opera, which surpassed all previous attempts at musical drama, was possibly the most important development in the history of opera and established it as a serious form of musical and dramatic expression. Through skillful use of vocal inflection, Monteverdi sought to express emotion as it would be expressed in the highly charged speech of a great actor. The orchestra, considerably enlarged and varied, was used not merely as an accompaniment for the singers but also to establish the moods of the various scenes. The score itself contains 14 independent orchestral pieces. The public received Orfeo enthusiastically, and with his next opera, Arianna (1608), Monteverdi's reputation as an opera composer was firmly established.

In 1613 he was appointed to one of the most important musical posts in Italy, choirmaster and conductor at Saint Mark's Cathedral in Venice. From this time on, Monteverdi wrote numerous operas (many now lost), motets, madrigals, and masses. In his sixth, seventh, and eighth books of madrigals (1614-38) he moved away from the Renaissance ideal of equal-voiced polyphony toward the newer styles emphasizing melody, bass line, and harmonic support as well as personal, or dramatic, declamation. In 1637 the first public opera house was opened, and Monteverdi, stimulated by the enthusiastic response to opera, wrote a new series of operas, of which two remain, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ulysses to His Homeland, 1641) and L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppaea, 1642). Written in Monteverdi's old age, these operas contain scenes of great dramatic intensity in which the vocal and orchestral music accurately reflect the thoughts and emotions of the characters. They influenced many subsequent composers of opera and are still performed today. Monteverdi died in Venice on November 29, 1643.

Christoph Willibald Gluck

Christoph Willibald Gluck

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787), German composer, whose work to reform opera had far-reaching influence.

Born in Erasbach on July 2, 1714, Gluck was the son of a gamekeeper. He studied music at the Jesuit seminary at Komotau (now Chomutov, Czech Republic) and also in Prague and Milan. In Milan he studied with the Italian composer Giovanni Battista Sammartini. Gluck's first opera, Artaserse, was produced at La Scala, Milan, in 1741. During the following nine years he wrote and produced approximately 16 operas in various European cities. Among these works were Sofonisba (1744) and Artamene (1746). In 1750 he took up residence in Vienna, which was thereafter the center of his activities except for periods spent in Naples, Rome, and Paris. In 1754 Maria Theresa, archduchess of Austria, appointed him director of opera at her court theater. Among the operas Gluck wrote between 1750 and 1760 were La clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus, 1752) and Antigono (1756).

Until 1762 Gluck composed in the contemporary operatic style, cultivated chiefly in Italy, which was marked by music written primarily to give virtuoso singers opportunity to display their skill. As his career progressed, however, Gluck grew dissatisfied with the conventionalities of Italian opera, which was characterized by surface brilliance and overornamentation. He began to develop a style intended to restore opera to its original purpose of expressing in music the meaning or emotion conveyed by the words. To this end he also worked closely with the great French ballet reformer Jean Georges Noverre. About 1760 he became acquainted with the Italian poet Ranieri di Calzabigi, who wrote a libretto for Gluck that admirably suited the composer's ideas concerning proper balance between words and music. The opera that resulted was Orfeo ed Euridice, which surpassed in grandeur, dignity, dramatic quality, and naturalness anything he had written before; it was produced in Vienna in 1762 with great success. Among other operas in his “grand” manner were Alceste (1767) and Paride ed Elena (Paris and Helen, 1770), on texts by Calzabigi; Iphigénie en Aulide (Iphigenia in Aulis, 1774); and Armide (1777).

The operatic reforms inaugurated by Gluck met with violent opposition. This opposition was particularly manifest in Paris, where from 1774 to 1781 a veritable war was waged between those who favored the reforms of Gluck and those who championed Italian opera and the Neapolitan operatic composer Niccolò Piccinni. The director of the Paris Opéra commissioned the two rivals each to compose an opera on the same text, Iphigénie en Tauride. The Gluck version turned out to be his masterpiece. Produced in Paris in 1779, it met with tremendous success; the Piccinni version, produced in 1781, was adjudged inferior.

Gluck's reforms made a lasting mark on opera. The principles for which he stood influenced the work of many composers who followed him, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Luigi Cherubini, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Richard Wagner. Gluck died in Vienna on November 15, 1787.

Chamber Music

Chamber Music

Chamber Music, instrumental music for an ensemble, usually ranging from two to about ten players, with one player for each part and all parts of equal importance. Chamber music from about 1750 has been principally for string quartet (two violins, viola, and cello), although string quintets as well as duets, trios, and quintets of four stringed instruments plus a piano or wind instrument have also been popular. It is called chamber music because it was originally meant for private performance, typically in a small hall or a person's private chambers. Public concerts of chamber music were initiated only in the 19th century.

