Anton Bruckner 1824 – 1896

July 10, 2008 on 9:41 am | In Romantic Period | No Comments

    This composer has been praised by Richard Wagner as being ‛the only composer who could measure up to Beethoven.’ Anton Bruckner was born in Ansfelden, Austria. Although he appeared to have great musical ability as a child, his first aspirations were not directed at going into the field of music. Wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps, he became a school teacher at the St. Florian monastery near the city of Linz. It was there, having once been a pupil himself, that he indirectly started his musical career. Part of his teaching duties included playing the organ.
    During this time, he became quite fascinated with music and pursued several disciplines. It was not until 1855 that he applied for the position of organist at the cathedral of Linz, Austria. Even at this time, he was quite unsure of the decision to make a living solely from music alone and was greatly persuaded to apply for the job. Surely enough, his application was successful and he was a full blown professional musician.
    Although his work in Linz took up a great deal of his time, he sought out lessons in counterpoint and harmony with Simon Sechter by means of a correspondence course at the Vienna Conservatory.  Subsequently, in 1861, he graduated with honours. At his final examination, one of his examiners, astounded by his ability,  remarked that Bruckner should have judged them.
    Only seven years later, Anton Bruckner became professor at the Vienna Conservatory, thereby leaving his organist position in Linz. To make the decision to change jobs was a difficult thing for him to decide. He enjoyed a great deal of security as cathedral organist. It was not until the Vienna Conservatory said that his salary would be much higher that he decided to take up the professorship.
    Bruckner wrote a great deal of sacred music, yet was most noted for his symphonies. His pieces were very long and rich in polyphony(*-Music arranged in parts for several voices or instruments. )It is an interesting fact that his symphonies at the time were regarded as wild and unplayable. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra refused to play his works on account of this. Bruckner then allowed revisions and cuts to his compositions. This led to the attack of his pieces by a famous music critic, Eduard Hanslick, due to their inconsistency. Not until the present day have they started to play his works in their original form.
    The one composer that always supported him had been Richard Wagner. This was much appreciated and for this reason, following Wagner’s death, Bruckner dedicated the Adagio from his Seventh Symphony to his memory. It was this very work which brought his music into light of the international community and finally received the recognition it deserved. His Eighth Symphony was not received quite as well, yet the first 3 movements of his Ninth Symphony are truly his most spectacular. It is such a pity that this great man was not capable of finishing it before his death in 1896.To listen to music by Anton Bruckner click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO6HltIxevU

Intro and Welcome

June 20, 2008 on 10:43 am | In Welcome to Visitors | 1 Comment

I hope you like the blog. Please, feel free to make comments. And, if you have time, don’t forget to visit my site, www.ferrisguitar.com . It is a website dedicated to inspiring guitarists, but in my opinion, all musicians could have interest. There are recordings, a resource page, interesting reading, photos, a forum and more. All in all, it is a great piece of my life that I am sharing with others. 

Frédéric Chopin 1810-1849

June 18, 2008 on 6:13 pm | In Romantic Period | 2 Comments

Our next composer, Frédéric Chopin, was originally from Poland. Born near Warsaw in Zelasowa Wola, he started studying music at the age of six. Only a year later, he started giving concerts and even published his first composition. At 16 years old, he was accepted by the Warsaw Conservatory to study under Józef Elsner and graduated with honours only three years later, at the time a young man of 19 years and already an accomplished pianist. By the age of 20, he had already composed two piano concertos which were quite demanding for the piano soloist. (* concerto – a word coming from Italian word for concert;  in English meaning a composition for orchestra and a soloist.)
 
The first concerts that he gave abroad were in Vienna, Austria. He was charmed by life outside his country and eventually ended up leaving Poland for good, settling in France in 1831. His father was originally a Frenchman, hence the name he was given Frédéric Chopin.
(*His name is pronounced by correctly reading the following in English accenting the bold print: fre der eek – shou pa)
 
In France, although he became known as a very good player among a great deal of people, he had a difficult time developing his career as a pianist in the beginning. On account of the fact that he was such a shy person, it damaged his ability to perform on stage. In fact, his first performance in France was not a huge success. People just didn’t take to his introverted presence on stage. He then resorted to playing in the Parisian salons for smaller groups of people which eventually led to his reputation of being arrogant. At the same time, playing for these small groups of influential people, teaching, and composing soon made him one of the most popular and well-paid musicians in Paris. He didn’t need the concert halls to make a living.
 
At the age of 27, he met the French writer George Sand and ended up living with her for a period of ten years before breaking up. George Sand is known to have inspired him a great deal during the period when he wrote some of his best pieces. She had also cared for him during the times that he became bedridden with tuberculosis.
 
Frédéric Chopin’s music is something very special. He was, of course, influenced by Johann Sebastian Bach and Vincenzo Bellini, yet a great deal of his compositions were the product of the sounds of the folk songs and dances of his native Poland. Due to the fact that these were so unique with respect to their unusual melodies and rhythms, borrowing them for his compositions also made Chopin’s pieces quite individual in themselves. In fact, along with having influence composers such as Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, and Johannes Brahms, the music of Frédéric Chopin is still listened to and loved and cherished to this very day.
 
