Accent on Composers

The opening four notes of my Symphony No. 5 are among the most famous notes in all of music.

Match the following

• Brahms

• It took me 22 years to complete my first symphony. My music was sometimes thought to be old fashioned during my lifetime. Yet many young composers came to visit me in Vienna to study with me

• Handel

• My Music was very patriotic and much loved by the royal family of England. In fact, the king of England knighted me in 1904

• Bach

• I wrote vocal music in three different languages, but my most famous work is The Messiah

• Elgar

• I was a church musician, choirmaster, and music teacher who composed thousands of pieces of music. Although less than a dozen were published during my lifetime.

• Ives

• I have two careers: composer and insurance agent. Many of my compositions were not performed in public for many years after I wrote them. If I wanted to hear my music I had to hire professional musicians to play it for me. Sometimes they would look at the music and tell me it was "Unperformable."

I wrote 104 symphonies. My most famous is number 94, The Surprise.

• Haydn

• Joplin

• Handel

• Hildegard

I lived in the Middle Ages and wrote plainsong chants for female voices.

Match the following

• Mozart

• Although I was a priest, I composed operas as well as music for church services. Today, my orchestral works, such as the 230 I wrote for violin and string orchestra, are more popular than my operas

• Wagner

• Operas, Operas, Operas! I wrote almost nothing but operas. I was obsessed by them. I wrote the libretto for all my operas. I talked a king into building an opera house at Bayreuth, Germany, just to perform my operas and I even set up a kind of fan club to help pay for the performance of my operas at the theater in Bayreuth

• Vivaldi

• I was a child prodigy. In spite of the fact that I lived a very short life, I composed hundreds of works including symphonies, operas, concertos, oratorios, and keyboard music

• Joplin

• Although I also wrote operas and ballets, I was known as the "Kind of Ragtime"

• Felix Mendelssohn

• I was encouraged to become a musician by my older sister, became a fine concert pianist, and rediscovered the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. I also found time to compose music.

By age 23, I had composed over 500 musical works, but only two had ever been performed in public. I died very young, leaving two symphonies unfinished. One was completed by a friend of mine after my death, and that is the Unfinished Symphony you listened to when you studied me.

I am known as "The March King," and invented a marching tuba which bears my name.

• Armstrong

• Schubert

• Sousa

• Stravinsky

Most of my music can be described as Impressionistic.

I wrote mostly keyboard, vocal, and chamber music. Because women of my era were not encouraged to write symphonies.

• Bach

• Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel

• Beethoven

• Clara Schumann

I believed that a composer should write music for a variety of occasions and performing groups, and should not limit himself to composing for serious, professional musicians. I took advantage of new technologies of the early 20th century, including recordings, radio, and motion pictures.

• Aaron Copland

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Johann Sebastian Bach
• Ludwig van Beethoven