May 18th 2009
Archive for the 'Music' Category
May 13th 2009
BIZET and Carmen the best-known opera in the world
When Tchaikovsky saw Carmen in 1875 he prophesied that it would be the best-known opera in the world. At the time he was the only person who thought so; the rest of the first- night audience was shocked and outraged. Continue Reading »
May 13th 2009
BIZET：Suites from L’Arlisienne
Nineteenth-century theatre-goers liked lavish incidental music, and to provide this most theatres had pit bands, ranging from two or three players to full orchestras. Writing music for plays financed many composers‘ lives. L’Arlésienne (`The Girl from Arles’) was a tragedy by the Provençal writer Alphonse Daudet, first performed in Paris in 18 72. Continue Reading »
May 11th 2009
Classic Music MOZART，Requiem
Mozart’s last work begins with a solemn prayer that the spirits of the dead may rest in peace. The mood is set by basset horns (tenor clarinets, among Mozart’s favourite instruments), pleading against blaring brass chords, like foretastes of the Last Trump. Continue Reading »
May 8th 2009
RACHMANINOV, Prelude in C sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2.
Rachmaninov wrote this piece when he was nineteen, and sold it to a publisher, outright, for a handful of roubles. He then introduced it at a piano recital, and it made a sensation. Continue Reading »
April 8th 2009
Mahler and his world-famous as the theme music
This piece, the slow movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, became world-famous as the theme music for the film Death in Venice, about a dying musician obsessed by a beautiful boy. Scored for string orchestra and harp, the music builds from a scatter of single notes at the start (like slowly dripping water), first to a coherent tune, then to an edifice of huge, piled chords, before fading again to silence. Its pace never varies, and its mood is sustained throughout. Miraculously, it combines melancholy with heart-easing beauty, so that you are finally uplifted, not depressed. Continue Reading »
March 3rd 2009
Tallis’ Audivi Vocem, classical song of ‘I heard a voice coming from heaven…’
Audivi vocem is the eighth respond (a chant or anthem) to be sung during Matins on All Saints Day. Responds or responsories were part of daily service at the Chapel Royal and consisted of alternating sections for soloists and choir. This setting of Audivi vocem was one of thirty-four Cantiones Sacrae, or Sacred Songs, published in 1575 by Thomas Tallis and his pupil, the composer William Byrd. Continue Reading »
February 23rd 2009
Mozart’s the Marriage of Figaro
Mozart’s comic opera of 1786, The Marriage of Figaro, is one of the most successful works of the entire operatic repertoire. It was Mozart’s first opera set to a libretto by the Italian playwright, Lorenzo da Ponte, and was soon followed by two more da Ponte successes, Don Giovanni (1787) and Cosi fan Tutte (1789). Continue Reading »
February 23rd 2009
Music Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata
Beethoven himself labelled this sonata “Pathetique,” not, as was often the case with descriptive titles, the publisher. The title clearly refers to the music’s turbulent moods of pathos and suffering. From the opening moments of the first movement, thundering minor chords alternate with dramatic downward runs. After a short, singing adagio, the finale returns to something of the first movement’s revolutionary temperament. Continue Reading »
February 20th 2009
SCHUBERT’S TROUT QUINTET Fourth Movement: Variations
Following the success of Schubert’s song “Die Forelle” (The Trout), the composer agreed to write a set of variations on the melody at the request of an enthusiastic amateur musician and friend, Sylvester Paumgartner. He started composing the piece while he was on holiday in Upper Austria during April 1819, and the final result was his five-movement Trout Quintet. Continue Reading »
