Inspiring Quotes from Classical Composers

Opulence of colour, sumptuousness of texture, meltingly expressive and exceedingly excellent are but some of the few adjectives that we can use to describe the works of great classical music maestros. An often overlooked area is the exquisite beauty, wisdom and inspiring value of their quotes. Join me, as we sample inspiring quotes that the great composers left unto us:

Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day.

--Franz Liszt

I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well

--Johann Sebastian Bach

                           

Muss es sein? Es Muss sein! Es muss sein! (Must it be? It must be! It must be!)

            -- Ludwig van Beethoven on the finale of his String Quartet in F Major)

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind

            --Johann Brahms

Young people can learn from my example that something can come from nothing. What I have become is the result of my hard efforts

            --Franz Joseph Haydn

Imagination creates reality.

            --Richard Wagner

Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.

            --Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

--Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart   

           

Some people come into our lives, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never the same.

--Franz Schubert

Whatever my passions demand of me, I become for the time being -- musician, poet, director, author, lecturer or anything else.

            -- Wagner, letter to Liszt

As long as I have health and strength, I will gladly work all my days.

--Frederic Chopin

The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.

--Gustav Mahler

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, it is the wine of a new procreation, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and makes them drunk with the spirit.           

-- Ludwig van Beethoven, quoted in Marion M Scott, Beethoven (1934)

Word Painting in Handel’s Messiah: The Historic Painting of His-Story

Scored for orchestra, chorus and soloists the Messiah is undoubtedly the world’s finest oratorio. An oratorio is a music piece that is set from biblical text. The Messiah traces the story of the Christian Messiah by incorporating prophecies, nativity, life and passion of Christ.

Handel’s use of word-painting excites nerves by rending the Messiah the exquisite air of ingenuity, grace, perspicuity, eloquence, and animation. Word painting is the musical depiction of words by mirroring music to convey the literal meaning of the text of a song. For example setting a happy melody in a major key, using low notes to express a sad mood among others. Word painting can be achieved through the use of a minor or major key to express the mode; tempo to express mode or role of a piece of music, or through melodic shape such as melismatic and syllabic word-painting to enhance the emotional impact of words. Melisma is setting a single syllable over many notes while syllabic painting entails one note per syllable.

Handel’s Portrait

There is a rare and exquisite harmony that is balanced in a lively and sober melody. Opening with the tenor aria Comfort ye my people, a first-time listener may take the same phrase to be a Come-for-tea (com-for-t) invite (an offense I was once guilty of when I first performed the tenor aria).

The text Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low; the crooked straight, and the rough places plain. (Isaiah 40:4) is set for a tenor aria

In Handel's melody, the word "valley" ends on a low note, "exalted" is a rising note on an augmented interval; "mountain" depicts a sharp rise and high leap, while "low" is another low note. "Crooked" is set to four notes of uneven quality, while "straight" is sung on a single note; "the rough places" is sung over short, separate notes whereas "plain" carries over several measures in a series of long notes. See excerpt of the score below:

In the Hallelujah chorus, low notes symbolize the world while the kingdom of the Lord is sung on high notes (And oooh the soprano parts were not written for female voices, they were set for male soprano and castrati. True that unbroken male voices are the best soprano quality, just listen to that 10-year old boy squeal…) The hallelujah section has a joyful timbre characterized by sweet arpeggios and implied chromaticism on a major scale making it the most popular movement of Handel’s Messiah.  

The happy madrigal For unto us a Child is born chorus is my favorite movement of the Messiah as well as Christmas Carol. Set on the word wonderful, the upward swing and swift climb of the violin in thirds is bright and jubilant illustrating more than words could that the child was a wonderful counselor. The four parts seldom appear in unison painting a charm and graceful air. Each part sings a delicate melody that is stimulating to all musical palates. Until Christmas...

In All We Like Sheep the movement begins in unison with all voices singing "All we like sheep." However on the word astray the 4 voices disintegrate and wander away from each other almost aimlessly in running notes. The melody literally goes astray by hipping and hopping through an unlogical melodic progression. By using counterpoint, dissonant chord progression, and unresolved cadential points Handel achieves a tension that serves to make the voices more independent.

Glory to God in the highest is contrasted with peace on earth. Glory is scored for the sopranos, altos, and tenors and reaches high notes that are light in timbre and lively. Peace on Earth is sung low in pitch and by the men.

In the movement of ‘And with His stripes’ Handel uses a staggered entrance of Renaissance counterpoint to have each of the chorus' sections state this text prominently. This creates the dual impression of lash after lash on the back of Christ and his falling down with the cross during the Passion. To depict the pain from the whips, Handel composes a dissonant jump from a high note to a low one. The forbidden notes are also used in the chordal progression to reinforce pain.

The final movement (Worthy is the Lamb) sums up the message of the Messiah. The Messiah musically narrates the story of Jesus: his birth, death, and resurrection. Worthy is the Lamb concludes that Jesus is the Messiah (he is the "lamb" that is "worthy"). The text adapted from Revelation 5:12-14, is set in heaven around the "throne", with (ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands) all angels singing:

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain

And hath redeemed us to God by his blood,

To receive power, and riches, and wisdom,

and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing…..

