Johannes Brahms wrote his Third Symphony in the span of a few short months in the summer of 1883 after he was hit with a sudden rush of inspiration. The theme of F - Aflat - F can be found throughout the piece and are believed to be a reference towards Brahms’ personal motto frei aber froh which translates to free but happy. In the First and Final Movements, this theme is full of conflict as the key shifts between F-major and F-minor. Brahms may have been expressing his complex emotions regarding his love life in these movements and throughout the entirety of the piece. Brahms never married, but he had a very close friendship with Clara Schumann that, arguably, was more than platonic. These conflicting themes may have been expressing, on one
Dohnányi was a major Hungarian composer, pianist and conductor of the turn of the 20th century, second only to Bartok in influence in his home country. His compositional output was late Romantic in style and very conservative, largely influenced by Brahms.
Before actually going into the analysis of the actual piece itself, background information would be helpful. The composition was written by Bach, and it is part of the sonatas and partitas for solo violin. For this example, Partita II in d minor, movement I, Allemanda, will be discussed. Allemanda, sometimes spelled allemande, derives from German and simply means “dance.” While there are various tempos used, this movement is usually fast, around 120 beats per minute.
Concerto in F is a classical music. Concerto in F is like then the piano solo and orchestra is closer in form to the traditional concerto. The concerto in F has strong thematic links between the three movements (Huscher, 2014).
Arnold Schoenberg "broke down the traditional tonal system and invented a new way of organizing music" with the concepts of "twelve-tone music," "Emancipation of the dissonance" and "equal rights of pitches." He persisted his sense of tonality through his life. Pierrot Lunaire consists of musical settings of 21 poems about the character and set for voice, flute, clarinet, cello, violin, and piano. He took "atonality to never before heard places." Igor Stravinsky was a primary tonal composer with an anti-romantic attitude who sought to extend musical ambiguity as far as possible, while remaining within the tonal system. He was an objectivist who treated everything in composition including emotion as object. His work The Rite of Spring has highly
This was a story about a sudden storm coming to an American town. The author Kate Chopin wrote this story in 1898, at that time, America was during the two concept conflict time. This story happened when husband and son outside, wife met her ex in their home. The wife could not reject Alcee, so they made a mistake during the storm. After storm past, everything was back to normal, Calixta and Alcee returned to their family. In many people’s thought, Calixta and Alcee are betrayed their families; however, in Chopin’s mind, they are not wrong, they just give each other a chance to vent feeling, this connection does not mean they are betray their families, and I agree with her opinion. Love and marriage are separate, people can have many lovers, but they just have one partner.
Frederic Chopin, a Polish Nationalistic composer of the Romantic period, is a famous musician. Chopin’s compositions are individualistic to his talent and love of the piano. Chopin lived in Warsaw as a child and spent a great deal of his life living Paris amongst other artists of the Romantic period. He was influenced by people surrounding him and even more from his childhood in Poland. The Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-Flat major opus 61, is musically representative of Chopin and the Romantic period, nationalistic styles from Poland and unique innovations especially from Warsaw.
Recently as an avid operagoer I decided to attend one of Lyric Opera’s productions, which happened to be Die Walküre. I had my reservations about this opera as it was written by one of my contemporaries who I no longer feel worthy of calling a colleague but now rather address him as a fraud. The man that I speak of is Richard Wagner. Now I tried to attend this opera with little bias as possible, as I once was a dear friend of Wagner, but I must say after 5 hours at the opera I had a distaste in my mouth. This opera was more off-putting than I thought it would be, and I already had my reservations about Wagner. Not only was the opera long, at moments it was rather unentertaining; the plot of the story had some moments that were unpleasant. Now
Requiem in d minor by Mozart (1756-1791) was written in 1791. Mozart fully completed Movements I and II: Introitus and Kyrie. Movements III and IV, Sequenz and Offertorium, were sketched out. When Mozart died on December 5, 1791, Franz Xaver Süssmayr (1766-1803) completed the Requiem shortly after Mozart’s death. The original key is d minor. Movements I and II are in d minor. Movement III moves from d minor, B-flat Major, g minor, d minor, F Major, a minor, and back to d minor. Movement IV is in g minor, E-flat Major, and g minor. Movement V to D major, VI is B-flat Major, VII d minor to B-flat Major, and Movement VIII Communio starting in B-flat Major and ending in the original d minor key. I listened to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Georg Solti performance of this with guest performer Cecilia Bartoli. Throughout this analysis Movement II, Kyrie, will be discussed. Kyrie is unique to the other Movements because of its form: a double fugue.
