German composers: James Last, Johann Sebastian Bach and others. Germany - the birthplace of great composers Brilliant German composer of the 19th century

No country in the world has given humanity as many great composers as Germany. Traditional ideas about the Germans as the most rational and pedantic people are collapsing from such a wealth of musical talents (however, poetic ones too). German composers Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Arf, Wagner - this is not a complete list of talented musicians who created an incredible number of musical masterpieces of various genres and directions.

The German composers Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Georg Handel, both born in 1685, laid the foundations of classical music and brought Germany to the forefront of the musical world, where the Italians had previously dominated. The ingenious, not fully understood and recognized by contemporaries, laid the powerful foundation on which all the music of classicism later grew.

The great J. Haydn, W. A. ​​Mozart and L. Beethoven are the brightest representatives of the Viennese classical school - a direction in music that developed in the late 18th - early 19th centuries. The very name of the "Viennese classics" implies the participation of Austrian composers, such as Haydn and Mozart. A little later, Ludwig van Beethoven, a German composer, joined them (the history of these neighboring states is inextricably linked with each other).

The great German, who died in poverty and loneliness, gained centuries-old glory for himself and his country. German romantic composers (Schumann, Schubert, Brahms and others), as well as modern German composers such as Paul Hindemith, having gone far from classicism in their work, nevertheless recognize Beethoven's enormous influence on the work of any of them.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Beethoven was born in Bonn in 1770 to a poor and drinking musician. Despite the addiction, the father was able to discern the talent of his eldest son and began to teach him music himself. He dreamed of making a second Mozart out of Ludwig (Mozart's father successfully demonstrated his "miracle child" to the public from the age of 6). Despite the cruel treatment of his father, who forced his son to study all day, Beethoven passionately fell in love with music, by the age of nine he even “outgrew” him in performing, and at eleven he became an assistant to the court organist.

At the age of 22, Beethoven left Bonn and went to Vienna, where he took lessons from Maestro Haydn himself. In the Austrian capital, which at that time was the recognized center of world musical life, Beethoven quickly gained fame as a virtuoso pianist. But the composer's works, filled with stormy emotions and drama, were not always appreciated by the Viennese public. Beethoven, as a person, was not too "comfortable" for others - he could be either sharp and rude, or unbridled cheerful, or gloomy and gloomy. These qualities did not contribute to Beethoven's success in society; he was considered a talented eccentric.

The tragedy of Beethoven's life is deafness. The disease made his life even more withdrawn and lonely. It was painful for the composer to create his brilliant creations and never hear them performed. Deafness did not break the strong spirit of the master, he continued to create. Already completely deaf, Beethoven himself conducted his brilliant 9th symphony with the famous "Ode to Joy" to the words of Schiller. The power and optimism of this music, especially given the tragic circumstances of the composer's life, still amaze the imagination.

Since 1985, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" arranged by Herbert von Karajan has been recognized as the official anthem of the European Union. he wrote about this music in this way: “The whole of humanity stretches out its arms to the sky ... rushes towards joy and presses it to its chest” .

Richard Wagner had a significant impact on the development of not only the music of the European tradition, but also the world artistic culture as a whole. Wagner did not receive a systematic musical education, and in his development as a master of music he is decisively obliged to himself. Comparatively early, the composer's interests, wholly focused on the genre of opera, became apparent.

Much more than all the European composers of the 19th century, Wagner saw his art as a synthesis and as a way of expressing a certain philosophical concept. Its essence is put into the form of an aphorism in the following passage from Wagner's article "Artwork of the Future": reasons to be ashamed of the connection with life. From this concept stem two fundamental ideas: art must be created by a community of people and belong to this community; the highest form of art is musical drama, understood as an organic unity of word and sound. The embodiment of the first idea was Bayreuth, where the opera house for the first time began to be interpreted as a temple of art, and not as an entertainment institution; the embodiment of the second idea is the new operatic form "musical drama" created by Wagner. It was its creation that became the goal of Wagner's creative life. Some of its elements were embodied in the composer's early operas of the 1840s - The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin.

