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Thursday, December 5, 2013

George Frideric Handel - Messiah

7:35 AM    No comments

Handel - Messiah

The love affair that British classical music audiences have with this oratorio is quite phenomenal. Since its Dublin premiere in 1742, it has been performed by choirs across the land every year since at least 1745.
Handel-messiah
Handel composed his most famous piece in 1741, and continued to work on it after its initial performance, finally arriving at the version we know today in 1754. Impressive solo arias, like 'Ev'ry valley shall be exalted' and 'Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion' are interspersed with compelling chorus numbers, telling the story of Jesus' birth, life, death, resurrection, and final victory over sin and death.
During Victorian times, there was a phase when Messiah was performed by ever expanding musical forces – there almost seemed to be a competition to see just how big a chorus and orchestra could be crammed onto one stage before they fell through. Earlier, Mozarteven got in on the act, with his own arrangement of Messiah, which was not, it has to be said, to everyone’s taste. One critic remarked that it ‘resembles elegant stucco work upon an old marble temple ... easily ... chipped off again by the weather’.
The rousing 'Hallelujah' Chorus is one of the most famous pieces ofBaroque choral music, and by far the most widely-known section of the work. Audiences tend to stand during performances – a tradition that allegedly began when King George II stood up during the chorus at the oratorio’s debut London performance.
The forgotten man behind the success of Messiah is the librettist, Charles Jennens, who adapted the words of the King James Bible, which Handel set to music. Handel's approach to setting the text is, at times, amusing – in the chorus 'All we like sheep have gone astray', the mood changes in the middle of the sentence, resulting in a rousing choir declaring their fondness for the wooly animal. Joking aside, Handel's ability to capture the mood – from passionate rage to serene pastoral moments – is what makes this one of the most enduring choral works of all time.

Video: Lynne Dawson, 'Rejoice Greatly'

Handel: Messiah recordings

George Frideric George Frideric Handel Music

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tavener oceanic motionWatchHandel - Water Music

Find out more about Handel's Water Music Suites. Watch and listen to different recordings and download your favourite

Handel-messiahWatchHandel - Messiah

Find out more about Handel's Messiah. Watch and listen to different recordings and download your favourite.


Who was Handel? Fast and Friendly Guide

Biography

Handel
George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) was a German-British baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Most music lovers have encountered George Frideric Handel through holiday-time renditions of the Messiah's 'Hallelujah' chorus or hisMusic for the Royal Fireworks. 


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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Requiem

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Mozart - Requiem

Mozart's Requiem is one of the most famous choral works in the classical repertoire. The mournful 'Lacrimosa' is a highlight, but how much of it did Mozart actually write?
Requiem
We all know that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was one of the most remarkable and naturally gifted musicians in history. But composing a deeply emotional and complex choral Requiem on his death-bed in 1791? Surely even Mozart would've struggled with that. In fact, he did - but what's the real story?
When the quirky Count von Walsegg's wife Anna died on Valentine’s Day 1791, it set in motion a series of events that, one could argue, has never stopped. Walsegg, an accomplished musician himself, anonymously commissioned the piece, totally spooking an already unstable Mozart in the process (he'd been taken ill after a performance of La Clemenza di Tito ). Mozart became consumed by the work, believing he had been cursed to write a requiem for himself, because he was about to die.
The work was never delivered by Mozart, who died before he had finished composing it, only finishing the first few bars of the Lacrimosa. The opening movement, Requiem aeternam, was the only section to be completed. It was brushed into some sort of shape by Mozart’s only composition pupil, Sussmayr, but to the complete lack of satisfaction of scholars down the centuries. As a result, the world and his wife have tried to complete it after him. Regardless, the Requiem still sounds wonderful to most ears.
To add further intrigue, when the unfinished manuscript was displayed in Brussels in the 1950s, a section was torn from the last page and never retrieved. As Mozart worked on the Requiem on his deathbed, it’s highly likely that someone stole the last notes ever written by Mozart.

