Download COMPOSERS AND LISTENING EXAMPLES BY MUSICAL PERIOD

COMPOSERS AND LISTENING EXAMPLES BY MUSICAL PERIOD
MEDIEVAL (400-1450)
Hildegard of Bingen
*Alleluia, O Virga Mediatrix
German, woman, she had visions and also wrote poetry.
Notre Dame School composers (Leonin and Perotin)
Composers who developed organum and polyphony
*Sumer is icumen in (Summer is Come)
An example of the type of music being written by the notre dame school composers
Composer is anonymous
RENAISSANCE (1450-1600)
John Farmer
English composer, active in Dublin Ireland, was the organist and master of choirboys at Christ Church
Wrote madrigals and English songs
*Fair Phyllis (Madrigal)
Josquin de Prez
Spent most of his career in Italy
Wrote motets, masses and French chansons and Italian secular songs
He was humanistic composer: a new thinking centered on human issues and the individual.
*Ave Maria…. Virgo serena (Motet)
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Italian; worked as organist and choirmaster in various Italian churches
Wrote over 100 masses and madrigals and motets
Wrote *Pope Marcelleus Mass (Gloria) to satisfy the council of trent (This is a mass)
BAROQUE (1600-1750)
Claudio Monteverdi
Italian early opera composer
Wrote opera and madrigals
Wrote Orfeo and The Coronation of Poppea
Henry Purcell
English composer
Wrote operas, incidental music for plays, sacred and secular vocal music and some instrumental music
*Dido and Aeneas (Dido’s Lament)(Opera)
Johann Sebastian Bach
German composer, raised Lutheran. His most important position was that of cantor at St. Thomas
Church in Lepzig where he supervised music for 4 of the city’s main churches. He was also the director
of the collegium musicum.
Wrote sacred vocal music (over 200 cantatas, 4 passions and the mass in b minor), orchestral music,
concertos, solo sonatas and keyboard music.
Cantata No. 140 Wachet auf (numbers 1 and 4)
Contrapunctus I, from The Art of the Fugue (This is keyboard music, a fugue based on a single theme)
George Frideric Handel
German, ended up living in London later in his career
Wrote over 40 Italian operas, English Oratorios, other vocal music, orchestral suites and keyboard and
chamber music
*The Messiah, Rejoice Greatly and Halleluiah Chorus…. This is an oratorio
*Water Music Suite (Alla Hornpipe)….. this is a dance suite
Antonio Vivaldi
Italian
Wrote over 230 violin concertos, other solo concertos, sinfonias, vocal music including opera and
oratorios
*The Four Seasons, Spring (This is a program concerto for violin)
CLASSICAL (1750-1825)
Joseph Haydn
Austrian composer. Spent most of his career writing for the Esterhazys, a family of wealthy Hungarian
princes. (An example of patronage)
Wrote symphonies, chamber music, 68 string quartets, concertos, sacred vocal music and 14 operas.
*String Quartet Op76, No. 3 (Emperor) II
*Symphony No. 100 in G Major (Military), II
*Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major, III
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Austrian. Rebelled against patronage and was a struggling freelance musician. Died at 35 penniless.
Wrote chamber music including 23 string quartets, divertimentos and serenades, keyboard music,
orchestral music, concertos, comic operas, serious operas, German singspiel, sacred choral music.
*Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A little Night Music) (An example of a serenade…. A type of chamber music)
*Don Giovanni, Act I, scene 2 (An example of opera buffa)
*Requiem, Dies irae (a funeral mass, the dies irae is one movement)
Ludwig Van Beethoven
German. Went deaf. He had 3 compositional periods, the first was classical like Haydn and Mozart. The
second had charactoristics of the romantic period to come including large dynamic contrasts, explosive
accents and longer movements. In the third period Beethoven used more chromatic harmonies and
developed a l skeletal way of writing that stripped away any nonessential elements.
He wrote 9 symphonies, overtures, concertos, chamber music, 32 piano sonatas, other piano music, one
opera and choral music.
*Piano sonata in c-sharp minor, Moonlight
*Symphony No. 5 in c minor, SHORT SHORT SHORT LOOOOOOOOOONG
ROMANTIC PERIOD (1825-1900)
Franz Schubert
Born in Vienna, was writing his great works as a teenager. Died at 31
Wrote more than 600 lieder, 9 symphonies, chamber music, string quartets, operas, other choral music
and seven masses
*Elfking (example of through composed lieder with 4 voices, narrator, son, father, elf king)
Frederic Chopin
Polish but spent most of his career in France. He is the father of modern piano composition.
Most work is focused on the piano, he wrote: 2 piano concertos, piano music including four ballades,
three sonatas, preludes, etudes, mazurkas, polonaises, scherzos, waltzes, impromptus, nocturnes,
chamber music with piano and songs.
*Mazurka in B-flat minor, op. 24, No 4 (piano solo)
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel
German. Discouraged from composing because she was female.
Wrote instrumental music, over 125 piano works including sonatas, preludes and fugues, character
pieces (like das jahr), vocal music and over 250 lieder
*September: at the river from the Year (Das Jahr) Piano character piece.
Stephen Foster
American. Combined elements of art song and opera to create commercially successful pop music.
Also wrote pieces popularized through minstrelsy (blackface performers acting scenes from slave life)
Wrote many songs: Beautiful dreamer, camptown races, Old Kentucky home, Oh Susanna, Old folks at
home, *Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair
Hector Berlioz
French. Won the Prix de Rome in the same year he wrote the symphonie fantastique
Wrote orchestral music, program symphonies, choral music, 9 works for solo voice and orchestra and
writings about music including an orchestration treatise.
*Symphonie Fantastique IV, March to the Scaffold (5 movements total, idee fixe the beloved)
Bedrich Smetana
Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). Nationalistic composer, after a failed revolution against Austrian
rule he accepted a conducting position in Sweden. Went deaf at the end of his life.
Wrote 8 operas, orchestral music, chamber music and keyboard works, choral music
*The moldau (1 of 6 symphonic poems from the cycle My Country)
Johannes Brahms
German, good friend of Clara and Robert Schumann. Wrote in the classical style with romantic flair.
He wrote: 4 symphonies, variations, overtures, four concertos, chamber music, duo sonatas, piano
music, character pieces, dance, variation, choral music and part songs and lieder.
*Symphony No. 3 in F Major, III
Giuseppe Verdi
Italian. Nationalist.
Wrote 28 operas (Macbeth, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata, unballo in maschera, don carlos, otello,
Falstaff) and vocal music including the Requiem Mass
*Rigoletto, Act III (tenor solo followed by quartert singing “un di”)
*Requiem, Dies Irae
Richard Wagner
German. Wrote “music dramas” and he did everything from the words to the staging. He used
leitmotifs to signify ideas, places, people.
Wrote 13 music dramas (Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, etc.) orchestral music,
piano music and vocal and choral music. Wrote the book “Art and Revolution, the art work of the
future”
* The Ring of the Nibelung (4 operas in 1 including: Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried and
Gotterdammerung) (Ride of the Valkyries and closing Scene, wotan summons the god of fire)