Tuesday, June 7, 2011

MUSIC CONCERT SCHEDULE 2011-2012

AS OF THIS DATE:

JUNE 7, 2011

THESE ARE THE DATES GIVEN ME FOR OUR CONCERTS FOR THE 2011-2012 SCHOOL YEAR:



HARVEST FESTIVAL: OCTOBER 27
WINTER HOLIDAY: DECEMBER 8
FIESTA: MARCH TBA
6TH GRADE ORIENTATION: MAY 24
SPRING CONCERT: MAY 31

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

QUOTE OF THE DAY: WEEK #17 Semester #2

DATE: MONDAY WEEK 17 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Plato
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“Music can highlight everything you do in life.”

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DATE: TUESDAY WEEK 17 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Aldous Huxley
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:

“Silence, an element of music, is often a more powerful expression than words."
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DATE: WEDNESDAY WEEK 17 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Charlie Parker
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“A lot of who you are is due in part to your life’s experiences. Emotions that emanate from those experiences will come out uniquely in the creation of music.”

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DATE: THURSDAY WEEK 17 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Igor Stravinsky
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“Music is a way that man has emotionally recorded his history throughout time.”

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DATE: FRIDAY WEEK 17 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Oscar Hammerstein
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"All the sounds on the earth are like music."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“Music is all around us; the wind, ocean pulse, and from the birds that sing….if you only listen for it.”
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Saturday, May 21, 2011

QUOTE OF THE DAY: WEEK #16 Semester #2

DATE: MONDAY WEEK 16 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Martha Graham
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"No artist is pleased...there is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:

“An artist is never satisfied with his/her art. The pleasure the artists gets is in the act of striving for the perfection that will never be realized.”
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DATE: TUESDAY WEEK 16 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR:
Henry Van Dyke
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:

"Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except the best."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:

“A person does not have to be a professional musician in order to experience the joys of making music.”
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DATE:
WEDNESDAY WEEK 16 SEMESTER #2

AUTHOR: T. S. Eliot
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"You are the music while the music lasts."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:

“While listening to music you can escape the realities of life and create your own universe.”
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DATE: THURSDAY WEEK 16 SEMESTER #2

AUTHOR: Victor Hugo
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:

“Feelings can be communicated through music in a way that words can never express."
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DATE: FRIDAY WEEK 16 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Robert Rauschenberg

QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“An artists creates art as a response to what he/she experiences during the course of a lifetime.”
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Thursday, May 19, 2011

SPRING CONCERT 2011

Please Save This Date:
Event:SPRING CONCERT
............................................
Date:
Thursday, June 2, 2011
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Times:

Night Concert:
6:00 PM
[CALL TIME (when performers are to arrive):
5:15 to the cafeteria]
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Day Concert:
TIMES TO BE ARRANGED
There will be an amended school schedule for that day.
Times are to be arranged and I will notify students when I get the specifics.
..................................

Place:
GRANADA MIDDLE SCHOOL
OUTSIDE STAGE IN FRONT OF THE CIRCLE AREA
------------------

What to Wear at the Evening Concert:
(Purple ties to be supplied)
GIRLS:
Plain dark skirt or pants/white blouse (preferably with collar)

