Western music history assignment

Such Is the legacy of the man that after over 200 years of his death, his middle nd surname would be taken as the stage name of rock/metal band Skid Row’s frontman. While most people would assume a composer Is merely someone who sits at a piano, Bach was in reality an organist, harpsichordist, violist and violinist. A pioneer of the Baroque period, Bach began musical tutelage under his father. a young Johann Sebastian had to live with his brother Johann Christoph from the tender young age of 9 after his parents had passed away.

Through his brother, who has an organ player in church and had himself studied under Johann Pachelbel, Bach began learning the clavichord before being given a cholarship to study music at the age of 14. This would later prove invaluable as it exposed him to a wider aspect of European culture, whilst rubbing shoulders with the sons of noblemen. Once free from his studies at St. Michael’s School in Luneburg, Bach came into the employment of several churches and even one Duke Johann Ernst from Weimar. His dissatisfaction with his employers led him to seek a Job at St.

After returning from Italy on March 1773, Mozart, who had by now composed several operas, soon found appointment in the Salzburg court by employment of ruler Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. It was here hat Mozart developed some of his best works: five violin concertos, the only ones he ever wrote, as well as a K. 271, a piano concerto considered by many to be trade there as well as Paris, it would not be until his move to Vienna in 1781 after a falling out with his employer Archbishop Colloredo that Mozart would become the composer we know of him as today.

This move is the revolutionary step in his career, as well as his life (Solomon, 1995). He soon immersed himself in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederic Handel, due to Gottfried van Swieten’s owning many manuscripts of Baroque maestros. Needless to say, his knowledge of these pieces of work along with his prodigious skills made him a remarkably famous and successful composer, which in turn led him to becoming a Freemason in 1784. Towards the end of his life, Mozart returned to writing operas, writing the masterpieces The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni before the Austro-Turkish War hindered his career.

It should be noted that his funeral was a grand affair, with entrance being restricted to ticket holders, as well as Mozart’s Requiem being Chopin was known for employing a rubato style of playing into his work, a style that was also prevalent in the works of Mozart before him. Fellow Romantic era composer Robert Schumann also noted that Chopin had a strong sense of Polish nationalism in im; he once said in a review of Chopin’s concertos in 1836 that “ Now that the Poles are in deep mourning [after the failure of the 1830 rising], their appeal to us artists is even stronger if the mighty autocrat in the north [i. . Tsar Alexander I] could know that in Chopin’s works, in the simple strains of his mazurkas, there lurks a dangerous enemy, he would place a ban on his music. Chopin’s works are cannon buried in flowers! “(Schumann, 1988). Last but not least, the composer who is considered to have bridged the gap between late 19th century and early 20th century Western classical music: Claude Debussy. Along with fellow composer Maurice Ravel, Debussy was one of the most prominent and influential composers of Impressionist music.

Hailing from France, Debussy is the only one of the four composers IVe mentioned that came from a non-musical background; his father owned a shop which sold china and crockery, and his mother was a seamstress. He began taking violin lessons at the age of seven, who in turn drew the attention of supposed Chopin student Marie Maut?? de Fleurville. At the age of 10, he enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire, where he spent 11 years studying and truck up a friendship with fellow student Isidor Philipp, who after Debussys death would be asked for advice on how to play his pieces.

Now that is something worth looking up.