Masters in Western Music

I was reading up stuff on some western music composers and I found some really interesting stuff about them ...

Mozart

- Mozart is considered one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time, authoring over 600 works before his premature death at 35.
- He was playing the harpsichord by the age of 4, composing music at 5, and performed his first recital at age 6 for the Empress of Austria.
- Beethoven wrote his own early compositions in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years"
- Mozart excelled at nearly every kind of musical composition. He wrote 22 operas, over 40 symphonies, and composed a great amount of church and chamber music. Much of Mozart's work is still performed and enjoyed today.
- He died in poverty in 1791.

"When I am . . . traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly" -Mozart

Beethoven

- Beethoven's hearing began to deteriorate in the late 1790s, yet he continued to compose, and to conduct and perform, even after becoming completely deaf.
- Beethoven did not immediately set out to establish himself as a composer, but rather devoted himself to study and to piano performance.
- Beethoven used a special rod attached to the soundboard on a piano that he could bite-the vibrations would then transfer from the piano to his jaw to increase his perception of the sound.
- Beethoven's hearing loss did not prevent his composing music, but it made playing at concerts-lucrative sources of income-increasingly difficult. After a failed attempt in 1811 to perform his own Piano Concerto No. 5 (the "Emperor"), he never performed in public again.
- During his middle period, Beethoven said, "I am not satisfied with the work I have done so far. From now on I intend to take a new way".[57] The first major work of this new way was the Third Symphony in E flat, known as the "Eroica".
- Unlike Mozart, who, owing to extreme poverty was buried anonymously in a paupers' communal grave (such being the custom at the time), 20,000 Viennese citizens lined the streets for Beethoven's funeral on 29 March 1827

Just shows what goes behind the making of masters like these ... It's a life of hard work and struggle and an endeavor to get better everyday

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