The six Brandenburg concertos were dedicated to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg. Each of the six concerti is distinct and can stand alone from one another as individual pieces, not to be seen as a set of works to some respect. Hearing the 5th concerto in comparison from the rest shows us clearly that Bach was a brilliant contrapuntist.…
Bartok left two major concertos unfinished: the Third piano concerto and the Viola Concerto. The former was complete except for the orchestration of the last seventeen measures, but the latter required much more extensive work. The manuscript for this unfinished work was given to Bartok’s friend and informal student Tibor Serly, who reconstructed the work and prepared it for publication. The first performance was given on December 2, 1949, in Minneapolis. The work has become a staple in the orchestra repertoire and has enjoyed great popularity with audiences for over sixty years. However, musicologists and critics…
Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story”, Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” and Nielson’s “Symphony No. 5” all utilize different symphonic techniques to create 3 beautiful pieces.…
In Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5 in C minor the first movement is called Allergro con brio and it is in sonata form. This movement is very intense and strong sounding and has a single rhythmic motive that is short-short-short-long. The first theme of this movement is in C minor. Throughout this theme he shifts the motive to different pitches and instruments. The second theme is in E flat major and starts with a varied basic motive of short-short-short-long-long-long. The horns starts a new melody that is calm sounding compared to the opening of this movement. In this movement you can hear horns, some woodwind instruments and some string instruments. This movement has a dramatic climax and the closing section starts in C major and moves into C minor.…
Ludvig van Beethoven no doubt is one of the greatest pianist and composers to date. His earlier works are usually compared to Mozart due to the similarity of the structure but one major different was Beethoven’s ability to incorporate his own imagination into each composition. Although most of his work had been recognized by the music industry, it was his first symphony of the starting point in his career. The Symphony number one, opus 21 was written in C major contain four movements, and although its structure contain some similarity to Mozart’s work, it was the one that put Beethoven onto the musical scene in Vienna.…
Berlioz was known for his use of large orchestras, often made up of more than 1000 performers. The use of giant orchestras is a development of the romantic period. Leonard Bernstein describes the symphony as “”the first musical expedition into psychedelic because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature”; this is very unique to a piece composed of this period. Berlioz composed music that represented his lively imagination. Freedom of form and design was also a key aspect of the romantic period and Berlioz’s symphony portrays this well. Lastly, during his five movements there is a large range of dramatic contrasts of dynamics and pitch, especially during his first movement. A dramatic contrast is also a characteristic well known during this…
The second piece I am going to discuss is the Symphony No.2 in D Minor, Op. 36 composed by Ludwig van Beethoven(1770-1827). It was in the Classical period, and the genre of it is Symphony because of it had four movements. The first movement is in the Adagio molto form, the second movement is in the Larghetto form, the third movement is in the Scherzo: Allegro form which breaks the rule of most of symphonies, and the fourth movement is in the Allegro molto form. The length of the work is about thirty-five minutes and…
This movement sounds like he was painting a beautiful picture. It has some kinds of romantic emotion, but Beethoven described it by a sorrowful way. Beethoven composed this movement use lots of sixteenth notes, from one part to others. The theme sixteenth notes were formed by A.F.E.D. This movement was totally different with the second movement, and makes a confrontation with the first movement. This also can give expression to Beethoven have a firm belief in the struggle for victory. However, this movement comes to an abrupt end. This makes people to reverie. There are still having hardships in the endeavor. Like the end of the Shakespeare’s Tempest, the protagonist subdued his foes. However, he let the past be forgotten, and forgave all of his foes. This also gave expression to the helpless of can’t triumph over the societal forces and limitations. This explained the ending of Beethoven’s tempest sonata and Shakespeare’s Tempest has some relevance.…
At the age of 39, Beethoven’s hearing condition worsened. He lead a series of disastrous recitals. People weren't pleased wight he different type of music he was playing and his “family” of noblemen advised him to go back to the traditional way of playing music.…
Symphonie Fantastique is a symphony written by French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830 and composed of five movements. It was written for his English lover and was program music. The first movement is the basic introduction to the movements and it starts off slow and emotional and then it quickens and sounds frantic and crazy. With the slowing and speeding up of the music, there are elements of acoustics and it sounds like there is a heavy and light use of plucking strings. There is also a very repetitive themes, both the acoustics and in the pounding of the drum. Unpredictability was also an element of the movement, just when you thought…
* Perfect Cadence!! – In the concept Pitch, the perfect cadence is very obvious at the end of the sections and phrases – change from the dominant to the tonic.…
Haydn composed his Op. 74 quartets in the later years of his life between 1796 and 1797 and it was the last of his completed string quartets. The set of quartets were dedicated to the Hungarian Count Joseph Erdödy and were published in 1799. It was said that this selection of quartets was one of his “most ambitious chamber works” with his attempt of “emphasizing thematic continuity, seamlessly and continually passing motifs from one instrument to another” 1. The fourth of these quartets is nicknamed “Sunrise”. This is due to the exquisite rising theme heard in the first violin part at the beginning of the first movement from bar one to bar four as seen in Figure 1.…
My listening selection that I chose from the classical era was ¬¬¬Mozart’s Symphony #40 in G Minor K 550. This piece was composed in 1788. The tempo of this piece is molto allegro and the rhythms are fairly simple. Syncopation is used in this piece as well with homophonic texture. The piece is mainly quite with development to a louder section in the middle, but ends softly. The exposition of the piece demonstrates the quietness that is seen, but contains a small louder section. The recapitulation is very similar to how the exposition is composed. The majority of the dynamic parts are sudden with very little build up to crescendos or diminuendos. There are… This is piece has been described by being a muted struggle against out of controllable…
Romantic composers favored program music as it allowed them as “Romantics” to delve into a more humanistic and emotional approach to composition. Compositions such as Cesar Franck’s ‘Le Chasseur Maudit’ and Richard Strauss’ ‘Don Quixote’ are examples of how music can be influenced by literature and the values of Romanticism. Through manipulating tempo and note values to fit the personality of a character or to create imagery of a landscape or group, to framing the form around the plotline of the story these compositions create a deeper emotional experience for the audience which is why the composers of the 19th century preferred to write program…
Sonata form is the musical form is the form that has been most widely used then any other form. It really toke shape as a main form during the Classical period. It is usually used a first movement in a multi-movement piece and is commonly referred as Sonata-Allegro form. The concept behind it was to try and find a way to organize or categorize musical ideas into a movement based on a particular “key.”…