SOYOUWANNA LEARN ABOUT CLASSICAL MUSIC?

3. GET TO KNOW SOME GREAT COMPOSERS AND THEIR STYLES

There are so many great composers out there that it would be a major pain in the butt to write about them all, so we'll only do a sampling of who we consider to be the most interesting and revolutionary. Yeah, we're lazy. Deal.

Antonio Vivaldi
Johann Sebastian Bach
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Frederic Chopin
Peter Tchaikovsky
Igor Stravinsky
And the rest…

Antonio Vivaldi

• All about Antonio. Vivaldi (1678-1741) was a (very) hardworking composer who wrote almost 700 pieces of music during his career. If you're thinking that he probably didn't date much, you're right. Vivaldi started off as a priest but was fired because he couldn't keep his music writing under control and often put his holier duties second. He ended up becoming a violin teacher at a music school for illegitimate girls. Don't ask.
  
  
• Vivaldi's style. Vivaldi was into concertos in a big way. His most famous work, The Four Seasons, is a series of four concertos that really do sound like the winter, spring, summer, and fall.

Johann Sebastian Bach

• All about Johann. Some call Bach (1685-1750) the father of piano. He was, in fact, known during his lifetime for his amazing organ playing and not so much for his composing. Yet, because he is no longer capable of giving concerts, it is Bach's works that make him great today.
  
  
• Bach's style. Bach was a master at weaving several different tunes together and making them work as one song. (The technical term is "counterpoint.") If you listen carefully to any of his pieces, you'll be able to pick out at least two distinct melodies. It's pretty obvious in his well-known piece, Air on the G String (as in the violin string, you perv).

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• All about Wolfgang. Whether Mozart (1756-1791) really had a crazy laugh (as the movie Amadeus depicted) is debatable, but historians agree that he really was nuts. Well, you would be too, if music flowed profusely and unceasingly from your brain until the day of your death! There is no question that Mozart was a child prodigy and a musical genius; he composed hundreds of works without a thought. It was simply a matter of getting it all down on paper in time.
  
  
• Mozart's style. Mozart was fond of scales (quick successions of consecutive notes in one key) and often incorporated them into his music. The scales complemented the fleeting, blithe, and spirited nature of his works. For a great example of Mozart's style, listen to his Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

Ludwig Van Beethoven

• All about Ludwig. Beethoven (1770-1827) was not only a brilliant pianist and composer, he was a true artiste: sensitive, dramatic, and tragic. It was, unfortunately, a debilitating handicap that pushed Beethoven into greatness: he discovered much to his horror that he was going deaf at the age of 31. After this realization, Beethoven's music became fraught with the emotions he was desperately trying to express before he could no longer hear his own works. Sad, eh? At least his dramatic creations are still appreciated to no end by even those who can't tell classical music apart from a serenading troll.
  
  
• Beethoven's style. Most of Beethoven's music is reflective of the stages of his life, so some of it is sweet sounding and mild, while other pieces are sweeping and grand, and still others are filled with drama and darkness. All of it is great -his symphonies, (like the famous fifth one), his sonatas (e.g. The Moonlight Sonata)-absolutely all of it.

Frederic Chopin

• All about Fred. Before Chopin (1810-1849) came along, people thought that classical music was emotionally limited when played on the piano alone. Chopin changed all that by composing beautiful, diverse music for the piano. Ironically, Chopin was a skinny, sickly man who often couldn't make it through a concert of his own music. Fortunately, he was able to make a decent living off selling his music, giving piano lessons, and giving private concerts in people's homes. Imagine inviting Chopin over to tickle your ivories!
  
  
• Chopin's style. One defining factor of a Chopin song is that they're always played on the piano. Stylistic features to look out for are blatant romance and passion - Chopin wrote lots of tender music like his Grand Valse Brillianteand fiery pieces like his Fant-Impromptu op. 66.

Peter Tchaikovsky

• All about Peter. Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) lived like a true musician: his life was tragic, but he managed to change the course of classical ballet music before committing suicide at the age of 53. A big part of Tchaikovsky's problems was that he was rumored to be gay, which was reason enough for banishment in his home country of Russia. Despite his troubles, Tchaikovsky was capable of composing cheerful, bouncy music that ballet dancers pirouetted to - and soon, audiences were clamoring to listen to the music without the pirouetting ballet dancers.
  
  
• Tchaikovsky's style. Like Beethoven, Tchaikovsky's musical style vacillated between the paradoxically weightless/rich music of his ballet compositions (for example, his famous Nutcracker Suite), and the dramatic nature of pieces like his famous 1812 Overture.

Igor Stravinsky

• All about Igor. Stravinsky (1882-1971) was a real rabble-rouser. His music was so different from anything anybody had ever heard that people actually stalked out of his concerts en masse. To give the fools credit, Stravinsky's music is a little hard to handle if you're unfamiliar with it: he purposely set out to create dissonant, completely mismatching sounds. Somehow, they work.
  
  
• Stravinsky's Style. It's whatever the complete opposite of Mozart is. Off beats, jarring chords, surprising crescendos - these are the trademarks of Stravinsky. When he launched his most infamous piece, The Rite of Spring, it infuriated crowds and caused riots. Strangely enough, audiences gave him standing ovations for it a year later.

And the rest…

Just because we don't have room for the rest of these musical masters doesn't mean that you should be deprived of their music. Here are some songs that a classical music novice such as yourself should look out for as an introduction to each artist:

• George Frideric Handel:
  
  
• Joseph Hadyn:
  
  
• Franz Schubert:
  

• Felix Mendelssohn:
  
  
• Johannes Brahms:
  
  
• Franz Liszt:

• Johann Strauss:
  
  
• Hector Berlioz:
  
  
• Antonin Dvorak:

• Sergei Rachmaninoff:
  
  
• Claude Debussy:
  
  
• George Gershwin: