WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem which was largely unfinished at the time of his death. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons. Mozart learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and his influence on subsequent Western art music is profound; Beethoven composed his own early works in the shadow of Mozart, and Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years."

All of the movements are in the key of A major or A minor; therefore, the work is homotonal. A typical performance of this entire sonata takes about 20 minutes.The last movement, "Alla Turca", popularly known as the "Turkish Rondo", is often heard on its own and is one of Mozart's best-known piano pieces; it was Mozart himself who titled the rondo "Alla Turca".It imitates the sound of Turkish Janissary bands, the music of which was much in vogue at that time. Various other works of the time imitate this Turkish style, including Mozart's own opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail. In Mozart's time, the last movement was sometimes performed on pianos built with a "Turkish stop", allowing it to be embellished with extra percussion effects. The third movement is related to the first one, because its beginning can be seen as an additional variation of the theme of the first movement, varied in the Janissary style.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Beethoven’s signature

Ludwig Van Beethoven baptized 17 December 1770[– 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 concertos for piano, 32 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets. He also composed other chamber music, choral works (including the celebrated Missa Solemnis), and songs. Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, Beethoven displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and Christian Gottlob Neefe. During his first 22 years in Bonn, Beethoven intended to study with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and befriended Joseph Haydn. Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792 and began studying with Haydn, quickly gaining a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. He lived in Vienna until his death. During the late 18th century, his hearing began to deteriorate significantly, yet he continued to compose, conduct, and perform after becoming completely deaf.

Symphony 9. th (Beethoven)

The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the best-known works of the Western classical repertoire. Among critics, it is almost universally considered to be among Beethoven's greatest works, and is considered by some to be the greatest piece of music ever written. The symphony was the first example of a major composer using voices in a symphony(thus making it a choral symphony). The words are sung during the final movement by four vocal soloists and a chorus. They were taken from the "Ode to Joy", a poem written by Friedrich Schiller in 1785 and revised in 1803, with additions made by the composer. Today, it stands as one of the most played symphonies in the world..

A page from Beethoven's manuscript of the 9th Symphony

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

Tchaikovsky’s signature

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY                                               Pyotr Ilyich Chaykovsky (7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) anglicised as Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky , was a Russian composer whose works included symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets,chamber music, and a choral setting of The Russian Orthodox Divine Liturgy. Some of these are among the most popular concert and theatrical music in the classical repertoire. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally,which he bolstered with appearances as a guest conductor later in his career in Europe and the United States. One of these appearances was at the inaugural concert of Carnegie Hall in New York City in 1891. Tchaikovsky was honored in 1884 by Emperor Alexander III, and awarded a lifetime pension in the late 1880s. Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant. There was scant opportunity for a musical career in Russia at that time, and no system of public music education. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from where he graduated in 1865. The formal Western-oriented teaching he received there set him apartfrom composers of the contemporary nationalist movement embodied by the Russian composers of The Five, with whom his professional relationship was mixed. Tchaikovsky's training set him on a path to reconcile what he had learned with the native musical practices to which he had been exposed from childhood. From this reconciliation,he forged a personal, independent but unmistakably Russian style a task that did not prove easy.self-confidence.

Swan Lake ballet, Op. 20, by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, was composed in 1875–1876. The scenario, initially in four acts, was fashioned from Russian folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger. The ballet was premiered by the

Bolshoi Ballet on 4 March 20 February] 1877at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow,billed as The Lake of the Swans. Although it is presented in many different versions,most ballet companies base their stagings both choreographically and musically on the 1895 revival of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, first staged for the Imperial Ballet on 15 January 1895, at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. For this revival, Tchaikovsky's score was revised by the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre's chief conductor and composer Riccardo Drigo.

Swan Lake ballet

MIKALOJUS KONSTANTINAS

CIURLIONIS

Lithuanian artist and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911), a unique figure in the history of European arts,has left a profound imprint on Lithuanian culture.   Judging by the breath of his artistic activities and diverse interests, Čiurlionis can be seen as a truly Renaissance individual. Over a short, mere decade-long career,he composed nearly four hundred musical compositions, including two large-scale symphonic poems, an overture, two piano sonatas, a string quartet,and a cantata for chorus and orchestra. During those same brief years he also created approximately four hundred paintings and etchings, as well as several literary works and poems,while still finding time to experiment with art photography. Notes from his study years at the Warsaw Institute of Music show his interest ingeology and history,chemistry and geometry, physics and astronomy,astrology and ancient mythology, dead and modern languages, philosophical ideas of antiquity and modernity,eastern and western religions. On the other hand, his active involvement in the Lithuanian national movement and his idealist self-sacrifice for the sake ofartistic ideals show him as a typical artist of the Romantic mold. During his short life,Čiurlionis managed to be at the heart of the creation of the Lithuanian Artists Union and actively organized andparticipated in the first three exhibitions of Lithuanian artists, organized and directed Lithuanian Choruses in Warsaw, Vilnius, and St. Petersburg,and was the first Lithuanian professional composer not only to take interest in Lithuanian folk songs, but to collect and publish them

His passionate approach to life is perhaps best summarized by his refusal to accept an offered safe teaching position at the Warsaw Institute of Music, and his declaration in a letter to his brother that he intends “to dedicate to Lithuania” all of his “past and future works.” In addition, in following the German Symbolists in his paintings, exploring synaesthetic ideas, fashionable at the time, and exploring chromatic and harmonic possibilities of the tonal major-minor system in his music compositions Čiurlionis stands as typicalartist of the late Nineteenth-early Twentieth century Europe. Finally, his latest mature paintings, based on intricate musical compositional technique , and piano compositions in which tonal writing is blended with proto-serial techniques and constructive use of short rhythmic, melodic and harmonic complexes, stand as examples of totally unprecedented plastic-aural experiences unique in the history of European art.

fa diyez major preluddo minör string quartetla major preludJourney of the Princess: a fairy tale forest (in the forest) tone poem jura (sea) tone poem

His musical works