Basics - Genres - Classical 2

Mozart

What would classical music without dear Mozart? One of the most brilliant composers of all time. And one of the most difficult to truly understand.

His music is perfect, yet in its perfection it is riddled with so much feelings and imperfection of humanity. Like how my piano teacher liked to describe him, "Too simple for beginners, too difficult for the masters", Mozart has this amazing quality of making simplistic rules still sound so filled with emotions.

The biggest difficulty of all time to really play or experience Mozart's music is to understand his difficult life despite having that immense talent within him. Confined by the rules of the aristocrats and the ideas of the people of his time, he still managed to bring forth his cynicism, and true emotions into his music despite the constant need for "happy music" by the nobles.

Here is his masterpiece, in a few excerpts. Please do listen more if you find this emotional scintillating, for it is for me.



Haydn

Again, one of the best composers. One who had to continuously produce symphonies after symphonies because of the fact that he was commissioned to do weekly symphonic pieces for the ones who hired him. He was ingenious with his ideas throughout these symphonies, but couldn't fully expand his music to its full potential until he left the service later in his life.

That's when some of his best works were produced. My personal favourites are his quartets; actually my favourite music within classical is chamber music to begin with anyway. Despite the largely classical framework, Haydn, much like Mozart, inserted his own ideas and beautiful feelings in every piece.

Here is a beautiful cello concerto written by him.



Gluck



One of the greatest violin masters playing this beautiful piece. Gluck was more well known for his works in operatic work. Operas are amazingly difficult grand works in my opinion. Firstly, plot, characters and lyrics are some really difficult things to do. On top of that you have to work on orchestration, arrangement, and melodic writing and present it all in a coherent form with thematic repetitions (repeating themes, which are melodic phrases or certain sounds that reminds people of each individual in the opera or characterises the ideas behind the opera) so that people can relate to the piece and understand it as a play and a symphony all at the same time.



Enjoy. =)

Beethoven

Everyone trained in classical music would be able to identify Beethoven as one of the great masters. Much like Mozart defined the transition between Baroque and Classical, Beethoven defined the transition between Classical to Romantic.

He wrote so many amazing pieces that till now everyone knows the melodies at the very least. But not only are his pieces filled with great melodic value, they have amazing arrangements. He magically uses different instruments to bring out the melody to bring contrasting sounds and emotions within his works. His usage of instrumentation to colour his chords in the way to evoke emotions is still one of the most studied materials for all classical composing students.

The piece coming up is one of the most well-known pieces ever. Used over and over again in movies and played virtually everywhere, this piece of music was only but one of the masterpieces that Beethoven created.

Remember that Beethoven slowly turned deaf as he progressed through the years. He might have lost his hearing, but that might have been the secret to his amazing ability to compose new melodies arrangements - for all those music were in his head and he had no other distractions. This is an amazingly important thing to note - for in music, if we cannot even begin to hear the sound within our own mind, how would it ever come out any bit meaningful and powerful. I think that Beethoven is a great proof of that point.



Hope you enjoyed this one too! =D

Basics - Genres - Classical 1

Hi everyone! Will be covering Classical in 4 periods... Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Contemporary. So it'll be with each post.

I know I haven't been updating much... Sadly school is a very taxing process and getting out there is even more difficult. Haha.

Anyway so to start everything, I'd like to show you THE composer, the one who started our whole knowledge of the Western Music Theory; the one who wrote the "Well-Tempered Clavier" and started the equal temperament which became a standard for most of music for a long time.

Bach



One of the most famous pieces of all time. In my opinion, as any kind of musician, if you cannot appreciate Bach's grandiosity in the sphere in music, you're probably better off not playing. Why? He was pivotal in the development of music as we now know it. Almost everyone has been inspired from him...

Great examples in jazz are people like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, who got a large part of their early sound in bebop through going through Bach Preludes and Fugues. He had a super advanced way of thinking about music, beyond even classical and romantic theory in large parts. The concept of time being involved with harmony was unthinkable for most even after him, but he did things instinctively, creating music and writing it so organically.

Another part of his brilliance is the amazing ability to create great 2-4 part melodies and lines which give such amazing texture to any music that he creates. Listen to this piece, there are so many counter melodies and ideas running through, it's almost like a full 4 piece band running through different lines or an orchestra going through different lines. Of course there were plenty of people after him who could create such music but he was an unstoppable force in terms of influence.

There is another thing to note about Baroque period. Right now, because the scores are virtually empty rather than the notes and some important notations left by the composer due to the fact that the printing press was still primitive and making of the scores was through carving of a mould which was very difficult if you had so many markings and notes. So a lot of ornamentation and details were left out and left to the discretion of the musician.

Vivaldi



Interesting rendition of the piece. I don't know if I completely agree with some parts of the piece with all the phrasing short. But that's me. Great technique, horrible video and I do like her overall idea of the piece.

There's this edgy feel to this music. Vivaldi probably never really intended this, but this is where classical music goes into an area of "craft-based" thing. Vivaldi wasn't a great arranger, if you notice the lines are pretty much simple. The good part about all of this is that Vivaldi has composed a no of pieces where the violin really stood out. And therefore it always being utilised.

His is the Russian Baroque sound. A bit stiffer, a lot more notes and a lot more bombastic in my opinion. Not that it's any worse than other Baroque music. I think that it's definitely one of those more easily palatable music that wows people without any musical knowledge, while still keeping the art form alive.

Handel

A lot of Baroque music is still used nowadays in Catholic churches and some Christian churches due to the fact that many hymns came from Baroque and Renaissance, but since Renaissance did not have much notated music (mostly aural), most of the music retained were mainly adapted from the Baroque period.

Handel was one of those great composers who composed brilliant tunes, for many purposes, including his beliefs. The Messiah is one of his most famous pieces, and is probably one of the most overplayed classical piece over Canon in D. Here's Hallelujah



Grand music. Not like the Russian sound, but more on harmony and inter-weaving lines. This version is also well-known to be "romanticised" meaning made to be less "staunch" and more towards a modern sound in many sense. This is what's commonly done to much Baroque music because of the nature of the lack of obvious notation of "emotions" by the Baroque composers.

Henry Purcell



Here's the jazz/classical snob himself - Wynton Marsalis. This is a recording trying to stay true to the original sound of the Baroque music. Almost completely emotionless and staunch. This is one of the beauties of the music actually - most of Baroque music was meant for Church or dancing. These were the two large functions of music in the past (still used in those areas obviously). Other than that were enjoyment for the royalty obviously but that's also rare.

Henry Purcell to me was a great melodist and had quite good arrangements... Do check out more of his music if you're interested. =)

Pachelbel

The man himself...

I'll take this opportunity to introduce to you the original Baroque instruments.



All Baroque instruments here. It's quite amazing because most people don't dare to use such instruments because it is rather different from the modern instruments. And such it's easy to mix up the two unless you dedicate yourself to the Baroque instruments like these people did.

YouTube any other Canon in D to compare. It's actually a great piece illustrating the methods of composition in Baroque. Canon itself means people taking turns one after another to play the same line/melody. This is really brought forth by this piece and is one of the more accessible tunes till this date.

Imagine if Pachelbel got royalty for every time this piece is played in this day and age. He'd probably be super wealthy. Too bad that by the time this piece is popularised, he is long gone. Haha

That's the nature of classical music mostly anyway.

Next up will be the Classical era. Hope you enjoyed this post! =D