To listen to music by Frédéric Chopin click: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WpDH5zbhIk
 

Mikhail Glinka 1804 – 1857

June 5, 2008 on 5:17 pm | In Romantic Period | No Comments

    Born in the village of Novospasskoe near Smolensk in Belarus Russia to a wealthy family, this composer’s first contact with music had to most certainly be Russian folk songs and the sound of church bells which rang every day in his small and quaint little village. At the age of 13, he was sent to a school in St. Petersburg for noble families where he studied for a period of five years. During this time, he had his first piano lessons with composer John Field, who was residing in St. Petersburg and teaching. He only had a few lessons with Field until he continued his instruction with a pianist by the name of Charles Meyer. Mikhail Glinka started composing music on his own shortly after. His early compositions were not very refined on account of the fact that he had never really studied composition seriously, yet the characteristics of folk melody in his pieces could easily be recognised even at this time. After completing his studies in 1822, he ended up staying in St. Petersburg until 1830, having received a governmental appointment that was not very demanding, thereby being able to pursue earning a living as a pianist and a singer as well.
    Being drawn to music to such a great extent, it was his wish to further his studies. Making a trip to Italy with a tenor by the name of  Invanov in 1830, he ended up in Milan, where he studied at the local conservatory. He encountered a great deal of composers and learned a lot, yet he never really cared for Italy. Before returning to Russia, he had studied composition under Siegfried Dehn in Berlin for a period of five months. This was his first formal composition instruction and unfortunately, it had to be cut short on account of his father’s death.  
    Up until this point, music life in Russia was principally full of a lot of Italian composers. They, of course, were not fond of putting elements of Russian folklore into their music. Consequently, Russian folk music was disregarded. Glinka realized that it was his life’s goal and calling to go back to Russia and combine what he had learned in Italy with the music of his Russian roots.
    In 1835 and 1836, Glinka’s first opera, A Life for the Tsar, was written. It was based on a story by Zhukovsky which told about how a man, Ivan Susanin, risked his life to save the first Romanov Tsar from a gang of Poles. It was so successful that Glinka was named the Imperial Director of Music in Russia by Emperor Nicholas I himself only a year after the opera’s first performance.
     Although he started his next opera right away, it did not actually get completed for another six years. Earlier on, upon Glinka’s father’s death and returning to Russia, he got married to a woman named Maria Petrovna Ivanova . The marriage turned out to be somewhat of a disaster, seeing that she was not very supportive of his career in the field of music. After his divorce, he moved in with his mother. This whole process slowed down the completion of his second opera, Ruslan and Lyudmila which turned out not to be such a great success.  Although it contained a great deal of Glinka’s best and very influential music, the fairy tale by Pushkin, on which the plot was based, was not suitable for opera.
    After the short-coming of Ruslan and Lyudmila, Glinka did not compose a great deal of significant music with the exception of one masterpiece, Kamarinskaya, a musical piece which had a great influence upon future composers including Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the group of Russian composers known as  ‘The Five.’ (* -The latter, also known as ‘The Mighty Handful’ was an important group of composers in music history with the aim of producing a kind of Russian art music without European influence. The group consisted of the following composers: Mily Balakirev who led the group, Modest Mussorgsky, César Cui, Alexander Borodin, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.)
    Mikail Glinka died in Berlin on the 15th of February, 1857 on a visit to his old professor, Siegfried Dehn. Throughout his lifetime, he created wonderful music and influenced great Russian composers following in his footsteps. It is certainly for this reason that he is referred to as ‘the Father of Russian Art Music.’
 
To listen to music by Mikhail Glinka click here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX-gR-zzZgc 

 

Gregorio Allegri 1582 – 1652

May 26, 2008 on 4:04 pm | In Baroque Period | No Comments

Little is known about the early life of Gregorio Allegri. At the age of 9, he was a choirboy in Rome until his voice broke. He then went on to become a tenor at San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, where he remained between the ages of 14 and 22. It was during this time that he started studying music under the composer Giovanni Nanini, who was believed to have been a former student of Palestrina. Palestrina’s music was of a very great influence on Allegri’s style of composing. His studies were carried out quite intensely up until he was 30 years of age.
    At the age of 35, he was a singer and composer at the cathedral of Fermo, then at Tivoli. It was not until he was 46 years old that he was given the rank of Maestro di Cappella (Choir Director) at the church of Santo Spirito in Sassia located in Rome. By this time, he had had 37 years of practice and training in the field of music. A large number of motets and sacred music were composed during that time. 
    Two years later, he joined Urban VIII’s papal choir. The experience in the choir did not only help to develop his singing ability , but also led Allegri to write a number of works for the choir’s use. Among these compositions was the one that makes him so famous to this very day, namely Miserere. It is one of the best pieces ever written during the period and is a great example of what is know as the Palestrina style of composition, whereby it was incredibly important to emphasise the texts of  musical works and at the same time emphasising the beauty in music itself. 
    The Miserere has quite a history. It was written for the Holy Week (the week before Easter) celebrations at St. Peter’s in Rome. It proved to be such a success and such a powerful piece that its performance became a traditional part of the Holy Week service sung in the Sistine Chapel every year after. Only three copies of the piece are known to have existed. The musical score was kept under close guard of the Vatican. Copying the work was considered an offence punishable by excommunication. It was not until the time of Mozart that the piece was performed on a wider scale. It was the young 14 –year-old Mozart who wrote out the entire piece from memory after hearing only one or two performances.
 
To listen to  Miserere click:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUlFF4A8dm0
 

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