BOYS:
Plain dark pants/white shirts (preferably with collar)
............................................
DRESS REHEARSAL:
TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2011
6th Period 12:32-1:15
Teachers of all student participants for this rehearsal will be notified of the students that may be excused from Period 6 for this day only. Students must make-up all work missed. Any teacher may determine if a student is not eligible to be excused for this rehearsal due to classroom obligations.
DRESS REHEARSAL DIRECTIONS:
PERIOD 4 STUDENTS:
Set-up chairs and music stands, pass out music booklets, etc. according to directions to be handed out.
Get instruments from behind the stage where we left them on Friday.
Leave cases in the cafeteria.
Find assigned seats (see seating chart).
Sit quietly and wait for tuning.
Practice songs in performance order.
At the end of period 4, students not in Room 43 homeroom, will put away their instruments and place their cases backstage in the cafeteria.
Students who are in Room 43 homeroom will remain on the outside stage for practice
Before being dismissed for lunch put away instruments and place cases backstage in the cafeteria.
PERIOD 5 STUDENTS:
Pick-up instruments from behind the stage where we left them on Friday.
Leave cases and backpacks in the cafeteria) and go to seats for practice.
Stage area should already be set-up from Period 4
Find assigned seats (see seating chart)
Sit quietly and wait for tuning.
Practice songs in performance order.
PERIOD 6:
Period 5 students remain seated.
Students from the Period 4 and Homeroom classes (and soloists) will join the period 5 class on the outside stage for practice.
Students from Period 4 and Homeroom are to pick-up instruments from behind the stage.
Leave cases and backpacks in the cafeteria.
Find assigned seats (see seating chart).
Sit quietly and wait for tuning.
Practice songs in performance order.
After the bell rings:
All students are to each take their own instrument, chair, and stand back into the cafeteria behind the stage.
Period 5 students to help put away remaining equipment according to the direction hand-out.
AGAIN: All instruments are to be put away in cases and stored behind the stage for Wednesday’s rehearsal.
………………………………………………………………………………………………..
PLEASE BE PREPARED TO BE A FEW MINUTES LATE
BEING DISMISSED TO GO HOME
CONCERT SONG ORDER:
DAY (SCHOOL) CONCERT:
(Due to limited concert time we will play only 5 songs but will play all of them for the evening concert.)

01. “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” ……….Greenday
02. “A Year With Out Rain”……….Toby Gad, Lindy Robbins Gad
03. “Imagine”……….John Lennon
04. “Numb”……….Linkin Park
05. “Paparazzi”……….Lady GaGa

………………………………………………………………………………………………..

EVENING (PARENT) CONCERT:
01. “21 Guns” ……….Greenday
02. “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” ……….Greenday
03. “Cielito Lindo”……….Traditional Mariachi
04. “Las Mananitas”……….Traditional Mariachi
05. “A Year With Out Rain”………. Toby Gad, Lindy Robbins Gad
06. “Pachelbel Canon”……….Johann Pachelbel (Piano Solo: Cara Gleich)
07. “Imagine”……….John Lennon
08. “Numb”……….Linkin Park
09. Dear You……….Haru (Piano Solo: Joselynn Gosse'tte)
10.Hoedown”……….Traditional/arr. Endriss
11. “Legends of the Fall”……….James Horner
12. “Paparazzi”……….Lady GaGa
………………………………………………………………………………………………..
*****PLEASE REMEMBER*****
PARTICIPATION AT THE CONCERT IS MANDATORY FOR THE 4TH and 5TH PERIOD STRINGS CLASS AND IS A MAJOR PART OF THE MUSIC GRADE. NON-PARTICIPATION WITHOUT A PARENT OR GUARDIAN SIGNED/WRITTEN LEGITIMATE EXCUSE WILL MEAN THAT THE FINAL GRADE WILL BE LOWERED OR A MAKE-UP ASSIGNMENT WILL BE REQUIRED TO AVOID THE LOWERING OF THAT GRADE.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

QUOTE OF THE DAY: WEEK #15 Semester #2

DATE: MONDAY WEEK 15 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Rita Mae Brown
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"Music is to the soul as food is to the body."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:

“You need food to nourish your body and music to feed your soul."
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DATE: TUESDAY WEEK 15 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:

"Music is the universal language of mankind."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“Music is a form of communication that everyone can understand.”

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DATE: WEDNESDAY WEEK 15 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Author Unknown
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:

"Play the music, not the instrument."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“An instrument is just the mechanism for the music inside you.”
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DATE: THURSDAY WEEK 15 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR:
Oliver Wendell Holmes
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"Alas, for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!"
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“It is sad when a person has no musical outlet for their emotions.”
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DATE:
FRIDAY WEEK 15 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Robert Schumann
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"The painter turns a poem into a painting; the musician sets a picture to music."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:

“All the arts interweave each other: words can be made into art and music; art can be imitated by music.”
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Monday, May 9, 2011

QUOTE OF THE DAY: WEEK #14 Semester #2

DATE: MONDAY, WEEK 14 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: George Jellinek
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"The history of a people is found in its songs."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
"Man leaves behind his history through art.”

