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I can play the first part. :) If I can find the second part, I’ll work on that too. :)
The Minuet in G major is a keyboard piece included in the 1725 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach. Until 1970 it was attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV Anh 114), but it is now universally attributed to Christian Petzold.[1][2][3] It is a 32-measure piece primarily in the key of G major, but measures 20-23 are in D major.
“The String Quartet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1 begins one of the greatest cycles of music in the entire Western Classical canon, the sixteen quartets of Beethoven spanning the whole of his creative life. Composed between 1798 and 1800, the six Op. 18 quartets show an astonishing mastery of the language of Haydn and Mozart, a language that Beethoven used nonetheless to express his own emerging personality and to demonstrate his own relentless innovative creativity. These are “classical” works in the truest sense: Beethoven’s closest “imitation” of Haydn and Mozart before he would revolutionize the genre with his next set, Op. 59. Naturally considered to be from Beethoven’s “early” period, the Op. 18 quartets reveal, in all their variety and complexity, all the elements of Beethoven’s middle and late styles albeit clear perhaps only in retrospect. Actually the second quartet that he composed, the F Major was placed first within the published Op. 18 set by Beethoven. For its energy, drama and craftsmanship, it is a perfect opening move, a showcase for this new young maverick to break ground in a daunting and already mature tradition.
The opening Allegro con brio demonstrates one of the chief characteristics of the Viennese style: the motive or motif. The music begins with a fleet, six-note figure. Not so evolved as a melody or a theme, it is a small musical fragment clearly recognized by its rhythmic and melodic profile. In this sense, a “motif” is a musical cell that tiles the majority of the music like the minute, repetitive textural patterns in wallpaper or skin. It is nearly omnipresent though it shifts and changes throughout the music. The artful use of short motifs to create drama and variation while sustaining a specific unique signature with the music was a central design principle for Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (and Bach). The motif weaves a fabric that is draped over the sonata form, a plan for harmonic and sectional drama, a narrative journey of highly articulated musical development. Beethoven’s first sonata for string quartet features an intense development bristling with contrapuntal juxtapositions of the motif through a jarring series of chord and key changes. The conclusion finds Beethoven in one of his earliest great “afterthoughts”, the coda following the recapitulation, wherein he would further explore and conclusively exhaust the momentum of his giant musical thoughts with magnificent endings like brilliant bows tied around brilliant packages. This first movement also highlights that Beethoven inherited the string quartet with a fully mature and independent cello part, a feat slowly established in the quartets of Haydn and Mozart and cemented in the early chamber works of Beethoven, especially the string trios and the very first classical cello sonatas on record.
Beethoven concludes his “first” quartet with another motif-driven movement, a dazzling little flourish that recalls both Mozart and Bach. While the motif plays a central role, this music is rich with a variety of musical ideas, an abundant cornucopia that is almost obscene, especially when compared with the obsessive monothematicism of the first movement. Here again the influence is most definitely Mozart. Essential to the classical Viennese style is the rich infusion of counterpoint rescued, as it were, from the high Baroque and married with the fad for gallant, dramatic expressiveness that had temporarily abandoned such writing as old-fashioned pedantry. Haydn, Mozart and quintessentially Beethoven all invested their chamber music with a dazzling array of contrapuntal techniques and processes that so perfectly matched the independent part-writing possibilities of this “new” string quartet ensemble. Here, Beethoven deploys the frothy flourish motif in two sections of fugato, little swatches of fugue that invest the musical development with a special kind of intensification through obsession. This was the first extended example of this kind of learned counterpoint in Beethoven’s quartets, and it was merely the beginning. Throughout the ensuing series of sixteen quartets, Beethoven would repeatedly drive the concept of fugue to such extended lengths that his purview of radical innovation would even extend backwards to this technique—a technique considered archaic even before the death of Bach. Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn would all freely and organically intermix this kind of linear part-writing with the vertical chords and “accompanied” melody of the gallant in a fresh, complex amalgam that was yet another hallmark of Viennese classicism. Here was a very specific and highly cultivated musical genre pioneered by Haydn, invested with divine perfection by Mozart and, eventually, revolutionized by the giant force of Beethoven to contain all the power, intellect, beauty, violence, personal passion and transcendent profundity that any music could ever hold.”
[Source]
Gaspar Sanz’s birth date is unknown but he was baptized as Francisco Bartolome Sanz y Celma in the church of Calanda de Ebro, Aragon on 4 April 1640 later adopting the first name “Gaspar”.
