Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was an Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher, impresario, and Roman Catholic priest. Born in Venice, the capital of the Venetian Republic, he is regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe. He composed many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other musical 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.
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist whose music ranks amongst the most performed of the classical music repertoire; he remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music. His works span the transition from the classical period to the romantic era in classical music. His career has conventionally been divided into early, middle, and late periods. The "early" period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. His "middle" period, sometimes characterized as "heroic", showed an individual development from the "classical" styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, typically covers the years 1802 to 1812, during which he increasingly suffered from deafness. In the "late" period from 1812 to his death in 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression.
In music, an aria is a self-contained piece for one voice, with or without instrumental or orchestral accompaniment, normally part of a larger work. An aria is a formal musical composition unlike its counterpart, the recitative.
Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi was an Italian-born English composer, pianist, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer.
Sonata form is a musical structure consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th century.
The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, marked Quasi una fantasia, Op. 27, No. 2, is a piano sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven. It was completed in 1801 and dedicated in 1802 to his pupil, Countess Giulietta Guicciardi. The popular name Moonlight Sonata goes back to a critic's remark after Beethoven's death.
Carl Czerny was an Austrian composer, teacher, and pianist of Czech origin whose vast musical production amounted to over a thousand works. His books of studies for the piano are still widely used in piano teaching. He was one of Beethoven's numerous pupils.
The trio sonata is a genre, typically consisting of several movements, with two melody instruments and continuo. Originating in the early seventeenth-century, the trio sonata was a favorite chamber ensemble combination in the Baroque era.
In music, variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these.
The Sonate pour clarinette et piano, FP 184, for clarinet in B-flat and piano by Francis Poulenc dates from 1962 and is one of the last pieces he completed. It is dedicated to the memory of an old friend, the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, who like Poulenc had belonged to the group Les Six. A typical performance takes 12-14 minutes.
A ritornello[ritorˈnɛllo] is a recurring passage in Baroque music for orchestra or chorus.
Cyclic form is a technique of musical construction, involving multiple sections or movements, in which a theme, melody, or thematic material occurs in more than one movement as a unifying device. Sometimes a theme may occur at the beginning and end ; other times a theme occurs in a different guise in every part.
The Sonate pour flûte et piano, FP 164, by Francis Poulenc, is a three-movement work for flute and piano, written in 1957.
Frédéric Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35, is a piano sonata in four movements. Chopin completed the work while living in George Sand's manor in Nohant, some 250 km (160 mi) south of Paris, a year before it was published in 1840. The first of the composer's three mature sonatas, the work is considered to be one of the greatest piano sonatas of the literature.
Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 16 in G major, Op. 31, No. 1, was composed between 1801 and 1802. Although it was numbered as the first piece in the trio of piano sonatas which were published as Opus 31 in 1803, Beethoven actually finished it after the Op. 31 No. 2, the Tempest Sonata.
The Piano Sonata No. 24 in F♯ major, Op. 78, nicknamed "à Thérèse" was written by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1809. It consists of two movements:
Piano Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 28, is a piano sonata by Sergei Rachmaninoff, completed in 1908. It is the first of three "Dresden pieces", along with Symphony No. 2 and part of an opera, which were composed in the quiet city of Dresden, Germany. It was originally inspired by Goethe's tragic play Faust; although Rachmaninoff abandoned the idea soon after beginning composition, traces of this influence can still be found. After numerous revisions and substantial cuts made at the advice of his colleagues, he completed it on April 11, 1908. Konstantin Igumnov gave the premiere in Moscow on October 17, 1908. It received a lukewarm response there, and remains one of the least performed of Rachmaninoff's works.
Carl Maria von Weber's Concerto for Bassoon in F Major, Op. 75 was composed in 1811 for Munich court musician Georg Friedrich Brandt, and then revised in 1822. Primarily an opera conductor and composer, Weber had only arrived a few months earlier in Munich, where he was extremely well received. The concerto is one of two pieces written for bassoon by Weber, the other being Andante e Rondo Ungarese, Op. 35. A typical performance lasts 18–20 minutes.
The Grand Duo Concertant, Opus 48, J204, is a three-movement work for clarinet and piano composed by Carl Maria von Weber from 1815 to 1816. It is a virtuosic piece for both instruments. Weber most likely composed the work for himself and his friend Heinrich Baermann, a leading clarinettist of the era, although it has also been suggested that the intended clarinettist was Johann Simon Hermstedt.
Six sonatas for various instruments, composed by Claude Debussy, French musician was a projected cycle of sonatas that was interrupted by the composer's death in 1918, after he had composed only half of the projected sonatas. He left behind his sonatas for cello and piano (1915), flute, viola and harp (1915), and violin and piano (1916–1917).