The theory of musical drama was most fully embodied in Wagner's Swiss articles ("Opera and Drama", "Art and Revolution", "Music and Drama", "Artwork of the Future"), and in practice - in his later operas: "Tristan and Isolde ", the tetralogy "Ring of the Nibelung" and the mystery "Parsifal". According to Wagner, a musical drama is a work in which the romantic idea of ​​the synthesis of the arts (music and drama) is realized, an expression of programmaticity in opera. To implement this plan, Wagner abandoned the traditions of opera forms that existed at that time - primarily Italian and French. He criticized the first for excesses, the second for pomp. With furious criticism, he attacked the works of the leading representatives of classical opera (Rossini, Meyerbeer, Verdi, Aubert), calling their music "candied boredom." Trying to bring the opera closer to life, he came up with the idea of ​​a through dramatic development - from beginning to end, not only of one act, but of the entire work and even a cycle of works (all four operas of the Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle).

In the classical opera by Verdi and Rossini, separate numbers (arias, duets, ensembles with choirs) divide a single musical movement into fragments. Wagner completely abandoned them in favor of large end-to-end vocal and symphonic scenes flowing one into another, and replaced arias and duets with dramatic monologues and dialogues. Wagner replaced overtures with preludes - short musical introductions to each act, on a semantic level, inextricably linked with the action. Moreover, starting with the opera Lohengrin, these preludes were performed not before the opening of the curtain, but already with the stage open. External action in the late Wagner operas (especially in Tristan and Isolde) is reduced to a minimum, it is transferred to the psychological side, to the realm of the characters' feelings. Wagner believed that the word is not capable of expressing the full depth and meaning of inner experiences, therefore, it is the orchestra, and not the vocal part, that plays the leading role in the musical drama. The latter is entirely subordinated to orchestration and is considered by Wagner as one of the instruments of a symphony orchestra. At the same time, the vocal part in a musical drama is the equivalent of a theatrical dramatic speech. There is almost no song, arioznost in it. In connection with the specifics of vocals in Wagner's opera music (exceptional length, mandatory requirement for dramatic skill, merciless exploitation of the limiting registers of the tessitura of the voice), new stereotypes of singing voices were established in solo performance practice - the Wagner tenor, the Wagner soprano.

Wagner attached exceptional importance to orchestration and, more broadly, to symphonism. Wagner's orchestra is compared to an ancient choir that commented on what was happening and conveyed a "hidden" meaning. Reforming the orchestra, the composer created a quartet of tubas, introduced a bass tuba, a contrabass trombone, expanded the string group, and used six harps. In the entire history of opera before Wagner, no composer used an orchestra of this magnitude (for example, Der Ring des Nibelungen is performed by a quadruple orchestra with eight horns). Wagner's innovation in the field of harmony is also generally recognized. The tonality inherited by him from the Viennese classics and early romantics, he greatly expanded by intensifying chromatism and modal alterations. Having weakened (straightforward for the classics) the uniqueness of the connections between the center (tonic) and the periphery, deliberately avoiding the direct resolution of dissonance into consonance, he gave tension, dynamism and continuity to the modulation development. The hallmark of Wagnerian harmony is the Tristan Chord (from the prelude to the opera Tristan und Isolde) and the leitmotif of fate from Der Ring des Nibelungen. Wagner introduced a developed system of leitmotifs. Each such leitmotif (short musical characteristic) is a designation of something: a specific character or living being (for example, the leitmotif of the Rhine in the Rhine Gold), objects that often act as character characters (the ring, sword and gold in the Ring , a love potion in Tristan and Isolde), scenes of action (the leitmotifs of the Grail in Lohengrin and Valhalla in the Rhine Gold) and even an abstract idea (numerous leitmotifs of fate and fate in the Ring of the Nibelung cycle, languor, a loving look in Tristan and Isolde).

