German music-Minnesingers and Meistersingers

After Latin-language religious music had dominated for centuries, in the 12th century to the 14th centuries, minnesingers (love poets), singing in German, spread across Germany. Minnesingers were aristocrats traveling from court to court who had become musicians, and their work left behind a vast body of literature, Minnelieder. The following two centuries saw the minnesingers replaced by middle-class meistersingers, who were often master craftsmen in their main profession, whose music (meistergesang) was much more formalized and rule-based than that of the minnesingers. Minnesingers and meistersingers could be considered parallels of French troubadours.

Among the minnesingers, Hermann, a monk from Salzburg, deserves special note. He incorporated folk styles from the Alpine regions in his compositions. He made some primitive forays into polyphony. The innate love of music and the desire to find in it an adequate means for emotional expression characterized the German people during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to a far greater degree than is evident among the troubadours of the neighboring Latin countries.

The Meistersinger made a sincere effort to perpetuate the musical treasure of the Minnesinger, but their stifling pedantry, their isolation from the main currents of contemporary musical life,' rendered their compositions, in comparison with the older German monophony, forced and stuffy. Nevertheless, the Meistersinger made an important contribution to the history of music. All countries had church music, and other countries had court music, but only in Germany was there such intensive musical activity among the bourgeoisie. The Meistersinger were instrumental in bringing music into the middle-class home; and they may have laid the foundations for the widespread love of music among all classes that helped in making possible the preeminent German musical productivity of other countries.

The title character of Tannhäuser is a Minnesinger: a medieval German troubadour who composed and performed songs about love, politics, ethics and current events. Minnesingers were an important part of German court life during the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. Their songs and poems developed and reinforced one of the defining concepts of their world: courtly love.
The term “courtly love” (minne) refers to the medieval concept of spiritual love between a brave knight and a noble lady. The lady love was usually above her knight in rank, or married to another man, or both. The knight idealized her, yearned for her, and devoted himself to her. In the world of the medieval court, marriage for love was almost unheard of. Marriage matches were made to cement political alliances or build fortunes; hence true love was thought to occur outside of marriage. Love, as opposed to marriage, was associated with personal development and private happiness. A love relationship inspired a knight to lead a better life and develop a more beautiful soul. The concept of courtly love affirmed the bold idea that there was more to a man than his title or his wealth—each individual also had a private emotional life, linked more to their soul than to their station.

The MINNESINGERS which refer to the name given to the German lyric poets of the 12th and 13th centuries. The term Minnesang, is applicable to the poems expressing the homage rendered by the knight to his mistress, is applied to the whole body of lyric poetry of the period, whether dealing with love, religion or politics. Its tone was, on the whole, far healthier and more sincere, reflecting the difference between the simple conditions of German life and the older and corrupt civilization of Provence. The minnesinger belonged to the lower ranks of the nobility, and his verses were addressed to a married woman, often above him in rank; consequently the commonest lyric themes are the lover's hopeless devotion and complaints of the lady's cruelty, expressed with a somewhat wearisome iteration. The poet was not permitted to give the lady's name, or to betray her identity; and a direct expression of passion would also have contravened the rules. The poems were from the first sung in open court to a melody of the poet's own composing, accompanied with the accompaniment of a fiddle or small harp. The older songs consisted of a single strophecast in three divisions, two (known as Stollen or doorposts) identical in form, stating and developing the argument, the third (Abgesang) of different form, giving the conclusion. Then, two or more strophes were used in a single poem, but the principle of their structure was retained. In this form were cast the Tagelied, a dialogue describing the parting of lovers at dawn; and the crusading song. Side by side with these existed the Spruch that is written in a single undivided stanza, destined for recitation and often cast in the form of a fable. The lay was written in unequal strophes, each formed of two equal divisions.
The origin of the native lyric, which flourished especially in Austria and Bavaria, is perhaps to be sought in the songs which accompanied dancing. These were not necessarily love songs, but celebrated the coming of spring, the gloom of winter &c., the commonplaces of Minnesang throughout the two centuries of its existence. These songs are contradictory to the root idea of Minnedienst, since the lady is the wooer, and the poet, at the most, an acquiescent lover.

