César Franck was one of the most sought-after and remarkable composers of the 19th century. Born in Liège in 1822, Franck received his musical instruction at the age of eight at Liège Conservatoire. In 1834, he gave the first public concert in Liège. After moving to Paris in 1835, Frank entered the Conservatoire where he studied counterpoint with Leborne and piano with Zimmermann. It was during his student years at the Paris Conservatoire which Franck composed his first serious works, three trios for piano, violin and cello, that foreshadows his late style music, concluding the early use of cyclic form. In 1858, Franck was appointed as an organist at Sainte-Clotilde, which leads to his combinations of organ techniques reflected in his late …show more content…
After acquiring the professorship Franck wrote several pieces that have entered the standard classical repertoire, including symphonic, chamber, and piano works. As one of the great organists, Franck composed significant works for organ and have adapted the technique into his piano writing. The sonority that was best-suit to church acoustic, and the improvisational features beautifully display in his works. One of Franck’s longtime celebrated works, the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, was composed in 1884. His exploration in the complete piano resources clearly shown in this grand work, as presented in Prelude—lyrical, Choral—chordal, and Fugue—contrapuntal. The essence of this piece lies in the theme which is “Cross motive” referring to the birth, death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And presenting the goodness overcoming the evil, in the dark key and solemn, painful character of prelude, jointed the two by the serenity of chorale and ended in victorious melodic and harmonic development in fugue. Franck proved his mastery of variation in this grand piece. His original plan was to write a Prelude and Fugue, and the idea of the choral was constructed when he felt that the two needs the …show more content…
The chorale fulfilled the lack of ‘cantabile’ and sustained melody, the chorale served as the relieve from the rush of the Prelude and lead to the Fugue. Franck gave to the Prelude Chorale et Fugue the sense of being grounded in baroque practice. His inspirations were Bach, Beethoven’s sonatas, Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes, and Liszt’s Weinen Klagen variations. There is a close reflection of Wagner’s Parsifal in the melody of the chorale. The Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue, “in its basic ideas, as well as their technical expression for the instrument...wielded a powerful influence over the rising generation of composers in offering them a kind of ideal to follow, a complete expression of the ideals that were opposed fundamentally to the superficial music then in popular favour.” In d’Indy’s biography of his teacher, he tells us of Franck’s sudden interest in the piano and how he came to write the Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue: “César Franck, struck by the lack of serious works in this style, set to work with a youthful fervour which belied his sixty years to try if he could not adapt the old aesthetic forms to the new technique of the piano, a problem which could only be solved by some considerable
Sonatas composed from 1773 to 1784 were intended as “public” works from the very beginning, with a clear conception of the taste, preferences, and instruments available to the musical public of Vienna. The Sonata in F Major, Hob. XVI: 23; L38 written in 1773 for solo harpsichord is the best known and most virtuosic of
Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565, is a two-part musical composition for organ, written by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750), a German composer, and musician of Baroque period, is known for its magnificent sound, classic, state-of-the-art rhythm having methodological command, with artistic splendor and intellectual gravity. Bach's abilities as an organist were respected throughout Europe during his lifetime but at that time he was not recognized as a great composer until a revival of interest and performances of his music in the first half of the 19thcentury. Nowadays he’s regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. (Blanning, 2008)
The Toccata and Fugue in D minor is a two-part harmonious oeuvre for the organ, Bach composed the composition before 1708, and people recall it because of its magnificent sound, phenomenal authority, and stimulating rhythm. Moreover, the Fugue’s passage is a copy of a phrase in one of Johann Pachelbel’s D minor fantasias; ordinarily, the formation of fugues on other composers’ themes was conventional. Breitkopf and Hartel issued the piece in late 1833; Felix Mendelssohn devised and partly prepared the piece; moreover, he performed it on August 6, 1840, in Leipzig. The performance affected Franz Liszt so much that he decided to add the piece into his organ repertoire in the 19th
Composers since the early classical era have used sonata form to express through music ideas which are at once complex and unified. This form contains a variety of themes and permutations of these themes, but is brought together into a comprehensible whole when these excerpts reappear. Beethoven, in the first movement of his Piano Sonata Opus 2 Number 3 utilizes this form to its full potential, modifying the typical structure in his characteristic way.
