What is your favourite classical music?

338 years ago from today, the Italian baroque master Antonio Vivaldi was born. While Vivaldi is much better known for his contribution with violin music, here is something equally amazing yet still has been under-appreciated. This is Vivaldi's "Gloria." HAPPY BIRTHDAY VIVALDI!

Mhh first one would be Smetana



Secound one Brahms Lullaby:




<3

Speaking of Vivaldi, it's important to note that this composer left a significant and lasting influence on Bach in his early years. Around 1710 to 1715, Bach came under the patronage of Johann Ernst of Sachsen-Weimar , who was an avid collector of musical compositions and owned several concertos by Vivaldi. It was during this time period that Bach began to show a growing interest in the works of several Italian composers, which greatly influenced him throughout his musical career.

According to The New Yorker :

An 1802 biography of Johann Sebastian Bach makes the astonishing but apparently authoritative claim that the Master “learned to think musically” from his study of Vivaldi's concertos. What could the creator of the “St. Matthew Passion” have owed to the inventor of “The Four Seasons”? Everything, the Bach scholar Christoph Wolff suggests. It used to be said that Bach took from his Italian contemporary a superficial interest in melody, but the influence went deeper than that. Vivaldi offered a template for building and sustaining musical tension within a steady-state harmonic universe.

According to Bach's entry on Encyclopedia Britannica :

Bach’s development cannot be traced in detail during the vital years 1708–14, when his style underwent a profound change. There are too few datable works. From the series of cantatas written in 1714–16, however, it is obvious that he had been decisively influenced by the new styles and forms of the contemporary Italian opera and by the innovations of such Italian concerto composers as Antonio Vivaldi. The results of this encounter can be seen in such cantatas as No. 182, 199, and 61 in 1714, 31 and 161 in 1715, and 70 and 147 in 1716.

To commemorate Vivaldi's birthday, here is Bach's transcription of Vivaldi's Concerto for 2 Violins in A minor (RV 522) as the Organ Concerto in A minor (BWV 593).



And of course, the original version as composed by Vivaldi:

Besides Bach, Handel was also strongly influenced by the Italian style, with several of his compositions premiering in Rome and Florence.

Here is the Fantasia C Major (HWV 490), one of Handel's numerous masterpieces. I first encountered it around the age of 13 and fell in love with it immediately. I play this piece regularly (almost everyday) on my digital piano, and it brings me so much joy in my life

I love you Handel, and I won't give up Baroque music for anything else in life!!



On 29 July 1819, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote a letter to the crown prince of Austria (Archduke Rudolf), in which he made the following comment about the previous generations of composers:

"Genie hat doch nur unter ihnen der Deutsche Händel u. Seb. Bach gehabt,"

"Only two of them who possessed the quality of a genius: Händel and Seb. Bach" (informal translation)

The Beethoven House in Bonn has a full list of quotes on Handel, Bach, and Mozart, which can be accessed here . According to Gramophone magazine:

[Mozart] also wrote home to his father, asking for copies of fugues (presumably held in the family library) by Handel and Johann Ernst Eberlin, writing again only 10 days later with what today would seem the unremarkable observation that Eberlin’s efforts were 'far too trivial to deserve a place beside Handel and Bach'....Beethoven later raised Handel above Mozart to stand at the head of his own personal pantheon of great composers.

There is also this alleged quote by Beethoven according to a 1824 letter (authorship disputed):



"Händel ist der größte Komponist, der je gelebt hat. Ich würde mein Haupt entblößen und an seinem Grabe niederknien."

I have just received news that the Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt has passed away

Here is Harnoncourt's recital of Bach's Musical Offering , a collection of fugues and canons dedicated to Frederick the Great, the King of Prussia. It was published a few years before Bach's death, and the crown jewel of this composition was a Ricercare (an Italian musical style originating from the late renaissance) comprising six (!) individual lines of counterpoint .



And here is Harnoncourt conducting Mozart's 40th symphony in G minor (KV 550), one of my most beloved symphonies of all time.

I just realized that is Euler's identity haha @professor

Also, I enjoy Chopin, Satie, Pachelbel, Yiruma, and the classics of classical. Romantic classical is probably my favorite.

Ashleyck wrote: I just realized that is Euler's identity haha @professor

How observant! Yes, this equation is indeed Euler's identity.

Like Kepler, Leibniz, and many others before him, Euler saw a natural relation between music and mathematics. Apart from being one of the world's greatest mathematicians, he was also a proficient player of the clavier (a forerunner to the modern piano) and published several important musical theories, all of which having origins in mathematics.

Euler devised the concept of a Tonnetz, which displays tonal relationships in the form of a two-dimensional lattice diagram. Here is a Tonnetz visualization of Bach's famous Brandenburg Concertos .



And a Tonnetz visualization of Bach's 2nd Prelude of the Well-Tempered Clavier in the key of C Minor:



On April 17, 1712, the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (who invented binary number system) wrote a letter to his mathematics colleague, Christian Goldbach, wherein he made the following comment about music and mathematics:



"Musica est exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi"

Professor, did you ever see any live performances in Germany (or beyond)? If so, which ones were your favorite(s)?

SpamMusubi wrote: Professor, did you ever see any live performances in Germany (or beyond)? If so, which ones were your favorite(s)?

I would love to attend a concert someday, as far as my schedule permits, but so far the live performances that I've seen were all played by street buskers. I think my most memorable experience was hearing a random stranger play Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee on an accordion such as this one:



Classical music is seldom performed by street buskers in the U-Bahn; the music they play is generally too loud and horribly annoying. However, when they do play classical music, it actually sounds (surprisingly) good. Also, I never knew that the Flight of the Bumblebee could be played on the accordion and hearing this familiar piece of music again was, in fact, one of several factors that made me rediscover classical music in early adulthood, just when I was neglecting almost everything except academia.

The Flight of the Bumblebee stayed in my head for at least a week, and it was not long before I naturally returned to the music of Bach and Beethoven.