Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Music: Claude Debussy is generally considered the dominant figure in the transition from the

late romantic style to that of the twentieth century. Born in St. Germain de Fleurville, France in 1862, Debussy studied at the famous Paris Conservatory from the age of ten to twenty-two and awarded the Prix de Rome in 1884. Debussy's principal influences included the music of Russia, the exotic colors of Asian music (which he first heard at the Paris International Exposition in 1889), and the ideas of writers and poets like Stphane Mallarm, Paul Verlaine, and Charles-Pierre Baudelaire. Following the production of his opera Pellas et Mlisande in 1902 and the completion of his popular orchestral work La Mer (The Sea) (1905) Debussy was soon recognized as a leading composer of early twentieth-century. Due to certain aspects of Debussy's style, his music is usually classified as a musical counterpart to the artistic movement known as impressionism. Like the paintings of Claude Monet (1840-1926), Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Debussy's music (and musical impressionism in general) conveys a feeling of vagueness rather than sharply defined articulation. For example, the exotic tone colors, sensuous harmonies, imperceptible metrical pulse, and tonal ambiguity--all characteristics of Debussy's style--seem to accurately reflect the spirit of ethereal paintings like Monet's Impression, Sunrise(1874). In debussy's music, clearly delineated harmonic progressions, melodies, and rhythms are purposely avoided to evoke mood and atmosphere rather than concrete images. In the work entitled La Cathdrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral), Debussy utilizes a compositional device known as parallel chords (or planing) to dilute the sense of directed motion found in traditional progressions. It should be noted that it it took a while for the critics and the listening public to warm up to this new and bold experiment in harmonic freedom. Styles: Rudolph Reti points out these features of Debussy's music, which "established a new concept of tonality in European music": 1. Glittering passages and webs of figurations which distract from occasional absence of tonality; 2. Frequent use of parallel chords which are "in essence not harmonies at all, but rather 'chordal melodies', enriched unisons"; some writers describe these as non-functional harmonies; 3. Bitonality, or at least bitonal chords; 4. Use of the whole-tone and pentatonic scale; 5. Unprepared modulations, "without any harmonic bridge." He concludes that Debussy's achievement was the synthesis of monophonic based "melodic tonality" with harmonies, albeit different from those of "harmonic tonality".[28][page needed] The application of the term "impressionist" to Debussy and the music he influenced is a matter of intense debate within academic circles. One side argues that the term is a misnomer, an inappropriate label which Debussy himself opposed. In a letter of 1908, he wrote "I am trying to do 'something different'an effect of reality...what the imbeciles call 'impressionism', a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by the critics, since they do not hesitate to apply it to [J.M.W.] Turner, the finest creator of mysterious effects in all the world of art."[29] The opposing side argues that Debussy may have been reacting to unfavorable criticism at the time, and the negativity that critics associated with impressionism. It can be argued that he would have been pleased with application of the current definition of impressionism to his music.

Arnold Shoenberg (13 September 1874 13 July 1951) was an Austrian composer and painter, associated with the expressionistmovement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. He used the standard German spelling Schnberg until after his move to the United States in 1934 (Steinberg 1995, 463), whereupon he altered it to Schoenberg "in deference to American practice" (Foss 1951, 401), though one writer claims he made the change a year earlier (Ross 2007, 45). Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, is among the major landmarks of 20th-century musical thought; at least three generations of composers in the European and American traditions have consciously extended his thinking or, in some cases, passionately reacted against it. During the rise of the Nazi Party in Austria, his music was labeled, alongside jazz, as degenerate art. Schoenberg was widely known early in his career for his success in simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify pioneering innovations in atonality (although Schoenberg himself detested the term "atonality" as inaccurate in describing his intentions) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelvetone technique, a widely influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation, and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea. Styles: Schoenberg's Suite for Piano (1921-1923) occupies a place of central importance in the composer's catalogue as his first completely 12-tone composition. Though the 12-tone technique represents only a single, and by no means predominant, aspect of the composer's style, it remains the single characteristic mostly closely associated with his music. Schoenberg made repeated, though varied, use of the technique across the spectrum of genres, from chamber works like the String Quartet No. 4 (1936) and the Fantasy for Violin and Piano (1949) to orchestral works like the Violin Concerto (1935-1936) and the Piano Concerto (1942), to choral works like A Survivor from Warsaw (1947).In the early 1920s he worked at evolving a means of order which would enable his musical texture to become simpler and clearer, and this resulted in the "method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with one another" (Schoenberg 1984, 218), in which the twelve pitches of the octave (unrealized compositionally) are regarded as equal, and no one note or tonality is given the emphasis it occupied in classical harmonyTen features of Schoenberg's mature twelve-tone practice are characteristic, interdependent, and interactive (Haimo 1990, 41): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Hexachordal inversional combinatoriality Aggregates Linear set presentation Partitioning Isomorphic partitioning Invariants Hexachordal levels Harmony, "consistent with and derived from the properties of the referential set" Metre, established through "pitch-relational characteristics" Multidimensional set presentations

