Edward Elgar (1857 - 1934)

Sir Edward William Elgar, an English composer, was born on 2nd June 1857 at Broadheath, a village some three miles from the small city of Worcester in the English West Midlands. His father, William Henry Elgar (1821–1906), had a music shop in Worcester and tuned pianos.


The young Elgar, therefore, had the great advantage of growing up in a thoroughly practical musical atmosphere. He studied the music available in his father's shop and taught himself to play a wide variety of instruments. It is a remarkable fact that Elgar was very largely self-taught as a composer - evidence of the strong determination behind his original and unique genius. His long struggle to establish himself as a pre-eminent composer of international repute was hard and often bitter. For many years he had to contend with apathy, with the prejudices of the entrenched musical establishment, with religious bigotry (he was a member of the Roman Catholic minority in a Protestant majority England) and with a late Victorian provincial society where class consciousness pervaded everything.

Throughout the 1880s and the 1890s his experience grew and his style matured as he conducted and composed for local musical organisations. He also taught the violin and played the organ at St. George's Roman Catholic Church in Worcester.

In 1889 he married one of his pupils, Caroline Alice Roberts, daughter of the late Major- General Sir Henry Roberts who had enjoyed a distinguished career with the British army in India. She married Edward in opposition to her aunts and cousins (her mother had died in 1887) who considered that in marrying the son of a mere tradesman, a music teacher without prospects, she was marrying beneath herself. Nevertheless, Alice with determination and a dogged faith in Edward's emerging genius, played a vital part in the development of Elgar's career.

Slowly, and through such early works as Froissart (1890), the Imperial March (1897) and the cantatas King Olaf (1896) and Caractacus (1898), his reputation began to spread beyond the area immediately around his native Worcestershire. His first big success came with the Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma) in 1899. Dedicated to "my friends pictured within", this work, which is a masterpiece of form and orchestration, showed that Elgar, by that time, had surpassed the other leading English composers of his day, both in technical accomplishment and sheer force of musical personality.

After Sea Pictures, a song cycle for contralto and orchestra (1899), came one of Elgar's greatest religious compositions - The Dream of Gerontius - based on Cardinal Newman's poem about a soul's journey through to its judgement and beyond. Unfortunately, due to inadequate rehearsals, the first performance at Birmingham in October 1900 of this complex and original work proved to be a failure, but the majority of the critics recognised the work's greatness. Fortunately, the composition was rescued from oblivion by a second performance under Julius Buths at Dusseldorf in December 1901, and again at the Lower Rhine Festival in Dusseldorf in May the following year. Following this latter performance, Richard Strauss praised Elgar as the first English progressive musician.

After the initial failure of the Dream of Gerontius in 1900, Elgar was understandably depressed, but within a few days he had characteristically started writing again - an ebullient concert overture - Cockaigne (In London Town) which was successfully premiered in 1901. Confirming this success, in the same year came the first two Pomp and Circumstance Marches - the first in D major containing the famous trio section that was later to becomeLand of Hope and Glory. Elgar appreciated its worth; he had prophesied: "I've got a tune that will knock 'em - knock 'em flat! … a tune like that comes once in a lifetime …" Elgar had 'arrived'. An all-Elgar festival at Covent Garden was held in 1904, which included an exuberant new overture, In the South, written after a visit to Alassio in Italy. In July of that year, Elgar was knighted by King Edward VII.

By this time, Elgar's works were being performed both in Europe and in the USA In 1905, came the Introduction and Allegro for Strings, a masterly essay in string writing dedicated to Professor Sanford of Yale University. In 1906, Elgar was busy working on his great oratorio, The Kingdom, the sequel to The Apostles of 1903. These two works were based on an intricate tapestry of linking leitmotives in the style of Wagner. Elgar originally intended that there should be a cycle of three oratorios but the third part of the trilogy was never completed.

Elgar next began to concentrate on symphonic work. He had been planning a symphony (originally around the character of General Gordon) as early as 1898. Work began again in earnest during the winter of 1907-08, while he was staying in Rome. The Symphony No. 1 in A flat was first performed in Manchester in December 1908. It was dedicated to and conducted by Hans Richter who said of it: "Gentlemen, let us now rehearse the greatest symphony of modern times, written by the greatest modern composer - and not only in this country". The work was received with tremendous enthusiasm and there were a hundred performances of it in Britain and all over Europe and in America, Australia and Russia, etc. in just over a year. August Jaeger of Novellos (the music publishers) - Nimrod of the Enigma Variations - believed that the symphony's slow movement was comparable to those of Beethoven.

