(Italian: [anˈtɔːnjo ˈluːtʃo viˈvaldi]; 4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741) was an Italian[2]Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher and cleric. Born in Venice, he is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe. He is known mainly for composing many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than forty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons. Many of his compositions were written for the female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for abandoned children where Vivaldi (who had been ordained as a Catholic priest) was employed from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740. Vivaldi also had some success with expensive stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua and Vienna. After meeting the Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, hoping for preferment. However, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldi's arrival, and Vivaldi himself died less than a year later in poverty.
Ahh, Vivaldi…. One of the greatest, if not the greatest violinist. His style has been deemed to be cheery, playful or upbeat. I believe this to be a narrow understanding of his true approach however, which was genuinely more somber and audacious.
His Magnum Opus, the Four Seasons is a sonorous, yet subtle and introspective communication with nature and spirit. It begins as an energetic dance of mirth, yet transitions quite abruptly to a steadier plodding pace. The Summer concerto is a robust and exceedingly passionate abundance of exuberant yet melancholic flurries that have an effect to shudder one’s mind and body. Autumm then becomes more cheery again, but not overly so. Winter then is simply a bold yet poetically forceful climax. I don’t believe Vivaldi cared to cater to certain emotions of the masses. The whole series is grand because neither season plays on a particular clichéd emotional attachment to a season that should inspire some particular feeling, and so he did not intend any season to be correlated to happiness or even despair which might have been the ironical motivation; but just a transitional exploration of the turbulence of nature itself and emotions.
What I love about Vivaldi, is his ability to master both expressions; the dark and the light, the despondent and the jovial, the pain and pleasure. His passion was Wagnerian.
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This I consider to truly be one of the greatest pieces of musical genius ever created. Almost a besotted precision. But There is only one word to encapsulate it….passion.
(/ˈʃoʊpæn/; French pronunciation: [fʁe.de.ʁik fʁɑ̃.swa ʃɔ.pɛ̃]; 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849), born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin,[n 1] was a Polish composer and a virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era, who wrote primarily for the solo piano. He gained and has maintained renown worldwide as one of the leading musicians of his era, whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation."[1] Chopin was born in what was then the Duchy of Warsaw, and grew up in Warsaw, which after 1815 became part of Congress Poland. A child prodigy, he completed his musical education and composed his earlier works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at the age of 20, less than a month before the outbreak of the November 1830 Uprising. At the age of 21 he settled in Paris. Thereafter, during the last 18 years of his life, he gave only some 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon. He supported himself by selling his compositions and teaching piano, for which he was in high demand. Chopin formed a friendship with Franz Liszt and was admired by many of his musical contemporaries, including Robert Schumann. In 1835 he obtained French citizenship. After a failed engagement to Maria Wodzińska, from 1837 to 1847 he maintained an often troubled relationship with the French writer George Sand. A brief and unhappy visit to Majorca with Sand in 1838–39 was one of his most productive periods of composition. In his last years, he was financially supported by his admirer Jane Stirling, who also arranged for him to visit Scotland in 1848. Through most of his life, Chopin suffered from poor health. He died in Paris in 1849, probably of tuberculosis. All of Chopin's compositions include the piano. Most are for solo piano, though he also wrote two piano concertos, a few chamber pieces, and some songs to Polish lyrics. His keyboard style is highly individual and often technically demanding; his own performances were noted for their nuance and sensitivity. Chopin invented the concept of instrumental ballade. His major piano works also include mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, études, impromptus, scherzos, preludes and sonatas, some published only after his death. Influences on his compositional style include Polish folk music, the classical tradition of J. S. Bach, Mozart and Schubert, the music of all of whom he admired, as well as the Paris salons where he was a frequent guest. His innovations in style, musical form, and harmony, and his association of music with nationalism, were influential throughout and after the late Romantic period. In his native Poland, in France, where he composed most of his works, and beyond, Chopin's music, his status as one of music's earliest superstars, his association (if only indirect) with political insurrection, his love life and his early death have made him, in the public consciousness, a leading symbol of the Romantic era. His works remain popular, and he has been the subject of numerous films and biographies of varying degrees of historical accuracy.