Igor Stravinsky (17 June 1882 6 April 1971) was a Russian, and later French and American composer, pianist and conductor. He is widely considered to be one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century. Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The last of these transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His "Russian phase" was followed in the 1920s by a period in which he turned to neoclassical music. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto grosso, fugue and symphony). They often paid tribute to the music of earlier masters, such as J.S. Bach and Tchaikovsky. In the 1950s, Stravinsky adoptedserial procedures. His compositions of this period shared traits with examples of his earlier output: rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few two- or three-note cells and clarity of form, of instrumentation and of utterance.

Styles: The first of Stravinsky's major stylistic periods (excluding some early minor works) was inaugurated by the three ballets he composed for Diaghilev. The ballets have several shared characteristics: they are scored for extremely large orchestras; they use Russian folk themes and motifs; and they bear the mark of Rimsky-Korsakov's imaginative scoring and instrumentation. The first of the ballets, L'Oiseau de Feu, is notable for its unusual introduction (triplets in the low basses) and sweeping orchestration. Petroushka, too, is distinctively scored and the first of Stravinsky's ballets to draw on folk mythology. But it is the third ballet, The Rite of Spring, that is generally considered the apotheosis of Stravinsky's 'Russian Period'. Here, the composer draws on the brutalism of pagan Russia, reflecting these sentiments in roughlydrawn, stinging motifs that appear throughout the work. There are several famous passages in the work, but two are of particular note: the opening theme played on a bassoon with notes at the very top of its register, almost out of range; and the thumping, off kilter eighth-note motif played by strings and accented by French horns on off-rhythms (See Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) for a more detailed account of this work). The next phase of Stravinsky's compositional style, slightly overlapping the first, is marked by two works: Pulcinella 1920 and the Octet (1923) for wind instruments. Both of these works feature what was to become a hallmark of this period; that is, Stravinsky's return, or 'looking back', to the classical music of mozart and Bach and their contemporaries. This 'neo-classical' style involved the abandonment of the large orchestras demanded by the ballets. In these new works, written roughly between 1920 and 1950, Stravinsky turns largely to wind instruments, the piano, and choral and chamber works. Other works such as Oedipus Rex (1927), Apollon Musagete (1928) and the Dumbarton Oaks concerto continue this trend. Some larger works from this period are the three symphonies: the Symphonie des Psaumes (Symphony of Psalms) (1930), Symphony in C (1940) and Symphony in Three Movements (1945). Apollon, Persephone (1933) and Orpheus (1947) also mark Stravinsky's concern, during this period, of not only returning to 'Classic' music but also returning to 'Classic' themes: in these instances, the mythology of the ancient Greeks.

Frederic Chopin (1 March or 22 February 1810 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is widely considered one of the greatest Romantic composers.[3] Chopin was born in elazowa Wola, a village in the then Duchy of Warsaw. A renowned child-prodigy pianist and composer, he grew up in Warsaw and completed his music education there; he composed many mature works in Warsaw before leaving Poland in 1830 at age 20, shortly before the November 1830 Uprising. Following the Russian suppression of the Uprising, he settled in Paris as part of Poland'sGreat Emigration. During the remaining 19 years of his life, Chopin gave only some 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon; he supported himself by sales of his compositions and as a piano teacher. After some romantic dalliances with Polish women, including an abortive engagement, from 1837 to 1847 he carried on a relationship with the French writer Amantine Dupin. For most of his life, Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris in 1849 at age 39. The vast majority of Chopin's works are for solo piano, though he also wrote two piano concertos, a few chamber pieces and some songs (to Polish texts). His piano works are often technically demanding, with an emphasis on nuance and expressive depth. Chopin invented the instrumental ballade and made major innovations to the piano sonata, mazurka,waltz, nocturne, polonaise, tude, impromptu, scherzo and prlude.

