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Igor Stravinsky

(1882-1971)

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer, considered by many in both the West and his native land to be the most influential composer of 20th century music. He was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by “Time” magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works.

Stravinsky’s compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Serge Diaghilev and performed by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (Russian Ballet): “The Firebird” (1910), “Petrushka” (1911/1947), and “The Rite of Spring” (1913). The Rite, whose premiere provoked a riot, transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure; to this day its vision of pagan rituals, enacted in an imaginary ancient Russia continues to dazzle and overwhelm audiences.

After this first Russian phase he turned to neoclassicism in the 1920s. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto grosso, fugue, symphony), frequently concealed a vein of intense emotion beneath a surface appearance of detachment or austerity, and often paid tribute to the music of earlier masters, for example J.S. Bach, Verdi, and Tchaikovsky.

In the 1950s he adopted serial procedures, using the new techniques over the final twenty years of his life to write works that were briefer and of greater rhythmic, harmonic, and textural complexity than his earlier music. Their intricacy notwithstanding, these pieces share traits with all of Stravinsky's earlier output; rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few cells comprising only two or three notes, and clarity of form, instrumentation, and of utterance.

He also published a number of books throughout his career, almost always with the aid of a collaborator, sometimes uncredited. In his 1936 autobiography, Chronicles of My Life, written with the help of Alexis Roland-Manuel, Stravinsky included his infamous statement that “music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all”. With Roland-Manuel and Pierre Souvtchinsky he wrote his 1939-40 Harvard University Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, which were delivered in French and later collected under the title Poetique musicale in 1942 (translated in 1947 as Poetics of Music). Several interviews in which the composer spoke to Robert Craft were published as Conversations with Igor Stravinsky. They collaborated on five further volumes over the following decade.
Notes

quintessentially – главным образом

riot – бунт
In Russia

Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum and brought up in St. Petersburg. His childhood, he recalled in his autobiography, was troublesome: “I never came across anyone who had any real affection for me”. His father, Fyodor Stravinsky, was a bass singer at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, and the young Stravinsky began piano lessons and later studied music theory and attempted some composition.

In 1890, Stravinsky saw a performance of Tchaikovsky's ballet “The Sleeping Beauty” at the Mariinsky Theatre; the performance, his first exposure to an orchestra, mesmerized him. At fourteen, he had mastered Mendelssohn's “Piano Concerto in G minor”, and the next year, he finished a piano reduction of one of Alexander Glazunov's string quartets.

Despite his enthusiasm for music, his parents expected him to become a lawyer. Stravinsky enrolled to study law at the University of St. Petersburg in 1901, but was ill-suited for it, attending fewer than fifty class sessions in four years. After the death of his father in 1902, he had already begun spending more time on his musical studies. Because of the closure of the university in the spring of 1905, in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, Stravinsky was prevented from taking his law finals, and received only a half-course diploma, in April 1906. Thereafter, he concentrated on music. On the advice of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, probably the leading Russian composer of the time, he decided not to enter the St. Petersburg Conservatoire; instead, in 1905, he began to take twice-weekly private tutelage from Rimsky-Korsakov, who became like a second father to him.

In 1905 he also saw his betrothal to his cousin Katerina Nossenko, whom he had known since early childhood. They were married on 23th of January in 1906, and their first two children, Fyodor and Ludmilla, were born in 1907 and 1908 respectively.

In 1909 his “Fireworks” was performed in St Petersburg, where it was heard by Sergei Diaghilev, the director of the Ballets Russes in Paris. Diaghilev was sufficiently impressed to commission Stravinsky to carry out some orchestrations, and then to compose a full-length ballet score, “The Firebird”.
Notes

closure – закрытие

tutelage – обучение

betrothal – помолвка

“The Firebird” – балет «Жар-птица»

In Switzerland

Stravinsky travelled to Paris in 1910 to attend the premiere of “The Firebird”. His family soon joined him, and decided to remain in the West for a time. He moved to Switzerland, where he lived until 1920 in Clarens and Lausanne. During this time he composed three further works for the Ballets Russes “Petrushka” (1911), written in Lausanne, and “The Rite of Spring” (1913) and “Pulcinella”, both written in Clarens.