Igor Fyodovich Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer, pianist, and conductor, considered by many to be one of the most important and influential composers 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.[4] 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 Sergei Diaghilev and performed by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (Russian Ballets): L'Oiseau de feu ("The Firebird") (1910), Petrushka (1911/1947), and Le Sacre du printemps ("The Rite of Spring") (1913). The Rite, whose premiere provoked a riot, transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure, and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary, pushing the boundaries of musical design. In the 1950s he adopted serial procedures, using the new techniques over his last twenty years. Stravinsky's compositions of this period share traits with all of his earlier output: rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few two- or three-note cells, and clarity of form, of instrumentation, and of utterance. He also published a number of books throughout his career.

His contribution
For wind instruments are Stravinsky's first compositions to feature his re-examination of the classical music of Mozart and Bach and their contemporaries. For this "neo-classical" style Stravinsky abandoned the large orchestras demanded by the ballets, and turned instead largely to wind instruments, the piano, and choral and chamber works.His other works such as Oedipus Rex (1927), Apollon musagète (1928, for the Russian Ballet) and the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto (1937–38) continued this re-thinking of eighteenth-century musical styles.Works from this period include the three symphonies: the Symphonie des Psaumes (Symphony of Psalms) (1930), Symphony in C (1940) and Symphony in Three Movements (1945). Apollon, Persephone (1933) and Orpheus (1947) exemplify not only Stravinsky's return to music of the Classical period, but also his exploration of themes from the ancient Classical world such as Greek mythology. He also use a similar technique found as early as the sixteenth century, to compose the music of Cipriano de Rore, Orlandus Lassus, Carlo Gesualdo, and Giovanni de Macque.

His musical output
One of the song he composed was the “The Ballet Russes”such combination leaves the piece ambiguous as to its sacred or secular character, but Stravinsky may unintentionally and unconsciously be pushing this distinction to its breaking point if not making it almost impossible to make. The symphony is set in three movements, each connected to the three psalms used for the text: Psalm 38, verses 13 and 14; Psalm 39, verses 2,3, and 4; and the complete text of psalm 150, respectively. The first movement begins with the oboe and bassoon in a solo melody reminiscent of the opening of The Rite of Spring’s bassoon solo, which is a rearrangement of a Lithuanian folk tune. The Oboe solo at the beginning of the second movement is similar. But this only adds to the complexity of this piece. Stravinsky’s attempt to situate these movements in the “Russian folk tradition” that he in many ways seems to have established in his work with The Ballet Russes, provides a sharp contrast to the text of the psalms for all three movements, which are in Latin.

George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-English Baroque composer, who is famous for his operas, oratorios, and concerti grossi. His life and music may justly be described as "cosmopolitan": he was born in Germany, trained in Italy, and spent most of his life in England. Born as Georg Friedrich Händel in Halle in the Duchy of Magdeburg, he settled in England in 1712, becoming a naturalized subject of the British crown on 22 January 1727. His works include Messiah, Water Music, and Music for the Royal Fireworks. It was strongly influenced by the techniques of the great composers of the Italian Baroque era, as well as the English composer Henry Purcell, Handel's music became well-known to many composers like Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. He was born on the same years as johann sebastian bach and Domenico scarlatti.
Handel displayed his musical talent at an early age of seven. He was a skillful performer on the harpsichord and pipe organ.However, his father, a distinguished citizen of Halle and an eminent barber-surgeon who served as valet and barber to the courts of the Duchy of Saxe-Weissenfels and the Margraviate of Brandenburg, was opposed to his son's wish to pursue a musical career, preferring him to study law. By contrast, Handel's mother, Dorothea, encouraged his musical aspirations. Despite that, he was permitted to take lessons in musical composition and keyboard technique from Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow. He also learnt about harmony and contemporary styles. He analyzed scores and learned to work fugue subjects and copy music. Sometimes he would take his teacher's place as organist for services.

His contribution
He composed music for the Royal Fireworks; 12,000 people came to listen. He was then commissioned to write four anthems for the coronation ceremony of King George II. One of these, Zadok the Priest, it has been played at every British coronation ceremony. His compositions include 42 operas; 29 oratorios; more than 120 cantatas, trios and duets; numerous arias; chamber music; a large number of ecumenical pieces; odes and serenatas; and sixteen organ concerti. His most famous work, was the Messiah oratorio with its "Hallelujah" chorus.It was most common during christmas season.