A Violin Concerto in B minor followed in 1910 and then, in 1911, another symphony. The violin concerto was dedicated to Fritz Kreisler who gave the first performance. The score is headed with an inscription in Spanish: "Aqui esta encerrada el alma de ….." ("Here is enshrined the soul of …."). Some say that he was referring to Alice Stuart-Wortley, daughter of the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Millais. She was closely associated with Elgar and his music at this time. The concerto is a difficult virtuoso piece similar in scale to the Brahms concerto but more richly orchestrated. The slow movement has a particular beauty and the last movement has a unique and magical feature - an accompanied cadenza where the strings are instructed that the pizzicato tremolando should be thrummed with the soft part of three fingers whilst the violin muses at length over ideas recalled from the earlier movements.

The Symphony No. 2 in E flat, although by no means as immediately successful as its predecessor, is nevertheless probably Elgar's profoundest symphonic utterance. The score is prefaced by a quotation from Shelley: "Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight", suggesting that the work is not only about delight but also about the rarity of its occurrence. Elgar dedicated the symphony to the memory of King Edward VII, who had recently died but the composition is much more than an expression of national mourning for a much loved monarch. Elgar admitted to his friends that it symbolised everything that had happened to him between April 1909 and February 1911, and its roots went back even further. He marked the score with two place names - Venice & Tintagel. In fact the Larghetto, usually assumed to be a funeral lament for the late King, begins with an idea inspired by the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice, which Elgar had visited in 1909.

Between the period of the Second Symphony and the beginning of the First World War in 1914, there appeared only two major works - The Music Makers, an ode for contralto, chorus and orchestra based on a poem by Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1912), and a symphonic study based on Shakespeare's Falstaff (1913). The Music Makers is a deeply personal work with many self quotations from earlier works. It expresses the positive influence on society of the creative artist but it also underlines his loneliness and vulnerability. Elgar considered Falstaff to be amongst his very best works - a view shared by many professional musicians - but after the personal outpourings of the great oratorios, the symphonies and the violin concerto, Falstaff seemed relatively detached and this probably explains its comparative neglect.

The First World War depressed Elgar deeply. Apart from a few patriotic pieces, incidental music for a children's play entitled The Starlight Express (1915), settings of three war poems by Laurence Binyon The Spirit of England (1915-17), now recognised as one of the composer's masterpieces, and the ballet The Sanguine Fan (1917), nothing major emerged. It was not until 1918 and 1919 that his final great period produced the three chamber works - the Violin Sonata and the String Quartet, both in E minor, the Piano Quintet in A minor and theCello Concerto in E minor, his last great masterpiece. Audiences were quick to note the change - no longer the pomp and swagger of earlier days.

Here was a new Elgar - less assured, more contemplative, more withdrawn. Speaking of the Cello Concerto, Elgar's biographer Ian Parrott says: "It is a work apart, by a lonely man in war-time who sees that artistic criteria have altered irreversibly".

In 1920, Lady Elgar died and with her died much of Elgar's inspiration and will to compose. She had organised his household and ministered to his comforts. For a long time she saved him hours of drudgery, for instance by ruling bar lines on score paper. She walked miles in all weathers to post precious parcels of manuscript and proofs. In the early days of their marriage she had collaborated with him to produce such works as Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands (1896) - Elgar's settings of his wife's poems inspired by holidays spent in Germany. At times when success seemed forever to be eluding him, she never lost faith. In short, she had been the driving force behind his genius encouraging him and proclaiming his talents at every opportunity.

Throughout the 1920s, Elgar, saddened by his bereavement and by the social and musical changes brought about by the war, lived in virtual retirement, outwardly content to live the life of a country gentleman in his beloved Worcestershire with his dogs, sometimes emerging for the occasional visit to London or for a conducting or recording assignment. (He made a fine series of recordings of his own compositions for HMV). Honours continued to be conferred on him: in 1928 he was created Knight Commander of the Victorian Order (K.C.V.O). About this time, it seemed that he had taken on a new lease of life for he began work on a number of large projects including an opera, The Spanish Lady and a third symphony. In 1933 he flew to Paris to conduct his violin concerto with the youthful Yehudi Menuhin, the soloist with whom he had recorded the work in London some weeks earlier. Whilst in France, Elgar took the opportunity of visiting Delius at Grez-sur-Loing. Both men had but one more year to live. In October, Elgar was found to be suffering from a malignant tumour which pressed on the sciatic nerve. Further composition became impossible and he died on 23rd February, 1934.