While the Stravinskys were in Switzerland, their second son, Soulim (who later became a minor composer), was born in 1910; and their second daughter, Maria Milena, was born in 1913. During this last pregnancy, Katerina was found to have tuberculosis, and she was placed in a Swiss sanatorium for her confinement. After a brief return to Russia in July 1914 to collect research materials for Les Noces, Stravinsky left his homeland and returned to Switzerland just before the outbreak of World War I brought about the closure of the borders. He was not to return to Russia for nearly fifty years.
Notes

“The Rite of Spring” – балет «Весна священная»

pregnancy – беременность
In France

He moved to France in 1920, where he formed a business and musical relationship with the French piano manufacturer of Pleyel. Essentially, Pleyel acted as his agent in collecting mechanical royalties for his works, and in return provided him with a monthly income and a studio space in which to work and to entertain friends and business acquaintances. He also arranged, one might say re-composed, many of his early works for the Pleyel, Pleyel's brand of player piano, in a way that makes full use of the piano's 88 notes, without regard for the number or span of human fingers and hands. These were not recorded rolls, but were instead marked up from a combination of manuscript fragments and handwritten notes by the French musician, Jacques Larmanjat, who was the musical director of Pleyel's roll department. Stravinsky later claimed that his intention had been to give listeners a definitive version of the performances of his music, but since the rolls were not recordings, it is difficult to see how effective this intention could have been in practice. While many of these works are now part of the standard repertoire, at the time many orchestras found his music beyond their capabilities and unfathomable. Major compositions issued on Pleyel piano rolls include “The Rite of Spring”, “Petrushka”, “Firebird”, “Les Noces” and “Song of the Nightingale”. During the 1920s he also recorded Duo-Art rolls for the Aeolian Company in both London and New York, not all of which survive.

After a short stay near Paris, he moved with his family to the south of France; he returned to Paris in 1934, to live at the rue Faubourg St.-Honore. Stravinsky later remembered this as his last and unhappiest European address; his wife's tuberculosis infected his eldest daughter Ludmila, and Stravinsky himself. Ludmila died in 1938, Katerina in the following year. While Stravinsky was in hospital, where he was treated for five months, his mother also died. Stravinsky already had contacts in the United States; he was working on the Symphony in С for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and had agreed to lecture in Harvard during the academic year of 1939-40. When World War II broke out in September, he set out for the United States.

Although his marriage to Katerina endured for 33 years, the true love of his life, and later his partner until his death, was his second wife Vera de Bosset (1888-1982). When Stravinsky met Vera in Paris in February 1921, she was married to the painter and stage designer Serge Sudeikin, but they soon began an affair which led to her leaving her husband. From then until Katerina's death from cancer in 1939, Stravinsky led a double life, spending some of his time with his first family and the rest with Vera. Katerina soon learned of the relationship and accepted it as inevitable and permanent. Around this time both left France for the USA, to escape World War II (Stravinsky in 1939 after Katerina's death, Vera following in 1940). Stravinsky and Vera were married in Bedford, MA, USA, on 9 March 1940.
In America

At first Stravinsky took up residence in Hollywood, but he moved to New York in 1969. He continued to live in the United States until his death in 1971; he became a naturalized citizen in 1945. Stravinsky had adapted to life in France, but moving to America at the age of 58 was a very different prospect. For a time, he preserved a ring of émigré Russian friends and contacts, but eventually found that this did not sustain his intellectual and professional life. He was drawn to the growing cultural life of Los Angeles, especially during World War II, when so many writers, musicians, composers, and conductors settled in the area; these included Otto Klemperer, Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel, George Balanchine and Arthur Rubinstein. He lived fairly close to both Arnold Schoenberg and George Gershwin, though he did not have a close relationship with either of them. Bernard Holland notes that he was especially fond of British writers who often visited him in Beverly Hills, "like W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Dylan Thomas (who shared the composer's taste for hard spirits) and, especially, Aldous Huxley, with whom Stravinsky spoke in French." He settled into life in Los Angeles and sometimes conducted concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the famous Hollywood Bowl as well as throughout the U.S. When he planned to write an opera with W. H. Auden, the need to acquire more familiarity with the English-speaking world coincided with his meeting the conductor and musicologist Robert Craft. Craft lived with Stravinsky until the composer's death, acting as interpreter, chronicler, assistant conductor, and factotum for countless musical and social tasks.

In 1962, Stravinsky accepted an invitation to return to St. Petersburg for a series of concerts. He spent more than two hours speaking with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who urged him to return to the Soviet Union. Despite the invitation, Stravinsky remained settled in the West. In the last few years of his life, Stravinsky lived at Essex House in New York City.

He died at the age of 88 in New York City and was buried in Venice on the cemetery island of San Michele. His grave is close to the tomb of his long-time collaborator Diaghilev. Stravinsky's professional life had encompassed most of the 20th century, including many of its modern classical music styles, and he influenced composers both during and after his lifetime. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6340 Hollywood Boulevard and posthumously received the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1987.




Sultan Gabyashi

(1891-1942)

Gabyashi’s Songs

In the January of 1942 villagers of Chelkak in Buraevsky district followed in the last journey of a talented composer, teacher and scientist Sultan Khasanovich Gabyashi.