The fugue is often regarded as a genre defined by strict procedural guidelines. It is notable that three historically important composers, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759), and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), all employed a closely related fugue subject in three different works. An analysis of each of these works individually, and a comparison of these works collectively reveal numerous latent and salient features, and a reflection of the composers’ style within these works. Analyses also provide an outlook into the fluidity in certain aspects and rigidity in others of the form itself, reflected historically. The three composers analyzed fall closely together in history. J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel were contemporaries, whereas Mozart was born six years after Bach’s death and three years before Handel’s death. Analytically, the angularity of these similar fugue subjects presupposes a treatment regardless of the composer. Because of the shared intervallic content among the subjects of these fugues, despite being written by several different composers, a surprising number of similarities arise. Therefore, it is reasonable to assert that compositional choices made in the construction of the fugue subjects limit the number of results possible.
Felsenfeld takes his readers on a journey from being an uninspired teenager, into the world of an adult “rebel” composer. Although Daniel was in piano lessons at a young age, he just couldn’t seem to spark an interest in the classical music that was being put in front of him. He continued the lessons through high school, and only had enough skill to make minimal money in piano bars and orchestra pits. Daniel regularly hung out with a friend, Mike, whose house he would go
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.
The concert started off at a quick and stimulating pace with Brahms’s Sonata for Two Pianos in F Minor. The piece starts with descending arpeggios echoing a sensation of distress or confusion. There are frequent slight pauses, creating a sense of suspense for what is to follow and building on the emotions
inspiration for the composition of the piece, as it was written in French to make use of the language’s sound and enhance its decadence.
1. Discuss the use of music in Catholic and Protestant worship practice, from the development of polyphony, through the music of J.S. Bach. In so doing, discuss the shift in responsibility for musical development from the Catholic Church to the Lutheran Church.
He began to write preludes for organs but did not cover large- scale organization, when two melodies interact at the same time. A few years after playing for the church, Bach made a visit to Dieterich Buxtehude in Lubeck. This visit reinforced Bach’s style in music with the works he has made.
Chopin drew inspiration from numerous sources. He predominantly composed with national Polish traditions in mind, but often studied other composers and expanded upon their styles. Chopin’s 24 Preludes were based on a study of Bach’s own set of Preludes. In both cases, these composers wrote a Prelude for all 24 major and minor keys. Bach arranged his chromatically, while Chopin arranged his in a circle of fifths pattern. While Chopin did study Bach’s Preludes, Chopin’s were only a tribute. “It was there he composed these most beautiful of short pages which he modestly entitled the Preludes. They are masterpieces.” He wrote each one with a specific theme or mood in mind and he set them to stand on their own as independent works, despite the fact that the genre “prelude” is translated from French as “introduction.” Their function became as such when the composer was “capable by means of a suitable prelude of preparing the listeners, setting the mood, and also thereby ascertaining the qualities of the pianoforte, perhaps unfamiliar to him, in an appropriate fashion.“ Chopin’s 24 preludes are so skillfully composed, they are “admirable for their variety, the labor and learning with which they abound are appreciable only by the aid of a scrupulous examination; everything seems fresh, elastic, created at the impulse of the moment, abounding with that freedom of expression which is characteristic of works of genius.” Their variety is
Ludwig Van Beethoven was one of the most influential composers of his time. The decades around the 1800’s were years of many changes and Beethoven’s new approach to music was something that reflected that. “His symphonies, concertos, string quartets and piano sonatas are central to the repertory of classical music.” This essay will focus on the historical and theoretical aspects of the third movement of Sonata Op. 28 No. 15.
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).
In the bars 21-24 of the fugue (fig. 2.1.2), several appoggiatura-resolutions occur. While the top layer shows the original score, the middle layer visualizes the passage without appoggiaturas, and the bottom layer represents the harmony. Within this passage, the first note of each slur is an appoggiatura (a non-chord