Opera composers Essays

  • Carmina Burana vs. Pictures At An Exhibition

    681 Words  | 2 Pages

    different because of the background of the composers, the instruments used, and the influences that led Carl Orff and Modeste Moussorgsky to create these epic works of art. “Carmina Burana” and “Pictures At An Exhibition” are two wonderfully composed pieces of music, but the actual composers were very different. Carl Orff was born on July 10, 1895 in Munich, Germany. Orff began learning to play the piano at the age of five and soon realized he wanted to become a composer more than he wanted to perform. Orff

  • Mozart

    907 Words  | 2 Pages

    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is one of the greatest music composers who ever lived. His name and the word 'genius' are often bandied about together by music writers and critics and many would argue rightly so. Mozart had a fantastic ear for writing a catchy tune with perfect orchestral arrangement. His compositions have a rich and distinctive sound; it can be said that in his brief lifetime (only 35 years) that he wrote a masterpiece in every genre of classical music without much apparent effort. Original

  • Johann Sebastian Bach

    1397 Words  | 3 Pages

    organist, composer, and musical scholar of the Baroque period, and is almost universally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. His works, noted for their intellectual depth, technical command, and artistic beauty, have provided inspiration to nearly every musician after him, from Mozart to Schoenberg. J. S. Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany, March 21, 1685. Bach’s uncles were all professional musicians ranging from church organists and court chamber musicians to composers. His father

  • Mozart

    1539 Words  | 4 Pages

    classical music played today and his life is still studied because his music is so well known and liked. An Austrian composer and performer who showed astonishing precocity as a child and was an adult virtuoso, musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria Pertl in Salzburg, Austria on January 27, 1756. Leopold Mozart was a successful composer and violinist and served as assistant concertmaster at the Salzburg court. Mozart and his older sister Maria Anna "Nannerl"

  • Mozart

    624 Words  | 2 Pages

    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria on January 27th, 1756. He was born to Leopold and Anna Maria Pertl. Leopol was a very successful composer, voilinist, and the assistant concertmaster at the Salzburg court. Mozart showed musical talent at a very young age. By age five he was composing minuets.And at age six he played before the Bavarian Elector and the Austrian Empress.His father taught him, but said teahcing Wolfgang was hard because he knew so much already. His father was also

  • Russian Composers

    1834 Words  | 4 Pages

    Russian composers are often mentioned in history as the most influential in the world. With style unlike any other, Russians are able to capture mood through a unique ability to capture exactly what they feel. Exactly how the Russians are able to do this is unknown, though through this, the greatest composers have turned out to be Russian. Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich are all able to write and portray the most detailed feelings and moods, and it is to them that we owe the advancement

  • Poulenc

    798 Words  | 2 Pages

    to be primarily a self-taught composer. During the 1920s, Poulenc became associated with a group known as Les Six that included Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Germaine Tailleferre, and Georges Auric (the Les Six received their name after being compared to Russia’s Big Five). Although these composers did not represent a particular school of music, they favored jazz and music hall styles and opposed the romantic and formal style of previous French composers including Claude Debussy. Poulenc

  • Bach

    2741 Words  | 6 Pages

    Johanna Sebastian Bach was a composer of the Baroque era, the most celebrated member of a large family of northern German musicians. Although he was admired by his contemporaries primarily as an outstanding harpsichordist, organist, and expert on organ building. Bach is now generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time and is celebrated as the creator of the Brandenburg Concertos, The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B Minor, and numerous other masterpieces of church and instrumental

  • George Gershwin

    1635 Words  | 4 Pages

    One of the most influencial composers of the 1920’s was George Gershwin. Gershwin was the most celebrated and wealthiest American composers of the 1920’s. In this paper I will discuss Gershwin’s life as a child and his upbringing and how his music expressed the dreams of every American Citizen by mixing different styles of music like Jewish, black, jazz, classical, blues and put them into one genre and created absolute music. George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 26, 1898

  • Carl Orffs Philosophies In Music Education

    1688 Words  | 4 Pages

    While Carl Orff is a very seminal composer of the 20th century, his greatest success and influence has been in the field of Music Education. Born on July 10th in Munich, Germany in 1895, Orff refused to speak about his past almost as if he were ashamed of it. What we do know, however, is that Orff came from a Bavarian family who was very active in the German military. His father's regiment band would often play through some of the young Orff's first attempts at composing. Although Orff was adamant