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DATE: TUESDAY, WEEK 14 SEMESTER #2

AUTHOR: Ernest Boyer
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"Music gives us a language that cuts across the disciplines, helps us to see connections and brings a more coherent meaning to our world."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:

“Music incorporates all the elements of life into one medium.”
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DATE: WEDNESDAY, WEEK 14 SEMESTER #1

AUTHOR: Red Auerbach
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“When you listen to music your troubles often tend to disappear.”
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DATE: THURSDAY, WEEK 14 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR:
Katie Greenwood
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
"Music isn't just learning notes and playing them, you learn notes to play to the music of your soul."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
"There is no music in notes alone. It is the human, emotional element that makes notes into music.”
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DATE:
FRIDAY, WEEK 14 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: W.H.Auden
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:

"A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become."
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
"You do not need to think all the time to enjoy music; you can just enjoy the feelings.”

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Saturday, April 30, 2011

QUOTE OF THE DAY: WEEK #13 Semester #2

DATE: MONDAY WEEK 13 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Igor Stravinsky
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
“I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.”
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“Wisdom and knowledge are developed through lessons learned from making mistakes.”
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DATE: TUESDAY WEEK 13 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Ludwig Van Beethoven
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
“Everything will pass, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain.”MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“Good art will outlast the generations and continue to be popular.”
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DATE: WEDNESDAY WEEK 13 SEMESTER #1
AUTHOR: Max Lerner
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
“You may call for peace as loudly as you wish, but where there is no brotherhood there can in the end be no peace.”
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“Peace will only happen when man learns to accept the differences of others and come together as one.” 
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DATE: THURSDAY WEEK 13 SEMESTER #1
AUTHOR: Robert Schumann
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
“If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. Therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.”
MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“No single person becomes successful on their own; it takes the support of others.”
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DATE: FRIDAY WEEK 13 SEMESTER #2
AUTHOR: Hector Berlioz
QUOTE FROM THE BOARD:
“Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.”MEANING OF THE QUOTE:
“Artistic inspiration is fleeting (passing quickly) and unexpected.”
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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY #5




THERE ARE MANY VERSIONS

OF BEETHOVEN'S 5TH SYMPHONY.
HERE ARE SOME INTERESTING ONES I FOUND:

Beethoven: Symphony No. 5





Fantasia 2000 -

L. V. Beethoven "Symphony No.5/1"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3pdO-Y5ZKU



Beethoven 5th Symphony

(No. 5, graphical score animation, allegro)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRgXUFnfKIY



Liszt transcription of

Beethoven Symphony No. 5 op.67




Apocalyptica -

Beethoven's Symphony No.5




Beethoven symphony no 5




Beethoven's Fifth, Symphony No. 5




Glass Harp Music




Argument to Beethoven's 5th
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEhF-7suDsM



Rockin' Beethoven



Beethoven: Symphony Number 5 Guided Tour
"This is a Guided Tour of Beethoven's 5th Symphony via explanatory subtitles. This symphony, conducted here by Toscanini, is in four sections, called movements. The first movement, in this video, is fast and is in sonata form. Sonata form means that it comes in four sections: an Exposition, where the main themes of the movement are laid out, a Development where those themes are broken down and played with, a Recapitulation where the themes return and a Coda, where everything comes to a close. These moments and other musical highlights will be pointed out by the subtitle track."

BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY #7 (FIELD TRIP SELECTION)



TO VIEW THE ENTIRE BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY #7 CLICK ON THIS LINK:











About The Piece
Beethoven's Symphony #7

Composed: 1811-1812
Length: c. 35 minutes
Orchestration: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings

First Los Angeles Philharmonic performance: April 1, 1921, Walter Henry Rothwell conducting

“It is a composition in which the author has indulged in a great deal of disagreeable eccentricity. Often as we now have heard it performed, we cannot yet discover any design in it, neither can we trace any connection in its parts. Altogether, it seems to have been intended as a kind of enigma – we almost said a hoax.”

So wrote a critic in London’s influential Harmonicon in July of 1825, a full 13 years after Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was introduced in Vienna. While that concert, which also featured the first performance of the bellicose Wellington’s Victory, was enthusiastically received by the public – the Wiener Zeitung reported that “...the applause rose to the point of ecstasy” – the A-major Symphony was savagely assailed by virtually all of the critics, including Carl Maria von Weber, who dismissed it as the work of a madman. Ironically enough, this giddy, impetuous swirl of motion, which Wagner in a famous pronouncement called the “Apotheosis of the Dance,” was written during one of the darkest and most difficult periods in the composer’s life.

