Concerto RV461 in A minor for Oboe and Strings Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741) Antonio Vivaldi was an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist and impresario of Baroque music. Along with Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, Vivaldi ranks amongst the greatest Baroque composers and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe, giving origin to many imitators and admirers. He pioneered many developments in orchestration, violin technique and programmatic music. He consolidated the emerging concerto form into a widely accepted and followed idiom. Vivaldi composed many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other musical instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than fifty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons. Many of his compositions were written for the all-female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for abandoned children. Vivaldi began studying for the priesthood at the age of 15 and was ordained at 25, but was given dispensation to no longer say public Masses due to a health problem. Vivaldi also had some success with expensive stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua and Vienna. After meeting the Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, hoping for royal support. However, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldi's arrival, and Vivaldi himself died in poverty less than a year later. After almost two centuries of decline, Vivaldi's musical reputation underwent a revival in the early 20th century, with much scholarly research devoted to his work. Many of Vivaldi's compositions, once thought lost, have been rediscovered - some as recently as 2015. His music remains widely popular in the present day and is regularly played all over the world Wikipedia Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E minor, Op. 64 Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847) Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, MWV O 14, is his last concerto. Well received at its premiere, it has remained among the most prominent and highly-regarded violin concertos. It holds a central place in the violin repertoire and has developed a reputation as an essential concerto for all aspiring concert violinists to master, and usually one of the first Romantic era concertos they learn. A typical performance lasts just under half an hour. Mendelssohn originally proposed the idea of the violin concerto to Ferdinand David, a close friend and then concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Although conceived in 1838, the work took another six years to complete and was not premiered until 1845. During this time, Mendelssohn maintained a regular correspondence with David, who gave him many suggestions. The work itself was one of the foremost violin concertos of the Romantic era and was influential on many other composers. Although the concerto consists of three movements in a standard fast-slow-fast structure and each movement follows a traditional form, it was innovative and included many novel features for its time. Distinctive aspects include the almost immediate entrance of the violin at the beginning of the work (rather than following an orchestral preview of the first movement's major themes, as was typical in Classical-era concertos) and the through-composed form of the concerto as a whole, in which the three movements are melodically and harmonically connected and played attacca (each movement immediately following the previous one without any pauses). Many violinists have recorded the concerto and it is performed in concerts and classical music competitions. It was recorded by Nathan Milstein and the New York Philharmonic as an album and released as the first LP record upon the format's introduction in 1948. Wikipedia Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36 Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770 - 1872) Beethoven began writing his Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36, during one of the most productive and paradoxically most depressed periods of his life. As a 30-year-old man at the end of 1800, Beethoven was receiving a sizable income of 600 florins from Prince Lichnowsky, his music was being received with great notoriety locally and abroad, and incoming commissions for new works were more than he could accommodate. In 1801, when Beethoven composed the majority of the Second Symphony, he "saw the richest publishing harvest of his career so far, both in quantity and musical scope" (Solomon 1998, 145). It was during this time he wrote the famous "Moonlight" Piano Sonata Op. 27, and his ballet score The Creatures of Prometheus, Op.43 was a resounding success, with 23 performances from 1801-02. Beethoven's autobiographical accounts from 1801-1802 shed light on the volatile nature and optimism prevalent throughout his Second Symphony. On June 29 and July 1, 1801, Beethoven wrote two letters to his close friends Franz Gerhard Wegeler and Karl Amenda, respectively. In them, he describes his gradual deafness for the very first time and laments at its hindrance in his social life. (See "Beethoven's Words" essay below.) By this point, his loss of hearing had been a secret kept to himself for several years, although exactly when it started is unknown. Beethoven wrote to Wegeler again on November 16, 1801 about the continued decline of his hearing but overall improvement otherwise: "My poor hearing haunted me everywhere like a ghost; and I avoided - all human society." In an uplifting spirit, he expresses his ambitions and declares, "For some time now my physical strength has been increasing more and more, and therefore my mental powers also-I will seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not crush me completely." Europe, too, was standing on the precipice of war with France and Napoleon Bonaparte. The immensely popular general had previously defeated both Italian and Austrian armies, annexed a large portion of Germany, taken control of Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt, and in 1799 had successfully staged a "coup d'etat" becoming the First Consul of France. By the time Beethoven finished the Second Symphony in 1802, the influence and fear of Napoleon loomed over all of Europe. Beethoven was aware of current world affairs and was even influenced by Bonaparte's revolutionary ideas as well as French march music. Some of those influences can already be seen in his Second Symphony, "including the use of massive orchestral forces, a quality of grandeur and potency, and even some occasional references to military rhythms and instruments" (Lockwood, Beethoven's Symphonies, 44). Despite the rapid deterioration of his hearing and increasing feeling of isolation from society, and the threats posed by the politics surrounding the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte, Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 generates and maintains a cheerful enthusiasm, demonstrating the composer's strength and resolve to seize the day despite the many negative obstacles. Even Hector Berlioz commented in 1862 that "everything in this symphony smiles." While Beethoven's internal struggles can be heard through the music's stark contrasts, brief moments of darkness and chromaticism, and unpredictable behavior, no one could have anticipated the severity of his anguish and desperation that was expressed in the Heiligenstadt Testament of October, 1802. Although often overshadowed by both the First and Third Symphonies, Symphony No. 2 is universally characterized as an expressively positive composition. The bold, inspired, and adventurous spirit of this work foreshadows Beethoven's heroic style and new symphonic vision that would take full flight in the monumental Eroica Symphony soon to follow. Lewis Lockwood notes that "without the innovations of the Second Symphony the Eroica might not have been possible." (Lockwood, Beethoven's Symphonies, 37-38) Beethoven relied largely on the juxtaposition of extremes and surprises-the tools of the sublime aesthetic-to create the bold optimism of this work, and to prop open the door to the 19th century dramatic language of the symphony. Throughout the work extremes of dynamics, sudden and powerful silences, new orchestral colors, harmonic surprises and modal shifts, and clever contrasting of sonata- and symphonic-style materials, all challenge but in the end push to the fore a cheerfulness and exuberance that would challenge any of his later works, until perhaps the finale of the Ninth Symphony (also in D major). Eastman School of Music