On Thursday, April 10, 2014 at 7:30 PM the Louisville Philharmonia will be performing GriegPiano Concerto in a minor (featuring pianist Nada Loutfi), Faure Pavane, Dvorak Slavonic Dances No. 1-4 op 46. We will be playing at the Harvey Browne Presbyterian Church, 311 Browns Lane, Louisville, KY. The cost is $0, unless you would like to donate. I will be in the 2nd violin section, hope to see you there!
What's the benefit of coming? It is a good way to relax, nice entertainment. Second, it is a good way to encourage your children to keep practicing their instrument, because they get to see it live! This is one of the easiest ways to keep your family inspired musically, so in the long-term it is a good investment. It will also encourage you to keep practicing when you are thinking it may not be worth all the effort you are putting into all of this. Fourth, it will encourage your children to see a different side of culture in society that they may not be used to.
Here are some things to keep in mind when practicing this song:
1. Get into a good playing position.
2. Put the bow on the A string.
3. Use legato bowing, which is smooth bowing.
4. The song has two parts to it, they are similar, but keep in mind where they differ.
5. Listen to the video once, then play the song without the video, then play with the video.
6. Make the half notes two beats, it is easy to make them too short, use a long bow on each note.
7. Parents, have your child play the song with the music once then have them play it twice without the music, then add on note to what they know. Everyday they will know more and more until all of it is easy for them to play.
Contemporaries:Claudio Monteverdi, Thomas Tallis, Thomas Morley, Tomas Luis de Victoria, and Carlo Gesualdo.
Specialist
Genres:sacred music, keyboard works, madrigals, consort pieces for viols.
Major
Works:Three Latin and one English Mass; Cantiones sacrae; 140 keyboard pieces.
The 1500's was full of good and bad. The first black slaves were sent to America, the Turks conquer Egypt, Verrazano explores America, Nicolaus Copernicus comes out with the book On the Revolution of Heavenly Bodies explaining how the earth revolves around the sun, Shakespeare writes wonderful sonnets and plays, the Gregorian calender is adopted, but probably the biggest even was The Protestant Reformation that swept up Europe bringing many changes in countries, including England. The Reformation was sparked by Martin Luther who continued to bring reform to the church until he died, but three years before he died William Byrd was born. In 1543, William Byrd was born in England and grew up to be a Catholic Christian in times when there was much fighting between Catholic and Protestant Christians in England.
Contemporaries:Johannes Brahms, Camille
Saint-Saens, Antonin Dvorak, Claude Debusey, Gustav Mahler, Edvard, Grieg,
Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt, Gabriel Faure, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner,
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussrogsky, Cesar Cui, Alexander Borodin, Mily
Balakirev
Specialist
Genres: ballet
music and symphonies
Major
Works:The Nutcracker, Swan Lake,
Sleeping Beauty, Violin Concerto, Piano Concertos, 6 symphonies, 1812
Overture.
Have
you ever heard of The Nutcracker? Or Sleeping Beauty? Or
even Swan Lake? Most people have, but they may not know much about
the man behind the music. The man is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and he was born
in Votkinsk, a small town in Russia’s Ural Mountains. Tchaikovsky lived during stirring
times: the United States of America was in the Great Depression, Samuel Morse
invented “Morse Code”, David Livingstone went as a missionary to Africa, lower
and upper China united, Crawford Long uses first anesthetic (ether), Edgar Allen Poe came out with The Raven and Other Poems, and Charles H. Spurgeon
impacted England and America with his great sermons from the Bible.
It was
in these tremendous times that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky played the piano and
wrote lots of cool classical music with a Russian twist. Alongside ballet
music, Tchaikovsky wrote symphonies, the
1812 Overture, a violin concerto and piano concertos. Tchaikovsky had what
many composers living in his time did not: “a sweet, inexhaustible,
supersensuous fund of melody.”[1]
His
Life & Music
Pyotr
Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840. From a young age Tchaikovsky had an interest
in music, but his parents wanted him to study law, just like G.F. Handel.
