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“Perhaps the best reflection of these emotional extremes is the Second Movement, which he titled “Funeral March,” a powerful musical evocation of the massive state funerals then taking place in Paris.
The music suggests the thunder of drums and the roar of the crowd. In this movement, Beethoven explores grief, its public face and its intimate expression.
The oboe solo at the beginning is a personalized and interior expression of grief within a public ceremony. It’s a modern solo in that it has tremendous psychological dimension.
The music is evocative—we can almost see the funeral procession pass before us and ask, What really has died here? Perhaps it is part of Beethoven that is being mourned.
In the years before he wrote Eroica, Beethoven realized he was going deaf, and his initial reaction was terror and shame. He tried to keep it a secret. He couldn’t bear for anyone to know that he—a musician—was not able to hear.
But he came to realize that, as a musician, he could function perfectly well. What really scared him was being cut off from other people, losing the possibility of hearing intimate conversation.
What kind of strange, isolated, lonely, crazy individual was he in danger of becoming? That was the real terror.
As Beethoven’s personal crisis deepened in 1802, he took refuge in the village of Heiligenstadt. He hoped that the quiet of the countryside would bring relief to the distortions in his hearing. And he needed time to get himself together—to face the decision, literally, of whether to live or to die.
In Heiligenstadt, he wrote the most important document we have that reflects the turmoil in his life. The so-called Heiligenstadt Testament is a kind of last will, or possibly a suicide note.
It wasn’t meant to be read during his lifetime. But it reveals Beethoven’s state of mind just before he wrote Eroica. Somehow he found the strength to go on. In the works that follow the Heiligenstadt Testament, he inserted his humanity into the very fabric of the music.”
The second theme always gets me at 30:00. Such struggle, fighting with inevitable fate, such majesty… yeah. There I go again. :>
A change of pace, let’s imagine for a minute that Lennon’s Imagine piece was written in the Baroque period. It could sound a little like this.
Love the Angus Dei from this mass, getting the phrasing correct was a challenge but well worth the effort. :)
The Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo, Hob. XXII:7, Novello 8, is a mass in B-flat major by Joseph Haydn.[1] The missa brevis (short mass) was written around 1775 for the order of the Barmherzige Brüder (Brothers Hospitallers) in Eisenstadt, whose patron saint was St. John of God. Scored modestly for soprano, four-part mixed choir, two violins, organ and bass, it is known as the Kleine Orgelsolomesse (Little Organ Mass) due to an extended organ solo in the Benedictus movement.
This Sonata in F sharp minor first appeared in a manuscript of other Scarlatti sonatas and pieces in Venice in 1742. However, virtually all the music in it is believed to have been written during or before 1719, the year the composer departed Italy for Portugal. This particular Sonata is short, even for Scarlatti — typically running about one-and-a-half minutes — and bears stylistic characteristics found in the toccata style of his father, Alessandro Scarlatti. The Sonata, K. 67, is thus almost certainly a very early work, predating the “before 1742” description in the headnote by as many as three decades.
Marked Allegro, the work brims with energy that would normally suggest a Presto marking. Not surprisingly, the piece requires a virtuosic technique to properly execute its difficult demands. The thematic material springs from the opening chord — a chord that spawns rich motivic activity that scampers breathlessly up and down the keyboard. In the latter half of this mini-Sonata there is some limited development of materials, but the kinetic drive of the music remains constant throughout, the busy manner never pausing to catch its breath or to settle into a calmer or sweeter emotional state.
You know this piece, just not the full form. Skip to 2:20 if its still a mystery. :)
Although in his lifetime Ponchielli was very popular and influential, in introducing an enlarged orchestra and more complex orchestration, the only one of his operas regularly performed today is La Gioconda. It contains the great tenor romanza “Cielo e mar”, a superb duet for tenor and baritone “Enzo Grimaldo”,[3] the soprano set-piece “Suicidio!”, and the ballet music “The Dance of the Hours”, known even to the non-musical from its use in Walt Disney’s Fantasia in 1940, Allan Sherman’s novelty song, “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh”, and other popular works.
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Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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