Styles: Although Chopin lived in the 19th century, he was educated in the tradition of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Clementi; he used Clementi's piano method with his own students. He was also influenced by Hummel's development of virtuoso, yet Mozartian, piano technique. Chopin cited Bach and Mozart as the two most important composers in shaping his musical outlook.[86] The series of seven Polonaises published in his lifetime (another nine were published posthumously), beginning with the Op. 26 pair, set a new standard for music in the form, and were rooted in Chopin's desire to write something to celebrate Polish culture after the country had fallen into Russian control.[87] The Polonaise in A major, Op. 40, No. 1, the "Military," and the Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53, the "Heroic," are among Chopin's best-loved and most-oftenplayed works. Chopin also wrote 24 different preludes as a tribute to J. S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier. Chopin's preludes move up the circle-of-fifths, whereas Bach uses the chromatic scale to create a prelude in every major and minor tonality achievable on the clavier

This suggests that Chopin is not to be found at commonly encountered one-sided extremes. The unbalanced views are:

that Chopin requires metronomic rhythm in the left hand; that insecure performances of Chopin can be justified with reference to rubato; that performances with particular inflections, that result from technical limits/insecurities rather than a performer's intentions, can be justified with reference to rubato.

Some performers' (and piano-schools') "too strongly held one-sided views on Chopin's way of playing rubato" may account for some unsatisfactory interpretations of his music

Franz Liszt (October 22, 1811 July 31, 1886) was a 19th-century Hungarian[3][4][5] composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age, and in the 1840s he was considered by some to be perhaps the greatest pianist of all time. Liszt was also a well-known and influential composer, piano teacher and conductor. He was a benefactor to other composers, including Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Sans, Edvard Grieg and Alexander Borodin.[6] As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the "Neudeutsche Schule" ("New German School"). He left behind an extensive and diverse body of work in which he influenced his forwardlooking contemporaries and anticipated some 20th-century ideas and trends. Some of his most notable contributions were the invention of thesymphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form and making radical departures in harmony.[7] He also played an important role in popularizing a wide array of music by transcribing it for piano STYLES: Today, he is considered to be one of the greatest pianists in history, despite the fact that no recordings of his playing exist. Liszt is frequently credited with re-defining piano playing itself, and his influence is still visible today, both through his compositions and his legacy as a teacher. He is credited with the invention of the symphonic poem, as well as the modern solo piano recital, in which his virtuosity won him approval by composers and performers alike. He also contributed greatly toward the Romantic idiom in general. His writings and philosophies about the nature of music as an art, the role of the artist, and the necessary future direction of music had a significant effect on the musical culture of the time. His great generosity with both time and money benefited many people, including victims of disasters, orphans, and the many students he taught for free. He was also a benefactor and advocate of many composers, most famously Richard Wagner and Hector Berlioz. Many of his piano compositions have entered the standard repertoire, including the Hungarian Rhapsodies,Transcendental Etudes (tudes d'excution transcendante), Annes de Plerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), the Piano Sonata in B minor, and two piano concertos. He also made many piano transcriptions of operas, famoussymphonies, Paganini Caprices (some of the most demanding works of the violin repertoire in his day), andSchubert lieder. Many of his piano compositions are among the most technically challenging in the repertoire. Liszt was also a composer of lieder and choral music, of symphonic poems and other orchestral works. He also wrote for the organ, and his compositions for that instrument are lauded and well-established in the organ repertoire. His piano works have always been well represented in concert programs and recordings by pianists throughout the world. Many of his works have been recorded a multitude of times. However, the only pianist who has recorded his entire pianistic oeuvre is the Australian Leslie Howard. The project took almost 15 years to complete, and comprised 95 full-length CDs. Howard was awarded a place in the Guinness Book of Records for having completed the largest recording project ever in the history of music (including both pop and classical). The series has also earned several Gramophone Grands Prix du Disque, and a special award from the Hungarian government. This massive undertaking included a number of premiere recordings, including many unpublished pieces, recorded from manuscript, which had not been played by anyone since Liszt himself.