By the summer of 1812, when the work was taking its final form, the French army had invaded Russia, thus launching the most savage phase of the Napoleonic Wars. Amid the universal turmoil, Beethoven was suffering innumerable shocks within his own silent hell. This was the period of those ardent, pathetically hopeful letters to “The Immortal Beloved,” the great unrequited love of his life. It was also a time when the illness which had destroyed his hearing began manifesting itself through other disturbing symptoms: the constant, excruciating intestinal pain, and the first signs of the serious liver disorder that would eventually kill him.

Except in its heart-rending second movement, the ebullient, life-affirming A-major Symphony shows no signs of either the social chaos or the private agony that surrounded its composition. Following the lengthiest of Beethoven’s symphonic introductions – in which a pair of simple, unadorned musical ideas are developed at majestic length – the first movement proper, marked Vivace, is announced by some chirping woodwinds who expand a bare but insistent rhythmic figure into light and graceful dance. While the movement reminded Hector Berlioz of a peasant round, the music is far too complex and refined for such a description – unless the peasants happened to be members of the Kirov corps de ballet. After a development section in which the irresistible power of the dance figure nearly threatens to destroy the formal bonds which contain it, an even more uninhibited coda, over a droning five-note figure that rumbles out of the depths of the orchestra, brings the movement to its exultant close.

The essentially rhythmic organization of the Symphony is evident even in the melancholy second movement, marked Allegretto. After a somber woodwind chord, the lower strings present the hushed, march-like pulse from which the entire movement will grow. Fugal countermelodies in the violas and cellos are woven around the principal subject, which eventually gives way to a second, flowing melody in the clarinets and bassoons. A mysterious passage rises to a tremendous climax, after which fragments of the principal theme rustle like leaves in the various sections of the orchestra.

The slapdash Scherzo is among the most impetuous and light-hearted symphonic movements that Beethoven ever wrote. The Presto section is buoyant, witty, and full of colorful, explosive contrasts. The Trio is built on an alternately tender and noble melody for the clarinets, bassoons, and horns, which ends with a sleepy string figure bearing a striking resemblance to the tune of “Good Night, Ladies.” Both sections of the movement are repeated with minor variations, although when the Trio attempts to return for a third and final time, it is rudely cut off by five impatient staccato chords.

The whirlwind Finale, marked Allegro con brio, is a frenetic, uninhibited dance in which one furious climax follows another in a welter of moiling, though perfectly controlled and unfailingly good-natured, commotion.

http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/piece-detail.cfm?id=9


Notes on Beethoven's Seventh Symphony


by Christopher H. Gibbs

June 11, 2006 - By the mid 1810s Beethoven was recognized far and wide as the preeminent living composer. That did not mean, however, that he was the most popular, published, or often performed. Rossini was emerging as a new force in the musical world, and his prominence extended far beyond the opera house; arrangements for every conceivable combination of instruments took his music into home, café, and concert hall. Beethoven's imposing historical stature can obscure our appreciation of how in his own time he sought to juggle fame, popularity, and artistic innovations.

Greatness and Popularity
Many of what are today considered Beethoven's most highly esteemed compositions, especially ones from late in his career, were initially received with a complex mixture of admiration, bewilderment, and resistance. But there were also works that were truly popular or at least aimed to be so. These pieces tend to be much less familiar today than when they were the favorites of his contemporaries: Wellington's Victory, the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, the Septet, and his best-loved song, "Adelaide." Occasionally, Beethoven wrote something that was immediately recognized as both artistically great and hugely popular. An example is the second movement of his Seventh Symphony, a piece that was often performed separately from the complete Symphony and that may have been Beethoven's most popular orchestral composition. It also exerted extraordinary influence on later composers, as the slow movements of Schubert's "Great" C-major Symphony and E-flat Piano Trio, Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony, Berlioz's Harold in Italy, and other works attest.

After its premiere, the Seventh Symphony was repeated three times in the following 10weeks; at one of the performances the "applause rose to the point of ecstasy," according to a newspaper account. The Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reported that "the new symphony (A major) was received with so much applause, again. The reception was as animated as at the first time; the Andante [sic] (A minor), the crown of modern instrumental music, as at the first performance, had to be repeated." The Symphony's appeal is not hard to understand. In scope and intensity, it is fully Beethovenian, and yet it does not place quite as many demands on the listener as does the "Eroica." The ambition of the first movement, beauty of the second, the breathlessness of the scherzo, and relentless energy of the finale did not fail to impress audiences. Beethoven himself called it "one of the happiest products of my poor talents."

