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Period: to
Claissical Period
Europe move toward Classicism in architecture, literature and art.
- age of enlightenment
- rise of middle class
- concert hall
- orchestra size increse
- private concert (string quartet)
- pleasing sounding music, follow identifiable form, singable melody, etc.
- First Viennese School: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven -
Period: to
Franz Joseph Haydn's Life Span
Born in Rohrau, Austria.
- Sent to Vienna to be a choir boy in St. Stephen's Cathedral at the age of eight.
- Composed 104 symphonies, 83 string quartets, numerous divertimentos, trios, and sonatas, and over 20 operas.
- Befriends Mozart in the 1780s. -
Period: to
Wolfgan Amadeus Mozart's Life Span
Born in Salzburg, Austria.
- Son of court musician and composer.
- First symphony premiered when he was 8 years old.
- Moved and became freelance musician in Vienna in 1781. -
British Industrialization begins
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Ludwig van Beethoven's Life Span
Born in Bonn, Germany.
- Also a court musician like Mozart.
- Moved to Vienna 1792.
- Intended to study with Mozart, ended up with Haydn instead.
- Acclaimed virtuoso pianist.
- Became deaf after the age of thirty. -
Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution
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Period: to
Romantic Period
Reaction against rationalization of nature and age of enlightenment and later, Industrial Revolution
- music becomes more expressive and emotional.
- rhythm and time more fluid.
- facination with nature, past (Middle Ages, legend and chivalry, mystic and supernatural)
- new attention to national identity.
- discontent with musical formulas and conventions
- Beethoven, Chopin, Berlioz, Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, etc -
Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major
Was one of 3 subscription concerts given that spring and was probably played by Mozart himself.
- Proceeds from one of his most gentle and songful first movements.
- First movement might almost have been intended as a demonstration piece for double-exposition form, except for one unique feature: a new theme introduced halfway through. -
Mozart's Don Giovanni
Mozart wrote Don Giovanni for Prague, the second-largest city of the Austrian Empire.
- Premiered at Teatro di Praga.
- Count as an opera buffa, but it's neither wholly comic drama nor wholly tragic. -
Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G Minor
Mozart completed Symphony No. 40 on this date.
- It is one of his most famous and admired work.
- Conveys a dark and uneasy mood.
- Suggests some kind of muted struggle against inescapable restraints. -
French Revolution begins
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Haydn's Symphony No. 95 in C Minor
The exact date of premiere is unknown.
- First performed at Hanover Square Rooms in London. -
Period: to
Hector Berlioz's Life Span
Born in France.
- The first great composer who played no standard instrument.
- Father was a country doctor.
- Sent to medical school in Paris, ended up in Paris Conservatory of Music instead.
- Supported himself with musical journalism. -
Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C Minor
First performed in Vienna's Theater an der Wien.
- One of the best-known composition in classical music. -
Period: to
Frédéric Chopin's Life Span
Born near Warsaw, Poland.
- Extraodinary pianist.
- Moved to Paris.
- Restrict his work to music for piano.
- Died of tuberculosis. -
Industrialization spreads throughout Europe
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Beethoven's String Quartet No. 16 in F, Op. 135
Written in October, 1826 and premiered in March 1828.
- On a smaller scale compare to his other late quartets.
- Third movement considered a scherzo. -
Berlioz' Fantastical Symphony: An Episode in the Life of an Artist
First performed at the Paris Conservatoire.
- Program symphony
- An important piece of the early Romantic period
- Encouraged listeners to think it had been written under the influence of opium. -
Chopin's Nocturne in F-sharp major, Op. 15, No. 2
Nocturnes means "night pieces."
- Has an elegance that stems partly from the wonderfully graceful rhythm, partly from the Romantic turns of harmony, and partly from the pianistic decoration of the melodic line. -
Period: to
Johannes Brahms' Life Span
Born in Hamburg, Germany.
- Spent much of his professional life in Vienna.
- Father was orchestral musician.
- By age 7 was studying with one of the finest music teacher Hamburg.
- Met Robert and Clara Schumann at age twenty.
- Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. -
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Giacomo Puccini's Life Span
Born in Lucca, Tuscany. -
Period: to
Gustav Mahler's Life Span
Born in Kaliště, Bohemia, Austrian Empire.
- Father was abusive, lost siblings to diphtheria, suicide or mental illness.
- Lived near military barracks, influenced his music (marches).
- Studied in Vienna Conservatory.
