A-Z of Classical Music

[TheSound]

Don't know if this should go here, or as a User Journal, so if any mod wants to move it there, then that's fine, might be better there actually.

Thought about doing an A-Z of Classical Composers, remind myself of some fine works, and maybe if anyone into classical wants to join in, comment, post their own, etc maybe we will hear less familiar stuff too. I think as soon as I get to B I better ignore Beethoven, in the hope that LG will be tempted to chip in with a selection from his #1 composer, so we’ll see! So feel free to chip in if you like, as long as it’s some composer on the letter still current, I’ll change to the next letter in the alphabet every week or two, there’s no rush, and I don’t have time to spend too much time on this anyway, so let's just see what comes up alphabetically in due course. I’m also just going to be stealing a few words of bio from Wiki to save time.

A

Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (8 June 1671 – 17 January 1751) was an Italian Baroque composer. While famous in his day as an opera composer, he is mainly remembered today for his instrumental music, such as the concertos, some of which are regularly recorded. The 'Adagio' has permeated popular culture, having been used as background music for such films as Gallipoli, in television programmes, and in numerous advertisements.




John Coolidge Adams (born February 15, 1947) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer with strong roots in minimalism. His best-known works include Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986), On the Transmigration of Souls (2002), a choral piece commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2003), and Shaker Loops (1978), a minimalist four-movement work for strings. His well-known operas include Nixon in China (1987), which recounts Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China, and Doctor Atomic (2005), which covers Robert Oppenheimer, theManhattan Project, and the building of the first atomic bomb.




Gregorio Allegri (1582 – 17 February 1652) was an Italian composer of the Roman School and brother of Domenico Allegri; he was also a priest and a singer. He lived mainly in Rome, where he would later die. A 14-year-old boy called Mozart, who, on a visit to Rome with his father heard the now famous ‘Miserere’ sung only once, then transcribed the entire piece faithfully from memory, thus creating the first unauthorised copy, and proof of his genius.

 

[LG]

This is a Big undertaking TS...and it's up to you if you want it here or in the Journal section.

My brother had a couple of Albinoni's CD's...but I don't think I have anything by him...have to check and see.

 

[TheSound]

This is a Big undertaking TS...and it's up to you if you want it here or in the Journal section.

My brother had a couple of Albinoni's CD's...but I don't think I have anything by him...have to check and see.

Thanks LG. The Journal section would probably be better - if you would oblige? It's not so much of an undertaking really LG, especially if others like you join in, though A is a bad letter for composers as there are so few A's, when we hit the B's it could be fun! I've been very active (for me anyway) the past couple of weeks as I have had time on my hands, but I now have so much on and stuff to do and deal with over the coming months between now and summer, that I'm now going to have to limit myself time-wise to just a few areas of CRF that most interest me the most anyway, and not even read the rest - mostly Springsteen, maybe couple of other rock artists threads, sports, movies, classical, my other journals if I get time, and that's probably about it. It's just a phenomenally active forum, which is great, but impossible to keep up with, I actually don't know how you mods and admins do it, as I assume you have to read every post in every thread, you guys have great dedication.

 

[LG]

^^You've been a very welcome guest since you returned...I will miss you.

I agree my brother and I call them "The Killer B's"...I mean Bach and Beethoven alone make it a letter of distinction.



Oh and your thread is in the journal section as requested.

 

[TheSound]

^^You've been a very welcome guest since you returned...I will miss you.

Thanks LG!!....except I'm not going anywhere, unless you know something that I dont and I'm about to be ejected from the game by the ump!!??? I just said I won't have as much time to post here as in the past 2-3 weeks, family and home stuff mainly, plus I will be over in the US quite a lot, work and not all play sadly! So even if I have my laptop I won't be around quite as much, but don't send out the search party unless my User Journals lie dormant for about a month! Thanks for moving this anyway, I'll update it when I can, hope you may chip in, the Letter A is proving to be a bugger as we Brits say, Letter B should be a killer, there's around 20 I can think of for a start, plus there's lots of Bachs! I expect you knew this but J S Bach had 21 children (though they didn't all survive) and several of them became composers too. Anyway, cheers!

 

[LG]

^^I don't know of any plans afoot to summarily eject you TS...

Just got the feeling you were about to submerge again like last time, glad that is not the case.

I know about Bach's extended family and that a few did go into music, but none would ever rival their father.