The part above mimics all angels and creatures respectively thus the singing and instrument orchestration is intense and loud.

The voices are too excited to sing in unison. There is excellent syncopation and ingenious cadences to show a leap of eras and transport the listener to a different age and new location. The final amens are set on different melodies for the different voices. This depicts the image of what it will be like in heaven hearing the multitudes sing amen in different and distinct voices. The word-painting of amen (let it be so) also expresses agreement with the whole text and underlying message of the Messiah.

The Messiah (Jesus Christ) is the reference point of historical epochs having split History into AD and BC. Surely History is His-Story. And no musician understood this better than Handel. What Einstein did with relativity, Handel achieved more with word painting.

The 3 B's of Music: Bach, Beethoven & Britten

THE 3 B’S OF MUSIC

Today we shall look at the 3 B's of music. They are J S Bach, Beethoven and Britten; though some will argue that Brahms is the third B. 

Heralded as “the immortal god of harmony,” “the beginning and end of all music,” and “a benevolent god to which all musicians should offer a prayer to defend themselves against mediocrity” Johann Sebastian Bach known as JS Bach (1685-1750) was a German Composer of the Baroque period. He was a contemporary of GF Handel. He is one of the few music greats whose music was written in mathematics. He is rumoured to have met intellects like John Milton (English poet who wrote Paradise Lost), and the great Italian scientist Galileo Galilei with whom he revered Mathematics as the Music of the Spheres.

Bach’s signature

He is famously known for his church music. His foray into secular works led him to compose the concerti grossi which made him to be considered as the father of ‘keyboard concertos’. Famous works include The Art of Fugue which is an intellectually staggering show of virtuoso and a landmark of baroque instrumental works; the Toccata  and Fugue in D Minor boasts of ornamentation and instrumental colour which serves to cement one’s love affair with Bach’s genius; Cantata No 8 is his most imaginative sacred cantata

All Bach’s works are symptomatic of dedicated genius that was not a victim of itself. His sons were his students and they inherited his musical genius though to a lesser extent. He was also a dedicated organ and composer teacher to his second wife Ann Bach.

Ludwig Van Beethoven was a child prodigy who excelled in pianism more than in other instruments. All his works bear a seal of distinction. His piano concertos bear a trademark signature of electrifying and arresting opening tuttis. The Piano Concerto No 5 in E Flat Major (Emperor) was written by a deaf 39 year old Beethoven. The emperor  was his final concerto, and has been hailed as his final heroic gift to mankind.

His symphonies exhibit a battle between struggle (disturbance) and triumph (exhilaration) what has since become the Teutonic tradition of ‘Beethovian’ interpretation. The translation from scherzo to finale in the 1st movement of the 5th Symphony(No 5 in C Minor) attests to this. His choral symphony embodies the spirit of the Romantic Period of music. Celebrating spirituality, Beethoven preaches and sanctifies optimism as the highest virtue that ennobles man and makes his existence possible. Interspersed with glorious adagios and scherzos, Symphony No 9 is most famous with its ‘Ode to Joy’. Other Beethoven greats include Archduke; Serenade in D Major; Spring Sonata; Kreutzer Sonata; No 5 in D Major on Rule Brittannia.

Beethoven’s Mass in D Major (Missa Solemnis) is a supreme masterpiece whose performance has always been disastrous. The dismal performance is attributable to the strain on the quality of solo and chorus renditions been unable to match Beethoven’s genius as expressed in the fugues of the Gloria and Credo.

The genius of Beethoven is always challenged by the ingenious Austrian Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Born in England, Benjamin Britten, later knighted as Lord Britten of Aldeburgh was a music child prodigy born in the 20th Century period of Classical music. He immortalized himself with the Aldeburgh festival that he started in his home area. He is the finest opera writer England ever produced. Most of his solo works were written for his great friend and the tenor Peter Pears.

His great symphonies are the Cello Symphony and the Sinfonia da Requiem. Employing sonata form, the Sinfonia is majestic, bold and one of the most powerful orchestral works. Discarding the traditional formula of a concerto as a struggle between solo and orchestra, the pacifist Britten took a fresh approach and wrote a cello symphony that was a conversation between the two.

The lesser known Cantata misericordium was commissioned in 1962 by the Red Cross Society.It was scored for tenor and baritone soloists, chorus, string quartet and orchestra as a universal appeal for charity. The Cantata misericordium falls short of an oratorio and was adopted from the Good Samaritan parable. Another Ben’s opus is The Young person’s Guide to the Orchestra. It is adapted from a theme by Purcell (famous for his Dido and Aeneas) to demonstrate to children the instruments of the orchestra. The lofty work has a pleasant, light and expressive air due to the variant timbre and colour scheme of the full range orchestral instruments.

Other famous works by Britten include A ceremony of Carols; the Spring Symphony; Cantata Academica; Peter Grimes; The Rape of Lucretia among other operas and scores developed for films and theatre.