- Jewish and opressed by anti-Semitism view of the time. -
U.S. Civil War
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Period: to
Claude Debussy's Life Span
Born in France.
- Went through the strict curriculum of Paris Conservatory of Music, which he entered at the age of 10.
- Famous for his innovations in orchestration and in ppiano writing. -
Period: to
Arnold Schoenberg's Life Span
Born in Vienna.
- Largely self-taught in music.
- Produced books on music thoery, painted impressionist paintings, and wrote literary texts for many of his compositions.
- Music grew more and more atonal, developed twelve-tone ( or serial) system when he was nearly 50.
- Labeled degenerate music with the rise of the Nazi Party because he was Jewish.
- Moved to the US in 1934.
- Strange personality: gloomy, uncompromising, inordinately proud, highly superstitious. -
Period: to
Charles Ives' Life Span
Born in Danbury, Connecticut.
- Son of a Civil War military bandmaster and music teacher.
- Church organist as teenager.
- Went to Yale.
- Successful insurance business.
- Combined American popular- and church- music with European art music.
- Experimental music - quarter tones. -
Brahms' Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77
Written in 1878 and premiered by Joachim at Leipzig on Jan 1 1879.
- Follow Classical forms. -
Period: to
Igor Stravinsky's Life Span
Born in Russia.
- Father Fyodor Stravinsky was an important bass singer.
- Studied law and did not turn seriously to music until 19.
- After WWI, he modeled his music on pre-Romantic composers, transforming the music by his own unique rhythmic and harmonic style. (Neoclassicism) -
Period: to
Anton Webern's Life Span
Born in Vienna, Austria.
- pupil of Schoenberg.
- the most radical of its milieu in its rigorous and resolute apprehension of twelve-tone technique.
- compositions are concise, distilled and select.
- killed by US soldier when accidentally broke curfew. -
Period: to
Alban Berg's Life Span
Born in Vienna.
- Most powerful exponent of expressionism in music after Schoenberg.
- Produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone system. -
Mahler's Symphony No. 1
Premiered at the Vigadó Concert Hall, Budapest.
- Started out as a symphonic poem in one movement, grew to a five-movement symphony, and was finally revised into four movements.
- Includes fragments from a number of his earlier songs.
- Special kind of counterpoint closely tied up with his individual style of orchestration. -
Period: to
Modernism
More experimental composition following WWI and WWII.
- expressionism, neoclassicism, etc.
- Second Viennese School: Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Anton Webern.
- Igor Stravinsky, Charles, Ives, Aaron Copland, etc. -
Debussy's Three Nocturnes
Might be described as impressionist symphonic poems, though have no narrative programs.
- Suggest various scenes without attempting to illustrate them literally.
- Refrence to famouse atmospheric paintings by impressionist artist, James McNeill Whistler. -
Period: to
Aaron Copland's Life Span
Born in Brooklyn.
- Went to study under Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
- Promoted American music after returned.
- Attracted by the idea that art should "serve the people." (Gebrauchsmusik)
- Draw from folk materials. -
Puccini's Madame Butterfly
First performed at La Scala and was withdrawn after disatrous premiere.
- Second version premiered at Brescia to great success.
- Puccini wrote 5 versions of the opera. -
Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question
Three sections:
- string (The Silences of the Druids)
- trumpet (The Unanswered Question of Existence)
- woodwind (The Invisible Answer - Fighting Answerers) -
Webern's Five Orchestral Pieces
Premiere in London at a Promenade Concert.
- music feels concentrated (atomized)
- 6 measures long
- very short time segment of very high intensity
- total chromaticism -
Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire
Song cycle sets poems by a minor symbolist poet, Albert Giraud.
- Pierrot is the eternal sad clown
- Poem dotted with Freudian imagery.
- "Lunar" - obsession with the moon, amorous frustrations, nightmarish hallucinations.
- Five instruments: flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano. (3 player double on other instruments: piccolo, bass clarinet, viola) -
Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring
Written for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company.
- First performance caused a riot (audience shocked and infuriated by the violent, dissonant sounds and the provocative choreography)
- No real story, more an abstract concert piece. -
World War I begins
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Alban Berg's Wozzeck
First performed in 1925.
- First conceived during WWI.
- Wagnerian (depends on musical continuity carried by the orchestra).
- Uses leitmotivs, contains no arias.
- Musical style influenced by Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire. -
World War II begins
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Copland's Appalachian Spring
Premiered at the Library of Congress.
- choreographed and danced by Martha Graham.
- Concert suite in six continuous sections.