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Mozart's Compositional Method
Scholars have long studied how Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart created his works. Nineteenth-century views on this topic were often based on a romantic, mythologizing conception of the process of composition. More recent scholarship addresses this issue by systematically examining authenticated letters and documents, and has arrived at rather different conclusions. Mozart's approach to composition A surviving letter of Mozart's to his father Leopold (31 July 1778) indicates that he considered composition an active process:You know that I plunge myself into music, so to speak—that I think about it all day long—that I like experimenting—studying—reflecting.One cannot quite determine from these words alone whether Mozart's approach to composition was a conscious method, or more inspired and intuitive. Sketches Mozart often wrote sketches, from small snippets to extensive drafts, for his compositions. Though many of these were destroyed by Mozart's widow Constanze, about 320 sketc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mozart (unfinished) By Lange 1782
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition resulted in more than 800 works of virtually every genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as among the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture". Born in Salzburg, in the Holy Roman Empire, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. His father took him on a grand tour of Europe and then three trips to Italy. At 17, he was a musician at the Salzburg court but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
André Grétry
André Ernest Modeste Grétry (; baptised 11 February 1741; died 24 September 1813) was a composer from the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (present-day Belgium), who worked from 1767 onwards in France and took French nationality. He is most famous for his '' opéras comiques''. Biography He was born at Liège, his father being a poor musician. He was a choirboy at the church of St. Denis (Liège). In 1753 he became a pupil of Jean-Pantaléon Leclerc and later of the organist at St-Pierre de Liège, Nicolas Rennekin, for keyboard and composition and of Henri Moreau, music master at the collegiate church of St. Paul. But of greater importance was the practical tuition he received by attending the performance of an Italian opera company. Here he heard the operas of Baldassarre Galuppi, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, and other masters; and the desire of completing his own studies in Italy was the immediate result. To find the necessary means he composed in 1759 a mass which he dedicat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friedrich Rochlitz
Johann Friedrich Rochlitz (12 February 1769 – 16 December 1842) was a German playwright, musicologist and art and music critic. His most notable work is his autobiographical account ''Tage der Gefahr'' (''Days of Danger'') about the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 — in ''Kunst und Altertum'', Goethe called it "one of the most wondrous productions ever to have been written". A Friedrich-Rochlitz-Preis for art criticism is named after him — it is awarded by the Leipzig Gesellschaft für Kunst und Kritik and was presented for the fourth time in 2009. Life Friedrich Rochlitz was born in Leipzig, where he attended the Thomasschule, and where, from 1789 to 1791, he studied theology, before working as a private tutor. In 1798 he founded the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, along with Gottfried Christoph Härtel, serving as its editor until 1818. He planned to marry the harpist Therese Emilie Henriette Winkel and so Duke Karl August made him a privy councillor of the Duchy of Saxe-We ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maynard Solomon
Maynard Elliott Solomon (January 5, 1930 – September 28, 2020) was an American music executive and musicologist, a co-founder of Vanguard Records as well as a music producer."Maynard Solomon" in ''Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians'', vol. 5 ( N. Slonimsky & D. Kuhn, 2001). Later, he became known for his biographical studies of Viennese Classical composers, specifically Beethoven (writing an influential biography and an award-winning collection of essays), Mozart (biography), and Schubert (Solomon was the first to openly propose the highly disputed theory of Schubert's homosexuality in a scholarly setting). Education Having attended New York's High School of Music & Art, Solomon graduated Phi Beta Kappa''Billboard'', 19 November 1966, featuring Vanguard Records from Brooklyn College, CUNY, with a BA in 1950, subsequently pursuing graduate studies at Columbia University from 1950 to 1952. In 1979 he became adjunct associate professor at the Graduate School, CUNY, and betw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sistine Chapel
The Sistine Chapel (; la, Sacellum Sixtinum; it, Cappella Sistina ) is a chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the pope in Vatican City. Originally known as the ''Cappella Magna'' ('Great Chapel'), the chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who had it built between 1473 and 1481. Since that time, the chapel has served as a place of both religious and functionary papal activity. Today, it is the site of the papal conclave, the process by which a new pope is selected. The fame of the Sistine Chapel lies mainly in the frescoes that decorate the interior, most particularly the Sistine Chapel ceiling and ''The Last Judgment (Michelangelo), The Last Judgment'', both by Michelangelo. During the reign of Sixtus IV, a team of Italian Renaissance painting, Renaissance painters that included Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli, created a series of frescos depicting the ''Life of Moses'' and the ''Life of Christ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miserere (Allegri)