In 1915 S. Gabyashi arrives in Kazan and goes to study in Kazan University, where his second year of his calling in the army. In Kazan, more active creative, performing and musical and organizational work of S. Gabyashi appeared. He wrote music to several performances Tatar dramatic troupe (“Zuleikha” G. Iskhaki, “Tahir and Zohra” F. Burnashev, “Booz eget” "(“Nice brave”) K. Rahim). It gained wide popularity in his time of his songs on topical themes. His "Kekkuk" (“The Cuckoo”) still retained the freshness of sound, is one of the top national music.

In the 20 years there was an active process of becoming a professional musical education in Tatarstan. C. Gabyashi was among the first teachers of music theory, choir. He also directed a number of choral circles in various organizations and educational institutions. These choirs were made by processing them Tatar folk songs, first performed polyphonic. This was a completely new and unusual phenomenon of Tatar musical culture.

S. Gabyashi is also a pioneer in musical folklore in Tatarstan: his music and ethnographic expeditions to the region of Tatarstan were professional, scientific nature.

In 1932 Gabyashi moved to Ufa, conducted musical and pedagogical activity, he was one of the organizers of the Union of Composers of Bashkortostan.

Gabyashi’s contribution to the Tatar culture is significant and largely underestimated even today. Painful atmosphere of ideological pressure 20-30-ies, struck a discordant note the fate of many representatives of national intelligence, was almost swallowed and Sultan. His name and the legacy for a long time have been erased from the history of Tatar culture.

Gabyashi received an excellent education in the best Tatar madrassas “Muhammadiya” in Kazan and “Galia” in Ufa. He was a great connoisseur of classical literature and folklore of the East Turkic people, owned several Eastern (Arabic, Turkish, Persian) and European (Latin, German, French) languages.

Since 1909, Sultan Gabyashi began to participate in the Tatar literary and musical evenings, which were held in Ufa and Kazan. Conducted concerts, accompanied singers, played in the orchestra. Name S. Gabyashi firmly established on the concert stage. At the same time first performed his own compositions were love songs and songs to poems Tukay and Ramiev, pieces for piano. They immediately brought melodic richness and earned the young author and more popular.

By this time in Kazan had already existed Tatar Drama Theatre. The highlight was staged on its stage Gayaz Iskhaki’s drama “Zuleikha” in 1917. The author of the music for this play was Sultan Gabyashi. All the newspapers that responded to the Prime Minister, has consistently pointed out the strong impression of the spectators of his music.

For “Zuleikha” followed by other performances, among which are production based on the famous Oriental legend “Yusuf and Zuleikha”, “Tahir and Zohra”, “A nice young fellow”, “Shah Gabbas” and other. Unfortunately, until we reached only a small part Gabyashi music written for those dramatic works, but it allows you to judge him as a composer of great lyrical talent.

Creative conviction of the composer, based on the practice of folk music-making and defend the values of tradition, was at odds with the official ideology. Interest in folk art called nationalism, loyalty to traditions - conservatism and opposition to proletarian culture.

Today the name of Sultan Gabyashi is hearing again, and his work finds its rightful and honourable place in the history of Tatar music.

Creative ideas of the composer, in particular, he proposed a model of intonation and frets, dating back to Islamic musical and poetic culture, were picked up and implemented many years later in works of contemporary composers of tatars A. Monasypova, S. Sharifullin, R. Kalimullina, M. Shamsutdinova.
Notes

“Zuleikha” G. Iskhaki, “Tahir and Zohra” F. Burnashev, “Booz eget” "(“Nice brave”) K. Rahim – «Зулейха» Г. Исхаки, «Тагир и Зухра» Ф. Бурнашева, «Буз егет» К. Рахим (пьесы начала ХХ века)

“Muhammadiya” – знаменитое медресе в Казани

“Galia” – знаменитое медресе в Уфе

connoisseur – знаток


Salikh Saydashev

(1900-1954)

Salikh Zamaletdinovich Saydashev is a founder of Tatar professional musical creation. Salikh Saydashev was born in Kazan. He got education in Kazan musical school. In the years of civil war, he was in rows to Red Army. From 1922 years Saydashev began the activity of composer. He used the first in Tatar music such forms as orchestra and choir, instrumental band and Tatar folklore by the forms of Russian music.

In 1934 - 1938 Saydashev studied in the Moscow conservatory. After his return to Kazan he composed the new raising of the Tatar academic theatre, lyric songs, came forward as a bandleader. Labours of Salikh Saydashev proved that both a symphony and other forms are fully applicable in Tatar music. Listeners perceived with delight these innovations, enriching national music.

