Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The two would often play string quartets together. Mozart spent three years (1782-1785) producing a set of six string quartets that he would dedicated to Haydn. One of Haydn's important innovations, which was adopted by Mozart and Beethoven, was to make the moment of transition the focus of tremendous creativity, instead of using stock devices to make the transition. During Beethoven’s 'Middle…

opus 114. These two works for clarinet would be his last contributions to chamber music. Prior to the Brahms Quintet, other works written for chamber clarinet included the opus 34 of Weber, opus 107 by Anton Reicha and the A Major Quintet, K.581, by Mozart. Additionally, the Adagio from Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet has often been attributed as one of the inspirations of Richard Wagner’s early years. Brahms’ two works for clarinet were directly inspired by clarinetist, Richard Mühlfeld of the…

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a 19th and early 20th century French composer of classical music. Maurice Ravel was born on March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, France. His mother, Marie Delouart was Basque and father, Joseph Ravel was from Switzerland. At his third month, his family moved to Paris. His brother, Édouard Ravel was born in Paris after three years of their moving. There was no evidence of Ravel’s entering a school for his formal Education. However, acknowledging his passion in the early age,…

The musicale had a lot of variety in the performance of the songs. The pieces ranged from being purely instrumental to art songs. There was also a mixture of music from the Baroque through the Modern era. The assorted musical periods and instruments contributed to a more varied Musicale. The group pieces at the beginning and end of the Musicale sounded the most contemporary. “On stranger Tides” was a good choice to start with because it was from a popular movie with which most of the audience…

Music has evolved drastically throughout time. There are countless styles of music in the world that I appreciate and admire. However, I prefer music that has a message or story in it that touches my heart. The combination of moving lyrics, beautiful voices, and outstanding music composers creates magic. One of my favorite songs is a song called As Real as You and Me by Rihanna. I first heard the song while watching the move Home. It started playing while a characters sacrifices himself for the…

Every day, I try to listen to a new piece of music. Whether it be a string group, unaccompanied choir, or even a percussion consort, I believe that by doing this, so much can be learned from just listening. About the mid-month of July, I came across this piece of music. I thought it was extremely fun and quirky at the same time! I had continued to listen to it, read some background information on the piece, and do a small amount of study on the work. When it came time to choose the piece for…

Song no. 2 displays how Shostakovich uses uncertainty in major-minor mode to evoke folk-like flavor. In the orchestral introduction of song no. 2 mm. 1-18, the music sounds as if in an F# minor key, but the E major chords in mm. 16-18 that proceeds to the A major chord in m. 19 provide a certainty that the music really is in the key of A major (fig. 15), with the submediant chord at the beginning of the song gives the song a minor flavor. Fig. 15: The dominant chord in mm. 16-18 in song no. 2…

This essay will focus on comparing “Die Lindenbaum”, the fifth Lied from the Song Cycle, Winterreise by Franz Schubert with “Lucy, I Remember Your Name” (2009) by John Cooper of the band Skillet (www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7sjrjiOYYQ). While there are several similarities between the two pieces, there are noticeable differences; such as, the time periods in which the two pieces were composed. “Die Lindenbaum” was written in 1828 during the Romantic period to be performed with a piano…

The scene that I have composed a song to appears in ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2’. The scene takes place after (SPOILER ALERT!) Severus Snape is killed and Harry collects some of his memories into a vial. Harry then pours Snape’s memories into a pensieve to re-watch them. Snape’s memories take us back to his childhood and when he first meets Harry’s mother, Lily. The full scene is absolutely heart-wrenching as you watch Snape’s feelings grow for a girl that does not reciprocate…

The funny and talented actor, Rainn Wilson, was on Oprah today talking about his show, "SoulPancake." In it two people go around in a lime green VW bus and create, what I would call, "Living Art." They encounter ordinary people on the street and ask them to participate in creating some form of art. One of the little vignettes actually brought tears to my eyes. People were asked to grab an empty picture frame, one of many hanging on a wall, and walk around, looking through it in order to spot…