The Wagnerian system of leitmotifs was most fully developed in The Ring - accumulating from opera to opera, intertwining with each other, each time receiving new development options, all the leitmotifs of this cycle as a result combine and interact in the complex musical texture of the final opera The Death of the Gods. Understanding music as the personification of continuous movement, the development of feelings led Wagner to the idea of ​​​​merging these leitmotifs into a single stream of symphonic development, into an “endless melody” (unendliche Melodie). The absence of a tonic support (throughout the entire opera Tristan und Isolde), the incompleteness of each theme (throughout the entire Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle, with the exception of the climactic funeral march in the opera The Death of the Gods) contribute to a continuous build-up of emotions that does not receive resolution, which allows keep the listener in constant tension (as in the preludes to the operas Tristan and Isolde and Lohengrin). A. F. Losev defines the philosophical and aesthetic basis of Wagner's work as “mystical symbolism”.

The key to understanding the ontological concept of Wagner are the tetralogy "Ring of the Nibelungen" and the opera "Tristan and Isolde". Firstly, Wagner's dream of musical universalism was fully embodied in The Ring. “In The Ring, this theory was embodied through the use of leitmotifs, when every idea and every poetic image is immediately specifically organized with the help of a musical motif,” writes Losev. In addition, the "Ring" fully reflected the passion for the ideas of Schopenhauer. However, it must be remembered that acquaintance with them happened when the text of the tetralogy was ready and work began on the music. Like Schopenhauer, Wagner feels the unfavorable and even senseless basis of the universe. The only meaning of existence is thought to be to renounce this universal will and, plunging into the abyss of pure intellect and inaction, to find true aesthetic pleasure in music. However, Wagner, unlike Schopenhauer, considers it possible and even predetermined a world in which people will no longer live in the name of the constant pursuit of gold, which in Wagnerian mythology symbolizes the will of the world. Nothing is known for sure about this world, but there is no doubt about its coming after the global catastrophe. The theme of the global catastrophe is very important for the ontology of the "Ring" and, apparently, is a new rethinking of the revolution, which is no longer understood as a change in the social order, but as a cosmological action that changes the very essence of the universe.

As for Tristan and Isolde, the ideas embodied in it were significantly influenced by a short passion for Buddhism and at the same time a dramatic love story for Matilda Wesendonck. This is where Wagner's long-sought merging of divided human nature takes place. This connection occurs with the departure of Tristan and Isolde into oblivion. Thought of as a completely Buddhist fusion with the eternal and imperishable world, it resolves, according to Losev, the contradiction between subject and object, on which European culture is based. The most important is the theme of love and death, which for Wagner are inextricably linked. Love is inherent in a person, completely subordinating him to himself, just as death is the inevitable end of his life. It is in this sense that Wagner's love potion should be understood. “Freedom, bliss, pleasure, death and fatalistic predetermination - this is what a love drink is, so brilliantly depicted by Wagner,” writes Losev. Wagner's operatic reform had a significant impact on European and Russian music, marking the highest stage of musical romanticism and at the same time laying the foundations for future modernist movements. Direct or indirect assimilation of Wagnerian operatic aesthetics (especially innovative "through" musical dramaturgy) marked a significant part of subsequent operatic works. The use of the leitmotif system in operas after Wagner became trivial and universal. No less significant was the influence of Wagner's innovative musical language, especially his harmony, in which the composer revised the "old" (previously considered unshakable) canons of tonality.

Among Russian musicians, Wagner's friend A. N. Serov was an expert and propagandist. N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, who publicly criticized Wagner, nevertheless experienced (especially in his later work) the influence of Wagner in harmony, orchestral writing, and musical dramaturgy. Valuable articles about Wagner were left by the great Russian music critic G. A. Larosh. In general, the “Wagnerian” is felt more directly in the works of the “pro-Western” composers of Russia in the 19th century (for example, in A. G. Rubinshtein) than in the representatives of the national school. The influence of Wagner (musical and aesthetic) is noted in Russia in the first decades of the 20th century, in the works of A. N. Scriabin. In the west, the center of the Wagner cult became the so-called Weimar school (self-name - the New German School), which developed around F. Liszt in Weimar. Its representatives (P. Cornelius, G. von Bulow, I. Raff, and others) supported Wagner, above all, in his desire to expand the scope of musical expression (harmony, orchestral writing, operatic dramaturgy).

