George Gershwin Essay

Alec Robertson, Dennis Stevens, ed., A History of Music Volume 2 (New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1965), Pg. 85.

He played the piano parts in a Mozart Quartet and in Beethoven?s Quintet for wind instruments and piano, with such success that a speculative impresario wished to engage him for a concert tour that was to take him as far as America.

Not even a year later Tchaikovsky wrote his first opera the Voyevada. He later used this piece in his next opera the Oprichnik, which won some success at St. Petersburg in 1874. It was then that a critic named Balakirev requested that he write a work on Romeo and Juliet, which would later be known as the Fantasy Overture. This specific work was rewritten many times until it met the requirements of Balakirev. This romantic piece is a symphony where each theme stood for a character in the drama. It is these expressive themes that make his first works well defined.

At this time, Gershwin's career skyrocketed. He was hired by George White to compose for the Scandals series. He continued doing this for four years. During this time, Gershwin composed his first operetta, Blue Monday. It impressed Paul Whiteman, a famous bandleader, so much that he asked Gershwin to compose a symphonic jazz piece. At this time, however, Gershwin was still busy composing for White and forgot to compose for Whiteman until only one month before the scheduled performance. During this rushed creation, Gershwin found inspiration to create his most famous individual piece, Rhapsody in Blue. At its first performance, the piece was loved by the audience so much that they gave it a standing ovation.

In 1894, a young, quietly colorful Charles Ives enters Yale University. He enters with a strong musical foundation provided by his father and community and a vision of what he thinks music can be. Horatio Parker, Ives’s composition professor unashamedly informs Ives that his vision of music seems blurry, perhaps even nauseating, to the astute, cultured musician. Ives quickly develops anger towards Parker’s traditional tutelage and rarely recognizes the positive effects Parker has on his compositions. Here begins the battle between new and old that Ives and Parker embarked upon during Ives’s college years, however the story starts and ends far from their four short years together.

Goldberg, Isaac. George Gershwin; a Study in American Music. New York: F. Ungar Pub. 1958. Print.

Since the Baroque era, the concerto has played a vital role in the music world. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, a concerto is “a composition for one or more soloists and orchestra with three contrasting movements.” There are two main types: the concerto grosso and the classical concerto; both will be discussed later. While the term concerto is relatively easy to understand in context, when put into use the term becomes more complicated to define.

Many of the serious works that he was composing became some of his most famous accomplishments in the musical world. His growing reputation writing serious music brought him a steady income. Gershwin's interest in serious music had increased so much that he now wanted to write full-length operas, which he had been contemplating for years.

Learning about how composers continued to compose and add resisting elements to their compositions was fascinating. Viktor Ullman created his most famous piece, Der Kaiser von

He remained a clerk for three years. He hated his job but he worked feverishly at it for he worked hard at every task he was given. He continued to be drawn into the music world and he took piano and theory lessons. Finally, in 1862, he quit his job and devoted the rest of his life to music which he began by entering the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He graduated with a silver medal in 1865. After graduation he was unsure of what to do until 1866 when Nicholas Rubenstein offered him the job of professor of harmony at the newly formed Moscow Conservatory. It was here that he wrote his first serious works which included AA Festival Overture on the Danish National Hymn,@ his First Symphony in G AWinter Daydreams,@ and his first opera AThe Voyevode.@ Showing his desire for perfection he tore up the opera because he was dissatisfied with it and it wasn=t until 1949 that it was revived.5

Williams concerto and has likely affected many a composer who has attempted to write a

Edvard Grieg was born in Bergen, Norway. His first teacher was his mother. She was a wonderful pianist. Because Edvard was also a very good musician, at the age of 15 he was sent to study at the Leipzig Conservatory in Germany. After that, he traveled to Denmark. There, Grieg met another Norwegian composer who taught him about Norwegian folk music. Grieg began performing as a pianist all over Europe, but every summer he went home to his cottage in Norway to compose. Grieg soon became the leader of a group of artists who wanted Norwegian music, art and theater to become more popular. Many of his songs are written to sound like folk songs from his home country. He also wrote a lot of music for the piano. Grieg is best known for the incidental music he wrote for Henrik Ibsen’s play, Peer Gynt. Incidental music provides background or atmosphere for the action in a play.

Being a clarinetist himself, this concerto was not commissioned by anyone and the composer wrote it shortly after he had a car accident that ended his clarinet career.

It was Franz Peter Schubert, who said to a friend “I have come into the world for no other purpose but to compose”. For someone to be so certain, focused and dedicated at such a young age with extraordinary talent and promise, finding out more about Schubert’s life and astonishing music was a must for me.

of Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller, his senior peers in the realm of writing; the stringently re-imagined moral objectives of Kant; and the standards of the French Revolution, with its energetic worry for the flexibility and respect of the person. He uncovered more strikingly than any of his ancestors the energy of music to pass on a reasoning of existence without the guide of a talked content; and in sure of his creations is to be discovered as the most grounded statement of the human will in all music, if not in all craftsmanship. In spite of the fact that not himself a Romantic, he turned into the wellspring of much that described crafted by the Romantics who tailed him, particularly in his optimal of program or illustrative music, which he characterized regarding his Sixth Symphony as "more an outflow of feeling than painting." In melodic shape he was a significant trend-setter, augmenting the