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The classical period of music
The classical period of music
Classical music history essay
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Gustav Mahler is now a world-renowned composer of classical music. He wasn’t always looked upon as highly during his working career as he is now posthumously. From Austria and of Jewish decent, Mahler began his musical career like many composers do, with the piano. He soon took to a formal musical education and grew to compose twelve full symphonies among his various other works. Mahler’s music fell into a part of musical history called the Romantic Period. Ranging from 1820 to 1900, the later portion of this period captured his works. This great composer gained much of his musical influence from the works of Richard Wagner and a small amount of influence in his earlier work also came from the Jewish culture. Near the end of his life Mahler was able to achieve the coveted position of Director of the New York Philharmonic Symphony. This spoke not only to his ability as a conductor but also to his ability as a composer. Musicologist Constantin Floros writes, “The best conductors are themselves composers.” The different musical roles Mahler filled serve to reinforce each other as a fantastic composer makes for a fantastic conductor. Mahler’s fame sat mostly in the musical community itself during his life and dropped slightly after his death. It wasn’t until half a century late when Leonard Bernstein revived Mahler’s works that it gained the status it holds today with composers like Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart.
The fifth symphony Mahler wrote falls into the middle period of the composer’s professional life. These pieces were purely orchestral compared to his early work, which incorporated vocal aspects. Debuted in 1901, his fifth symphony was not well received by the public and labeled ahead of its time. This was at ...
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...re intensity for a final crescendo, which brings an ultimate sense of grandeur and finality to the piece. The art form that is the symphony is so amazing in the stories and feelings that are conveyed to the listener all without words or pictures, but by organized sounds alone. Gustav Mahler died the same year the Titanic sunk, 1911, of complication from endocarditis. A lasting thought he left with the musical world is quite poetic and very appropriate to many famous composers in history, “Must we always die before the public allows us to live?” (Floros).
Works Cited
Floros, Constantin. Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1993. Print.
Kamien, Roger. Music An Appreciation. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Print.
Mahler, Gustav. Symphony No. 5 (1901). Perf. Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Cond. Claudio Abbado. 2004. Video.
Classical music can be best summed by Mr. Dan Romano who said, “Music is the hardest kind of art. It doesn't hang up on a wall and wait to be stared at and enjoyed by passersby. It's communication. Its hours and hours being put into a work of art that may only last, in reality, for a few moments...but if done well and truly appreciated, it lasts in our hearts forever. That's art, speaking with your heart to the hearts of others.” Starting at a young age Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven have done just that with their musical compositions. Both musical composers changed the world of music and captivated the hearts of many. Their love of composing shared many similar traits, though their musical styles were much different.
From the concrete structure of the Baroque period to the free-form structure of the Modern period each composer brings forth a new understanding and value to their time period. Within these pieces that they creatively compose it brings new light and displays the culture of the time period. The composers each have story to tell and has each creatively constructed their own works within the diameters of their era.
Lupo, Benedetto, and Peter Maag, perfs. Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in A Minor Op.54. By Clara Schumann. Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana. Arts Productions, 2004. Florida College's Classical Music Library. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
The late period of music concentrated on composing music very nearly only for musical purists, and even large portion of those had a troublesome time admiring the new style. Beethoven likewise tried to consolidate the polyphonic styles of Bach and Handel into his late period, and subsequently a great deal of fugues can be found in these compositions. Then again however, the greater part of the arrangement that were created in the late period were his most driven and were the most prolonged to compose. He also delivered the longest piano sonata, theme and variations, choral work, string quartet, and orchestra. These pieces in this period were made while Beethoven was totally deaf.
Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven. Two composers who marked the beginning and the end of the Classical Period respectively. By analysing the last piano sonata of Haydn (Piano Sonata No. 62 in E-flat major (Hob. XVI:52)) and the first and last piano sonatas of Beethoven (Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor Op. 2, No.1, Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor Op. 111), this essay will study the development of Beethoven’s composition style and how this conformed or didn’t conform to the Classical style. The concepts of pitch and expressive techniques will be focused on, with a broader breakdown on how these two concepts affect many of the other concepts of music. To make things simpler, this essay will analyse only the first movements of each of the sonatas mentioned.