''Miserere'' (full title: ''Miserere mei, Deus'', Latin for "Have mercy on me, O God") is a setting of Psalm 51 (Psalm 50 in Septuagint numbering) by Italian composer Gregorio Allegri. It was composed during the reign of Pope Urban VIII, probably during the 1630s, for the exclusive use of the Sistine Chapel during the Tenebrae services of Holy Week, and its mystique was increased by unwritten performance traditions and ornamentation. It is written for two choirs, of five and four voices respectively, singing alternately and joining to sing the ending in 9-part polyphony. History Composed around 1638, Allegri's setting of the ''Miserere'' was amongst the falsobordone settings used by the choir of the Sistine Chapel during Holy Week liturgy, a practice dating to at least 1514. At some point, several myths surrounding the piece came to the fore, stemming probably from the fact that the Renaissance tradition of ornamentation as practiced in the Sistine Chapel was virtually unknown ou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II (German: Josef Benedikt Anton Michael Adam; English: ''Joseph Benedict Anthony Michael Adam''; 13 March 1741 – 20 February 1790) was Holy Roman Emperor from August 1765 and sole ruler of the Habsburg lands from November 29, 1780 until his death. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Emperor Francis I, and the brother of Marie Antoinette, Maria Carolina of Austria and Maria Amalia, Duchess of Parma. He was thus the first ruler in the Austrian dominions of the union of the Houses of Habsburg and Lorraine, styled Habsburg-Lorraine. Joseph was a proponent of enlightened absolutism; however, his commitment to secularizing, liberalizing and modernizing reforms resulted in significant opposition, which resulted in failure to fully implement his programs. Meanwhile, despite making some territorial gains, his reckless foreign policy badly isolated Austria. He has been ranked with Catherine the Great of Russia and Frederick the Great of Prussia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann André
Johann André (28 March 1741 – 18 June 1799) was a German musician, composer and music publisher of the Classical period. He was born and died in Offenbach am Main. In 1774, as the patriarch of a Huguenot family, André founded one of the first music publishing houses to be independent of a bookshop, in Offenbach am Main. Among his closest friends in Offenbach were Goethe, at the time of his engagement to Anna Elisabeth Schönemann, and he is pictured in the seventeenth book of Goethe's autobiography ''Dichtung und Wahrheit'' with an Offenbach am Main background in 1775. In 1777, André was appointed musical director at the German theatre in Berlin, the Deutsches Theater, without having to abandon Offenbach am Main, however. He composed some 30 operas, ballads and songs. His son, Johann Anton André (1775–1842), followed his footsteps into composing and music theory. After taking over the music publishing business from his father in 1799, Johann Anton André acquired Mozar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lili Kraus
Lili Kraus (3 April 19036 November 1986) was a Hungarian-born pianist. Biography Lili Kraus was born in Budapest in 1903. Her father was from Czech Lands, and her mother from an assimilated Jewish Hungarian family. She enrolled at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, and at the age of 17 entered the Budapest Conservatory where she studied with Zoltán Kodály, and Béla Bartók. In the 1930s, she continued her studies with Severin Eisenberger, Eduard Steuermann in Vienna and Artur Schnabel in Berlin, who focused her interest in the classical tradition. Lili Kraus soon became known as a specialist in Mozart and Beethoven. Her early chamber music performances and recording with violinist Szymon Goldberg helped gain the critical acclaim that launched her international career. In the 1930s, she toured Europe, Japan, Australia and South Africa. In 1940, Kraus embarked on a tour of Asia where, while in Java, she and her family were captured and interned in a concentration camp by the J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volkmar Braunbehrens
Volkmar von Braunbehrens (born 22 March 1941 in Freiburg im Breisgau) is a German musicologist, specialising in research about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Braunbehrens studied history of literature, musicology, and art history in Munich, Heidelberg and Berlin; he received his PhD from the Free University of Berlin in 1974. He is Privatdozent (associate professor) since 1981. In 1976, he co-founded, and until 1981 co-edited, the journal ''Berliner Hefte – Zeitschrift für Kultur und Politik''; for many years, he was director of an art gallery in Berlin. Braunbehrens is a former board member of the Humanist Union. Humanistische Union He lives as a author in Freib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dora Stock
Dora (shortened from Doris or Dorothea) Stock (6 March 1760 – 30 March 1832) was a German artist of the 18th and 19th centuries who specialized in portraiture. She was at the center of a highly cultivated household in which a great number of artists, musicians, and writers were guests; and her friends and acquaintances included some of the most eminent figures of her day, namely Goethe, Schiller and Mozart. Life Childhood She was born in Nürnberg to a copper engraver named Johann Michael Stock (1737–1773). Stock had in 1756 married a widow five years his senior—Maria Helen Endner, née Schwabe (1733–1782)—who already had a son, Georg Gustav, by her previous marriage. Dora was the first of two surviving children born to this marriage; two years later her younger sister Anna Maria Jakobina, called Minna (11 March 1762 – 1843), was born. When Dora was five years old, her father took up a position in Leipzig working as an engraver and illustrator for the Breitkopf prin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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