The Great Composers

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the works of the world's greatest composers and looks at how their music was influenced and shaped by the environment in which they lived. The paper explains how classical music of the west breaks down into a handful of major periods and that each great change in musical tastes can be traced back to corresponding developments in society and civilization. Bach and Handel, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven are just a few of the composers discussed in this paper.

From the Paper:

"Romanticism differed from the earlier periods because of its appeal to raw emotion. This is not to say that the works of Bach and Hayden are devoid of human feeling. Rather, it is a different kind of emotional response that is being elicited. In a sense the compositions of the Romantic Era ask the listener to suspend reason, and to listen only with the heart. The Nineteenth Century was a time of great change in Europe. The early years of the century had seen the Old Order torn to bits, and a new, and much more completely secular order take its place. Governments now commanded loyalty not on the basis of their leaders' closeness to God, but on the extent to which these leaders tended to embody, or represent, the "national spirit." Wagner's Ring could never be fully understood outside the context of a rampant German nationalism. The newly unified German Empire wanted to demonstrate that it had arisen out of a proud and ancient past. The fact that the Ring is based on old Teutonic Legends is indicative of the extent to which Wagner himself had become enmeshed in the supposedly primal lore of his people - it is Wotan and not Jupiter who occupies center stage. The prominence given to non-Classical legend represents a major break with the Europe of the previous four centuries."

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