musical genres

Music. Fascinating both by it’s diverse individual styles and the inevitable fusion of different genres which in turn have created other completely new and unique styles of music. Classical music is a perfect example. The earliest forms of classical music were composed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and displayed a very complicated and sophisticated form of writing incorporating a wide range of instruments and used the principle of multi instrumentation which achieved a very full symphonic sound which in turn led to the creation of specially designed halls to facilitate the sound. The origins of the music were also diverse, many compositions having been written for the stage, composers such as ‘Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’ who is responsible for the remarkable musical compositions of ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘The Nutcracker’ wrote his music for Ballet in a style which was not only captivating and enchanting, but also told a story. Tchaikovsky was not the only composer to do this, ‘Richard Wagner’ who was a composer of Opera’s also wrote his music in a style that told a story. Wagner changed the concept of opera by viewing it as a ’total art work’ He wanted the Conductor to control all the elements of the dramatic production and to put them to work in projecting the drama through the Music. In the same diversified way the composers of the time wrote for dances to be performed on the stage, others wrote for dances that were popular at the time, such as the waltz, in this instance Composers such as ‘Josef Lanner’ and ‘Johann Strauss’ gave the waltz a whole new life. With their compositions the waltz gained sophistication and superiority Along with a distinctly Viennese light-hearted spirit. But not all classical music composers wrote for the stage or even for dance. Some composed music for the things they felt were important. ‘Johann Sebastian Bach’ was amongst this group, he was a very religious man who composed for the church, primarily, he was a man of God, and often he would concentrate on the depth of his religion and put it back into his music, as an intense personal statement of faith. But where Bach wrote for the church composers such as ‘George Fredric Handel’ wrote for the general public he was a man of the world who loved to travel and who put this across in his music. Handel’s compositions varied where some were simple others were a lot more vigorous.