In 1928-1954 S. Saydashev lived in 13, M. Gorky Street. Memorial plaque is there set now. Spiritual knowledge says of: only achievement of equilibrium is provided by a forward movement. Saydashev found this golden mean. In him lived simultaneously and man, firmly growing in the roots in the Tatar environment, and original, originally intellectual artist. Saydashev’s father died without seeing his son. Salikh was brought up in the family's sister, whose husband Shigab Akhmerov belonged to the progressive circles of the Tatar intelligentsia.

Salikh’s musical ability evidenced early. The first instrument on which he began to play was a harmonica, except for family bought a piano. The first teacher was his folk musician Zagidulla Yarullin and outstanding teachers Kazan Music College.

In 1918 young musician organized the orchestra. In 1919-1920 he volunteered to enter the ranks of the Red Army, and then the demobilization worked at a music school in Orenburg. In 1922 Saydashev returned to Kazan in the Tatar State Academic Drama Theatre named after G. Kamal, began to work as conductor and music director. Widely deployed creative activity Saydashev was music to plays “Galiabanu” by M. Faizi, “Bashmagym” (“Shoes”) by H. Ibragimov, “Il” (“Motherland”), “On Kandra”, “Blue shawl” by K. Tinchurin etc. Saydashev came to create a new genre; he has received the name of the musical drama. During these years he wrote “March of the Soviet Army”. He was actively working on creating new and new musical works in various genres, acts as a musician and leader in numerous concerts.

In 1934-1938 S. Saydashev was studying in the Tatar Opera studio in Moscow. Returning from Moscow, he continued to work in Tatar State Academic Drama Theatre.

S. Saydashev is the founder of Tatar professional music. For truly professional and high level creative Saydashev summed up, the experience of the first composers of popular, centuries-old traditions of the people managed to organically combine the experience of European music, folk, and create on this basis is really the national and professional art.

Perhaps no one Tatar writer found such a great love, as Salikh Saydashev. His music is radiant, full of life and cardiac heat, so deeply and firmly established in our everyday life, which is measured by its value along with the poetry of the great Tukai.
Notes

memorial plaque – мемориальная доска

“March of the Soviet Army” – “Марш Советской Армии”



Nazib Zhiganov

(1911-1988)

Zhiganov Nazib Gajazovich was extraordinary clever person. He was the person of the rare active energy, the strategist, the politician, the builder, the formations, the largest, the modern composer, the author of the excellent, original musical products noted by unique Tatar (national) originality, the richest art properties of own creative individualities.

Nazib Zhiganov was the artist of the big talent concerning to creativity selflessly, it is enamoured, being in the constant movement to new, to the perfection, the betrayed to the big heart the people, - the people which he immensely loved also to which in every way mind, hearts, talent served.

Nazib Zhiganov was the author of operas: “Kachkyn” (“Runaway”), which it has written, still being the student of the Moscow conservatory; “Altynchech” (“Goldhair”), “Tuljak and Sousylu” and “Djalil”.

“Kachkyn” (“Runaway”) is an original exposition of scenic creativity of the composer, in which the best, original art intentions of the author are already put. It is the first opera of the composer and practically the first Tatar opera. There Zhiganov had expressed the major idea: the people should be free. This idea penetrated also “Altynchech”. In “Dzhalile” the composer wished to see free all peoples from harm and obscurantism, for that his hero great Musa Dzhalil gave the life. Not casually these products making already of many years a basis national repertoire of the Tatar opera and ballet theatre have put forward the whole galaxy of the outstanding national singers who have grown on execution of parties protagonists and heroines.

“Altynchech” is the beginning of the Tatar opera classics, in which all "in a harmony", in symmetry, in effectiveness, in beauty in which there live the expensive to national heart images, images the generalised, bearing eternal aesthetic, moral motives of life where perfection reigns.

“Dzhalile” is an opera, issued stages not only native Tatar Opera and Ballet theatre, but also the most glorified scenes of the world: Prague National opera, the Moscow Bolshoi theatre. Performance went in Magnificent execution, at enormous scenic success. The opera “Dzhalile” of Zhiganov had deduced for the first time the Tatar music importance and that opera creativity of Nazib Zhiganov was an example for other generations of the composers pulled to scenic music (H. Valiullin, B. Muljukov, R. Kalimullin).

Certainly, after classical ballet of Farid Jarullin “Shurale” (“Wood-goblin”) it was difficult to write ballet the same level. But also here Zhiganov has acted successfully, having created two fine ballets: “Zukhra” and "Nzheri".

Notes

“Kachkyn” – опера «Беглец»

“Altynchech” – опера «Златовласка»

“Tuljak and Sousylu” – опера «Тулек и Сусылу»

“Djalil” – опера «Джалиль»

“Shurale” – балет «Шурале»

Some actual symphonies

The composer had created own tradition: annually to begin a season symphony concerts with the new symphony. Thus, number of symphonies grew, like annual rings of a tree. There are symphonies originally conceptual, figurative-characteristic, there are also symphonies of suite type.