Secular music in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (about 1450 to about 1600) was composed typically for small vocal and instrumental ensembles. Most compositions were vocal pieces in three, four, and five parts. Instrumental groups simply played this vocal chamber music using whatever instruments were desired or were available at the time.

In the baroque era (about 1600 to about 1750) the omnipresent musical texture was that of high melody lines supported by a basso continuo—a bass melody played, for example, by cello or bassoon, with harmonies filled in by a lute, harpsichord, or organ. Two instrumental genres became important during this period: the sonata da chiesa, or church sonata, and the sonata da camera, or chamber sonata. Although the sonata da chiesa cannot be considered chamber music in its strictest sense, since it was intended for public performance, by about 1700 the distinction between the sonata da chiesa and sonata da camera was blurred, since many pieces of each type were played both publicly and privately. The principal chamber music genres were trio sonatas, which were sonatas da chiesa or da camera written for two melody instruments (usually violins, flutes or oboes, often at the players' choice) plus continuo, and solo sonatas, usually for violin and continuo. Trio sonatas, however, might also be played, if desired, by larger ensembles of six or eight players. In addition, chamber cantatas for solo voice and continuo were written, as were vocal duets with continuo, which in fact provided the model for the trio sonata.

The most prominent 17th-century composer of trio and solo sonatas was Italian Arcangelo Corelli, whose works influenced the chamber music of English composer Henry Purcell and, later, of French composer François Couperin, German-English composer George Frideric Handel, and German composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

In the classical era (about 1750 to about 1820) Austrian composer Joseph Haydn developed chamber music as a style distinct from other ensemble music. Important as predecessors of the new style were Viennese light music genres, such as the divertimento and serenade. Played out-of-doors by groups of stringed and wind instruments, these compositions dispensed with the continuo, using the middle-voiced instruments to fill out the harmony. Haydn established the string quartet as the most common chamber music ensemble. His quartets were usually written in the four-movement sonata structure (a fast movement, a slow movement, a minuet, and another fast movement), a form which predominated in the classical era. Chamber music in the classical era, as developed by Haydn and his compatriot Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was also distinguished by finely wrought, complex, intimate interplay between the four instruments. Ludwig van Beethoven, a German composer, greatly expanded the dimensions of the string quartet while preserving its intimate character as well.

Chamber music in the romantic era (about 1820 to about 1900) tended to follow classical traditions. Composers often used the four-movement sonata structure, and the string quartet continued to be a favored combination of instruments. As composers sought to express intense emotion in their works, pieces featuring the piano, such as the Trout Quintet (1819) by Austrian Franz Schubert, and the Piano Quintet in F Minor (1864) by German Johannes Brahms, became popular, since the piano possessed a greater dynamic and expressive range than other chamber instruments. Public performances of chamber music also became common, and composers often created chamber music intended for public performance, thus changing chamber music's original function.

Several trends emerged in 20th-century chamber music. Classical genres such as the string quartet were infused with contemporary idioms and techniques in works of French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, Hungarian Béla Bartók, Austrians Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, Soviet composer Dmitry Shostakovich, and American Elliott Carter. Chamber music ensembles of varied composition—often including voices, harp, guitar, and wind and percussion instruments—became primary vehicles for new music by composers such as Schoenberg, Webern, Russian-born Igor Stravinsky, and French Pierre Boulez. Chamber music, once the domain of amateurs, playing for their own pleasure, has become increasingly popular with concert-hall audiences. Numerous professional chamber music groups flourished in the United States and elsewhere.

Arcangelo Corelli

Arcangelo Corelli

Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), Italian composer and violinist, whose style of playing became the basis for the violin technique of the 18th and 19th centuries, and whose chamber music compositions were far-reaching in their influence. Born in Fusignano, he studied in nearby Bologna and after 1675 lived in Rome. There his patrons included Queen Christina of Sweden and, after 1690, the art patron Pietro Cardinal Ottoboni. The most widely published and reprinted composer before the Austrian Joseph Haydn, Corelli was the first composer to gain an international reputation solely on the basis of his instrumental music. Many elements of his style became commonplace in the 18th century, and his works are early examples of the newly evolved system of major and minor tonality. As the preeminent violin virtuoso of the day, he taught many leading violinist-composers of the 18th century, among them the Italian Francesco Geminiani. Corelli's chamber music includes four sets of trio sonatas (op. 1-4); a set of 12 sonatas (op. 5) for solo violin and continuo (in this case, cello plus harpsichord), the last of which includes the famous variations on La Follia; and a set of 12 concerti grossi (op. 6), among the earliest concerti grossi to be published.

Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Vivaldi





INNOVATIONS AND INFLUENCE

From about 1750 on, after Vivaldi’s death, Italian composers primarily produced opera. However, for about the hundred years before 1750, Italy had been prolific in the production of music for the violin, the instrument that comes nearest in sound to the human voice. By Vivaldi’s time, the music of his most distinguished predecessor, Arcangelo Corelli, who died in 1713, was starting to seem old-fashioned. Corelli also wrote concerti grossi, but Corelli did little to differentiate the music played by the full orchestra from the music of the soloists. Vivaldi provided contrast between the two.

Vivaldi's concertos provided a model for the genre for composers throughout Europe. He established the standard three-movement format, in which a slow movement appears between two fast outer movements. He was the first composer who consistently used the ritornello (refrain) form that became standard for the fast movements of concertos. The ritornello is a musical theme played by the full orchestra that recurs in different keys throughout the movement. It alternates with passages dominated by the soloist, who introduces new, often virtuosic music. Vivaldi was among the first to introduce cadenzas—passages of extraordinary technical virtuosity—for soloists.

Vivaldi’s Opus 8 concertos entitled The Four Seasons are early examples of orchestral program music—music that describes a nonmusical idea. Each of the four concertos for strings and solo violin in The Four Seasons musically represents a different season of the year. Vivaldi published poems that describe the activities and moods represented by the music. Like much of his music, these concertos are marked by vigorous rhythms and strong contrasts.

L’estro harmonico (The Harmonic Whim), a collection of 12 concertos by Vivaldi for from one to four violins, was published in 1711 and proved highly influential, especially in Germany where it was studied by German composer Johann Sebastian Bach during his formative years. Bach made transcriptions, mostly for harpsichord, of a number of Vivaldi’s concertos and sonatas for violin. For many years Vivaldi was remembered chiefly for the transcriptions made by Bach.

During his lifetime Vivaldi was admired more as a violinist than as a composer. His skills and innovations advanced bowing techniques and string-playing generally. Largely forgotten after his death, the works of Vivaldi were rediscovered toward the end of the 19th century through Bach’s transcriptions. Scholarly interest in Bach led to interest in Vivaldi’s influence on Bach. Manuscripts for a number of Vivaldi’s sacred works were discovered in the 1920s, and a complete catalogue and publication of Vivaldi’s instrumental works was finally undertaken in 1947. Vivaldi’s popularity grew steadily during the last half of the 20th century, when his position in the history of music became firmly established. Interest in his operas and religious music began to increase in the late 20th century.

Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Vivaldi



Antonio Vivaldi

Italian composer and violinist Antonio Vivaldi standardized the concerto (a musical piece with three contrasting movements), which influenced later composers. His The Four Seasons (1725) is one of the first examples of orchestral program music.


(1678-1741), Italian musician, the most influential composer and violinist of his age. A prolific composer, he wrote nearly 500 concertos and established the concerto form for the baroque period. Vivaldi’s best-known concertos are The Four Seasons (1725).

Vivaldi was born in Venice and trained by his father, a violinist at Saint Mark’s Cathedral. Ordained a priest in 1703, Vivaldi began teaching that year at the Ospedale della Pietà, a conservatory that trained musically talented orphaned girls. He remained associated with the Pietà until 1740, at first as a teacher of violin and composition and from 1716 on as music director, although he traveled widely and was often absent. In addition to training the students, he composed concertos and oratorios for weekly concerts, and established an international reputation. From 1713 on, Vivaldi was active as an opera composer and producer in Venice and traveled to Rome, Mantua, and elsewhere to oversee performances of his operas. In 1740 he traveled to Vienna, Austria. He died in poverty in Vienna the following year.


COMPOSITIONS

Vivaldi’s output was enormous. His instrumental works include nearly 500 concertos and more than 70 sonatas written for an astonishing variety of instruments. About half of the concertos are for violin; others were composed for bassoon, cello, oboe, flute, mandolin, and various lesser-known instruments. Some are concerti grossi—compositions for a small group of soloists and a larger orchestral ensemble. A few are ripieno concertos—that is, for a full, though small, orchestra without soloists.

To make his orchestration more interesting, Vivaldi wrote for less common instruments such as the theorbo, a kind of lute, and for unusual combinations of instruments, such as two violins and two organs, lute and violin, or viola d’amore and lute. In a number of works he gave the solo part to instruments traditionally used for accompaniment, such as the bassoon or cello. His sonatas and concertos for cello contributed to the instrument’s growing popularity. He was the first to write for the chalumeau, an ancestor of the clarinet.