After the intermission, the orchestra played the first movement Bedächtig (thoughtfully) of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian Jewish composer. Purposefully isolating himself so he could focus on his work, Mahler completed Symphony No. 4 in a hut in Maiernigg, Austria. Bedächtig’s texture is homophonic. It’s also in sonata form and set in the key of G major at 4/4 time. The piece makes use of woodwinds (flutes, oboes, clarinets, piccolos), brass (horns, trumpets), percussion (notably, a wide variety of percussion instruments are used - for example, the triangle and sleigh balls), and strings (harp, violins, violas, cellos, bass). Bedächtig opens with a motive that will recur throughout the piece. The starting
Melvin B. Tolson was an African American modernist poet. Tolson is compared to the likes of Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison and Gwendolyn Brooks, some of the biggest names in African American literature during the realism, naturalism and modernist era. Melvin B. Tolson was born February 6th although his true birth year is unknown. Tolson was raised in a Methodist Episcopal church and his family moved around quite a bit. Beginning his career very young, Tolson’s first poem was published at the age of 14 in the local newspaper. His poem was about the sinking of the Titanic. Tolson attended Fisk and Lincoln University where he earned his bachelor’s degree. Tolson taught at Wiley College and coached the debating team. After taking a break from Wiley,
Melville didn’t name the chapter in the novel, Moby-Dick, randomly. It is evident in this chapter that his syntax, diction, and the vivid descriptions truly depict a symphony. A symphony is a piece of music created for an orchestra and typically has four parts, or movements: Allegro, Andante, Adagio, and Presto. This chapter’s organization can be compared with the parts of a symphony, hence the reasoning behind Melville’s title: The Symphony.
In order to understand a composer’s popularity one not only needs to analyse the circumstances and the composer’s works, but those pieces that provided the basis of the operas as well. Dent’s (1926) idea is that the melody of the music should follow the rhythm and pace of spoken English language. He also has a language requirement: an opera cannot become genuinely English if it is composed to foreign language. He emphasises that Purcell’s work needs to be studied; his works are in connection with the proper musical adaptation, since in Dent’s view Purcell was a master in following the rhythm of the language with the music. He even adds that the original story does not need to be written by an English author. In this chapter I am examining
The Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Opus 26 is one of the most famous violin concertos over the musical history. It is also considered to be the most renowned work by the German composer Max Bruch. I will begin with a short explanation of why I choose to analyse this piece followed by what makes this piece so remarkable. I will then present the musical context – German Romantic period – in which this piece was composed and discuss how it is representative of this period. Also, I will present briefly the biography of the composer and relate his life and style with this particular piece of music. After, I will explain the basic structure of a concerto, associate it with this violin concerto, and analyse how each movement is related. Then, I will analyse some psychoacoustic parameters of this piece (pitch, dynamics, rhythm, and texture). Finally, I will give my appreciation of this piece in term of beauty, musical expression, and mood.
Gustav Mahler began composing the Fifth Symphony in the summer of 1901. At this point in his life, Mahler had developed a high degree of confidence in his compositional ability. The symphony was written mostly during the summers of 1901 and 1902, with an important life event marked within this time period: Mahler’s engagement to Alma Maria Schindler (Fischer 385-6).
Ludwig van Beethoven was an exceptional composer and musician in his time period for numerous reasons. He produced countless symphonies, sonatas, masses, and even an opera. He was a very talented man in the Classical and Romantic era, and he will be remembered for many centuries to come. One of his works that intrigues me the most is his Piano Sonata No. 14, otherwise known as the Moonlight Sonata. Not only is it a hauntingly beautiful piece, but it is also very historically significant. Completed in 1801, the Moonlight Sonata stretched the boundaries of music in Beethoven’s time period. To understand why the Moonlight Sonata is such a unique piece, I will delve into the background of the piece, the form of Moonlight Sonata, and finally Beethoven’s