The true destiny of symphonies will be defined much later, when all of them more often will sound in symphony concerts when all will be published them Scores.

Nazib Zhiganov was very good not only in opera, ballet and symphonic compositions, but also in variety of other genres and forms: piano, choral, vocal, instrumental products.

Nazib Zhiganov was the organizer and many years the head of the Union of Composers TASSR. The management of the Union of Composers belonged to him by right. He was the true leader of the creative organisation most known the founder of new music.

Nazib Zhiganov supervised over the Union vigorously, acting with set of bright initiatives. Creative meetings were regularly held, plenums, series of reviews-concerts were organised. The Union of Composers of Tatarstan gradually became one of the largest creative organisations in the country, original the musical centre of the Volga region.

Nazib Zhiganov’s idea belonged of creation of Kazan conservatory, the major centre of music education. It was possible in 1945 in Kazan when other cities were in ruins. The role in value of conservatory is obvious now to all.

In Kazan it have been opened Secondary special musical school at conservatory, some musical schools, set of the musical the schools feeding all system of music education.

Mirsaid Yarullin

(1938-2009)
Mirsaid Yarullin is composer, teacher, a prominent community leader, secretary of the Union of Composers of the Russian Federation, Chairman of the Regional Association of the Union of Composers of the republics of the Volga and the Ural, Prize winner of the Republican in the name of M.Dzhalil, Honored Artist of Russia and Tatarstan, People's Artist of Tatarstan.

Mirsaid Yarullin’s creative activity was formed at the beginning of 60 years. Now Mirsaid is well-known figure in Tatar music art as author of oratorioes, vocal-symphonic poem “Nightingale and spring”, instrumental compositions, songs, theatrical music.

Mirsaid was born in 1938 in village Small Suni of Mamadyshsky region TASSR. His father, Zagidulla Yarullin, was the known tatar musician, pianist, author popular "March Slamming", who was his first teacher, attached future composer to the world of the music. Music atmosphere reigned in family, could not influence upon boy: in young age Mirsaid created his own first compositions: waltzs, canto.

In 1955 he entered in Kazan music school on composer faculty. Successfully finished it, he continued the education in Kazan conservatory (1958-1963) and in post-graduate school at conservatories (1964-1967).

Concert for violin with orchestra was the first large composition of the author, written in 1962 during training in conservatories. It confirmed eternal subjects of good, humanities, beauties, reflects the life of folk in his variety.

Qualification work of the conservatory was the vocal-tone poem on poetry Musa Dzhalil "Nightingale and spring" for choirs, soloist and orchestra, revealing subjects of faithfulness, love to native land and its folk.

In the beginning of 60 years the play “Azat” of T. Minnullin performed in Tatar Academic Theatre by music Mirsaid Yarullin.

Mirsaid Yarullin is creator of the first tatar oratorio “Keshe” (“Man”), personifying important philosophical- ethical problems.

The composer from his childhood was enamoured in tatar public canto. He collected, studied and processed it.

In 1973 he wrote cycle of the processing tatar song for voice and symphonic orchestra, where entered “Native land”, “Tents” and “Wave”. The Canto are colourful orchestrated, rich in harmonic and invoiced attitude, are an example of the ingenious processing public canto. New making the author appeared for the last three years.

Mirsaid Yarullin possessed lucky gratis-skill to combine creative, pedagogical activity with public. He was chairman of the rule of the Union composer RSFSR.

Shaping creative activity Mirsaid Yarullin, as his colleagues F. Ahmetov, R. Enikeev, occurred at period of the intensive growing and renovations of the tatar music, at period of the top ascent creative activity average generation composer - N. Zhiganov, A. Leman, Z. Habibullin.

On formation M.Yarullin as composer had certainly rendered the influence and household tradition. Here first of all follows to emphasize vicinity a composer was given birth-national headwaters, deeply valid and careful attitude to him.

The longing to new, mastering the best experience other folk and the whole preceding cultures in this instance classical tradition and achievements of the soviet music-other line typical of creative youth 60-70 years. And finally, skill in polyhedral reality to see the main to trends, essential phenomena, longing to answer the problems to life also typical of modern composer. The Manifestation these devil we see and in creative activity Mirsaid Yarullin.

The lyric poet of nature, he created the groups often a song, penetrated sincere. It was enough to recall the popular canto from collection: “Wood poet” (1965), “Friend of youth” (1969) and "Mysterious flower"(1979). Much are created by him song citizenship, patriotic sounding, denoted creative labour youth, fight for the world.
Notes

prominent – выдающийся

chairman – председатель

“Nightingale and spring” – вокально-симфоническая поэма «Соловей и ручей»

“Azat” – пьеса Т. Миннуллина



Antonio Lucio Vivaldi

(1678-1741)

Antonio Vivaldi was an Italian violinist and composer whose concertos - pieces for one or more instruments - were widely known and influential throughout Europe.

