Download Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-1791 Ludwig van Beethoven 1770

Yr 9 Music @ MHS with Mr Chua 2003.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-1791
superficial character and eventually the
critics denounced his music as difficult,
dissonant and sombre. He died in poverty
in Vienna at the age of thirty-five and was
buried in a pauper’s grave.
Wolfgang
(baptized
Johannes Chrysostomus
Wolfgangangus Theophilus),
the son of a highly acclaimed
German court musician,
Leopald Mozart (T o y
S y m p h o n y ), was an
outstandingly talented
Austrian child.
There is much evidence that Mozart was
fascinated with human behaviour. One of
the great strengths of his operas is his
ability to develop characters through their
interactions as the
dramas unfold.
He spent his early years with his
parents, travelling, giving recitals,
performing before royalty and
dignitaries and visiting the finest
opera houses in Europe. Mozart’s
concertos and operas are among
his finest works, possibly because
of these early experiences of large-scale
forms. This child was exhibited, adulated
and pampered.
Amongst
Mozart’s
significant
compositions are
forty-one symphonies,
more than 20 piano
concertos, several concertos for horn,
violin, flute, bassoon, oboe, clarinet, six
string quartets, and many operas and
operettas.
As an adult Mozart was employed, briefly
and disastrously, as a court musician.
After that he chose to make his living in
Vienna rather than be subservient. He was
popular as a teacher and performer.
Ludwig Alois Friedrich Kochel classified
more than 600 of Mozart’s compositions.
Kochel, born nine years after Mozart’s
death, was a lawyer, botanist,
mineralogist, and musicologist. His system
of classification is still used to identify
Mozart’s music.
Although he was a prolific and
distinguished composer, the Viennese
fashion was for music of a frivolous and
Ludwig van Beethoven 1770-1827
Beethoven was
born in Bonn,
Germany, and like
Bach and Mozart,
came from a family
of musicians.
By the age of 13 he was a skilled organist
and composer. When he was seventeen he
played for Mozart, who prophesied a great
future for him. When 21 Beethoven went
to Vienna to study with Haydn. From all
accounts Haydn found Beethoven to be a
self-willed and uncompromising pupil.
His earliest music
teacher was his
father, a singer in the chapel at Bonn. His
father wanted to turn Ludwig into another
Mozart.
Beethoven was always able to make an
adequate living as an independent
musician. Beethoven was supported by
Austrian, Bohemian, and Hungarian
aristocracy and his income was
3
Yr 9 Music @ MHS with Mr Chua 2003.
supplemented by teaching piano and
playing piano in concerts.
Beethoven’s manuscripts showed evidence
of laborious changes and corrections and
so it might seem that he did not compose
with the same ease as
Mozart.
By his early thirties, Beethoven was
recognized as the leading composer of his
time. His wealthy patrons were so
supportive that Beethoven could treat them
discourteously without losing their
goodwill. On top of that, he was also able
to drive hard bargains with his publishers!
Although he formed many
friendships with women,
usually aristocratic women,
none lasted. By the time he was 30 he was
also becoming increasingly deaf and
experiencing periods of despair. Some of
his greatest works were composed during
the last ten years of his life when he was
ill, profoundly deaf, and suffering
dreadful anxieties.
Beethoven’s third symphony was named
Eroica because it celebrates a hero and
expresses heroic greatness. Originally
dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte, who
promised to lead humanity into a
new age of liberty, equality, and
fraternity.
In 1804 Napoleon had himself
proclaimed emperor, and
Beethoven changed the title to
Sinfonia Eroica ( H e r o i c
Symphony . . . composed to
celebrate the memory of a great
man). Whether Beethoven was angry at
Napoleon is unclear. In 1809 Napoleon
was in the audience for a performance
conducted by Beethoven.
In Beethoven’s day the philosophies
of freedom and self-expression,
which were to dominate the artists
of the next generation, were just
beginning to gain momentum.
Beethoven was considered by his
successors to be the first great free spirit of
the Romantic Movement. His music,
energetic and original, certainly expresses
emotion as much as that of any romantic
composer.
It was immediately recognized as an
important work, although audiences had
trouble grasping it perhaps because of its
unprecedented length and complexity, and
its ambiguous form. The second
movement (the Funeral March) is said to
link the work with France and Napoleon.
Instead of a lyrical slow movement this
movement is a solemn march.
Even though Beethoven continued to
composed within the established forms,
particularly that of the sonata, his mature
works were found to be dissonant,
complex and bewildering during his time
(as with the music of Mozart’s and many
other “great” composers’!).
4
Yr 9 Music @ MHS with Mr Chua 2003.
ØMusic listened to:
•
Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro (Marriage of Figaro) Overture
•
Mozart: Symphony No.1 K.16, 1st movement
•
Mozart: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1st movement
•
Mozart: Cherubino’s Aria “Non so piu cosa son” (Le Nozze di Figaro)
•
Mozart: Cherubino’s Canzone “Voi che sapete” (Le Nozze di Figaro)
• Haydn: (The Surprise) Symphony no. 94, 2nd movement
•
Haydn: Cello Concerto in C, 3rd movement
•
Beethoven: Symphony no.5, 1st movement
•
Beethoven: Symphony no.1, 1st movement
•
Beethoven: Symphony no.3, 1st movement
•
Beethoven: Symphony no.6, 1st movement
•
Beethoven: Symphony no.6 3rd movement
•
Beethoven: Symphony no.6 4th movement
•
Beethoven: Symphony no.9 1st movement
•
Beethoven: Symphony no.9 5th movement
& Words to research for next class: Romanticism & Impressionism
Notes:
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