MUSICAL OUTPUT
One of the work composed by handel is massiah oratoria.The hallelujah chorus is found in the middle of Parts II and III -- the "Easter" section. Because of the popularity of this association, it is common for Advent performances to include the first 17 numbers of the work and then follow immediately with the No. 44 "Hallelujah" chorus as a finale. The most famous and oft-quoted example of the technique is in Every valley shall be exalted, the tenor aria early in Part I of Messiah. On the lyric "...and every mountain and hill made low; the crooked straight and the rough places plain", Handel composes it thus:

The notes climb to the high F♯ on the first syllable of mountain to drop an octave on the second syllable. The four notes on the word hill form a small hill, and the word low descends to the lowest note of the phrase. On crooked, the melody twice alternates between C♯ and B to rest on the B for two beats through the word straight. The word plain is written, for the most part, on the high E for three measures, with some minor deviation. He applies the same strategy throughout the repetition of the final phrase: the crookeds being crooked and plain descending on three lengthy planes. He uses this technique frequently throughout the rest of the aria, specifically on the word exalted, which contains several sixteenth note (semiquaver) melismas and two leaps to a high E.

Joseph Haydn
Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer. He was one of the most important, prolific and prominent composers of the classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these genres. He was also instrumental in the development of the piano trio and in the evolution of sonata form. Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, a village near the border with Hungary. His father was Mathias Haydn, a wheelwright who also served as "Marktrichter", an office akin to village mayor. Haydn's mother, the former Maria Koller, had previously worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of Rohrau. Neither parent could read music. However, Mathias was an enthusiastic folk musician, who during the journeyman period of his career had taught himself to play the harp. Haydn's parents had noticed that their son was musically talented and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain any serious musical training. It was for this reason that they accepted a proposal from their relative Johann Matthias Frankh, the schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg, that Haydn be apprenticed to Frankh in his home to train as a musician.
There is reason to think that Haydn's singing impressed those who heard him, because he was soon brought to the attention of Georg von Reutter, the director of music in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, who was touring the provinces looking for talented choirboys. Haydn passed his audition with Reutter, and in 1740 moved to Vienna, where he worked for the next nine years as a chorister, after 1745 in the company of his younger brother Michael. Haydn lived in Reutter's home with the other five choirboys. He was instructed in Latin and other school subjects as well as voice, violin, and keyboard. Reutter was of little help to Haydn in the areas of music theory and composition, giving him only two lessons in his entire time as chorister. However, since St. Stephen's was one of the leading musical centers in Europe, Haydn was able to learn a great deal simply by serving as a professional musician there.

HIS CONTRIBUTIONS
His most important contribution was to the symphony
· He wrote 90 works (symphonies) between 1760 and 1790
· These are the cornerstone of symphonic repertory
· The symphonies were the property of Prince Nikolaus and were exclusively for his enjoyment and for that of his guests
· 1799 - Haydn obtained permission to publish and he reached a much wider audience
· By mid 1780's he was considered the most accomplished and original of living active composers
· Haydn and Mozart became good friends

His Works
Smphonies, quartets, concertos and keyboard works poured from the pen of Joseph Haydn, making him one of the most important figures in classical music. Joseph Haydn: as man, musician, administrator, unofficial diplomat, inspired creator and master craftsman, he personified the best in humanity. No man is faultless, but Haydn might be said to have possessed more than the normal share of virtues. In his warmth, generosity and humility, with his humour, his total lack of malice and his transparent honesty, he endeared himself to audiences and musicians wherever he went.
The music of the Classical era (c. 1750–1830) was based on preconceived notions of order, proportion and grace. Predominant were beauty and symmetry of form, which combined to create an effectively Utopian image, an idealisation of universal experience. In the Romantic age (which Haydn anticipated, and which his pupil Beethoven came close to defining in his own revolutionary output), from the early 1800s onwards, this was gradually replaced by a cult of individual expression, the crystalisation of the experience of the moment, the unfettered confession of powerful emotions and primal urges, the glorification of sensuality, a flirtation with the supernatural, an emphasis on spontaneity and improvisation, and the cultivation of extremes – emotional, sensual, spiritual and structural. Form was not a receptacle but a by-product of emotion, to be generated from within. In Haydn, this is reflected in the Hungarian’ references that crop up in a number of his later works, such as the D major Piano Concerto and the late G major Piano Trio, with its famous ‘Gypsy’ Rondo. It was a trend directly connected to politics.
Inevitably, the ideals and consequences of the French Revolution were a source of great alarm to the rulers of the crumbling Holy Roman Empire. As a consequence, Austria, with Vienna as its capital, became a both a bastion against French imperialism and an efficient police state, in which liberalism, both political and philosophical, was ruthlessly suppressed. But the people of Vienna were not natural revolutionaries, and neither was Haydn. Indeed the Viennese were noted for their political apathy. Exceptions to this were during the two occupations by the French in 1805 and 1809 , which brought considerable hardship to the city in the form of monetary crises, serious food shortages and a fleeing population, while Austria as a whole suffered serious political and territorial setbacks.

Frederic Chopin
Chopin was born in the village of Żelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, to a French-expatriate father and Polish mother, and in his early life was regarded as a child-prodigy pianist. In November 1830, at the age of twenty, he went abroad; following the suppression of the Polish November Uprising of 1830–1831, he became one of many expatriates of the Polish "Great Emigration." In Paris, Chopin made a comfortable living as a composer and piano teacher, while giving few public performances. Though an ardent Polish patriot, in France he used the French versions of his names and eventually, to avoid having to rely on Imperial Russian documents, became a French citizen. After some ill-fated romantic involvements with Polish women, from 1837 to 1847 he had a turbulent relationship with the French writer George Sand. Always in frail health, he died in Paris in 1849, at the age of thirty-nine, of chronic pulmonary tuberculosis.
Chopin's extant compositions were written primarily for the piano as a solo instrument. Though they are technically demanding, his style emphasises nuance and expressive depth. Chopin invented musical forms such as the balladeand was responsible for major innovations in forms such as the piano sonata, mazurka, waltz, nocturne, étude, impromptu and prélude. His works are masterpieces and mainstays of Romanticism in 19th-century classical music.

HISTORY
In October 1810, when the infant was seven months old, the family moved to Warsaw, where his father took a position as French-language teacher at a school in the Saxon Palace. The Chopin family lived on the palace grounds. In 1817, Mikołaj Chopin began work, still teaching French, at the Warsaw Lyceum, housed in Warsaw University's Kazimierz Palace. The family lived in a spacious second-floor apartment in an adjacent building. The son himself would attend the Warsaw Lyceum from 1823 to 1826. Despite Mikołaj Chopin's occupation, Polish spirit, culture, and language pervaded the Chopins' home and, as a result, the son would never, even in Paris, perfectly master the French language. Louis Enault, a biographer, borrowed George Sand's phrase to describe Chopin as being "more Polish than Poland". All the family had artistic leanings. Chopin's father played the flute and violin; Chopin's mother played the piano, and gave lessons to boys in the elite boarding house that the Chopins operated. Thus the boy early became conversant with music in its various forms.
That same year, seven-year old Chopin composed two Polonaises, in G minor and B-flat major. The first was published in the engraving workshop of Father Izydor Józef Cybulski (composer, engraver, director of an organists' school, and one of the few music publishers in Poland); the second survives as a manuscript prepared by Mikołaj Chopin. These small works were said to rival not only the popular polonaises of leading Warsaw composers, but the famous Polonaises of Michał Kleofas Ogiński. A substantial development of melodic and harmonic invention and of piano technique was shown in Chopin's next known Polonaise, in A-flat major, which the young artist offered in 1821 as a name-day gift to Żywny.
MUSICAL OUTPUT
Frédéric Chopin composed his Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58 in 1844 and dedicated it to Countess Emilie de Perthuis. His last sonata for piano solo, it has been suggested that this was his attempt to address the criticisms of his earlier sonata Op. 35. The sonata consists of four movements, similar in structure to the second sonata, with a lyrical largo replacing the funeral march.
Allegro maestoso
Scherzo: Molto vivace
Largo
Finale: Presto non tanto; Agitato
The work opens on a martial note, the heavy chords and filigree in the opening of the first movement giving way to a more melodic second theme, eventually leading to the conclusion of the exposition in the relative major, D. Motives of the original theme emerge in the development, which, unconventionally, returns to the second theme (as opposed to the first) for the recapitulation. The movement concludes in B major. The scherzo, in the distant key of E flat and in strict ternary form, characterised by ebullient quaver runs in the right hand, with a more demure chordal middle section. It uses a theme from the composer's First Ballade, Unlike the scherzo of the B-flat minor sonata, it is exceptionally short, barely lasting two minutes in an average performance.
Despite a stormy introduction in dotted rhythm, the largo is serene, almost nocturne-like; a mellow and expansive middle section, again characterised by quaver figuration in the background of an intensely harmonic line, separates the more cantabile outer sections in B major. It is the most musically profound of the movements , in terms of a sustained melody and innovative harmonic progression; it rivals the extensive first movement in length alone. Its dramatic introduction–a rising harmonic progression left hanging on a high dominant seventh–aside, the finale, in B minor, is pervaded by a "galloping" rhythm; emphasis in the melodic line on the first and third beats of each half-measure outlines the fifth through eighth degrees of a harmonic minor scale (lending prominence to the augmented second between the sixth and seventh scale degrees). The overall melody, chromatic yet rooted in the minor tonic, contributes a dark mood to these primary sections.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner 22 May 1813, Leipzig, Germany – 13 February 1883, Venice, Italy)
• German Composer
• Conductor
• Theatre Director
• Essayist
• primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as they were later called).
Wagner wrote both the scenario and libretto for his works.
Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for contrapuntal texture, rich chromatics, harmonies and orchestration, and elaborate use of leitmotifs.
Richard Wagner was born at no. 3 ('The House of the Red and White Lions'), the Brühl, in Leipzig on 22 May 1813. The ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service. Wagner's father died of typhus six months after Richard's birth, following which Wagner's mother, Johanna Rosine Wagner, began living with the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer, who had been a friend of Richard's father. In August 1814 Johanna Rosine married Geyer, and moved with her family to his residence in Dresden. For the first 14 years of his life, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. Wagner may later have suspected that Geyer was in fact his biological father, and furthermore speculated incorrectly that Geyer was Jewish.In 1833, Wagner's older brother Karl Albert managed to obtain Richard a position as choir master in Würzburg.

