On Tuesdays and Thursdays I technically only have two classes, and they're ten minutes apart in the same classroom. So I go to class at 9:30, take notes about composers for an hour and a half, and then learn about cadences and stuff til noon. And then I'm done before I eat lunch.
My first class, Music in the Human Imagination, is basically a music history class with a fancy name. Things you should generally know about music history:
There are six periods of musical history:
Medieval (before 1400)
- Little known, very Christianity centered
Renaissance (1400-1600)
- Similar to Classical music, music was balanced and contained order.
Baroque (1600-1750)
- Ornate, expressive, over-the-top, certainly not balanced.
Classical (1750-1820)
- Back to order and balance
Romantic (1820-1914)
- Emotional, very expressive.
Modern (1914-present)
- Started with marches, evolved into more contemporary music.
Notice how things shift back and forth from balance and order to over-the-top and ornate. Each time period was a reaction to the time period before it.
Cool things about composers, because other than that everything else is really nerdy:
- Vivaldi wrote over 400 concertos, most of which were for the children who played music at Seminario Musicale dell'Ospedale della Pieta, a school he taught at.
- Bach was the Holy Grail of the Baroque period. When he died, the Baroque period ended. Simple as that.
- Mozart began composing when he was 5 years old, and played keyboard (harpsichord, probably) and violin like a boss, but he didn't make it into the Mannheim school, the big music conservatory of his time.
- Haydn wrote 108 symphonies, but he lived a pretty long time too. He worked for the Austrian royal family for 30 years.
- Beethoven didn't go deaf until his later years. He was one of the first to transition from the 3rd and 4th movements instead of taking a little break in between. And he was so good other people were scared to write symphonies because, relatively, they sucked.
- Brahms took 20 years to write his first symphony. He said he didn't want it to be compared to Beethoven's symphonies, even though it was in C minor, like Beethoven 5, and sounded a lot like Ode to Joy. Some of the critics called it "Beethoven's 10th" as a joke.
- Berlioz was the first major composer to not play an instrument. All of the previous composers were classically trained on at least one instrument. Perhaps as a result of his lack of training, he was innovative in techniques used to make sounds (using the back of the bow, mutes, etc.) and brining in new instruments.
- Tchaikovsky was a professor at the opening of the Moscow Conservatory, which was later renamed the Moscow P.I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory. His "Romeo and Juliet" follows the form of Shakespeare's original play but also somewhat sticks to the basic sonata and ritornello forms of composers before him.
So. That's enough nerdery for today. Wanna hear a shreddin' harpsichord player? Listen to the cadenza about 6 minutes in to this YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49IOKnhX0Sk
Happy Thursday!
M
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