Franz Peter Schubert (31 January 1797 19 November 1828) Franz Peter Schubert was among the first of the Romantics, and the composer who, more than any other, brought the art song (lied) to artistic maturity. During his short but prolific career, he produced masterpieces in nearly every genre, all characterized by rich harmonies, an expansive treatment of classical forms, and a seemingly endless gift for melody. Schubert began his earliest musical training studying with his father and brothers. Having passed an audition, Schubert enrolled at the Convict school that trained young vocalists to eventually sing at the chapel of The Imperial Court. Schubert began to explore composition and wrote a song that came to the attention of the institution's director, Antonio Salieri, who along with the school's professor of harmony, hailed young Schubert as a genius. In 1813, after Schubert's voice broke, he returned to live with his father, who directed him to follow in his footsteps and become a schoolteacher. Schubert begrudgingly complied and worked miserably in that capacity by day, while composing prolifically by night. He had written more than 100 songs as well as numerous symphonic, operatic, and chamber music scores, before he reached the age of 20.

STYLES: In some ways the work of Franz Schubert has always been overshadowed by the dominating presence
of Beethoven. They were contemporaries in the same city of Vienna at the time of significant change in the development and shape of music. While Beethoven was comparatively well-known and well funded, and working towards a major revolution in musical expression, Schubert was younger, less well-known, under-funded and his innovations in musical expression were not so well recognised at the time. In many ways it was not until after his death that others started to recognise his genius. Some of his works were then published and performed for the first time, and gradually his talents became widely recognised. During his short lifetime the lack of widespread public awareness didn't seem to bother Schubert. His writings suggested a man who was driven to spend his time composing, and he relied instead on the feedback and support of a small circle of friends and admirers. Franz Schubert belonged to a large family headed by his schoolmaster father. His father and a local teacher taught him music but his ability quickly exceed their standard. He joined the Imperial Court Chapel Choir as a boy soprano where he received further tuition, one of his teachers being the same Salieri who had been accused at one stage of poisoning Mozart (see the film "Amadeus" for more about this myth). When his voice broke he himself became a teacher and during this period he started to compose in earnest, eventually giving up teaching altogether so that he could devote even more time to his art. One of his brief teaching positions was to provide tuition to the daughters of Count Esterhazy in Hungary, for whose house Haydn had previously worked on a permanent basis. Physically Schubert was short and plump and short-sighted, and everything we know about him suggests that he was a quiet and private man. Although a skilled pianist and violinist, he was neither a virtuoso performer nor a flamboyant conductor who could promote his own work on the public stage. Many of his orchestra compositions were never performed publicly, and only his chamber music and songs were able to be performed in smaller social gatherings. The lack of significant publication and performance meant that his income was rather meagre. Schubert was not completely devoid of supporters though. Over several years he gathered an intensely loyal group of associates who enjoyed his music and did what they could to support the young composer and promote his music. Firstly there was his brother who provided creative stimulation and possibly financial support. The baritone Johann Vogl grew very fond of Schubert's songs (of which he wrote some 600) and sang them on many occasions. In this way Schubert even managed to achieve a modest degree of success for his songs. This circle of friends included fellow musicians and socialites who attended get-togethers known as "Schubertiads" since they centred around the composer and his music. At times people helped to finance publication of some of his works and in this way, word of the composer did begin to spread. Schubert was a great admirer of Beethoven and is known to have visited him.

Giusseppe Verdi (10 October 1813 27 January 1901) Giuseppe Verdi was to opera in the Italian tradition what Beethoven was to the symphony. When he arrived on the scene some had suggested that effective opera after Rossini was not possible. Verdi, however, took the form to new heights of drama and musical expression. Partisans see him as at least the equal of Wagner, even though his style and musical persona were of an entirely different cast. In the end, both Verdi's popular vein -- as heard in the operas Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and La traviata -- and his deeper side -- found in Aida, Otello, and Falstaff -- demonstrate his mastery and farreaching development of Italian opera. Verdi showed talent by the age of seven and even played organ at a local church. Around this time he was given an old piano, which he quickly learned to play with proficiency. He moved to Busseto in 1823 and began study the following year with Ferdinando Provesi. By age 15 he had become an assistant church organist and had already started composing. Beginning in 1832, he studied privately withVincenzo Lavigna in Milan, after the Conservatory there turned him away. He returned to Busseto and married Margherita Barezzi in 1836. Having achieved publication of some songs, he moved to Milan in 1839 and composed his first opera, Oberto. It was a success, though his next effort, Un giorno di regno, was an abject failure. Worse, Verdi's wife died during its composition. (Their two children had died in the previous two years.) Stunned and depressed, the composer struggled on to rebound with Nabucco (1842) and I lombardi (1843). Macbeth, Luisa Miller, and other operas came in the 1840s, most with great success.