Chopin, for me is the spirit of the wisdom of solitude. No despair or sadness or loneliness, but only the depth of knowing. His style is intensely intellectual but with a wandering chaos.
Channeling the ancient spiritualism of genius into oneself; though delicate nimble fingers of glory they may be, the force of ages past exudes and courses through a tiny physical medium of time and is absorbed back into the stream of consciousness...
A: What have you to say about this music? B: It has overcome me, I have nothing at all to say about it. Listen! They are playing it again! A: So much the better! Let us see to it that this time we overcome it. May I say a few words about this music? And may I also show you a drama which you may not have noticed at first hearing? B: Very well! I have two ears and more is need be. Come up close to me! A: What we hear now is not yet what he wants to say to us: up to now he has only been promising that he will say something and, as by these gestures he intends to indicate, something unheard-of. For they are gestures. How he beckons! Draws himself up! Throws out his arms! And now he seems to have reached the supreme moment of tension: two more fanfares and he introduces this theme, splendid and adorned, as though jingling with precious stones. Is it a beautiful woman? Or a beautiful horse? Enough: he looks around him in delight, for his task is to assemble delighted looks-only now is he wholly satisfied with his theme, only now does he become inventive, venture on bold and novel strokes. How he expands his theme! Ah! Pay attention – He knows not only how to decorate it but also how to color it! Yes, he knows what color health is, he understands how to make it appear – he is more subtle in his self-knowledge that I thought. And now he is convinced that he has convinced his hearers, he presents his ideas as though they were the most important things under the sun, he points shamelessly at his theme as though it were too good for this world. – ha, how mistrustful he is! He is afraid we might get tired! So now he showers his melodies with sugar – now he appeals even to our coarser senses so as to excite us and thus again get us into his power. Hear how he conjures up the elemental forces of stormy and thunderous rhythms!! And now, when he has seen that these forces have seized hold of us, throttled and almost crushed us, he ventures to introduce his theme into this play of the elements and to convince us, half-stupefied and shattered as we are, that our stupefaction and convulsion are the effect of his miraculous theme. And thenceforth his hearers believe it is so: as soon as they hear the theme there arises within them a recollection of that shattering elemental effect – this recollection then benefits the theme, it has now become ‘demonic’! How well ht understands the soul! He rules over us with the arts of a demagogue! – But the music has stopped! – B: And just as well! For I can no longer endure to listen to you! I would ten times rather let myself be deceived than once know the truth after your fashion! – A: This is what I wanted to hear from you. As you are, so are even the best nowadays: you are content to let yourselves be deceived! You come with coarse and lustful ears, you no longer bring the conscience of the art of hearing with you, on the way here you have thrown away the finest part of your honesty! And by doing this you ruin art and artists! Whenever you cheer and clap you have the artists’ conscience in your hands – and alas if they notice you are incapable of distinguishing between innocent music and guilty music! I do not mean between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ music – both species include both good and bad music. What I mean by innocent music is music which thinks wholly and solely of itself, believes in itself and has forgotten the world in contemplation of itself – the self-resounding of the profoundest solitude, which speaks to itself of itself and no longer knows that outside there are hearers and listeners and effects and failures. – Finally: the music we have just heard IS of this noble and rare species, and everything I said about it was lyingly invented – forgive me my wickedness, if you feel inclined to do so! – B Oh, then you love this music too? Then many sins are forgiven you!--Daybreak.
The lute is the most ancient and subtle of instruments. Capturing an array of tones and melodies, like eyes peering into the depths of existence.