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Thor Martin Johnson (1913-1975), Founding Music Director

Thor Johnson initially received national attention as the youngest American born and trained conductor of a major American orchestra—the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He later achieved international recognition and became known for his championing of contemporary music.


Thor was born in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin on June 10, 1913. His father was a Moravian minister, and young Thor grew up in a household steeped in the faith and traditions of the Moravian Church. When he was four years old, his father became the pastor of Friedberg Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, one of the largest Moravian settlements in the United States. The Moravian Church is well known for its music, and Thor immersed himself in it. His love of his church’s music informed much of his life. By the time he was in high school he played violin, viola, and French horn, and when only sophomore was made assistant conductor of the high school orchestra.

Thor received a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of North Carolina in 1934, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and the Order of the Golden Fleece, one of the university’s highest honors. In the fall of 1934 he entered the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor for graduate study. While there he came to the attention of Serge Koussevitzky, famed conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who recommended him for a grant from the Beebe Fund for American Musicians. He was awarded a full grant for a year of study in Europe, beginning in the summer of 1936. Living primarily in Leipzig and Prague, he studied with distinguished musicians, including Bruno Walter, attended concerts, and met many of the most important figures in the musical world.

Upon his return from Europe in the fall of 1937, he was appointed to a full-time faculty position at the University of Michigan. His title was “Instructor in Music Literature and Conductor of the University Symphony Orchestra.” It was during this period that he began speaking of the importance of encouraging American artists. This was an interest that stayed with him for the rest of his professional life.

In addition to his busy schedule at the University of Michigan, Thor took over as director of the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra—the beginning of his professional conducting career. In May 1941, during summer break, he was one of only six students (another was Leonard Bernstein) who studied conducting with Serge Koussevitszky.

The Second World War brought an end to Thor’s stay at the University of Michigan and involvement with the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, as he enlisted in the U.S. Army in May, 1942. During his tour of duty, he directed various army bands and orchestras and had the opportunity to guest conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Upon his discharge in May of 1946, he joined the faculty of Julliard School of Music. It was a natural position for a conductor who delighted in teaching and mentoring young musicians.

In December of 1946, while at Julliard, Thor came to national attention when he was appointed musical director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. It was a prestigious position. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra had been led by some of the world’s great conductors, among them Leopold Stowkoski and Fritz Reiner.

Thor Johnson was only 33 years old at the time of his appointment, and quite a bit was made of his youth and the fact that he was both American born and essentially American trained. This was unusual in a time when most conductors were either foreign born or foreign trained or both. His new post gave him the opportunity to expand his interest in introducing new music to the public, particularly music of American composers. During his 11 years with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, he conducted the premieres of 120 American and European works, at least half of which he had commissioned. He enjoyed a high degree of success in Cincinnati and received numerous awards and honorary degrees. He remained with the Orchestra until 1958.

In the early 1950s Thor founded two music festivals that have become synonymous with his name and that continue to thrive. They are linked by Thor’s devotion to Moravian Music. The first, the Early American Moravian Music Festival, came about as a direct result of Thor’s love of Moravian music, particularly music that was not well known. He directed the first festival, held in 1950 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, home of the headquarters of the Moravian Church in America. The weeklong festival featured instrumental and choral works, some of which were discovered in the Moravian Archives. It was a resounding success and led for calls for an annual festival. However, it was discovered that the stored music was so badly in need of cataloging that further festivals needed to be postponed for a bit.

After three years of work on the archives, the second Early American Moravian Music Festival and Seminar was held in Bethlehem in 1954, and the third took place in Winston-Salem. The festivals were held every few years at a variety of locations, always with Thor directing. The last one he directed was in DePere, Wisconsin in 1974. The festivals have continued on an intermittent basis ever since. Besides presenting interesting and exciting music, they give Moravians and others a greater appreciation of their musical heritage—just what Thor wanted.