Childhood and early career

Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice, Italy, on March 4, 1678. His first music teacher was his father, Giovanni Battista Vivaldi. The elder Vivaldi was a well-respected violinist, employed at the church of St. Mark’s.

Antonio was trained for a clerical (religious service) as well as a musical life. After going through the various introductory stages, he was ordained (authorized) as a priest in March 1703. His active career, however, was devoted to music. In the autumn of 1703 he was appointed as a violin teacher at the Ospitale della Pieta in Venice. A few years later he was made conductor of the orchestra at the same institution. Under Vivaldi's direction, this orchestra gave many brilliant concerts and achieved an international reputation.

Vivaldi remained at the Pietà until 1740. But his long years there were broken by the numerous trips he took, for professional purposes, to Italian and foreign cities. He went, among other places, to Vienna, Italy, from 1729 to 1730 and to Amsterdam, Netherlands, from 1737 to 1738. Within Italy he travelled to various cities to direct performances of his operas. He left Venice for the last time in 1740. He died in Vienna on July 26 or 27, 1741.

Vivaldi’s music

Vivaldi was very productive in vocal and instrumental music, sacred and secular (nonreligious). According to the latest research, he composed over seven hundred pieces—ranging from sonatas (instrumental compositions usually with three or four movements) and operas (musical dramas consisting of vocal and instrumental pieces) to concertos (musical compositions for one or two vocal performers set against a full orchestra).

Today the vocal music of Vivaldi is little known. But in his own day he was famous and successful as an opera composer. Most of his operas were written for Venice, but some were performed throughout Italy in Rome, Florence, Verona, Vicenza, Ancona, and Mantua.

Vivaldi was also one of the great eighteenth century violin virtuosos, or musicians with superb ability. This virtuosity is reflected in his music, which made new demands on violin technique. In his instrumental works he naturally favoured the violin. He wrote the majority of his sonatas for one or two violins and thorough-bass. Of his concertos, 221 are for solo violin and orchestra. Other concertos are for a variety of solo instruments, including the flute, the clarinet, the trumpet, and the mandolin. He also wrote concertos for several solo instruments, concerti grossi, and concertos for full orchestra. The concerto grosso features a small group of solo players, set against the full orchestra. The concerto for orchestra features differences of style rather than differences of instruments.

Orchestral music

Vivaldi's concertos are generally in three movements, arranged in the order of fast, slow, fast. The two outer movements are in the same key; the middle movement is in the same key or in a closely related key. Within movements, the music proceeds on the principle of alternation: passages for the solo instrument(s) alternate with passages for the full orchestra. The solo instrument may extend the material played by the orchestra, or it may play quite different material of its own. In either case, the alternation between soloist and orchestra builds up a tension that can be very dramatic.

The orchestra in Vivaldi's time was different, of course, from a modern one in its size and constitution. Although winds were sometimes called for, strings constituted the main body of players. In a Vivaldi concerto, the orchestra is essentially a string orchestra, with one or two harpsichords or organs to play the thorough-bass.

Some of Vivaldi's concertos are pieces of program music, for they give musical descriptions of events or natural scenes. “The Seasons”, for instance, consists of four concertos representing the four seasons. But in his concertos the "program" does not determine the formal structure of the music. Some musical material may imitate the call of a bird or the rustling of leaves; but the formal plan of the concerto is maintained.

Vivaldi’s concertos were widely known during and after his lifetime. They were copied and admired by another musician, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). In musical Europe of the eighteenth century Vivaldi was one of the great names.
Notes

clerical – конторский, духовный, офисный

ordain as a priest – назначать священником

superb – прекрасный

tension – напряженность

description – описание

the Ospitale della Pieta – венецианский консерватория «Оспедал делла Пиета»

Johann Sebastian Bach

(1685-1750)

Johann Sebastian Bach (March 21, 1685 - July 28, 1750) was a German organist, composer, and musical scholar of the Baroque period, and is almost universally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. His works, noted for their intellectual depth, technical command, and artistic beauty, have provided inspiration to nearly every musician in the European tradition, from Mozart to Schoenberg. Formative Years

J. S. Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany, in 1685. His father, Ambrosius Bach, was the town piper in Eisenach, a post that entailed organizing all the secular music in town as well as participating in church music at the direction of the church organist, and his uncles were also all professional musicians ranging from church organists and court chamber musicians to composers, although Bach would later surpass them all in his art. In an era when sons were expected to assist in their fathers' work, we can assume J. S. Bach began copying music and playing various instruments at an early age.