These Vivaldi concertos i have listened to multiple times. Sometimes Vivaldi is too much for me for how deeply he grasped Baroque complexity, as in these concertos. I'm convinced that if he had a talent of painting at the time, he would have rivaled Rembrandt. The violin flurries and strokes are so powerful in harmony, yet not grandiose, with the mandolin adding the colors and hues that give it breadth. Phenomenal.
The genius of woman is her joyous embrace, not domination, of the masculine. When she allows its force to guide her, to not resist, she becomes a sculpture of beauty.
Jarno
Gender : Posts : 2281 Join date : 2015-08-27 Age : 32 Location : Finland
The Harpsichord is another beautiful instrument of subtlety. The plucking of strings from the Harpsichord takes the lute into greater force and Majesty. The Harpsichord succeeds the lute, gives it more power. It is "airy" and "light" in a robust way.
After I found Boccherinni I've stopped listening to any non-classical music following a period of complete obsession strictly by his own music and absorbing it as much as I could, I just couldn't believe what I was hearing, the beauty of it and how much it stroke deeply into me, making me feel complete and elevated, giving me intense pleasure every second it lasted, never leaving me snoozing or distracted from it, I'd say this particular piece best describes my own essence and disposition temperamentally. Its like the childhood memories I have...unbelievable what a genius...
That’s an excellent piece by Boccherini. I don’t think I’ve heard it before, and I’ve heard a lot of Boccherini.
I like the German composers. The German spirit is robust and superior. We can sense this in Schumann, Schubert, Liszt and Brahms. If it’s not German or Baroque i generally don’t have much fancy for it. Although, some romanticists I can make exceptions for, Boccherini and Lully being some of them. But a kind of uplifting ‘Apollonian sensuality’, only the German composers are capable of. Liszt has a way throwing it out with might and then reeling it back in again. Schubert's symphonies are grand insights into the power of nature. Beautifully pagan.
Chopin, was something else. A genius on an island. His passion is very precise and heroic and solitary. In every melodic sequence and nocturne he played; he did not play with charm or playfulness, he didn’t put on facades. He had a spirit that communicated truisms about the world and he played with ancient hands and fingers.
These are beautiful examples of the German masculine artistry in my opinion:
I find myself enjoying this music lately and discovering this branch of European high art music(if it can be classified as such since obviously it gives away in craft churning next to the flames blazing through morning souls' skies of Bachs' or Bethovens'(my personal favourite)make):
There is something to this music that signifies or expresses a very strong reassurance in oneself and ones civilization/culture and a sense of divine purpose attached to it that is deeply set, furthermore I see in it a more of a collective expression and celebration whereas later musicians are much more individualistic and pessimistically heroic with deeper technical element in it.
Every Western man should listen through these at least once in his life with proper attention. Dear Ludwig, passionate master, sweeps me off my feet each time with his genius artistic and expressive might.
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37186 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
Vilvaldi's version of "La Follia" is my favorite version of this particular composition. It's intense poignancy brings me to tears. I've never heard it with a harp involved. This version is very complex and delicate, but still forceful as it must be for this piece. I like it alot.
polishyouth wrote:
There is something to this music that signifies or expresses a very strong reassurance in oneself and ones civilization/culture and a sense of divine purpose attached to it that is deeply set, furthermore I see in it a more of a collective expression and celebration whereas later musicians are much more individualistic and pessimistically heroic with deeper technical element in it.
Good thoughts. The melodies of the lute inspire recollections of my past in a way that seems to heighten their meaning for me. It is in the strength of the execution of those subtle notes that come off the lute that speak to me in a way no image or word ever could.
Alot of modern musicians, because of their lack of creativity, take the approach of academics; they feel that the more mastery over technical execution and knowledge of form, is the proper way to play, and they end up subverting the composers original structure into melodramatics or disjointed absurdity. Many modern pianists, for example, think that playing Chopin as softly and apprehensively as they can, somehow accentuates the structure of his music more than it is, when it sounds weak and cowardly.
There is a distinct energy of classical music that must be expressed with both the right amount of control and surrender.
