Arnold Schoenberg 3

Beethoven is perhaps the most famous musician of all time. His influence on later composers was extremely huge, to the extent where many composers were intimidated by his music. Ludwig van Beethoven was born in 1770 into a family of musicians. His father and grandfather were both musicians at the court of Elector in the German town of Bonn. His grandfather was very respected, but his dad not so much given that he was an alcoholic. At a young age, Beethoven was put in charge of his family’s finances and started a job at the court. He composed music and helped look after the instrumentation. Around the same time, he began to write music. In 1790, an important visitor passed through Bonn: this was Franz Joseph Haydn. He was on his way to London for a visit when he stopped to meet Beethoven and agreed to take him on as a student when he came back from London to Vienna. In 1792, Beethoven moved to Vienna to study with Hayden. Apparently, it did not go as planned. Hayden was old fashion and a little overbearing, while Beethoven was rebellious and headstrong. Beethoven found support among the rich arts who lived in Vienna. Prince Lichnowsky gave him board and lodging at his place for in return, Beethoven would compose music and preform at evening parties.

Only a few composers in the history of time have ever successfully left their mark throughout our musical world we live in today. It’s been over two hundred years since the birth of Beethoven and his music still speaks to us today as he originally expressed and composed it. Ludwig Van Beethoven was born in the city of Bonn Germany on December 16th 1770 and has since been one of the most influential composers known to man. A common theme of early age learning and mastering seems to emerge in Beethoven’s life because while living in a musical family as a child, his father taught him how to play the piano, violin and in addition how to compose musical pieces since he was four years of age. A few short years later, he gave his first public piano performance at the age of seven. While Beethoven certainly gained a lot of knowledge from his peers, he also supported his family by giving music lessons and also by playing in the court orchestra. In the year 1792, Beethoven worked under an Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn and by the year 1800, his compositions established him as a strong Mozart successor.

There are many great composers throughout the centuries. Each composer has a story to tell that is very interesting, when you dig deep for the information. Every composer has their own way of making, composing and producing music. Irving Berlin is no exception. Berlin is an extraordinary composer, and when examining his story amazing facts are found. Berlin is not just a musician and composer, he is a man of many hats. Berlin’s life is extremely compelling.

Dmitri Shostakovich was born in 1906 and showed an aptitude for music at a young age. In 1919, he enrolled in the Petrograd Conservatory where his abilities mesmerized the head of the institution, Alexander Glazunov. Shostakovich was never politically naïve; he imitated his parent’s ideals who initially

Leonard Bernstein is not only one of the greatest composers in America, but also one of the greatest conductors in the world. Bernstein conducted great music, composed great music, and also performed music as a pianist. According to the New York Times, he was “one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history.” Born and educated in the United States, Bernstein was the first American to obtain a worldwide acclaim. He is perhaps most known for his film score in the West Side Story production.

Mendelssohn was a famous German composer of the Romantic period. Although he was born into a Jewish family and grew up without a religion he soon became a reformed Christian. Mendelssohn was born with the talent to be able to play instruments and make music, but his parents never really supported his talent and didn’t help him to improve his talent. He went on to pursue what he loved to do and that was to compose and conduct music. Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, Germany, 1809.

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.

Though generations apart, Richard Wagner and Fritz Kreisler both display correlations not only in musical presentation and development but also in the consistencies and adversities regarding their lives. Despite their disparities, Wagner and Kreisler prove to have transformed music through their innovations in their own compositions. Regarding their biography, Wagner and Fritz have paraded their interests in music from an early age. Fritz Kreisler, born February 2, 1875, embodied the persona of a true child prodigy starting at the age of 4 when he was given a violin and with no prior knowledge of scales or notes he was able to play the Austrian National Anthem from start to finish perfectly. This foreshadowed the coming of his career in music and from there he could only go up moving towards when he was admitted, after lying about his age, into the Vienna Conservatory at the age of 7 becoming the youngest to attend the musical

Looking back in time at the great composers of the world, only one foreign composer stands out for his many contributions to classical music and in helping America to find its own music. Antonin Leopold Dvorak was born on September 8th, 1841, in a small village of Nelahozeves in Bohemia that lies on the bank of the Mauldau River. The village Dvorak was born into was in good company and surroundings however also retained much of its native luster even through the worst times of political oppression (1).

Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg developed atonality out of the expressionism that derived in the early 20th century; he later developed the twelve-tone technique, which was further perfected by his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Richard Strauss was a beacon of German post-Romanticism, mostly known for his programmatic symphonic poems and operas. Strauss was known as the Bach of the Romantic age. He followed in the footsteps of other romantics and expanded musical expression enormously, such as changing music performed by

Elly Ney, a piano prodigy that hated Jews, was the daughter of an army sergeant in the Nazi Party. Because of the hatred towards Jewish people, they lost their jobs and gigs, so there were many musician jobs not being filled. When Elly Ney would get offered to fill in for a Jew, she would be very offended that she was doing a Jew’s job, but she would just try to concentrate on the music to get her by. Just because she was raised with hatred towards Jewish people caused her to hate any music involved with Judaism (“Nazi Approved Music”). The Third Reich was also a great factor in German composers and musicians getting jobs. Any German musician was forced to join the Reich. Music that was not accepted by the Third Reich was called “Jewish Degenerate”. Hundreds of talented composers and musicians did not have jobs because their music was not accepted in the Reich; Mhaler, Mendelssohn and Schoenberg all fall into that category, even though they are geniuses of music. Anton Webern agreed with Hitler’s ideas, but just because he was friends with Schoenberg, his music was listed as degenerate (“Degenerate’

As a young artist, Hitler struggled to make a living by selling his paintings during his time in Vienna. Many of his paintings featured the architecture of Vienna. He enjoyed painting structures with intricate designs, and would often use nature as a backdrop. While his paintings were of quality, what must be noted was his utter lack of creative agency. His paintings had no liveliness, there was nothing interesting or different about his art. His work was essentially capturing the work of other men and selling it as his own. Something disturbing about Hitler’s art was his omission of people. Painting mostly public places one would think that an artist would be able to identify people as a crucial component that gives life and action to a painting, after all what is a city without its people? Although, if these omissions were not a mistake, they may have been an intentional motif, perhaps a signature of his work. The absence of people would indicate a strong distaste for human interaction, or a strong appreciation for the world around him whether it be natural or manmade.

Arnold Schoenberg believed that the developing harmonic language of the late nineteenth century had led to a musical crisis. He felt that tonality had been stretched to its absolute limits, and that what was to be said within its confines, was already best done by the great composers before him. Schoenberg believed that he existed within a lineage of composers, and therefore, was the successor to deliver the next big innovation in music. This idea of pushing music forward is not a novel one though; we have long observed similar acts of musical righteousness. Simply consider the first chorus in a symphony as in Beethoven’s Ninth, or a requiem text that is not in Latin as in Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem.

Born on July 7, 1860, in Kalischt, Bohemia, Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer, Mahler acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. However, Mahler also was a Jew, and Jews in the region were associated by ethnic Czechs with Germans. Mahler’s famous quote is: “I am thrice homeless, as a native of

Ludwig Van Beethoven was one of the greatest musical composers of his time. Starting very young in his studies of music, he held many important positions they would develop him into the composer he became. Born in Bonn, Germany to a singer, he held his first position at the church. He later moved to Vienna where his composed several pieces, and even an opera. He created a new style of music, cyclic form.