Celebrating Victory
Beethoven wrote the Symphony in 1811-12, completing it in April. It was premiered at one of his most successful concerts, given on December 8, 1813, to benefit soldiers wounded in the battle of Hanau a few months earlier. Paired with the Seventh was the first performance of Wellington's Victory, also known as the "Battle Symphony." The enjoyment of the event was hardly surprising given what most members of the Viennese audience had been through during the preceding decade. Napoleon's occupations of Vienna in 1805 and 1809 had proven traumatic, but the tide had turned with the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. In June, the Duke of Wellington was triumphant against Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's younger brother, in the northern Spanish town of Vittoria, and within the year the Congress of Vienna was convened to reapportion Europe in the aftermath of France's defeat. After so much conflict and misery, impending victory could be honored and celebrated.

Later writers characterized the Seventh Symphony in various ways, but it is striking how many of the descriptions touch on its frenzy, approaching a bacchanal at times, and on its elements of dance. Richard Wagner's poetic account is well known: "All tumult, all yearning and storming of the heart, become here the blissful insolence of joy, which carries us away with bacchanalian power through the roomy space of nature, through all the streams and seas of life, shouting in glad self-consciousness as we sound throughout the universe the daring strains of this human sphere-dance. The Symphony is the Apotheosis of the Dance itself: it is Dance in its highest aspect, the loftiest deed of bodily motion, incorporated into an ideal mold of tone."

As biographer Maynard Solomon has keenly observed, the descriptions of Wagner and others seem to have a common theme: "The apparently diverse free-associational images of these critics—of masses of people, of powerful rhythmic energy discharged in action or in dance, of celebrations, weddings, and revelry—may well be variations on a single image: the carnival or festival, which from time immemorial has temporarily lifted the burden of perpetual subjugation to the prevailing social and natural order by periodically suspending all customary privileges, norms, and imperatives." Wellington's Victory gave a realistic imitation of battle between the English (represented by the song "Rule Britannia") and the French ("Marlborough s’en va-t’en guerre") and ends victoriously with variations on "God Save the King"—it is an effective but hardly subtle work. The Seventh apparently tapped into similar celebratory emotions vivid at the moment, but on a much deeper level that has allowed the Symphony to retain its stature ever since.

A Closer Look
The Symphony's dance elements, vitality, and sense of celebration are conveyed principally through rhythm. It is not the melodies that are so striking and memorable as the general sense of forward movement. (At times there is no melody at all, but simply the repetition of a single pitch.) The first movement (Poco sostenuto) opens with the longest of Beethoven's introductions—indeed the longest yet in the history of the symphony, that leads (by way of repeating just one note) into the main body of the movement (Vivace). The famous A-minor Allegretto is framed by the same unstable chord to open and close the movement. The form is ABABA with the opening section using a theme that is once again more distinctive for its rhythmic profile than for its melody. The movement builds in intensity and includes a fugue near the end.

The Presto scherzo brings out the dance aspect even more. As in some of his other instrumental works, Beethoven includes two trio sections. The Allegro con brio finale offers a tour-de-force of energy and excitement. As throughout the Symphony, part of the distinctive sound comes from Beethoven's use of the horns. The work is in A-major, which gives a brightness not found in the composer's earlier symphonies.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5481664



FREE AUDIO VERSION





Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was completed in 1812 and conducted its premier on December 8, 1813 in the University of Vienna. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 is widely viewed as a symphony of dance, where as, Wagner described it as “the apotheosis of the dance.” Its highly enjoyable, haunting 2nd movement was often most encored.
http://classicalmusic.about.com/od/onestopbeethoven/a/beethovensympho.htm


BEETHOVEN: MODERN RENDITIONS

HAPPY BIRTHDAY VARIATIONS 
BASED ON SOME FAMOUS PIECES BY BEETHOVEN 

Happy Birthday Dear Ludwig  
Variations in The Style of Beethoven
Leonid Hambro (1970) 

BEETHOVEN PICTURES