Klarinet Archive - Posting 000376.txt from 1996/08

From: Brad Behn <BradBehn@-----.COM>
Subj: Composers
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 20:43:49 -0400

Claudio Monteverdi: Pioneer of Opera
Johann Sebastian Bach: Transfiguration of the Baroque
George Frideric Handel: Composer and Impresario
Christoph Willibald Gluck: Reformer of Opera
Franz Joseph Haydn: Classicism par excellence
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Prodigy from Salzburg
Ludwig von Beethoven: Revolutionary from Bonn
Franz Schubert: Poet of Music
Carl Maria von Weber: Freedom and a new Language
Hector Berlioz: Romantic Exuberance and Classic Restraint
Robert Schumann: Florestan and Eusebius
Frederic Chopin: Apotheosis of the Piano
Franz Liszt: Virtuoso, Charlatan-and Prophet
Felix Mendelssohn: Bourgeois Genius
Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini: Voice, voice and more voice
Meyerbeer, Cherubini, Auber: Spectacle, spectacle and etc.
Giuseppi Verdi: Colossus of Italy
Richard Wagner: Colossus of Germany
Johannes Brahms: Keeper of the flame
Hugo Wolf: Master of the Lied
Strauss, Offenbach, Sullivan: Waltz, Can-Can, Satire
Gounod to Saint-Saens: Faust and French Opera
Glinka to Rimsky-Korsakov: Russian Nationalism & Mighty Five
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Surcharged Emotionalism
Giacomo Puccini: Only for the Theater
Richard Strauss: Romanticism's long Coda
Bruckner, Mahler, Reger: Religion, Mysticism, Retrospection
Claude-Achille Debussy: Symbolism and Impressionism
maurice Ravel and Les Six: Gallic Elegance and the new Breed
Igor Stravinsky: The Chameleon
Elgar, Delius, Vaughan Williams: The English Renaissance
Scriabin and Rachmaninoff: Mysticism and Meloncholy
Prokofieff and Shostakovich: Under the Soviets
Busoni, Weill, Hindemith: German Neoclassicism
Gottschalk to Copland: Rise of an American Tradition
Bela Bartok: The Uncomprimising Hungarian
Schoenberg, Berg and Webern: The second Viennese School

What you have just read are the titles of the chapters in the book: "The
Lives of the Great Composers" by Harold C. Schonberg. Published by Norton
and Co.

Another very interesting book by the same author is entitled "The Virtuosy"
(I think) I read it about six years ago and I found it fascinating. It
reads very easily and tells of the amazing lives of the great performers of
the past, from the great Castrati...(indeed they did "do it"...lots of "it!")
to the great Divas and there incredible wealth and earnings to Brahms
buddy...the fiddle player ( I am embarassed to admit that his name escapes me
right now) to Paganini etc. Great book

Shylene, I hope I have been helpful in sparking an interest in the composers
and performers of "Classical Music" These books are well worth a trip to the
library.

For any of you wirdos that love conductors, The same author wrote another
book called "The great Conductors"

Piano lovers: you guessed it, "The Great Pianists"

-Brad Behn