  • Scott Joplin

    767 Words  | 2 Pages

    time as it is most commonly know was the type of fast paced music played around 1885 in St. Louis. Scott Joplin was born in 1868 and lived until 1917, but has done a lot in his life span. He was one of the first African Americans to be know as a composer. Born in Texarkana, Texas to a large family with musical background, he began learning to play the guitar and beagle, and gained free piano lessons by showing such fast progression to his teachers. After death of his mother, he left the house at

  • Dmitri Shostakovich: A Musical Creative Genius

    3777 Words  | 8 Pages

    contradictory reasons. He strongly believed in a profound bond between the composer and his society which enabled him to work, survive, and develop, but also which fostered an air of confusion when he felt he was wrongly criticized. In 1968, he was quoted as saying, "Soviet music is a weapon in the ideological battle. Artists cannot stand as indifferent observers in this struggle." (Blokker 133) He believed that composers could not retreat into private, creative worlds; rather, they must deal with

  • George Balanchine

    6676 Words  | 14 Pages

    George Balanchine If composers are the masters of time, then the choreographer George Balanchine is the master of visual realization of that time in human terms. A master in both the kinesthetic and musical frames of creativity, he did not devote his energies to music visualization by assigning a certain number of dancers to represent strings, others the brass, and still others woodwinds or percussion but by creating a visual analogy in space that restates the musical structure with the trained

  • The 20th century's 3 greatest composers

    2350 Words  | 5 Pages

    The 20th century's 3 Greatest Composers The 20th century has watched many musicians break through their generation's bounds of normalcy to creat a completely new music. Musicians who initiated revolutions so grandiose that the impact—like an earthquake’s aftershocks—would reverberate for decades and influence scores of musicians to come. Such influences can be traced back to three specific composers. Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, and Nadia Boulanger: the triumvirate of 20th century music

  • Paul Hindemith

    1331 Words  | 3 Pages

    was born in the German town of Hanau in 1895, on December Sixteen. We might assume that Hindemith felt a pull in the musical direction from a very early age; Paul’s father was a painter and did not want his son becoming a musician, so our little composer-to-be ran away at the age of 11, and started his own life. Paul taught himself the violin and viola, and began earning his living by playing at Cafes and other such establishments. Eventually, Hindemith learned the rudiments of all the instruments

  • Film Score Music

    3191 Words  | 7 Pages

    played in the background in a television commercial. The music is always there, reminding us of past experiences, making us smile and feel exhilaration and sometimes even making us cry. It is this power that music has over us that film score composers take advantage of when they are writing the music to accompany the movies. As listeners we often do not appreciate that the music that is scored for films or played in films is put there on purpose to create a certain feeling, emphasize a point

  • Antonio Vivaldi

    557 Words  | 2 Pages

    Venice. The orphans soon started to gain appreciation and esteem as Vivaldi wrote most of his concertos, cantate and sacred music for them. In 1705 the first collection of his works was published. He was a prolific composer and is most well known for composing over 500 concertos, 46 Operas, sinfonias, 73 sonatas, chamber music, and sacred music. His most famous work is said to be the Four Seasons. Vivaldi's music is particularly innovative as he gave brightness to the formal and the rhythmic structure

  • 20th Century

    836 Words  | 2 Pages

    electronic music. Like all people, musicians have been affected by the political, economic, and social problems of twentieth century. Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933 had an especially dramatic impact on the lives and careers of musicians. Many composers left Europe for the United States. These refugees made huge contributions to musical culture. One of the most significant changes in components of music that formed twentieth century music is rhythm. The modern music is full of complex rhythms and

  • BEETHOVEN

    760 Words  | 2 Pages

    known as the "Pathetique" is one of the first works in which Beethoven gives vent to his own dramatic musical voice. By 1800, Beethoven had become aware of his advancing deafness -- surely a most horrible fate for a musician and unendurable to a composer. Agonizing over his fate, Beethoven contemplated suicide, but in the end embraced life, determined to go on composing, if no longer performing. Unhappy with his compositions up to that time and stating that he would now be "making a fresh start,"

  • The Baroque Period

    768 Words  | 2 Pages

    period of newly discovered ideas. From major new innovations in science, to vivid changes in geography, people were exploring more of the world around them. The music of the baroque period was just as extreme as the new changes. Newly recognized composers such as Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, and Monteverdi were writing entirely new musical ideas and giving a chance for new voices to be heard that were normally not thought of sounds. Their musical legacy is still recognized today, and is a treasured discovery