The second major festival founded by Thor is the Peninsula Music Festival in Door County, Wisconsin. Lorenz Heise, a businessman from Milwaukee and summer resident of Door County, traveled to Winston-Salem to hear the first Early American Moravian Music Festival. He was so moved and excited by what he heard that he approached Thor about coming to Door County to do something similar. Thor was enthused and told Heise to get it started and he’d come. Heise returned to Door County and spread the word. Meetings and fund raising followed, and by 1953 the Peninsula Music Festival, under Thor’s baton, played its first concert. It was a 35-40 piece chamber orchestra composed of outstanding musicians recruited by Thor. The budget that year was $10,000 for eight concerts performed in the space of three weeks. The first concert featured what would become Thor’s hallmark—the premiere of a work composed for the Peninsula Music Festival. Thor refused compensation for his services, although he was always given some token of appreciation.


Thor came to love Door County and built a summer home on the shore of Green Bay. He liked being a member of the local community and being involved in local activities. Despite performing in a school gymnasium, the Peninsula Music Festival enjoyed success from the beginning and always played new pieces, frequently from American composers. Its soloists were handpicked by Thor—rising stars whose fees were still affordable. Many went on to become internationally famous.

Over the years the Peninsula Music Festival has grown and thrived and now performs in a state-of-the-art auditorium, but Thor’s influence is apparent in the number of new and unfamiliar works presented each season.

In 1958 Thor left the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and accepted a position as full professor and Director of Orchestral Activities at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. His presence attracted many gifted students, drawn by his ability to inspire as well as to demand excellence. In addition, he accepted a great variety of national and international guest conducting assignments, including yearly appearances at the huge Mormon Tabernacle for the Salt Lake City Oratorio Society’s performance of the Messiah.

Thor’s interest in young musicians was instrumental in his acceptance of the job as Director of the Interlochen Arts Academy and conductor of its orchestra in 1964. He was well known for his ability to get gifted young musicians to reach their potential, and enrollment at the Academy climbed under his directorship. After three successful years at Interlochen, he left to become the musical director of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, where he conducted the Nashville Symphony in its regular concerts as well as in young people’s concerts. He also conducted the Nashville Youth Symphony. During his years at Nashville, he presented numerous well-known soloists, as well as rising young stars. He continued his tradition of premiering new music.

On January 16, 1975, Thor Johnson died as the result of complications from surgery to remove a brain tumor. He was 61 years old. The love and respect with which he was held were obvious from the memorial services held for him on January 26. At the same hour, simultaneous services to celebrate his life took place at Home Moravian Church in Winston-Salem (where he was buried); Belle Meade United Methodist Church, Nashville; the Moravian Church, Ephraim (Door County), Wisconsin; First Congregational Church, Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Interlochen Arts Academy.

Over his lifetime Thor Johnson was the recipient of eight honorary degrees and uncounted standing ovations. But he is best remembered in the words of his biographer “…by the countless audiences who had been touched and blessed by his music, the thousands of orchestra members and choral singers whom he instructed and inspired to bring this music to life, and the hundreds of young musicians he encouraged, nurtured, and helped with unselfishness and joy.”

(from Thor Johnson, American Conductor by Louis Nicholas, The Music Festival Committee of the Peninsula Arts Association, 1982)

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Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828)

Schubert's life is the quintessential example of the Romantic notion of the neglected genius who dies in obscurity. Even Mozart, who probably had a harsher life and greater obstacles to overcome, was at least accorded a modicum of recognition in his own lifetime. For Schubert, an entire generation had to pass before his most substantial achievements saw the light of day.


Franz Peter Schubert (January 31, 1797 - November 19, 1828) is one of the few "Viennese" composers who was truly Viennese born and bred. One of five children out of nine who survived infancy he came from a modest schoolmaster's family living in Vienna's Lichtenthal district His father, Franz Theodor, was a keen amateur musician and quickly detected his son's talent, giving him violin lessons while the oldest brother taught him piano. After a short interlude with a private teacher, Franz was accepted as a choirboy in the Court chapel which automatically admitted him as a pupil to the Imperial and Royal City College. There he benefited greatly from contact with men such as Antonio Salieri and Phillip Korner, and wrote his first compositions. Schubert achieved satisfactory results in all subjects, but his musical abilities were recognized by all as exceptional. In 1812 his mother died: his father remarried the following year. Always close to his father, Franz grew to love his stepmother Anna, who in later years helped him with loans of money. While at the College Schubert experienced his first opera performances, and also discovered the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Mozart. He held the latter in the greatest awe: "O Mozart, immortal Mozart!" he wrote in 1816, "what numberless consoling images of a better, brighter world have you engraved upon our souls!".