After gaining his Bachelor of Theology at the University of Salamanca,[1] Gaspar Sanz travelled to Naples, Rome and perhaps Venice to further his music education. He is thought to have studied under Orazio Benevoli, choirmaster at the Vatican and Cristofaro Caresana, organist at the Royal Chapel of Naples. He spent some years as the organist of the Spanish Viceroy at Naples.
Sanz learned to play guitar while studying under Lelio Colista and was influenced by music of the Italian guitarists Foscarini, Granata, and Corbetta. When Sanz returned to Spain he was appointed instructor of guitar to Don Juan (John of Austria), the illegitimate son of King Philip IV and Maria Calderon, a noted actress of the day.
John of Austria as he appears on the dedication page of Instrucción de música sobre la Guitarra Española
In 1674 he wrote his now famous Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española,[2] published in Saragossa and dedicated to Don Juan.[3] A second book entitled Libro Segundo de cifras sobre la guitarra española was printed in Saragossa in 1675. A third book, Libro tercero de mùsica de cifras sobre la guitarra española, was added to the first and second books, and all three were published together under the title of the first book in 1697, eventually being published in eight editions. The ninety works in this masterpiece are his only known contribution to the repertory of the guitar[4] and include compositions in both punteado (“plucked”) style and rasqueado (“strummed”) style.
In addition to his musical skills, Gaspar Sanz was noted in his day for his literary works as a poet and writer, and was the author of some poems and two books now largely forgotten.
He died in Madrid in 1710.
Influence
His compositions provide some of the most important examples of popular Spanish baroque music for the guitar and now form part of classical guitar pedagogy. Sanz’s manuscripts are written as tablature for the baroque guitar and have been transcribed into modern notation by numerous guitarists and editors; Emilio Pujol‘s edition of Sanz’s Canarios being a notable example. He has influenced some twentieth-century composers.
The symphony is in four movements, with the third movement and the finale played attacca:
- Allegretto – Poco allegro – Tranquillo, ma poco a poco ravvivando il tempo all’allegro – Poco largamente – Tempo I – Poco allegro
- Tempo andante, ma rubato – Poco allegro – Molto largamente – Andante sostenuto – Andante con moto ed energico – Allegro – Poco largamente – Molto largamente – Andante sostenuto – Andante con moto ed energico – Andante – Pesante
- Vivacissimo – Lento e soave – Tempo primo – Lento e soave – (attacca)
- Finale: Allegro moderato – Moderato assai – Meno moderato e poco a poco ravvivando il tempo – Tempo I – Largamente e pesante – Poco largamente – Molto largamente
The duration is approximately 45 minutes.
In Finland, this popular work with its grandiose finale was connected by some with the struggle for Finland’s independence, even being popularly dubbed the “Symphony of Independence”, as it was written at a time of Russian sanctions on Finnish language and culture. Sibelius’s reaction to this has been widely debated; some claim that he had not intended any patriotic message and that the symphony was only identified by others as a nationalist composition, while others believe that he wrote the piece with an independent Finland in mind.
Tying in with Sibelius’ philosophy on the art of the symphony (he wrote that he “admired [the symphony’s] severity of style and the profound logic that created an inner connection between all the motifs…”), the work grows almost organically out of a rising three-note motif heard at the opening of the work, which, after appearing in many guises throughout the entire symphony (and indeed forming the basis for most of the material) forms the dramatic theme of the finale. Interestingly this first theme is to be heard in a very similar passage in Rubinstein’s symphony nr. 4 from 1874. This prominent motif has the same melody, rhythm, and orchestration and is repeated in different permutations throughout Rubinstein’s symphony.
Opus 70 is a set of two Piano Trios by Ludwig van Beethoven, written for piano, violin, and cello. Both trios were composed during Beethoven’s stay at Countess Marie von Erdödy’s estate, and both are dedicated to her for her hospitality. They were published in 1809.
The first, in D major, known as the Ghost, is one of his best known works in the genre (rivaled only by the Archduke Trio). The D major trio features themes found in the second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2. The All-Music Guide states that “because of its strangely scored and undeniably eerie-sounding slow movement, it was dubbed the ‘Ghost’ Trio. The name has stuck with the work ever since. The ghostly music may have had its roots in sketches for a Macbeth opera that Beethoven was contemplating at the time.”[1]
These pieces are representative of Beethoven’s “Middle” stylistic period, which went from roughly 1803 to 1812, and which included many of his most famous works. Beethoven wrote the two piano trios while spending the summer of 1808 in Heiligenstadt, Vienna,[2] where he had completed his Symphony No. 5 the previous summer. He wrote the two trios immediately after finishing his Sinfonia pastorale, Symphony No. 6. This was a period of uncertainty in Beethoven’s life, in particular because he had no dependable source of income at the time.
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