Among Western composers who have been influenced by Wagner are Anton Bruckner, Hugo Wolf, Claude Debussy, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Bela Bartok, Karol Szymanowski, Arnold Schoenberg (early work). The reaction to the cult of Wagner was the “anti-Wagner” trend, which opposed itself to him, the largest representatives of which were the composer Johannes Brahms and the musical aesthetic E. Hanslick, who defended the immanence and self-sufficiency of music, its unconnectedness with external, extra-musical “irritants”

In Russia, anti-Wagnerian sentiments are characteristic of the national wing of composers, primarily M. P. Mussorgsky and A. P. Borodin. The attitude towards Wagner among non-musicians (who evaluated not so much Wagner's music as his contradictory statements and his "aestheticizing" publications) is ambiguous. For example, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in his article "Casus Wagner":

Was Wagner a musician at all? In any case, he was more than something else ... His place is in some other area, and not in the history of music: he should not be confused with its great true representatives. Wagner and Beethoven are blasphemy…” According to Thomas Mann, Wagner “saw in art a sacred occult action, a panacea against all the sores of society…”.

The musical creations of Wagner in the XX-XXI centuries continue to live on the most prestigious opera stages, not only in Germany, but throughout the world (with the exception of Israel).Wagner wrote Der Ring des Nibelungen with little hope that a theater would be found that could stage the whole epic and convey its ideas to the listener. However, contemporaries were able to appreciate its spiritual necessity, and the epic found its way to the viewer. The role of the "Ring" in the formation of the German national spirit cannot be overestimated. In the middle of the 19th century, when Ring of the Nibelung was written, the nation remained divided; the Germans remembered the humiliation of the Napoleonic campaigns and the Vienna treaties; recently a revolution thundered that shook the thrones of the appanage kings - when Wagner left the world, Germany was already united, became an empire, the bearer and center of all German culture. The "Ring of the Nibelung" and the work of Wagner as a whole, although not the only one, was for the German people and for the German idea that mobilizing impetus that forced politicians, the intelligentsia, the military and the whole society to unite.

In 1864, having won the favor of the Bavarian king Ludwig II, who paid his debts and supported him further, he moved to Munich, where he wrote the comic opera Die Meistersinger Nuremberg and the last two parts of the Nibelungen Ring: Siegfried and The Death of the Gods. In 1872, the laying of the foundation stone for the House of Festivals took place in Bayreuth, which opened in 1876. Where the premiere of the tetralogy Ring of the Nibelungen took place on August 13-17, 1876. In 1882, the mystery opera Parsifal was staged in Bayreuth. In the same year, Wagner left for Venice for health reasons, where he died in 1883 of a heart attack. Wagner is buried in Bayreuth.

World's Greatest Composers of All Time: Chronological and Alphabetical Listings, References and Works

