The greatest of a musical family
For Johann Sebastian Bach(1685 – 1750), a world famous German composer, the composer and playing of music was an art whose ‘aim and final reason should be none else but the Glory of God and the recreation of the mind’. That principle infuses not only Bach’s religious works such as the Passions, the many Cantatas, and the B-minor Mass,but also his secular music, including the Well-tempered Clavier, the Art of Fugue, and other works created to teach keyboard students. A master of counterpoint, his music epitomizes the Baroque polyphonic style. His orchestral music includes the six Brandenburg Concertos (1721), other concertos for keyboard instruments and violin, four orchestral suites, sonatas for various instruments, six violin partitas, and six unaccomplished cello suites. Bach’s keyboard music, for clavier and organ, his fugues, and his choral music are of equal importance. He also wrote chamber music and songs. Bach held a number of musical posts culminating in the position of musical director at St. Thomas Church, Leipzig.
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Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst Weber(1786—1826), a German composer, established the Romantic school of opera with The Marksman and Euryanthe. He was kapellmeister at Breslau, Prague and Dresden. He died during a visit to London where he produced his opera Oberton written for the Covent Garden theatre.
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn (1809—1847) is a German composer, also a pianist and conductor. His music has a lightness and charm of classical music, applied to romantic and descriptive subjects. He was instrumental in promoting the revival of interest in Bach's music.
Robert Alexander Schumann (1810—1856) is a German composer and writer. His songs and short piano pieces portray states of emotion with great economy. Among his compositions are four symphonies, a violin concerto, a piano concerto, sonatas, and song cycles. Mendelssohn championed many of his works.
Richard Wagner (1813—1883), a German opera composer, revolutionized the 19th-century conception of opera, envisaging it as a wholly new art form unifying musical, poetic, and scenic elements. In 1872 he founded the Festival Theatre in Bayreuth. His masterpiece The Ring of the Nibelung, a sequence of four operas, was first performed there in 1876.
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Music in Britain
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries English musicians had a great reputation in Europe, both for their talent and for their originality. It was their experiments in keyboard music which helped to form the base from which grew most of the great harpsichord and piano music. William Byrd was the most distinguished English composer of this time, and his name is still widely known.
In the centuries which followed, England produced no composers of world rank except for Purcell in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Elgar in the twentieth century. Today, however, many people believe that there has been a reflowering of English music, and that the compositions of some contemporary composers will live on after their deaths. The music of Michael Tippett, Benjamin Britten and William Walton is performed all over the world.
Benjamin Britten was not modern in the musical sense of the word, but he was modem in his attitude towards his public. He has been called a ‘people's composer’ because he composed music, particularly operas and choral works, that can be sung by ordinary people and by children. Some of his operas, such as Noyes Fludde (Noah's Flood) are performed in churches every year, and people from the surrounding area sing and act in them. The festival which he started in his little home town, Alde-burg, on the North Sea coast of Suffolk, has become one of the most important musical festivals in Europe. Benjamin Britten's music, however, is traditionally compared with the works of many of the younger generation of composers. The music of composers like Peter Maxwell Davies, Richard Rodney Benett, John Tavener, and Andrew Lloyd Webberare having considerable influence and popularity abroad.
It is significant that Richard Rodney Benett is a very fine trumpeter and once played the piano in a jazz band. The dividing lines between serious music on the one hand and jazz, pop and folk music on the other, are becoming less and less clear, and the influence that they are having on one another is increasing. Many twentieth-century British composers, including Vaughan Williams, Tipett and Britten, have been attracted and influenced by old A.L. Webber English folk songs.
Most musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber, like Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Evita, Sunset Boulevard are still hits staged in the best theatres of England, the United States and others countries.
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Louis Armstrong (1901—1971). US jazz comet and trumpet player and singer. His Chicago recordings in the 1920s with the Hot Five and Hot Seven brought him recognition for his warm and pure trumpet tone, his skill at improvisation, and his quirky, gravelly voice.
Ella Fitzgerald. This US jazz singer was born in 1918. She is recognized as one of the finest, most lyrical voices in jazz, both in solo work and with big bands. She is celebrated for her smooth interpretations of George and Ire Gershwin and Cole Porter songs.
Duke Ellington (1899—1974). US pianist. He became one of the leading figures in jazz over a 55-year period. Some of his most popular combinations include Mood Indigo, Sophisticated Lady, Solitude, and Black and Tan Fantasy. He was one of the founders of big band jazz.
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