Ludwig von Bertalanffy

On Sunday, June 21st, I went to see the Dallas Symphony Orchestra perform “The Music of John Williams and Hollywood’s Great Composers” at Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco. The concert was held in the church’s worship room at 6:30pm. This was a great place for the DSO to perform because the audience and the orchestra were very close and, in a way, felt more personal. The show included fourteen pieces: “Overture to Captain Blood by Korngold, ‘Tara’ – A Short Poem for Orchestra from Gone with…

In the first movement of his Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra Op. 31, Gerald Finzi utilizes downward bass motion, disagreeing key areas, and ambiguous cadences for the purpose of establishing a sense of wandering and despair. Much like other well-known British composers of mid-twentieth century, Gerald Finzi’s music takes advantage of dissonant and dense orchestration, as well as reflections upon political turmoil and personal ailment of the period. During World War II, Finzi became…

Der Rosenkavalier, and the works by Boulez and Webern were all major vocal works. Mahler’s scherzo which is the foundation for the third movement is not properly a vocal piece, but has close connections with vocal music that go beyond the Antonius von Padua song. On the movements that follow the scherzo on the Symphony, Mahler introduces soloists and choir singing poems about death and resurrection. Berio’s choice of these quotations not only acknowledges the importance of the voice in music…

Opera means work in Italian and is the name given to a dramatic play set to music where the performers sing their parts accompanied or unaccompanied by music in solos called arias and two or more singers called ensembles. The sixteenth century saw the beginning of operas which started as poems sung by musicians called Camerata (“society”). In 1607 Claudio Monteverdi first used an orchestra to accompany his opera, La favola d’Orfeo, creating the modern opera we know today. (London: Octopus…

For my concert critique, I went to Jason Terry’s Doctoral Piano Recital on Tuesday, December 1st at the School of Music in room 206. Because Terry was able to pick the pieces he played, he picked a range of different pieces to emphasize his wide range of talent. He included older and modern pieces including Bach, Godowsky, Balakirev, Zorn, and Liszt. The first piece he played was “Prelude & Fugue, BWV 872” composed by Bach. I was a little unsure about the nature and form of this piece because…

Robert Schumann composed orchestral music, including four symphonies and one piano concerto. He also composed chamber music, including three string quartets, one piano quintet, one piano quartet, piano trios, and sonatas. In the emotional abandonment of his music, Schumann is the true Romantic. His piano pieces are filled with impassioned melody, unique changes of harmony, and driving rhythms. His music was often had literacy, meaning and was connected by a literary theme or musical motto.…

music was full of passion and despite his many characteristic flaws, he was able to convey great emotion and love in his music. Wagner composed 13 operas with his most famous works like Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin, Parsifal, and Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg(The Mastersingers of Nuremberg.) He transformed the way opera was written and performed by actually doing the libretto himself. The longest opera he performed spawned over four days with about 15 hours in length. But his most memorable…

Jerome Robbins' suggested the idea of developing a musical based off of the story of Romeo and Juliet to Leonard Bernstein in January of 1949 (originally proposed title: East Side Story, set in the less privileged areas of New York at the concurrence of Easter-Passover celebrations). In August of 1955, a gathering with Arthur Laurents took place where another idea emerged -- two teen-age mobs as the conflicting groups, one of them newly-arrived Puerto Ricans, the other self-styled…

The beginnings of music technology and consumption originated in the late 1800s with Thomas Edison’s ingenious phonograph. Over a course of seventy-five years, the phonograph has received many upgrades and has even become a basis for the recent music technology today (Price and Albright para. 5). Some of the newer music technological advances include vinyl records, cassette tapes, CDs, portable MP3 players, and streaming services, which have all revolutionized music consumption because they have…

Haydn’s “Baby-Stage” Sonata When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart focused on opera composition and Ludwig von Beethoven experimented innovations in various musical forms, Joseph Haydn was greatly responsible for the invention and refinement of sonata form in the classical period . His earliest sonatas, dedicated to Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, feature galant style, and reveal Haydn’s growth as a composer in his early years. Among these pieces, Haydn piano sonata in F major, Hob. XVI: 23 shows a very solid…