The Symphony No. 1 in D major by Gustav Mahler was mainly composed between late 1887 and March 1888, though it incorporates music Mahler had composed for previous works. It was composed while Mahler was second conductor at the Leipzig Opera in Germany. Although in his letters Mahler almost always referred to the work as a symphony, the first two performances described it as a symphonic poem and as a tone poem in symphonic form, respectively. The work was premièred at the Vigadó Concert Hall in Budapest, Hungary, in 1889, but was not well-received. Mahler made some major revisions for the second performance, given at Hamburg, Germany, in October 1893; further alterations were made in the years prior to the first publication, in late 1898. Some modern performances and recordings give the work the title Titan, despite the fact that Mahler only used this label for the second and third performances, and never after the work had reached its definitive four-movement form in 1896.
Johann Nepomuk Maelzel was a German inventor, engineer, and showman, best known for manufacturing a metronome and several music-playing automatons, and displaying a fraudulent chess machine. He worked with Beethoven to compose a piece of music for one of his inventions.
The Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, is a symphony in four movements composed by Ludwig van Beethoven between 1811 and 1812, while improving his health in the Bohemian spa town of Teplitz. The work is dedicated to Count Moritz von Fries.
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in B♭ major, Op. 83, by Johannes Brahms is separated by a gap of 22 years from his first piano concerto. Brahms began work on the piece in 1878 and completed it in 1881 while in Pressbaum near Vienna. It took him three years to work on this concerto, which indicates that he was always self-critical. He wrote to Clara Schumann: "I want to tell you that I have written a very small piano concerto with a very small and pretty scherzo." Ironically, he was describing a huge piece. This concerto is dedicated to his teacher, Eduard Marxsen. The public premiere of the concerto was given in Budapest on 9 November 1881, with Brahms as soloist and the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, and was an immediate success. He proceeded to perform the piece in many cities across Europe.
The Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93 is a symphony in four movements composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1812. Beethoven fondly referred to it as "my little Symphony in F", distinguishing it from his Sixth Symphony, a longer work also in F.
The Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, also known as the Pastoral Symphony, is a symphony composed by Ludwig van Beethoven and completed in 1808. One of Beethoven's few works containing explicitly programmatic content, the symphony was first performed alongside his fifth symphony in the Theater an der Wien on 22 December 1808 in a four-hour concert.
Turkish music, in the sense described here, is not the music of Turkey, but rather a musical style that was occasionally used by the European composers of the Classical music era. This music was modelled—though often only distantly—on the music of Turkish military bands, specifically the Janissary bands.
The Panharmonicon was a musical instrument invented in 1805 by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, a contemporary and friend of Beethoven. Beethoven composed his piece "Wellington's Victory" to be played on Mälzel's mechanical orchestral organ and also to commemorate Arthur Wellesley's victory over the French at the Battle of Vitoria in 1813. It was one of the first automatic playing machines, similar to the later Orchestrion.
Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, was composed in 1805–1806. Beethoven was the soloist in the public premiere as part of the concert on 22 December 1808 at Vienna's Theater an der Wien.
Orchestrion is a generic name for a machine that plays music and is designed to sound like an orchestra or band. Orchestrions may be operated by means of a large pinned cylinder or by a music roll and less commonly book music. The sound is usually produced by pipes, though they will be voiced differently from those found in a pipe organ, as well as percussion instruments. Many orchestrions contain a piano as well. At the Musical Museum in Brentford, examples may be seen and heard of several of the instrument types described below.
The Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43, is a four-movement work for orchestra written from 1901 to 1902 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.
On two occasions, Felix Mendelssohn composed music for William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. First in 1826, near the start of his career, he wrote a concert overture. Later, in 1842, five years before his death, he wrote incidental music for a production of the play, into which he incorporated the existing overture. The incidental music includes the famous "Wedding March".
The Fantasy for piano, vocal soloists, mixed chorus, and orchestra, Op. 80, usually called the Choral Fantasy, was composed in 1808 by then 38-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven.
The Coriolan Overture, Op. 62, is a composition written by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1807 for Heinrich Joseph von Collin's 1804 tragedy Coriolan.
The Ruins of Athens, Op. 113, is a set of incidental music pieces written in 1811 by Ludwig van Beethoven. The music was written to accompany the play of the same name by August von Kotzebue, for the dedication of the new Deutsches Theater Pest in Pest, Hungary.
Egmont, Op. 84 by Ludwig van Beethoven, is a set of incidental music pieces for the 1787 play of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It consists of an overture followed by a sequence of nine pieces for soprano, male narrator, and full symphony orchestra. The male narrator is optional; he is not used in the play and does not appear in some recordings of the complete incidental music.
Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt, Op. 112 is a cantata for chorus and orchestra composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is based on a pair of poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They met in 1812; Beethoven admired him and the work is dedicated to Goethe. It was first performed in Vienna on 25 December 1815, and first published in 1822. The piece is in a single movement, with a typical performance taking between 7 and 8 minutes. The single movement is in two sections: (1) "Meeresstille" – Sostenuto – D major; and (2) "Glückliche Fahrt" – Allegro vivace – D major.
The Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, also known as the Fate Symphony, is a symphony composed by Ludwig van Beethoven between 1804 and 1808. It is one of the best-known compositions in classical music and one of the most frequently played symphonies, and it is widely considered one of the cornerstones of western music. First performed in Vienna's Theater an der Wien in 1808, the work achieved its prodigious reputation soon afterward. E. T. A. Hoffmann described the symphony as "one of the most important works of the time". As is typical of symphonies during the Classical period, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony has four movements.
