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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: 5