Vivaldi’s sense of instruments produced sound color and musical effects of great beauty, as in the slow movement of the Concerto for Four Violins in B minor from Opus 3. He wrote with great brilliance and charm for the flute. The concertos for bassoon demand great virtuosity and fully realize the lyrical powers of the instrument. The opening themes of many of his concertos are bold and striking, but of all his gifts the most enduringly attractive is his lyricism. His slow movements, especially in the violin concertos, are like short operatic arias, with the instrument appearing to sing.

Vivaldi also composed vocal music, both religious and secular (nonreligious). His numerous choral works for churches include masses, psalms, motets, and oratorios. Among his best-known religious compositions are the Gloria in D (1708), the Stabat Mater (1712), and the oratorio Juditha triumphans (1716). His secular vocal music includes cantatas and operas. Vivaldi claimed to have written more than 90 operas but only about 20 have survived, among them Giustino (Justinian, 1724), Orlando furioso (The Mad Roland, 1727), and L’Olimpiade (The Olympiad, 1734). In general the operas take their themes from ancient history and mythology.



INNOVATIONS AND INFLUENCE

Method of Composing

Johann Sebastian Bach


II LIFE

Early Life
Arnstadt: 1703-1707
Mühlhausen: 1707-1708
Weimar: 1708-1717
Köthen: 1717-1723


III WORKS

Cantatas

Motets
Oratorios and Passions
Magnificat and B-Minor Mass
Organ Work
Clavier Works
Works for Solo Instruments
Works for Instrumental Ensemble
Musical Offering, Canonic Variations, Art of Fugue

Method of Composing

As a composer living in an age when new music was required on a weekly—if not daily—basis, Bach was accustomed to writing works with great speed. On good days he appears to have been able to compose highly refined masterpieces without the aid of sketches or drafts—almost as one would write a letter. Because Bach was under pressure to produce vast quantities of music, he often pulled a previously written piece off the shelf and revised it for a new occasion. Thus violin concertos from Köthen reappear in Leipzig as harpsichord concertos, or secular birthday cantatas resurface, with new words, as Sunday church music. The B-Minor Mass, for instance, appears to consist almost wholly of revised cantata movements from earlier periods. This procedure, which might be viewed as plagiarism in modern times, was accepted as a practical recycling process in the Baroque era, and Bach frequently used it to update early works and bring the music they contained to an even higher state of beauty.

IV THE REVIVAL OF BACH’S MUSIC

Musical Offering, Canonic Variations, Art of Fugue

Johann Sebastian Bach


II LIFE

Early Life
Arnstadt: 1703-1707
Mühlhausen: 1707-1708
Weimar: 1708-1717
Köthen: 1717-1723


III WORKS

Cantatas

Motets
Oratorios and Passions
Magnificat and B-Minor Mass
Organ Work
Clavier Works
Works for Solo Instruments
Works for Instrumental Ensemble

Musical Offering, Canonic Variations, Art of Fugue

In the last decade of his life Bach demonstrated his consummate achievements as a master of counterpoint in three works devoted to the craft of strict fugue and canon. The Musical Offering, BWV 1079, based on a theme proposed by Frederick the Great during Bach’s 1747 visit to Berlin, contains two large ricercares (old-fashioned fugues in Renaissance vocal style), a trio sonata, and a sequence of puzzle canons (canons that need to be solved). In 1747 Bach also composed the Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel Hoch, BWV 769, to mark his entry into the Society of Musical Sciences, whose select membership of 20 composers and theorists included George Frideric Handel and Georg Philipp Telemann. Based on the Christmas chorale “From heaven above to earth I come,” the variations present a sequence of five elaborate canons for an organ with two manuals and pedal.

Die Kunst der Fuge (“The Art of Fugue”), BWV 1080, once thought to date from Bach’s final year, is now known to have been compiled over a period of a decade or more. Around 1740 Bach assembled the core of the collection: a series of fugues and canons of increasing complexity, all based on the same principal theme. In the first version of the collection, the fugues include pieces for one, two, and three subjects. At the very end of his life Bach picked up the collection once again, this time with an eye to publishing it, perhaps as yet another part of the Clavierübung series. He revised and expanded the music, and added a climactic concluding fugue for four subjects, the last of which spelled in music his own name: B A C H (with B as B-flat and H as B-natural in the German scale). Bach died before bringing the gigantic quadruple fugue to an end, however, and the music breaks off, unfinished, in the 239th measure. The incomplete collection was printed after his death by members the family. Although The Art of Fugue is commonly performed on various combinations of instruments—strings, brass, woodwinds, full orchestra, or even saxophone quartet—it is clear that Bach intended the piece for keyboard (harpsichord or possibly organ).

Method of Composing

IV THE REVIVAL OF BACH’S MUSIC

 
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