STYLES: Verdi's predecessors who influenced his music were Rossini, Bellini, Giacomo Meyerbeerand, most notably, Gaetano Donizetti and Saverio Mercadante. With the exception of Otelloand Aida, it is said that he was free of Wagner's influence.[by whom?] However, many see[who?][citation needed]his monumental work, Don Carlo, as a response to
Wagner's typical epics that often spanned over four hours. Although respectful of Gounod, Verdi was careful not to learn anything from the Frenchman whom many of Verdi's contemporaries regarded as the greatest living composer. Some strains in Aida suggest at least a superficial familiarity with the works of the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka, whom Franz Liszt, after his tour of the Russian Empire as a pianist, popularized in Western Europe. Throughout his career, Verdi rarely utilized the high C in his tenor arias, citing the fact that the opportunity to sing that particular note in front of an audience distracts the performer before and after the note appears. However, he did provide high Cs to Duprez in Jrusalemand to Tamberlick in the original version of La forza del destino. The high C, often-heard in the aria "Di quella pira" from Il trovatore , does not appear in Verdi's score. Some critics maintain he paid insufficient attention to the technical aspect of composition, lacking as he did schooling and refinement.[citation needed] Verdi himself once said, "Of all composers, past and present, I am the least learned." He hastened to add, however, "I mean that in all seriousness, and by learning I do not mean knowledge of music." Many of his operas, especially the later ones from 1851 onwards, are a staple of the standard repertoire. With the possible exception of Giacomo Puccini, no composer of Italian opera has managed to match Verdi's popularity.

Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 8 March 1869) was a FrenchRomantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts (Requiem). Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a conductor, he performed several concerts with more than 1,000 musicians.[2] He also composed around 50 songs. His influence was critical for the further development of Romanticism, especially in composers likeRichard Wagner, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and many others. Berlioz: a profoundly original composer and brilliant writer; sensitive, agnostic, humorous, sardonic. During his life, and after his death his detractors outnumbered his admirers. A century later those detractors started to die out and Berlioz is now securely seated in the pantheon of great composers. Styles: In 1821 his father sent him to Paris to study medicine, and for a year he followed his courses faithfully enough to obtain his first degree in science. He took every opportunity to go to the Paris-Opra, however, where he studied, score in hand, the whole repertory, in which the works of Gluckhad for him the most appeal and authority. His musical vocation had become so clear in his mind that he contrived to be accepted as a pupil of Jean-Franois Lesueur, professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire. This led to disagreements between Berlioz and his parents that embittered nearly eight years of his life. He persevered, took the obligatory courses at the Conservatoire, and in 1830 won the Prix de Rome, having received second prize in an earlier competition. These successes pacified his family but were, in a sense, incidental to his career, for in the same year he had finished and obtained a performance of his first great score, which is also a seminal work in 19th-century music, the Symphonie fantastique. It was in some respects unfortunate that, instead of being able to follow up this success, Berlioz was required, under the terms of his prize, to spend three years abroad, two of them in Italy. During his long Paris apprenticeship, he had experienced the revelation of two modern musicians, Beethoven and Weber, and of two great poets, Shakespeare and Goethe. He had meanwhile fallen in love, at a distance, with Harriet Smithson, a Shakespearean actress who had taken Paris by storm; and, on the rebound from this rather one-sided attachment, he had become engaged to a brilliant and beautiful pianist, Camille Moke (later Mme Pleyel). In leaving Paris, Berlioz was not only leaving a flirtatious fiance and the artistic environment that had stimulated his powers; he was also leaving the opportunity to demonstrate what his genius saw that modern French music should be. The public was content with the Paris school, dating back to the 1780s, and there is evidence that all Europe (including the Vienna of Beethoven and Schubert) accepted the productions of Andr Grtry, tienne Mhul, Luigi Cherubini, and their followers as leading the musical world.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 6 November 1893) While the contributions of the Russian nationalistic group The Five were important in their own right in developing an independent Russian voice and consciousness in classical music, the compositions of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky became dominant in 19th century Russia, with Tchaikovsky becoming known both in and outside Russia as its greatest musical talent. His formal conservatory training allowed him to write works with Westernoriented attitudes and techniques, showcasing a wide range and breadth of technique from a poised "Classical" form simulating 18th century Rococo elegance to a style more characteristic of Russian nationalists or a musical idiom expressly to channel his own overwrought emotions.[1] Even with this compositional diversity, the outlook in Tchaikovsky's music remains essentially Russian, both in its use of native folk song and its composer's deep absorption in Russian life and ways of thought.[1] Writing about Tchaikovsky's ballet The Sleeping Beautyin an open letter to impresario Sergei Diaghilev that was printed in the Times of London, composer Igor Stravinsky contended that Tchaikovsky's music was as Russian as Pushkin's verse or Glinka's song, since Tchaikovsky "drew unconsciously from the true, popular sources" of the Russian race.[2] This Russianness of mindset ensured that Tchaikovsky would not become a mere imitator of Western technique. Tchaikovsky's natural gift for melody, based mainly on themes of tremendous eloquence and emotive power and supported by matching resources in harmony and orchestration, has always made his music appealing to the public. However, his hard-won professional technique and an ability to harness it to express his emotional life gave Tchaikovsky the ability to realize his potential more fully than any other Russian composer of his time.