John Eliot Gardiner conducts

Mozart: Requiem recordings

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Who was Mozart? A Fast & Friendly Guide

Mozart's Biography

Mozart, the most famous classical composer
Johannes Chrystostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart (1756–1791) was arguably the most gifted musician in the history of classical music. His inspiration is often described as 'divine', but he worked assiduously, not only to become the great composer he was, but also a conductor, virtuoso pianist, organist and violinist. Mozart's music embraces opera, symphony, concerto, chamber, choral, instrumental and vocal music, revealing an astonishing number of imperishable masterpieces.
  • Mozart was born in Salzburg, in 1756. Mozart's father, Leopold, was an ambitious composer and violinist.
  • Though he was and still is considered a genius, he was also tactless, arrogant and had a scatological sense of humour.
  • Mozart composed his first opera, Apollo et Hyacinthus when he was only 11. A year later the Emperor Joseph II commissioned him to write La finta semplice.
  • In August 1782 he married Constanze Weber. The Mozarts' marriage seemed to be a happy one. Constanze was easy-going, free-spending and usually pregnant. Only two of their six children survived.
  • Post-marriage, some of Mozart's best started to appear -the Haffner and Linzsymphonies and five string quartets, for example.
  • Between 1784 and 1786, he composed nine piano concertos and three of these concurrently with The Marriage of Figaro.
  • The year 1787 saw the premiere of Mozart's second opera, Don Giovanni.
  • Mozart had a great run of successes in his final years - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and theClarinet Quintet in A, three of his 41 symphonies; Cosí fan Tutte, three piano trios, the Coronation piano concerto, two piano sonatas and three string quartets.
  • His health began to fail and his work rate slowed in 1790. He got better, though, and in 1791 alone composed the most famous The Magic Flute, the Requiem (unfinished), and the Clarinet Concerto.
  • Mozart did not live long enough to complete his Requiem. He died in Vienna, in 1791, before his 36th birthday.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Music

Chopin Piano Con 1-2WatchMozart - Sonatas

He composed his first sonata at the age of six, and his last just three years before his death in 1791 - what is it about Mozart's sonatas that tells us so much about his life?

horn concerto mozartWatchMozart Horn Concertos

Have you heard the one about the cheesemonger and the horn player? Well, they’re actually the same person, and both he and Mozart were great friends; so much so that the Austrian composer wrote his horn concertos for the brass-blowing cheesemonger.

RequiemWatchMozart - Requiem

Find out more about Mozart's Requiem. Watch and listen to different recordings and download your favourite.

Mozart OperasWatchMozart - Solemn Vespers

Find out more about Mozart's Solemn Vespers. Watch and listen to different recordings and download your favourite.

Vivaldi Flute ConcertoWatchMozart - The Magic Flute

Find out more about Mozart's The Magic Flute. Watch and listen to different recordings and download your favourite.

Classic FM imageWatchMozart - Don Giovanni

Find out more about Mozart's Don Giovanni. Watch and listen to different recordings and download your favourite.

Classic FM imageWatchMozart - Così Fan Tutte

Find out more about Mozart's Così Fan Tutte. Watch and listen to different recordings and download your favourite.
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Antonio Vivaldi - The Four Seasons

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Vivaldi - The Four Seasons

The Four Seasons, composed in 1723, is one of Baroque legend Vivaldi's most famous works for violin, but it accounts for just four of his 350 concertos.
Vivaldi Flute Concerto
Vivaldi wrote so many concertos that, much like Haydn and his symphonies, he tended to resort to nicknames rather than numbers, for ease. Each concerto of his Four Seasons corresponds to a different season - so it's easy to guess how he nicknamed this particular work.
The music is accompanied by beautiful Italian sonnets, written - possibly - by Vivaldi himself, after he was inspired by painter Marco Ricci's paintings of the seasons. It's even customary in some concerts that a narrator reads the poems before the performance, to bring the musical story to life.
Listen out for the texture of the music representing Winter, with the high-pitched plucking from the strings sounding a bit like cold and icy rain. There are also more descriptive labels dotted throughout the movements: the second movement of Spring is part-labelled 'the barking dog', while one section of Autumn says 'the drunks have fallen asleep'. You might even hear a passionate thunderstorm in Summer, with the balmy music representing a warm August evening.