100 Great Composers of the World

List of composers in chronological order

1. Josquin Despres (1450-1521)
2. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)
3. Claudio Monteverdi (1567 -1643)
4. Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672)
5. Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)
6. Henry Purcell (1658-1695)
7. Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713)
8. Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)
9. Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)
10. Georg Handel (1685-1759)
11. Domenico Scarlatti (1685 -1757)
12. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
13. Christoph Willibald Gluck (1713-1787)
14. Joseph Haydn (1732 -1809)
15. Antonio Salieri (1750-1825)
16. Dmitry Stepanovich Bortnyansky (1751-1825)
17. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 –1791)
18. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 -1826)
19. Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778 -1837)
20. Nicollo Paganini (1782-1840)
21. Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791 -1864)
22. Carl Maria von Weber (1786 -1826)
23. Gioacchino Rossini (1792 -1868)
24. Franz Schubert (1797 -1828)
25. Gaetano Donizetti (1797 -1848)
26. Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835)
27. Hector Berlioz (1803 -1869)
28. Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804 -1857)
29. Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809 -1847)
30. Fryderyk Chopin (1810 -1849)
31. Robert Schumann (1810 -1856)
32. Alexander Sergeevich Dargomyzhsky (1813 -1869)
33. Franz Liszt (1811 -1886)
34. Richard Wagner (1813 -1883)
35. Giuseppe Verdi (1813 -1901)
36. Charles Gounod (1818 -1893)
37. Stanislav Moniuszko (1819 -1872)
38. Jacques Offenbach (1819 -1880)
39. Alexander Nikolaevich Serov (1820 -1871)
40. Cesar Franck (1822 -1890)
41. Bedrich Smetana (1824 -1884)
42. Anton Bruckner (1824 -1896)
43. Johann Strauss (1825 -1899)
44. Anton Grigorievich Rubinstein (1829 -1894)
45. Johannes Brahms (1833 -1897)
46. ​​Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin (1833 -1887)
47. Camille Saint-Saens (1835 -1921)
48. Leo Delibes (1836 -1891)
49. Mily Alekseevich Balakirev (1837 -1910)
50. Georges Bizet (1838 -1875)
51. Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839 -1881)
52. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 -1893)
53. Antonin Dvorak (1841 -1904)
54. Jules Massenet (1842 -1912)
55. Edvard Grieg (1843 -1907)
56. Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 -1908)
57. Gabriel Fauré (1845 -1924)
58. Leos Janacek (1854 -1928)
59. Anatoly Konstantinovich Lyadov (1855 -1914)
60. Sergei Ivanovich Taneev (1856 -1915)
61. Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857 -1919)
62. Giacomo Puccini (1858 -1924)
63. Hugo Wolf (1860 -1903)
64. Gustav Mahler (1860 -1911)
65. Claude Debussy (1862 -1918)
66. Richard Strauss (1864 -1949)
67. Alexander Tikhonovich Grechaninov (1864 -1956)
68. Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov (1865 -1936)
69. Jean Sibelius (1865 -1957)
70. Franz Lehár (1870–1945)
71. Alexander Nikolaevich Skryabin (1872 -1915)
72. Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov (1873 -1943)
73. Arnold Schoenberg (1874 -1951)
74. Maurice Ravel (1875 -1937)
75. Nikolai Karlovich Medtner (1880 -1951)
76. Bela Bartok (1881 -1945)
77. Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky (1881 -1950)
78. Igor Fedorovich Stravinsky (1882 -1971)
79. Anton Webern (1883 -1945)
80. Imre Kalman (1882 -1953)
81. Alban Berg (1885 -1935)
82. Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev (1891 -1953)
83. Arthur Honegger (1892 -1955)
84. Darius Millau (1892 -1974)
85. Carl Orff (1895 -1982)
86. Paul Hindemith (1895 -1963)
87. George Gershwin (1898–1937)
88. Isaak Osipovich Dunayevsky (1900 -1955)
89. Aram Ilyich Khachaturian (1903 -1978)
90. Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich (1906 -1975)
91. Tikhon Nikolaevich Khrennikov (born in 1913)
92. Benjamin Britten (1913 -1976)
93. Georgy Vasilievich Sviridov (1915 -1998)
94. Leonard Bernstein (1918 -1990)
95. Rodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin (born in 1932)
96. Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933)
97. Alfred Garievich Schnittke (1934 -1998)
98. Bob Dylan (b. 1941)
99. John Lennon (1940-1980) and Paul McCartney (b. 1942)
100. Sting (b. 1951)

MASTERPIECES OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

The most famous composers in the world

List of composers in alphabetical order

German composers have made a great contribution to the development of world musical art. Among them are a huge number of those whom we call great. Their masterpieces are heard by the whole world. In musical educational institutions, the works of many of them are included in the curriculum.

