The Greatest Composers Of The Twentieth Century

Certainly the jovial nature of the overture fits with this both this theme and the October Revolution festivities. Shostakovich’s composing life was certainly one of paranoia, due to a fear of pushing the boundaries too far with his work. His work had already been subject to censorship in 1936 and 1948 under Stalin’s rule. He managed to escape persecution however by his willingness to write works which reflected ’Soviet Realism’, How ironic it would be if the outpour of relief of Stalin’s death was the true inspiration for piece supposedly penned to celebrate the

In the passage by Igor Stravinsky, he uses not only comparison and contrast, but also language to convey his point of view about the conductors of the time and their extreme egotism. Stravinsky believes that conductors exploit the music for their own personal gain, so rather, he looks on them in a negative light.

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky is the author of six symphonies and the finest and most popular operas in the Russian repertory. Tchaikovsky was also one of the founders of the school of Russian music. He was a brilliant composer with a creative imagination that helped his career throughout many years. He was completely attached to his art. His life and art were inseparably woven together. "I literally cannot live without working," Tchaikovsky once wrote, "for as soon as one piece of work is finished and one would wish to relax, I desire to tackle some new work without delay." The purpose of this paper is to give you a background concerning Tchaikovsky's biography, as well as to discuss his various works of

While Ludwig van Beethoven and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky have much in common, they also have many differences. Both men are famous for their orchestral compositions and their future influence on other composers. They experienced a blend of horrible failures and great successes. Although they were from different musical time periods, they both made huge contributions to the world of music.

The Great Terror was one of the single greatest loss of lives in the history of the world. It was a crusade of political tyranny in the Soviet Union that transpired during the late 1930’s. The Terrors implicated a wide spread cleansing of the Communist Party and government officials, control of peasants and the Red Army headship, extensive police over watch, suspicion of saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries, and illogical slayings. Opportunely, some good did come from the terrors nonetheless. Two of those goods being Sofia Petrovna and Requiem. Both works allow history to peer back into the Stalin Era and bear witness to the travesties that came with it. Through the use of fictional story telling and thematic devises Sofia Petrovna and Requiem, respectively, paint a grim yet descriptive picture in a very efficient manner.

Many composers use various techniques in which they communicate the distinctly visual. John Misto’s ‘The Shoe-Horn Sonata’ and Alexander Kimel’s ‘The Action in the Ghetto of Rohatyn, March 1942’ represent significant issues in our world by using various literary and dramatic techniques. Through using these techniques it is evident that the composers of these texts allow the audience to ‘see’ with our eyes as well as with our minds. The many literary and dramatic techniques have the ability to create a visual that

​In his derogatory passage, Igor Stravinsky discusses the common views and reputation of orchestra conductors; he argues that conductors are not musical gods but rather destroyers of musical compositions and the glory that they are meant to receive. Because Stravinsky is a composer himself, he has firsthand experience with the relationship between composer and conductor and has dealt with conductors that have conducted his compositions. Stravinsky’s purpose in writing this passage is to convince the reader of the false perspective they possess of conductors. He wants to correct these pretenses and expose the façade of conducting in order for the reader to disassociate the conductor with being the star of the performance and help them focus

Composers’ representations of the complex relationship between people and politics are influenced by various moral and social agendas, whereby a portrayal of reality and meaning is inherently subjective.

Aaron Copland was one of the most respected American classical composers of the twentieth century (American Masters). Today, his compositions are still very known and they have inspired many composers and piano performers worldwide.

The engulfing size of the painting (250.5 x 159.5 cm) drives the audiences mind into a hypnotic frenzy as they are overwhelmed by bright and sensual colours, which, have the ability to evoke deep emotions and realisations. Kandinsky has portrayed this through the disorientation of his own personal visions of society during the industrial revolution. The rough yet expressive outline of buildings, a rainbow and the sun gives reference to realism as it allows viewers to connect and understand underlying motifs and shapes yet is painted abstractly to move away from the oppressive and consumerist society. Thus, Kandinsky breaks boundaries through his innovative approach to his art-making practise concluded from his personal belief of ‘art for arts sake’. He believed that art should mainly convey the artist’s personal views and self-expressionism that translated a constant individuality throughout his work from an inner intentional emotive drive. This broke traditional boundaries as art in the renaissance period was meant to be a ‘narration’ or an artwork where an audience could learn and benefit from. This is evidently shown in Composition IV as it exemplifies Kandinsky’s inner feelings towards the industrialised society

“In the struggle with falsehood art always did win and it always does win!” Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident, espoused this philosophy to the Swedish Academy. He spoke of the power of art in combating the tyranny and lies of a corrupt government, and as a medium for evaluating society. He was at various times, a soldier in the Soviet army, a political prisoner of the Soviet state, a celebrity for his literary works, and an exile from all of Russia. His fiery philippic against Stalin landed him in prison for eight years; his account of prison life made him immensely popular during the de-Stalinization years of the early 1960’s, and he was deported for his most famous work, The Gulag Archipelago. He has become a symbol of the

After Dvorak left the Organ School in 1859, he basically disappeared from the public eye for twelve years until 1871, which is when he emerged back into the public as a composer. For those twelve years he spent in seclusion, he was occupied with extensive writing in the classical form (8). To much grief and disappointment Dvorak’s first son died in September and his second daughter in October of 1877. These tragic losses were experienced within his grandiose oratorio “Stabat Mater.” For the next twenty years, Dvorak was invited to other European countries to conduct performances of his own works while enduring a struggling relationship with his publisher Hitherto Simrock (7).

The Russian Revolution is a widely studied and seemingly well understood time in modern, European history, boasting a vast wealth of texts and information from those of the likes of Robert Service, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Allan Bullock, Robert Conquest and Jonathan Reed, to name a few, but none is so widely sourced and so heavily relied upon than that of the account of Leon Trotsky, his book “History of the Russian Revolution” a somewhat firsthand account of the events leading up to the formation of the Soviet Union. There is no doubt that Trotsky’s book, among others, has played a pivotal role in shaping our understanding of the events of The Revolution; but have his personal predilections altered how he portrayed such paramount

In the musical world, no one is as controversial as Dmitri Shostakovich. Although he died not 30 years ago, many aspects of his life still remain to be a great mystery. When he was alive, many in the world believed he was a Communist and a devoted servant of Stalin. It was not until after his death that the truth had come out. Or had the truth been there all along? Many believe that this was because his music expressed a lot of nationalism and idolized Stalin. However, in an attempt to escape the red fist of Stalin, Shostakovich made his music appear to be nationalistic when really it is full of sarcasm and hidden messages. Shostakovich showed his contempt Stalin and

Russian Avant-Garde was born at the start of the 20th century out of intellectual and cultural turmoil. Through the analysis of artworks by Aleksandr Rodchenko and El Lissitzky this essay attempts to explore the freedom experienced by artists after the Russian Revolution in 1917. This avant-garde movement was among the boldest and most advanced in Europe. It signified for many artists an end to the past academic conventions as they began to experiment with the notions of space, following the basic elements of colour, shape and line. They strove for a utopian existence for all benefited by and inspired through the art they created. They worked with, for and alongside the politics of the time. The equality for all that they sought would