Video: Vivaldi - Winter


Vivaldi: The Four Seasons recordings

Antonio Vivaldi

Biography

vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) was one of the most productive composers of the Baroque era. His vast output included substantial quantities of chamber and vocal music, some 46 operas and a remarkable 500 concertos...
Life and Music
  • A colourful character with an eye for the ladies, Vivaldi defied a lifetime of ill-health by regularly absenting himself from his home base of Venice in a desperate attempt to establish an international reputation.
  • The exact date of Vivaldi's birth (4th March 1678) confounded scholars for many years, although it was known that following his delivery the midwife performed an emergency baptism. The reason for his emergency baptism is not known for certain but is likely due to his poor health or to an earthquake that shook Venice on that day.
  • Vivaldi's father, Giovanni Battista, was a violinist at St Mark's Cathedral, and although he taught the prodigiously gifted Antonio to play from early childhood, a musical career seemed unlikely, especially when, aged 15, he was shunted off to join the priesthood.
  • He studied for 10 years, received Holy Orders in 1703 and earned the nickname "il prete rosso" (the red priest) from the distinctive colour of his hair.
  • By September 1703 Vivaldi had already secured his first professional appointment as maestro di violino at the Pio Ospedale della Pieta, one of four orphanages for girls in Venice. Remarkably, this was to remain his base for the greater part of his life, from 1703 to 1740, though with several prolonged 'leaves of absence'.
  • Throughout the 1730s Vivaldi continued to travel widely - to Bohemia, Austria and throughout Italy - despite the fact that his worsening health meant taking an expensive entourage of carers. 
  • Destitute and alone, he passed away in Vienna in 1741 and was buried cheaply the same day in a hospital cemetery which sadly no longer exists.
Did you know?
Because Vivaldi was a priest, he was not allowed to marry or have a girlfriend, but it was largely believed that both Anna and Paolina Giro were Vivaldi's girlfriends at the same time!

Antonio Vivaldi Music



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Johann Sebastian Bach - "Air"

7:20 AM    No comments

Cover of Bach Favorites (Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra)

Suite for Orchestra No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068: II. Air, commonly referred to as “Air”, is the second movement of Bach’s Third Orchestral Suite and is one of the most famous pieces of baroque music. The suite is from the third of Ouvertures BWV 1066–1069 - a set of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, probably composed between 1725 and 1739 in Leipzig. The word ouverture refers to an opening movement in which a section of slow dotted-note rhythm is followed by a fugue; at the time, this name was also used to refer to a whole suite of dance-pieces in the French baroque style. An arrangement of the piece by German violinist August Wilhelmj (1845–1908) has come to be known as Air on the G String.

Air (French for “aria”; also ayr, ayre), a variant of the musical song form, is the name of various song-like vocal or instrumental compositions.

Who was Bach? A Fast and Friendly Guide


Bach's Biography

Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was music's most sublime creative genius.  Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist of the Baroque Era. 
  • Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21st 1685 in Eisenach, Germany.
  • The young Bach was offered a choral scholarship to the prestigious St Michael's School in 1699.
  • 1703 saw Bach become the organist at St Boniface's Church in Arnstadt - a role that saw him on a regular salary and expanding his skills at the keyboard.
  • Bach composed the cantata Gott ist mein König in 1708 - he was paid handsomely, and it helped him cement his early career.
  • The Brandenburg Concertos were composed in 1721 as a sort-of musical job application for the Margrave Ludwig of Brandenburg - it was unsuccessful.
  • In his later years Bach faced harsh criticism. During the 1720s and 1730s when he was composing his most important works - the Passions and the Goldberg Variations among them - a new Italian style invaded Germany, making his work appear outdated.
  • The Well Tempered Clavier, a quintessential student text, was finished in 1744 and comprised two volumes of piano music in every musical key.
  • With the notable exception of opera, Bach composed towering masterpieces in every major Baroque genre: sonatas, concertos, suites and cantatas, as well as innumerable keyboard, organ and choral works.
  • Bach died on July 28th 1750 in Leipzig. It is still disputed whether it was a botched eye operation or a stroke caused by pneumonia were to blame for his death.
  • Bach's popularity was decaying until 1829, when Mendelssohn performed the St Matthew Passion and rescued Bach from oblivion.
Did you know?
Bach once walked two hundred and thirteen miles to hear a performance by an organist whom he admired. Once he had heard the concert, he turned round and walked the same distance home again.


Johann Sebastian Bach Music


Johann Sebastian Bach at the organWatchBach - Prelude No. 1 in C Major

One of the most famous movements from J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, this prelude has become a standard piece not only for students but for concert pianists as well. But what's the story behind it?

bach cantata 208WatchBach - Cantata No. 208

Find out more about Bach's Cantata No. 208. Watch and listen to different recordings and download your favourite.

Bach cello suite 1WatchBach - Cello Suites

Find out more about Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, and listen, watch and download the best recordings

The Brandenburg Concertos WatchBach - Cantata No. 147

Find out more about Bach's Cantata No. 147. Watch and listen to different recordings and download your favourite.

Bach Violin ConcertoWatchBach - Mass in B minor

Find out more about Bach's Mass in B Minor. Watch and listen to different recordings and download your favourite.
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