Styles: Tchaikovsky also began receiving love letters in 1877 from a woman he had never met, Antonina Milyukova. It came to the point that she threatened suicide if he did not marry her. Tchaikovsky was trapped into marrying her in July 1877. The marriage had disastrous consequences. She turned out to be mentally unstable and certainly did not 'cure' Tchaikovsky's homosexuality. He fled to St Petersburg and Milyukova later died in a asylum. He spent his last years travelling Europe and parts of the United States. In 1893, he died of cholera, eight days after conducting the first performance of his Pathetique symphony. Tchaikovsky was the only great Russian Romantic composer who did not use oriental influences in his music. He disliked the exotic oriental style of 'the five', preferring authentic folk melodies. He wrote ten operas, among them Eugene Onegin (1879) and the Queen of Spades (1890), and also wrote chamber and sacred music. But it is his symphonies and ballets that he is remembered for. His symphonies include: No. 1 in G minor 'Winter Dreams' (1866); No.2 in C minor 'Little Russian' (1873), which makes use of folk tunes; No.3 in D major 'Polish' (1875); No.4 in F minor (1878); No. 5 E minor (1888); and arguably the greatest, No. 6, entitled the 'Pathetique'. He also composed three piano concertos, and his symphonic poems include Romeo and Juliet (1880) and Francesca da Rimini (1876). Tchaikovsky's ballet scores are Swan Lake (1877), The Sleeping Beauty (1890), and the Nutcracker (1891). Tchaikovsky is remembered as the composer who brought mainstream Western music into the Russian tradition.

Bela Bartok (March 25, 1881 September 26, 1945) During the course of his career, Bla Bartks compositional style evolved from a Romantic nineteenth-century idiom indebted to Liszt and Richard Strauss to a decidedly modern one. The composer expanded his musical vocabulary with modal scales and with new types of harmonies based on traditionally dissonant intervals seconds and sevenths as well as on fourths, as Gerard Schwarz discusses on the Conductors Guide CD of this album. He developed new rhythmic patterns modelled on those of Balkan and North African folk music, and he explored unusual instrumental colors and textures. Especially during the 1920's and early 1930's, when his innovative tendencies reached their height, these innovations earned Bartk a reputation as an uncompromising modernist with a penchant for harsh, unfamiliar sounds. To more conservative listeners, this was as much as being a musical anarchist, and for many years Bartk went unappreciated and largely unperformed, particularly in his native Hungary.But Bartk was no revolutionary. He had a deep knowledge of and regard for musical tradition, and certain traditional ideas and procedures remained part of his work as a composer. He favored sonata form, the venerable pattern of thematic exposition, development and reprise so characteristic of the classical masters, which he used in his Concerto for Orchestra and other compositions. He also valued traditional counterpoint and often developed his melodic ideas through fugal imitation.Beginning in the late 1930's Bartk shed the most acerbic elements of his style and moved toward an accessible modernism that placed a premium on expressive and even pleasing melodies. In place of pungent dissonance he offered an original use of conventional chords and traditionally consonant intervals, and the formal clarity of his compositions grew even more pronounced. These qualities inform his Concerto for Orchestra and other late works.