Bach’s mother died when he was still a young boy and his father suddenly passed away when J. S. Bach was 9, at which time J. S. Bach moved in with his older brother Johann Christoph Bach, who was the organist of Ohrdruf, Germany. While in his brother's house, J. S. Bach continued copying, studying, and playing music. According to one popular legend of the young composer's curiosity, late one night, when the house was asleep, he retrieved a manuscript from his brother's music cabinet and began to copy it by the moonlight. It went on nightly until Johann Christoph heard the young Sebastian playing some of the distinctive tunes from his private library, at which point the elder brother demanded to know how Sebastian had come to learn them.

It was at Ohrdruf that Bach began to learn about organ building. The Ohrdruf church’s instrument, it seems, was in constant need of minor repairs, and young J. S. Bach was often sent into the belly of the old organ to tighten, adjust, or replace various parts. Realizing that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the church organ, with its moving bellows, manifold stops, and complicated mechanical linkages from the keys and pedals to the many actual pipes, was the most complex machine in any European town, we can imagine that Sebastian may have been awed by it much as modern boys are fascinated by cars, trucks, and planes. This hands-on experience with the innards of the instrument would provide a unique counterpoint to his unequalled skill at playing the instrument; J. S. Bach was equally at home talking with organ builders and performers.

While in school and as a young man, Bach's curiosity compelled him to seek out great organists of Germany such as Georg Bohm, Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Adam Reinken, often take journeys of considerable length to hear them play. He was also influenced by the work of Nicholas Bruhns. Shortly after graduation (Bach completed Latin school when he was 18, an impressive accomplishment in his day, especially considering that he was the first in his family to finish school), Bach took a post as organist at Arnstadt, Germany, in 1703. He apparently felt cramped in the small town and began to seek his fortune elsewhere. Owing to his virtuosity, he was soon offered a more lucrative organist post in Muhlhausen. Some of Bach's earliest extant compositions date to this period (including, according to some scholars, his famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor), but owing to the general immaturity of this "early" Bach music, much of the music Bach wrote during this time has unfortunately been lost.

Professional Life

Still not content as organist of Muhlhausen, in 1708, Bach took a position as court organist and concert master at the ducal court in Weimar, Germany. Here he had opportunity to not only play the organ but also compose for it and play a more varied repertoire of concert music with the dukes' ensemble. A devotee of contrapuntal music, Bach's steady output of fugues begins in Weimar. The best known example of his fugal writing is probably The Well-Tempered Clavier, which comprises 48 preludes and fugues, two for each major and minor key, a monumental work not only for its masterful use of counterpoint but also for exploring, for the first time, the full glory of keys-and the means of expression made possible by their slight differences from each other-available to keyboard musicians when their instruments are tuned according to Andreas Werckmeister's system of well temperament or similar system. Also during his tenure at Weimar, Bach began work on the Orgelbuchlein for Wilhelm Friedemann. This “little book” of organ music contains traditional Lutheran church hymns harmonized by Bach and compiled in a way to be instructive to organ students. This incomplete work introduces two major themes into Bach's corpus: Firstly, his dedication to teaching, and secondly, his love of the traditional chorale as a form and source of inspiration. Bach's dedication to teaching is especially remarkable. There was hardly any period in his life when he did not have a full-time apprentice studying with him, and there were always numerous private students studying in Bach's house, including such 18th century notables as Johann Friedrich Agricola. Still today, students of nearly every instrument encounter Bach's works early and revisit him throughout their careers.

The St. Thomas church in Leipzig Sensing increasing political tensions in the ducal court of Weimar, Bach began once again to search out a more stable job conducive to his musical interests. Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cuthen provided Bach with a place in his court ensemble as chamber musician. Prince Leopold, himself a musician, appreciated Bach's talents, compensated him well, and gave him considerable latitude in composing and performing. However, the prince was Calvinist and did not use elaborate music in his worship, so that most of Bach's work from this period is secular in nature. Many of the Brandenburg concerti, as well as many other instrumental works, including the suites for solo cello, the sonatas and partitas for solo violin, and the orchestral suites, date to this period.

In 1723, J. S. Bach was appointed Cantor and Musical Director of St. Thomas church in Leipzig, Germany. This post required him to not only instruct the students of the St. Thomas school in singing but also to provide weekly music at the two main churches in Leipzig. Rising above and beyond the call of duty, Bach endeavoured to compose a new church piece, or cantata, every week. This challenging schedule, which basically amounted to writing an hour's worth of music every week, in addition to his more menial duties at the school, produced some genuinely sublime music, most of which has been preserved. Most of the cantatas from this period expound upon the Sunday readings from the Bible for the week in which they were originally performed; some were written using traditional church hymns.

