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Classic ComposersPublished: Tue, 03 Apr 2007 00:47:00 -0400 Most of us know names like “Bach,” “Mozart,” “Vivaldi,” and “Beethoven,” but generally brush them off as unknown entities that we can’t care to know; after all, classical music is boring, as we all know. For this article, I picked out three very different composers: Bach, Ives, and Schumann. I’ll tell you a little bit about their lives and a few pieces of music that you’ll probably enjoy (courtesy of Mrs. Spotts). Hopefully, you’ll go away feeling that classical music can’t be as bad as you previously thought! Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Born in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany, Bach fell squarely into the Baroque period and is what most of us think of when we think “classical.” Bach’s parents died when he was ten years old, so he went to live with his brother. His brother owned just one copy of a book of musical compositions--and Bach wasn’t allowed to touch it. In spite of this rule, Bach ventured into his attic where the book was kept and copied some of it each night. Soon, though, Bach’s brother died and Bach was shipped off to Lüneberg and was a boy soprano in the choir there. He also leaned to play the violin, viola, clavichord (a predecessor of the piano), and, most importantly, the organ. Bach began composing things during this time, and, by age 18, he was strongest in organ music. Bach liked the organ the best, and he almost got fired for walking 200 miles in order to hear Dietrich Buxtehude, the greatest organist of his time. Apparently, this really mattered, since, after he heard Buxtehude, Bach’s music became more sophisticated than it had been previously. As well as having an aptitude for composing, Bach had a temper and often fought with his employers. Once, he was imprisoned by a local prince for threatening to leave his job. Another time, Bach took a so-called “strange maiden” into the organ loft with him while he was playing the organ at a church. When his employer complained, Bach retorted, “That was no lady! That was my cousin.” With that being said, he promptly quit his job and married her. While in Mulhausen, another musician was promoted instead of Bach, who threw such a fuss that the administration fired him. “You can’t fire me; I quit!” Bach announced heatedly. At that, he was thrown into jail for a month. Bach can be summarized nicely in the words of Berlioz: “Bach is Bach, and God is God.” Though it’s extremely hard to go wrong when you’re listening to Bach, these few pieces stand out as particularly good. Charles Ives (1874-1954) Charles Ives began his own insurance agency along with one of his friends, Julian Myrick. Yeah, you read that right--Charles Ives is an insurance agent who also composed really, really strange music. When he was a boy, his dad had him play the piano with each hand in a different key, which sounds odd. Ives, though, rather enjoyed it and set off into the world to compose music that he liked, but that sounded horrendous to other people. Ives went to music school at Yale University, where he promptly began to challenge convention; in fact, he almost failed his nonmusical classes, and he annoyed his music teacher (Horatio Parker) by inserting folk tunes into his exercises. After getting his degree, Ives reverted to his old habits and once more began composing music that everybody hated. This is why he became an insurance agent; he knew that he could never actually live off of the money that his music brought in, because it didn’t bring any in. He made millions in insurance and therefore could compose however he wanted to without having to listen to anybody. Near the end of Ives’ life, his music finally received critical acclaim and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for his Symphony no. 3. Some of the Best: Without a doubt, you won’t enjoy Ives at first, because, as I said several times above, Ives’ music is strange and takes some getting used to.
Schumann was born in Zwichau, Germany, and grew up in a reasonably well-off house with good parents. His father owned a publishing house and a library and loved traditional Romantic novels. (Remember that “Romantic” doesn’t mean “having to do with love”; instead, “Romantic” means that Schumann was obsessed with dying young, tragedies of life, and ideals.) Early in his life, he wrote poems, essays, and a few novels; he liked criticizing music even then. Unendingly practical, Schumann’s parents enrolled him in law school, but he decided that he didn’t like it and took piano lessons from Friedrich Wieck instead. He could have become a great virtuoso, except that he invented a device to stretch his pinky and ring finger farther apart and irreparably damaged his hands. It was because of this that he turned to musical composition. Schumann fell in love with Friedrich Wieck’s daughter, Clara, and Wieck was definitely not pleased with that and forbade them to see each other, appealing to Schumann’s Romantic personality. Even though they couldn’t see each other, Schumann and Clara wrote to each other. Actually, Schumann composed his F Minor Sonata for her, and Clara played it in front of her dad without his knowing what it was for. They eventually married in 1840, which spawned multiple musical compositions including “Fantasiestucke” (“Year of Song”), “Dichterliebe” (“Poet’s Love”), “Frauenliebe und Leben” (Woman’s Life and Love), and the first of his four symphonies. In case you haven’t noticed, Schumann has always been a little bit unhinged in the mental department. He composed beautiful music, but his pieces generally came from highs and lows of emotion. Near the end of his life, this expanded into things like extreme depression, lapses of memory, hearing voices (supposedly demons and angels), and also Schubert and Mendelssohn. He threw himself into the Rhine in 1854 but somebody rescued him, so he lived in a sanatorium for two more years, where he died in 1856. Some of the Best:
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