His contribution
At the age of 20, he composed his first complete opera, Die Feen (The Fairies). This opera, which clearly imitated the style of Carl Maria von Weber, would go unproduced until half a century later, when it was premiered in Munich shortly after the composer's death in 1883. The Wagners’ spent 1840 and 1841 in Paris, where Richard made a scant living writing articles and arranging operas by other composers.
Wagner's early stage began at age 19 with his first attempt at an opera, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), which Wagner abandoned at an early stage of composition in 1832. Wagner's three completed early-stage operas are Die Feen (The Fairies), Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), and Rienzi. Wagner made a major contribution to the principles and practice of conducting. His essay On conducting (1869) advanced the earlier work of Hector Berlioz and proposed that conducting was a means by which a musical work could be re-interpreted, rather than simply a mechanism for achieving orchestral unison.Wagner's late stage operas are his masterpieces that advanced the art of opera. Some are of the opinion that Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Iseult) is Wagner's greatest single opera. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) is Wagner's only comedy still in the repertoire (his early Das Liebesverbot is forgotten) and one of the lengthiest operas still performed. Der Ring des Nibelungen, commonly referred to as the Ring cycle, is a set of four operas based loosely on figures and elements of Teutonic myth, particularly from later period Norse mythology. Wagner's musical style is often considered the epitome of classical music's Romantic period. He introduced new ideas in harmony and musical form, including extreme chromaticism. In Tristan und Isolde, he explored the limits of the traditional tonal system that gave keys and chords their identipointing the way to atonality in the 20th century. Some music historians date the beginning of modern classical music to the first notes of Tristan, the so-called Tristan chord.

His musical output
One of the music he composed was Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), with the libretto written by the composer after Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Described as a grosse komische Oper, it was composed in 1834, and Wagner conducted the premiere in 1836 at Magdeburg. Poorly attended and with a lead singer who forgot the words and had to improvise, it was a resounding flop and its second performance had to be cancelled after a fist-fight between the prima donna's husband and a leading tenor broke out backstage before the curtain had even risen. It was never performed again in Wagner's lifetime although it has occasionally been revived, most successfully in 1983 conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch. Its North American fully-staged premiere took place on July 19, 2008 at the Glimmerglass Opera in a production by Nicholas Muni. The cast was led by Mark Schnaible as Friedrich and Claudia Waite as Isabella; Corrado Rovaris conducted.A central theme in the work is a longing for unrestrained sexuality; this shows up again in Tannhäuser, Die Walküre, and Tristan und Isolde. In each opera, the self-abandonment to love brings the lovers into mortal combat with the surrounding social order. In Das Liebesverbot, because it is a comedy, the outcome is a happy one: unrestrained sexuality wins as the orgiastic carnival of the entire population goes rioting on after curtain-fall.Wagner's second opera, and his first to be performed, has many signs of an early work: it is very long and straightforwardly which is inspired by Beethoven and especially Weber..