Now in time there are many great composer that have outlived their dying age by making an impact and leaving a permanent seal on this planet with the great symphonies they have composed, which in turn has inspired many composers throughout the preceding centuries.
This paper will explore the life of the great composer, Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach was considered one of the greatest composers of all time. He created amazing, famous compositions that made a big impact in today’s world. He went through rough times like many people do, the loss of his parents and finding a way back to the old routine was not an easy task. Bach came from generations of musicians and was given a religious education which is something that played a big role in his life when becoming a musician. We will analyze and learn the significance of some of his great compositions, the stories and what inspired him to compose music.
First, let’s begin by looking at the form Mozart created the symphony in. Mozart uses the sonata form for this composition, which became the most widely used form during the Classical Period. Sonata form presents a series of procedures for the appropriate structuring of a piece. Sonatas
Among the many musical types of the period, the classical period is best known for the symphony, a form of a large orchestral ensemble. The symphonic pieces generally had three movements, the sonata, the minuet, and the finale. Building of the achievements of earlier composers, Haydn, and Mozart brought the symphony to it's peak in the last 20 years of the 18th century. Haydn excelled in rhythmic drive and development of theme-based music. Mozart also added to the symphony by contrasting memorable lyric themes in very full sounding orchestral settings.
Zaslaw, Neal. Mozart’s Symphonies: Context, Performance Practice, Recteption. United States: Oxford University Press. 1989, Print.
His astonishing understanding of musical rudiments was further cemented at age seven by his first teacher Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel, with piano literature ranging from Bach to Schubert to Clementi (Musgrave 10). The young gifted talent quickly matured, with his compositions being sedulously characterized in craft similar to the seasoned taste of aged liquor. Following in the wake of Beethoven, his style of romanticism seemed restrained, and viewed as being confined to classical forms. With his preference towards absolute music, his works demonstrated “as [Ian] McEwan/ [Clive] Linley would have it, at the intersection of emotion and reason” and of “powerful intellect and of passionate expressivity” (Platt and Smith 4). However, being the headstrong romantic that he is, he manipulated the limiting factor into an area of expanse, in which he developed his music into seriously emotional, imaginative works of art.... ...
...r. Mahler's chamber music composition was limited to his student days, and the closest he came to composing an opera was Rubezahl, for which he prepared a libretto in manuscript (in 1880 or 1881), sketched some music (1882), and then abandoned. He did, however, play a significant role assembling existing material and adding his own connecting material to create a performable version of Weber's Die Drei Pintos, at the request of Weber's family. Although Mahler had a thirty year long composing career, his complete works could be assembled on fifteen or sixteen CDs.
The four initial movements received a premiere in 1968, while the fifth movement was added to the work after the first performance, and received its first performance in the Donaueschingen Festival by the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra in the following year. It was only in 1970 when the New York Philharmonic performed the now complete work under the baton of Leonhard Bernstein. Sinfonia quickly drew attention from the critics and scholars. Bernstein himself stated that the piece was a representative of the new direction classic music was taking after the pessimistic decade of the sixties . Among its five movements, the central movement seemed to attract more attention due to its enigmatic metalinguistic character and to the multiple musical quotations incorporated into the work. In this paper, I will compare analytical strategies on the third movement of Sinfonia in order to prove that Luciano Berio intention was to trace a personal narrative about music history by the examination, commentary, and extension upon the scherzo of Gustav Mahler’s 2nd
In 1800, Beethoven had wrote his first ever symphony. He was just 30 years old and already showing symptoms of hearing lost. This just shows how dedicated and genius Beethoven was. Nobody at the time was doing anything remotely close to what he was writing. Not to mention, he was going deaf. It really shows how involved and dedicated he was to music and how he passion for natural and what he heard in the world, transferred into his pieces.