Music of Germany

The flowering of music in this country began in the 18th century. Then such great German composers as Robert Schumann, Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven began to create. They were the first representatives of romanticism.

Great composers who lived in Austria: Franz Liszt, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Strauss.

Later Karl Orff, Richard Wagner, Max Reger became famous. They wrote music, referring to national roots.

Famous German composers of the 20th century: Arnold Schoenberg, Paul Hindemith, Karlheinz Stockhausen.

James Last

The famous German composer James Last was born in Bremen in 1929. His real name is Hans. He worked in the jazz genre. James first appeared on stage in 1946 with the Bremen Radio Orchestra. After 2 years, he created his own ensemble, which he led, and performed with him. In the 50s of the 20th century, Last was considered the best jazz bass player. In 1964, James created his own orchestra. He was engaged in arranging popular melodies at that time. The composer released his first album in 1965, after which there were 50 more. They diverged in millions of copies. Eighteen discs went platinum, 37 went gold. James Last created arrangements for authors and performers who worked in a wide variety of musical genres from folk music to hard rock. The composer died in the USA in June 2015.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Great German composers of the Baroque era: Georg Böhm, Nikolaus Bruns, Dietrich Buxtehude, Georg Friedrich Handel and others. Topping this list is Johann Sebastian Bach. He was a great composer, teacher and virtuoso organist. J.S. Bach is the author of more than a thousand works. He wrote music of different genres. Everything that was significant during the period of his life, except for operas. The composer's father was a musician, like many other relatives and ancestors.

Johann Sebastian loved music since childhood and never missed an opportunity to play music. The future composer sang in the choir, played the harpsichord and organ, studied the work of composers. Around the age of 15, he wrote his first works. After graduation, the young man served as a court musician, then as an organist in the church. Johann Sebastian Bach had seven children, two of whom became famous composers. The first wife died, and he married again. His second wife was a young singer who had a great soprano voice. In his old age, J.S. Bach became blind, but continued to compose music, the notes were recorded by the composer's son-in-law under dictation. The great Johann Sebastian is buried in the city of Leipzig. In Germany, his image is immortalized in a large number of monuments.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Many German composers were adherents of the Viennese classical school. The brightest figure among them is Ludwig van Beethoven. He wrote music of all genres that existed at the time he lived. He even composed works for drama theatres. L. Beethoven is a composer whose works are performed by all musicians of the world. L. Beethoven's instrumental works are considered the most significant.

The composer was born in 1770. He was the son of a court chapel singer. The father wanted to raise his son as the second W. Mozart and taught him to play several musical instruments at once. At the age of 8, Ludwig first appeared on the stage. Contrary to his father's expectations, L. Beethoven did not become a miracle boy, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was. When the future great composer was 10 years old, his father stopped teaching him on his own, the boy got a real teacher - composer and organist - K. G. Nefe. The teacher immediately saw talent in L. Beethoven. He taught the young man a lot, introduced him to the work of the great composers of that time. L. Beethoven spoke to W. A. ​​Mozart, and he highly appreciated his talent, expressing confidence that Ludwig had a great future, and he would still make the world talk about himself. At the age of 34, the composer became deaf, but continued to write music, because he had an excellent inner ear. L. Beethoven had students. One of them is the famous composer Carl Czerny. L. Beethoven died at the age of 57.

Kurt Weill

Many German composers of the 20th century are considered classics. For example, Kurt Weill. He was born in 1900 in Germany. His most famous work is The Threepenny Opera. K. Weil was the son of a cantor in the synagogue. The composer was educated in Leipzig. He introduced elements of jazz into many of his works. Kurt Weill collaborated with the playwright B. Brecht and wrote music for a large number of productions based on his plays. The composer also composed 10 musicals. Kurt Weill died in 1950 in the USA.