Antonio Vivaldi's Influence In The Development Of Music

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was unlike most other composers of his time. “He wrote music for the glory of God, and to satisfy his own burning curiosity, not for future fame.” During the 1700s, people knew him as a talented musician, not as a composer, as we do today. He never left his country to pursue bigger and better things. Bach was content as long as he could play music. Traditions were very important to him. He wanted to carry on the musical tradition of his family, and never opted to change the traditional ways of composing, as did most composers. Bach’s work is vast and unique.

When looking throughout the history of music, there is no name with a larger impact than Bach. Writing over 200 pieces throughout his 65 year life. Many people know the names of Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms; but only a select few know the specifics about these land mark composers. “Most would say that Beethoven should have been named called ocean instead of brook” Bach in German. During this papers I will be giving a brief look into the life of one of the most prolific composer that ever lived.

Antonio Vivaldi is a famous Italian baroque composer, known by most Suzuki violin students who study his concertos or by audiences everywhere who have heard and love his composition of the Four Seasons.  Having grown up as students of the Suzuki Violin Method, we recognize this composer and have experience performing his pieces.  In addition to his many concertos written for solo violin, Vivaldi composed many concertos intended to be performed by two solo violins, accompanied by a small orchestra.  Because we are both violinists, we chose to analyze the second movement of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins in A minor, RV 522, included in his L’Estro Armonico works.

Giovanni Gabrieli was a legendary composer of the 16th century. As the fundamental structure and ideas of the Catholic Church were being challenged by the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, Gabrieli’s compositions were given the opportunity to be successful and influential to music in the coming centuries. His works helped to transform not only church music of the Catholic Church, but also secular music as well. Giovanni Gabrieli wrote significant works that ultimately shaped the rise of the symphony, including the development of purely instrumental works, the art of orchestration, and the concerto style. Without his innovations in composition, it is arguable that instrumental music would not have developed as quickly, or developed

Ever since his father began teaching him as a child to play the violin and clavier, any keyboard instrument such as the harpsichord, Ludwig van Beethoven has been amongst the most renowned and influential composers of music. Despite the harsh punishments and mistreatment Beethoven suffered through while practicing with his father, he still managed to become a “prodigy” at a rather young age, having his first public recital at around seven years old. After his first recital role music played in his continued to grow, and soon after dropping out of school to pursue music “full time” he published his first composition.

In this essay, I will be discussing the music of Jewish composers who were unable to showcase their pieces, due to the massive animosity towards their race, despite having composed several outstanding pieces of music. Although they were persecuted severely during the Nazi era, they too contributed to the international music community. For many of the Jewish composers, the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and Austria was an increasing danger to their safety in the country. They had to make difficult choices to survive –To stay in Germany and remain oppressed in their very own country, or to leave, and be detached from their own cultural roots forever.

composer has had an influence on the music we hear today. However, perhaps one of the most

Antonio Lucia Vivaldi was one of the greatest baroque composers of all time, his diversity and versatility

This thesis aims to explore the life of Johann Sebastien Bach (1685-1750), and his contribution to European classical music. Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. To this day, he is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest composers and musicians of all time. Bach is known for his talent in playing the organ, and the extreme complexity of his works using counterpoint, motifs and harmony. His catalogue boasts over a thousand pieces, from cantatas, motets, lute pieces, four part chorales, to chamber music, orchestral works and canons.

The difficulty of his breathing increased, less air came in with every breath, tightness filled his chest and lungs - this had to end. Antonio Vivaldi, known as “The Red Priest,” due to his hair color, attempted to give mass, but his bronchial asthma restricted him from doing his job well (Heller). He lost his ability to preach when the pain proved too much. So he returned to his first love: music. Antonio Vivaldi’s father, a barber-turned-professional-violinist in Venice, taught him to play the violin at a very young age. At ten years old, Vivaldi became his father’s substitute at St. Mark’s Orchestra (Getzinger). Thus, at an early age, he showed extraordinary promise. Years later, that promise came to fruition as he revolutionized Baroque music. Because Antonio Vivaldi’s compositions added warmth and a rhythmically textured sound to a rather ornamental Baroque style, his musical approach appealed to listeners and changed how everyone viewed concertos. His revolutionary style influenced other musicians and European society from his first composition in 1690 to his death in 1741. More than two centuries later, his music, best represented by The Four Seasons, continues to have an impact. When Vivaldi lost his ability to preach, he found a new but familiar voice through the violin and became the Baroque period’s most influential composer, changing the way Europeans, and even other composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, approached music.

INTRODUCTION Attention getter: Whether in spite of, or because of his father’s excessive harsh and abusive methods of teaching, Beethoven was an extraordinary musician from an early age. He showed creative musicianship and imagination that reach further than any other composer ever has or possibly ever will.

Throughout his life Antonio Vivaldi had many achievements. Some were big some were little some were small but they didn’t matter that much to him. His love and talent for music was much better than anything he could be given. Without his music the classical music genre would be almost non-existent.

The early piano sonatas of Beethoven deserve special mention. Although his first published examples of concertos and trios and the first two symphonies are beneath the masterpieces of Mozart and Haydn, the piano sonatas bear an unmistakably Beethovian stamp: grandiose in scope and length, and innovative in their range of expression. The sonatas were able to move expression from terrible rage to peals of laughter to deep depression so suddenly. Capturing this unpredictable style in his music, a new freedom of expression which broke the bounds of Classical ideals, was to position Beethoven as a disturbed man in the minds of some of his contemporaries. Furthermore, he was to be seen as the father of Romanticism and the single most important innovator of music in the minds of those after him. (Bookspan 27).

Both Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827) as composers, had elements of their environment, personalities and emotions that served as creative inspiration in their music. Both composers’ contributions had profound effects on Western music.

In his paper I’ll be talking Claudio Monteverdi, an Italian composer, string player and choirmaster during the late renaissance and early baroque era who was versed in both secular and sacred music and also worked as a choirmaster. A pioneer in the development of opera and crucial figure in both of these major music periods of classical music. Monteverdi was born in Cremona in 1567, as the son of a barber and brain surgeon as well as a chemist was his father Baldassare Monteverdi. Claudio’s mother, Maddalena Monteverdi nee Zigani was the child of a blacksmith. Monteverdi was born the oldest child of six other siblings, he had three other brothers and only two sisters. Maddalena died when Claudio when he was nine, at that time his father had married another woman by the name of Giovanno Gadio in 1577. Then having three more kids with Gadio but she died shortly after.