On holy days such as Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter, Bach produced cantatas of particular brilliance, most notably the Magnificent for Christmas and St. Matthew Passion for Good Friday. The composer himself considered the monumental St. Matthew Passion among his greatest masterpieces; in his correspondence, he referred to it as his "great Passion" and carefully prepared a calligraphic manuscript of the work, which required every available musician in town for its performance. Bach's representation of the essence and message of Christianity in his religious music is considered by many to be so powerful and beautiful that in Germany he is sometimes referred to as the Fifth Evangelist.
Family Life

Bach and his first wife, Maria Barbara, had seven children, although several of them died while still very young. Little is known about Maria Barbara. She died suddenly while Bach was travelling with Prince Leopold in July, 1720. While still at Cuthen, Bach met and later married Anna Magdalena, a young soprano. Despite the age difference, the couple seem to have enjoyed a very happy marriage, with Anna Magdalena supporting Sebastian's composing (many final scores are in her hand) and with Sebastian encouraging her singing career. Together they had 13 children, although few survived to adulthood.

All of the Bach children seem to have been musically inclined, which must have given the aging composer much pride. His sons Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Johann Gottfried Bernhard Bach, Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, Johann Christian Bach, and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach all became accomplished musicians, with С. P. E. Bach especially winning the respect of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Although the barriers to women having professional careers were great, all of Bach's daughters most likely sang and possibly played in their father's ensembles. The only one of the Bach daughters to marry, Elisabeth Juliana Friederica, choose as husband Bach's student Johann Christoph Altnickol. Most of the music we have from Bach was passed on through his children, who preserved much of what С. P. E. Bach called the "Old Bach Archive" after his father's death.

At Leipzig, Bach seems to have fit in amongst the professoriate of the university there, with many professors standing as god-parents for his children, and some of the university's men of letters and theology providing many of the librettos for his cantatas. In this last capacity Bach enjoyed a particularly fruitful relationship with the poet Picander. Sebastian and Anna Magdalena also welcomed friends, family, and fellow musicians from all over Germany into their home; court musicians at Dresden and Berlin as well as musicians including George Philipp Telemann (one of Carl Philipp Emanuel's godfathers) made frequent visits to Bach's house and may have kept up frequent correspondence with him. Interestingly, George Friedrich Handel, who was born in the same year as Bach, made several trips to Germany, but Bach was unable to meet him, a fact he regretted.

Later Life and Legacy Having spent much of the 1720s composing weekly cantatas, Bach assembled a sizable repertoire of church music that, with minor revisions and a few additions, allowed him to continue performing impressive Sunday music programs while pursuing other interests in secular music, both vocal and instrumental. Many of these later works were collaborations with Leipzig's Collegium Musicum, but some were increasingly introspective and abstract compositional masterpieces that represent the pinnacle of Bach's art. These erudite works start with the four volumes of his Clavierbung ("Keyboard Practice") a set of keyboard works to inspire and challenge organists and lovers of music that includes the 6 Partitas for keyboard, the Italian Concerto, the French Overture, and the Goldberg variations. At the same time, Bach wrote a complete Mass in В Minor, which incorporated newly composed movements with portions from earlier works. Although the mass was never performed during the composer's lifetime, it is considered to be among the greatest of his choral works.

After meeting King Frederick II of Prussia in Berlin in 1747, which played a theme for Bach and challenged the famous musician to improvise a six-part fugue based on his theme, Bach presented the king with a Musical Offering including several fugues and canons based on the "royal theme." Later, using a theme of his own design, Bach produced The Art of Fugue. These 14 fugues (called Contrapuncti by Bach), are all based on the same theme, demonstrating the versatility of a simple melody. During his life time he composed over 1,000 pieces.

Notes

inspiration – вдохновение

mechanical linkage – механическая связь, компоновка

accomplishment – выполнение, достижение

endeavour – стремиться, пытаться



Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(1756-1791)

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer whose mastery of the whole range of contemporary instrumental and vocal forms - including the symphony, concerto, chamber music, and especially the opera - was unrivalled in his own time and perhaps in any other.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January 27, 1756, in Salzburg. His father, Leopold Mozart, a noted composer and pedagogue and then the author of a famous treatise on violin playing was in the service of the archbishop of Salzburg. Together with his sister, Nannerl, Wolfgang received such intensive musical training that by the age of 6 he was a budding composer and an accomplished keyboard performer. In 1762 Leopold presented his son as performer at the imperial court in Vienna, and from 1763 to 1766 he escorted both children on a continuous musical tour across Europe, which included long stays in Paris and London as well as visits to many other cities, with appearances before the French and English royal families.

Mozart was the most celebrated child prodigy of this time as a keyboard performer and made a great impression, too, as composer and improviser. In London he won the admiration of so eminent a musician as Johann Christian Bach, and he was exposed from an early age to an unusual variety of musical styles and tastes across the Continent.