 

[TheSound]

B

Johann Sebastian Bach (21 March 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Revered for their intellectual depth, technical command and artistic beauty, Bach's works include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas, The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B minor, the St Matthew Passion, the St John Passion, the Magnificat, the Musical Offering, The Art of Fugue, the English and French Suites, the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, the Cello Suites, more than 200 surviving cantatas, and a similar number of organ works, including the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor and Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, and the Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes and Organ Mass. Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected throughout Europe during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now generally regarded as one of the main composers of the Baroque style, and as one of the greatest composers of all time (attr. Wikipedia)

 

[TheSound]

B is also for Brahms

Johannes Brahms (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs.
Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works; he also worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed many of his works and left some of them unpublished. Brahms is often considered both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Baroque and Classical masters. He was a master of counterpoint, the complex and highly disciplined method of composition for which Johann Sebastian Bach is famous, and also of development, a compositional ethos pioneered by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Brahms aimed to honor the "purity" of these venerable "German" structures and advance them into a Romantic idiom, in the process creating bold new approaches to harmony, melody and, especially, rhythm. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. From (Wikipedia)

 

[TheSound]

Decided it's a bit limiting this just doing composers A-Z, so I thought I'd expand it to include musicians, soloists, conductors, even orchestras as well as composers.

So, still on the B's....

B is for Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim, KBE (born 15 November 1942) is an Argentine-born pianist and conductor. He has served as music director of several major symphonic and operatic orchestras and made numerous recordings.
Currently, he is general music director of La Scala in Milan,[1] the Berlin State Opera, and the Staatskapelle Berlin; he previously served as Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris. Barenboim is also known for his work with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Sevilla-based orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians, and as an outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
Barenboim has received numerous awards and prizes, including Britain's Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire,[2] France's Légion d'honneur both as a Commander and Grand Officier, the German Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz and Willy Brandt Award,[3] and, together with the Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, Spain's Prince of Asturias Concord Award. He has won seven Grammy awards for his work and discography.
In the beginning of his career, Barenboim concentrated on music of the classical era, as well as some romantic composers. He made his first recording in 1954. Notable classical recordings include the complete cycles of Mozart's and Beethoven's piano sonatas, and Mozart's piano concertos (in the latter, taking part as both soloist and conductor). Notable Romantic recordings include Brahms's piano concertos (with John Barbirolli), Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte, and Chopin's nocturnes. Barenboim also recorded many chamber works, especially in collaboration with his first wife, Jacqueline du Pré, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, and the violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. Noted performances include: the complete Mozart violin sonatas (with Perlman), Brahms's violin sonatas (live concert with Perlman, previously in the studio with Zukerman), Beethoven's and Brahms's cello sonatas (with du Pré), Beethoven's and Tchaikovsky's piano trios (with du Pré and Zukerman), and Schubert's Trout Quintet (with du Pré, Perlman, Zukerman, and Zubin Mehta).
Notable recordings as a conductor include: the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert and Schumann, the Da Ponte operas of Mozart, numerous operas by Wagner, including the complete Ring Cycle, and various concertos. Barenboim has written about his changing attitude to the music of Gustav Mahler;[27] he has recorded Mahler's Fifth, Seventh and Ninth Symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde. He has also performed and recorded the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo and Heitor Villa-Lobos guitar concerto with John Williams as the guitar soloist.
By the late 1990s, Barenboim had widened his concert repertoire, performing works by baroque as well as twentieth-century classical composers. Examples include: Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (which he has played since childhood) and Goldberg Variations, Albeniz's Iberia, and Debussy's preludes. In addition, he turned to other musical genres, such as jazz,[28] and the folk music of his birthplace, Argentina. He conducted the 2006 New Year's Eve concert in Buenos Aires, in which tangos were played.[29]
Barenboim has continued to perform and record chamber music, sometimes with members of the orchestras he has led. Some examples include the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen with members of the Orchestre de Paris during his tenure there, Richard Strauss with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during his tenure there, and the Clarinet Trio of Mozart with members of the Berlin Staatskapelle.
Wagner's music was unofficially tabooed in Israel's concert halls because of the use **** Germany had made of the composer. Previously, the Palestine Philharmonic had performed Wagner's music, in spite of his known antisemitism. Barenboim has long opposed the ban, regarding it as reflecting what he calls a "diaspora" mentality that is no longer appropriate to Israel. In a conversation with Edward Said, Barenboim said that "Wagner, the person, is absolutely appalling, despicable, and, in a way, very difficult to put together with the music he wrote, which so often has exactly the opposite kind of feelings ... noble, generous, etc." He called Wagner's anti-Semitism obviously "monstrous", and feels it must be faced, and argues that "Wagner did not cause the Holocaust."
Text from Wikipedia

 

[MaryGreen]

Very interesting idea for the topic. For example for my greatest shame, despite on I always considered myself to be classical music lover I've never heard about Barenboim before... And now I do! Very informative! Thanks a lot!