Styles: Bartk, upon studying the Hungarian folklore, felt freed from the restraints of traditional major/minor tonality. The peasant tunes, based onold modes and pentatonic scales, were very liberating for him. His characteristic melodies seemed to circle around a given note and move within a narrow range. He was fond of repeating fragments on different beats of the measure, producing primitive effects like a melody turning in on itself. The influence of folk songs was also manifest in his use of the intervals of seconds, fourths, and sevenths. He loosened the old modes through chromatic ornamentation. He also experimented with polymodality. His fondness for the simultaneous use of major and minor sonorities was a result of his experimentation. Characteristic is his technique of superimposing independent streams of chords, as well as quartal harmony, cluster chords, and parallel seconds, sevenths and ninths. From the folk dances of southeastern Europe, he incorporated numerous asymmetrical formations. He had a fondness for repeated notes and passages based on alternating patterns. He, along with Stravinsky, played a major role in the revitalization of western rhythm. His orchestration exemplifies the contemporary tendency to use color for the projection of ideas rather than an end in itself. The compositions of the late 1920s and the 1930s incorporate a wealth of different scalar resources -including diatonic, whole-tone,octatonic, and chromatic types -- into a remarkably flexible new stylistic amalgam. By arriving at complex pitch configurations through the addition of simpler and more basic building blocks, Bartk was able to integrate a remarkable varied fund of pitch material, ranging from the simplest diatonicism to full twelve-tone chromaticism.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(27 January 1756 5 December 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era.

Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent onkeyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his death. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons. Mozart learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and his influence on subsequent Western art music is profound; Beethoven composed his own early works in the shadow of Mozart, and Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years. Mozart's music, like Haydn's, stands as an archetypal example of the Classical style. His works spanned the period during which that style transformed from one exemplified by the style galant to one that began to incorporate some of the contrapuntal complexities of the late Baroque, complexities against which the galant style had been a reaction. Mozart's own stylistic development closely paralleled the development of the classical style as a whole. In addition, he was a versatile composer and wrote in almost every major genre, including symphony, opera, the solo concerto, chamber music including string quartet and string quintet, and the piano sonata. While none of these genres were new, the piano concerto was almost single-handedly developed and popularized by Mozart. He also wrote a great deal of religious music, including masses; and he composed many dances, divertimenti, serenades, and other forms of light entertainment. The central traits of the classical style can all be identified in Mozart's music. Clarity, balance, and transparency are hallmarks, though a simplistic notion of the delicacy of his music obscures for us the exceptional and even demonic power of some of his finest masterpieces, such as the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, the Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, and the opera Don Giovanni. Charles Rosen has written (1997): "It is only through recognizing the violence and sensuality at the center of Mozart's work that we can make a start towards a comprehension of his structures and an insight into his magnificence. In a paradoxical way, Schumann's superficial characterization of the G minor Symphony can help us to see Mozart's daemon more steadily. In all of Mozart's supreme expressions of suffering and terror, there is something shockingly voluptuous." Especially during his last decade, Mozart explored chromatic harmony to a degree rare at the time. The slow introduction to the "Dissonant" Quartet, K. 465, a work that Haydn greatly admired even as it perplexed him,[citation needed] rapidly explodes a shallow understanding of Mozart's style as light and pleasant.