When he left the College in 1814, Schubert taught at his father's school, though this had little effect on his enthusiasm for composition. Indeed, that autumn his Mass #7 in F Major was performed to great acclaim, also his first lieder masterpiece, "Gretchen am Spinnrade" (to words from Goethe's Faust); he was just 17. The following year was even more impressive: symphonies, operas (no less than four attempted in one year), chamber music and nearly 150 songs spilled from his pen, all written out of a determination to earn money from his music so that he could escape the need for earning it through his detested teaching. Of the songs, the Goethe setting, "Der Erlkönig", is the most remarkable and most famous. A friend sent this and 30 other Goethe settings to the great man himself in Weimar. They were returned unaccompanied by any offer of help; Goethe did not appreciate Schubert's attempts to heighten the poet's words through his musical commentary.

"Der Erlkönig" was published in all the German-speaking territories and made Schubert famous outside his native city, and this led directly to a meeting with a young law student, Franz von Schober. Schober had come across "Erlkönig" and the song made such a deep impression on him that he determined to meet its creator. He suggested to Schubert that they take lodgings together at Schober's expense. With his father's consent, the 19-year-old Franz moved in to rooms in Schober's mother's house. While there he was introduced to the baritone Johann Michael Vogl, a successful operatic singer, who was so excited by Schubert's songs that within a few weeks the pair were performing concerts for Viennese society.

In 1817 Schubert branched out into piano sonatas and before the end of the year he had also written three more of his most famous songs: "Der Tod und das Mädchen", "An die Musik" and "Die Forelle". By then, however, he had been obliged to move back to his family home – the Schober idyll was over and his work rate slackened noticeably when he returned to the hated teaching. The following summer he became music master to the children of Count Johann Esterházy in Zseliz (in Slovakia, hundreds of miles from Vienna), and broke forever his ties with teaching. After a fitful summer at the Zseliz residence, Schubert returned to Vienna with the Esterházy family but took up lodgings with his poet friend Mayrhofer. He continued to teach the Esterházy children while "living out".

Schubert's life remained uneventful until the summer of 1819 when he joined Vogl on a trip to the country, spending three of the happiest months of his life discovering countryside which he thought "inconceivably lovely". This trip had a beneficial effect on his creative juices, the wonderful Trout Quintet being conceived and begun at this time. Inspiration remained with Schubert all through the following autumn and winter in Vienna, compositions coming thick and fast. During his time with Mayrhofer, Schubert would often sleep in his clothes, or leave his glasses on overnight, indulging in typical bachelor behavior and using the time-worn excuse that "it saved time and trouble" when asked why he was so slovenly. He certainly was not lazy when it came to composing, commenting: "I compose every morning, and when one piece is done I begin another". The spring of 1819 had been spent writing the music for a third-rate one-act libretto, Die Zwillingsbruder, which was staged in 1820 with Vogl taking both twin-brother roles. This relative failure (only five performances) led to a further commission for music for a three-act play, Die Zauberharfe. This was no better than the one-act play that preceded it, but Schubert's music shone out: the overture, for example, was later reused in Rosamunde, and thus gained immortality. Schubert's reputation in Vienna was hardly well-served by such failures, and he was never to see another presentation of his theatrical music.

Schubert moved from Mayrhofer's rooms to the house of a new friend, the amateur painter Moritz von Schwind, and was soon at work on one of his most striking Goethe compositions, a setting for four tenors and four basses, with string accompaniment, "Gesang der Geister über den Wassern" (1714), the work's mystical element holding great significance for him. Schubert's songs were now receiving fairly regular performances by his friends and colleagues in Vienna, and it is singular that he consistently failed to have them accepted for publication by local publishers. Frustrated by this intransigence, his supporters funded a sponsored publication of "Erlkönig" by the Viennese firm Caspi et Diabelli. This and seven other sponsored publications did so well that Caspi et Diabelli afterwards published Schubert direct and at their own risk. Schubert also managed to raise some much needed income by dedicating these pieces to wealthy patrons.