Tchaikovsky was an obedient son and went to law school, but he also kept pursuing
music. Eventually, Tchaikovsky went to
the St. Petersburg Conservatory to study music composition and the piano, which
led him to be considered one of the most popular classical music composers of
all time.
After
the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Tchaikovsky was given the great gift of
marriage, but he did not treasure marriage. Tchaikovsky divorced his wife a few
weeks after they were married, choosing to run away from her and focused on his
music. Music was more important to Tchaikovsky, too bad he did not choose to
love both music and his wife. He did write a lot of beautiful music, symphonies
and piano concertos and a violin concerto and ballet music and tone poems and
more. In 1891, Tchaikovsky even came to America to conduct his music for
people. And in 1884, Emperor Alexander III and even got a pension (money for
retirement). People really like his ballet music, his symphonies and even the
concertos for its beauty, deep emotion, lyricism in the Russian style.As two historians put it, “The music which
this unhappy man created was gorgeously colored, sometimes delicate and
fairy-like, sometimes almost hysterical in its tragic passion.”[2]
[1]Harold
C. Schonberg, The Lives of the Great
Composers, revised edition (New York: Norton Company, 1981), p. 377.
[2]Katherine
B. Shippen and Anca Seidlova, The Heritage of Music (New York: Viking
Press, 1963), p. 204.
Major Works:chamber music and songs, cantatas, violin and keyboard concertos, harpsichord sonatas, 12 masses, oratorio, 15 surviving operas, keyboard sonatas, Stabat Mater, string quartets, and 104 symphonies.
What's the Big Deal with Haydn?
If someone would ask you what you know about Franz Joseph Haydn, what would you tell them? Here are a few things that you could tell them. Franz Joseph Haydn is the forgotten master of classical music. Franz Joseph Haydn taught Ludwig van Beethoven and was close friends with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and pretty much invented the musical form of the concerto, string quartet, sonata and symphony in the Classical period.[1] But not many people know about Haydn’s achievements, that is why he is the forgotten master of classical music.
The Early Years In the time of the Enlightenment, America revolted against Great Britain becoming its own country (1776); Adam Smith had written about his ideas of capitalism; Jean-Jacques Rousseau had written Emile on the innate goodness of man and how people just need a good education; it was not well-received); John Wesley and George Whitefield were preaching to multitudes in America about the need to be born again. This brought the First Great Awakening in America where many people turned to God. It was during this time that Franz Joseph Haydn came on the scene in Europe bringing with him many new musical ideas.
Franz was one of 12 children in the Haydn family, at age 8 he was recruited to the sing in the choir at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna because of his beautiful singing voice just like Palestrina and Monteverdi. It was at St. Stephen's that Franz went on to learn to play violin and keyboard. Some scholars think that Haydn even learned the organ during these years, so we can see that Haydn has something in common with Scarlatti; they both played the harpsichord and organ. After a few years, Haydn’s voice changed (just like any boy), so he could not sing in the choir anymore. He then left the choir and started working as a music teacher and playing violin, while studying counterpoint and harmony in his spare time. This was a difficult time in Haydn's life because he did not make much money, and during this time in history parents did not help out their children very much after they finished school.
Haydn's Boss: The Esterházs
In 1761 Joseph Haydn was named Kapellmeister, or "court musician," at the palace of the influential Esterházy family after Prince Paul Anton heard one of his symphonies. It was his job to train the choir and orchestra, and take care of the instruments and music at Eisenstadt where the Esterházys lived. Haydn worked for the Esterházy family for 30 years writing symphonies, concertos, string quartets, trios, and even music for the viola d'amore; the instrument that his boss played. After Haydn finished working for the Esterházy family he was able to go throughout Europe to write and perform more music.
[1] Max Wade-Matthews and Wendy Thompson, Joseph Haydn in The Encyclopedia of Music: Instruments of the Orchestra and the Great Composers (New York: Hermes House, 2002), p. 323.