Franz Joseph Haydn (31 March[1] 1732 31 May 1809) known as Joseph Haydn,[2] was anAustrian[3] composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms. He was also instrumental in the development of the piano trio and in the evolution of sonata form.[4][5] A lifelong resident of Austria, Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterhzy family on their remote estate. Isolated from other composers and trends in music until the later part of his long life, he was, as he put it, "forced to become original".[6]At the time of his death, he was one of the most celebrated composers in Europe. Joseph Haydn was the brother of Michael Haydn, himself a highly regarded composer, andJohann Evangelist Haydn, a tenor. He was also a close friend of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartand a teacher of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Styles: Haydn's work became central to what was later described as the sonata form, and his work was central to taking the binary schematic of what was then called a 'melodie'. It was a form divided into sections, joined by important moments in the harmony which signalled the change. One of Haydn's important innovations, one which was adopted by Mozart and Beethoven, was to make the moment of transition the focus of tremendous creativity, instead of using stock devices to make the transition, Haydn would often find inventive ways to make the move between two expected keys. Later musical theorists would codify the formal organization in the following way:

Introduction: If present in an extended form, a slower section in the dominant, often with material not directly related to the main themes, which would then rapidly transition to the

Exposition: Presentation of thematic material, including a progression of tonality away from the home key. Unlike Mozart andBeethoven, Haydn often wrote expositions where the music that establishes the new key is similar or identical to the opening theme: this is called monothematic sonata form.

Development: The thematic material is led through a rapidly-shifting sequence of keys, transformed, fragmented, or combined with new material. If not present, the work is termed a 'sonatina'. Haydn's developments tend to be longer and more elaborate than those of Mozart, for example.

Recapitulation: Return to the home key, where the material of the exposition is re-presented. Haydn, unlike Mozart and Beethoven, often rearranges the order of themes compared to the exposition: he also frequently omits passages that appeared in the exposition (particularly in the monothematic case) and adds codas.

Coda: After the close of the recapitulation on the tonic, there may be an additional section which works through more of the possibilities of the thematic material.

Ludwig van Beethoven (17 December 1770[1] 26 March 1827) was a Germancomposer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romanticeras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 concertos for piano, 32piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets. He also composed other chamber music, choral works (including the celebrated Missa Solemnis), and songs. Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, Beethoven displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and Christian Gottlob Neefe. During his first 22 years in Bonn, Beethoven intended to study with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and befriended Joseph Haydn. Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792 and began studying with Haydn, quickly gaining a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. He lived in Vienna until his death. During the late 18th century, his hearing began to deteriorate significantly, yet he continued to compose,conduct, and perform after becoming completely deaf.

Styles: Beethoven is viewed as a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic eras of musical history. Above all, his works distinguish themselves from those of any prior composer through his creation of large, extended architectonic structures characterized by the extensive development of musical material, themes, and motifs, usually by means of "modulation", that is, a change in the feeling of the home key, through a variety of keys or harmonic regions. Although Haydn's later works often showed a greater fluidity between distant keys, Beethoven's innovation was the ability to rapidly establish a solidity in juxtaposing different keys and unexpected notes to join them. This expanded harmonic realm creates a sense of a vast musical and experiential space through which the music moves, and the development of musical material creates a sense of unfolding drama in this space. In this way Beethoven's music parallels the simultaneous development of the novel in literature, a literary form focused on the life drama and development of one or more individuals through complex life circumstances, and of contemporaneous German idealism's philosophical notion of self, mind, or spirit that unfolds through a complex process of contradictions and tensions between the subjective and objective until a resolution or synthesis occurs in which all of these contradictions and developmental phases have been resolved or encompassed in a higher unity. Although Beethoven wrote many beautiful and lyrical melodies, another radical innovation of his music, compared especially to that of Mozart and Haydn, is his extensive use of forceful, marked, and even stark rhythmic patterns throughout his compositions and, in particular, in his themes and motifs, some of which are primarily rhythmic rather than melodic. Some of his most famous themes, such as those of the first movements of the Third, Fifth, and Ninth symphonies, are primarily non-melodic rhythmic figures consisting of notes of a single chord, and the themes of the last movements of the Third and Seventh symphonies could more accurately be described as rhythms rather than as melodies. This use of rhythm was particularly well suited to the primacy of development in Beethoven's music, since a single rhythmic pattern can more easily than a melody be taken through a succession of different, even remote, keys and harmonic regions while retaining and conveying an underlying unity. This allowed him to combine different features of his themes in a wide variety of ways, extending the techniques of Haydn in development (see Sonata Form).