MusiLLection

Claude Debussy playing the piano at Ernest Chausson 's home. Claude Debussy was one of the greatest composers of piano music. The "Pianoforte" (soft-loud) as is its original Italian name, evolved from the harpsichord during the 18th century. Only in the next century, however, did it grow in size, wealth and tonal power. Beethoven , Schumann , Chopin , Liszt and Brahms wrote their best compositions for it. At the time of Debussy, that is, at the beginning of the 20th century, the piano had reached the peak of its development. Debussy took full advantage of this fact, writing music that made full use of the spectrum of the keyboard and the dynamics of the piano (the degree of softness and intensity).  He also used the pedals in a special way, giving duration to certain notes or chords at the same time as others are played, thus mixing their sounds. In this way he utilized the piano as the composers before him had not even imagined. Some of his pianistic compositions, with...

Franz List probably took this title from a poem by Lamartine (Une larme, ou Consolation). He composed six such works in 1848, immediately after his installation in Weimar. It was "The Year of the Revolutions" with the political movements that rocked the whole of Europe. Instead, these works are models of romantic tenderness. In Paris Liszt had read poems by Lamartine with his pupil Caroline de Saint-Cricq, their early liaison interrupted by her parents, but remembered by Liszt over the years. His circle of friends and acquaintances in Paris in the earlier 1830s also included Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve and the year 1830 brought the latter’s publication of his Consolations, a further suggested source for Liszt’s choice of title, both writers reflecting Liszt’s literary interests and associations. Liszt later revised his six Consolations, publishing them in 1850. Consolations in E Major and D flat Major Both of these works have almost the same mood - they are quiet, thoughtfu...

The optimism and serenity of Mozart's music is in stark contrast to a life of debt-chewing and an incurable anxiety.   Mozart was a child prodigy. Born on January 27, 1756, he played without difficulty any melody he heard on the piano at the age of three, violin at four and composed music at the time he gave his first public concerto, that is, when he was five and a half years old. A painting of the time, presents the Mozart  playing with his father and his sister Maria-Anna in  the garden of the house of his children’s years in Salzburg.  His life was full of music. Even in his games, young Wolfgang used to move from room to room, to the lively melody of a march. In the age of 12 years he had written three operas, six symphonies and hundreds of other works. European tours Mozart's father, Leopold, was a composer and a virtuoso violinist in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg. He understood that Wolfgang's extraordinary talent could bring significant economic ...

   Smetana loved polka and often used its rhythm in his work, as in String Quartet No. 1. The intensity of this autobiographical work with nationalistic elements has an emotional depth unprecedented throughout Smetana's work. Smetana's hearing loss was heralded in 1847 by a permanent and unbearable hum in his ears (medical tinnitus). When in 1876 he found that his hearing would never be restored, he began composing the String Quartet No. 1 a four-movement chamber composition. With this work, Bedřich Smetana musically expressed the anguish and pain caused by his hearing loss. Twenty-one years had passed since his last chamber music composition, the Piano Trio in G minor, with which he had expressed his sadness at the loss of his four-year-old daughter. Once again, he turned to chamber music in search of solace in his personal tragedy. Smetana himself described the String Quartet as "a memory of my life and the destruction of absolute deafness". Each of the first three...

The harpsichord has been sounding for about six hundred years. It's a keyboard instrument, but its strings are stimulated in a nocturnal way and not by hammering like on the piano. The sound produced is characteristic and easily recognized. When the harpsichord first appeared, it immediately became beloved and its reputation spread throughout Europe. With the begining of the 16th century it became extremely popular and the composers used it in almost every organic combination. It served more as an accompaniment, providing the harmonious substrate, rather than as a solo instrument. The body of the harpsichord has the shape of a wing. For each note there are two or more strings - the performer can choose how many are used at a time, allowing the instrument to produce loud and soft sounds. Some later instruments used a mechanism to change the volume, opening and closing some grilles on the body of the instrument, allowing the sound to strengthen. Usually the harpsichords have two, som...

The lyrics in "Gott, erhalte den Kaiser!" ("God save the Emperor") were written by Lorenz Leopold Haschka.  The winter of 1797-8 Joseph Haydn composed six String Quartets and dedicated them to the Hungarian count Joseph Georg von Erdődy.   The Quartet No. 62 in C major, Op. 76, No. 3, boasts the nickname Emperor (or Kaiser), because in the second movement is a set of variations on "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" ("God save Emperor Francis"), an anthem he wrote for Emperor Francis II, which later, is the national anthem of Austria-Hungary. This same melody is known to modern listeners for its later use in the German national anthem, the Deutschlandlied , which is used since Austria-Hungary and the Nazi era, known today as "Deutschland uber alles". Μovements : Ι. Allegro The first part , Allegro , although it begins with a pattern of just five notes, the rest of the part is developed from this simple phrase. As in the case of the "...

  Performance of the ballet "Adélaïde, ou le langage des fleurs" in 1912. The seven "Valses nobles et sentimentales" and the epilogue of this orchestral suite were originally written for piano in 1911.  Maurice Ravel  chose the title in homage to Franz Schubert , who had released collections of waltzes in 1823 entitled Valses nobles and Valses sentimentales.  The work was first presented in Paris in a recital of anonymous compositions. Many of Ravel's fans disapproved of the music, not imagining that the deliberate "wrong notes" belonged to one of the most beloved French composers. In 1912 Ravel orchestrated the suite and presented it as a ballet under the title "Adélaïde, ou le langage des fleurs (Adelaide: The Language of Flowers). The dynamic start reminds us that this is an unusual waltz. On the contrary, the second part is slow and expressive. For this lanzy subject, Ravel chose the flute, which plays in its lower extension. With a relaxed ob...