The ambition to compose weightier material continued to haunt him, and in August 1821 he attempted his Symphony #7 in E Major (D. 729), but this was only completed in full score up to the 110th bar; the rest was left marked down on a single line, accompanied by detailed annotation as to how the missing parts would be completed later which, of course, never happened. In recent years this and the other unfinished symphonies (Schubert only completed one of his many symphonic projects) have been given orchestral "realizations" which enable the music-lover to hear brilliant and exploratory works otherwise condemned to perpetual obscurity.

Schubert had returned to live at Schober's house, but was now immersed in a triangular friendship of great intimacy with Moritz von Schwind and a young playwright, Eduard Bauernfeld. The composer meanwhile persisted with his attempts to mount a successful opera, and in 1822 completed Alfonso und Estrela (D. 732). It was never produced, the libretto (by Schober) falling foul of Vogl's censure and therefore not receiving his influential backing. Three other events made this a pivotal year in Schubert's life. In April he met Beethoven, a meeting achieved by the presentation of his Variations on a French Air, Op. 10 (with a fulsome dedication) to Beethoven by a mutual friend. Accounts of the meeting are unreliable, but there is reason to believe that Beethoven enjoyed the Variations enough to keep the music in his possession. The second event was the writing – and abandonment – of the famous Eighth Symphony (Unfinished), although by now Schubert had a number of unfinished symphonies to his name. The multiplicity of reasons advanced for the abandonment of this sublime two-movement torso tend to prove that no-one really knows why Schubert stopped writing it. What is beyond dispute is that he presented the manuscript the following year to his friend Anselm Huttenbrenner. The work disappeared until 1865, when Huttenbrenner allowed it to be performed in one of the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde concerts and published the following year. This work was a clear statement from Schubert that he had found his own original approach to symphonic form.

The third event of 1822 was a tragic one: Schubert discovered that he had contracted syphilis. This discovery, and the illness which accompanied its initial onset, forced Schubert to return to the parental home. Until late spring 1823 he was too ill to leave the house, and this frightening collapse in one so young (he was just 25) led to a near-suicidal depression. A spell in Vienna General Hospital seems to have helped, and he composed all through this dark period of suffering, completing the Piano Sonata in A minor (D. 784) and another one-act opera, Die Verschworenen. During the summer he left hospital and traveled to Linz and Steyr, beginning yet another doomed opera, Fierrabras (D. 796), set to yet another poor libretto, and composing the first songs of the immortal cycle, Die schöne Mullerin. His health remained precarious throughout the year, only stabilizing as winter took hold and the Mullerin cycle was completed.

It is possible that Schubert felt he had overcome his affliction, but the disease had only entered its second phase. From this time on his previously carefree and sunny disposition became more troubled, his moods unpredictable. The year 1823 closed with yet another theatre-music failure, this time the play Rosamunde, written by Helmina von Chezy. It managed just two performances, then vanished into oblivion. The orchestral music Schubert mustered for this play eventually proved to be some of his most popular. In spring 1824 Schubert turned to chamber music: among the masterpieces to emerge was the quartet Der Tod und das Mädchen, which used variations on the song of the same name. The magnificent Octet in F (D. 803) followed soon after. This, plus the publication of the first part of Die schöne Mullerin, made this a special spring. Yet Schubert's mood was dark. He wrote to a friend at this time: "Think of a man whose health can never be restored and who from sheer despair makes matters worse instead of better. Think of a man…to whom love and friendship are a torture… every night I go to sleep hoping never to wake again…".

Schubert spent much of 1824 once again with the Esterházys in Zseliz; the slow pace of life seems to have been beneficial, although he chafed at having to teach again. The following year was notable for the steady increase in the number of his songs being published and the resultant spread of his reputation beyond Vienna. A summer holiday with Vogl in the country gave him the happiness and peace of mind which had been so conspicuously absent the previous spring. Here he began work on his Symphony #9 ("The Great") in C Major, the first to be completed in more than six years. His return to Vienna in September initiated a twelve month period of great conviviality in and around Vienna with the famous musical evenings among his friends and admirers – known as the Schubertiads – standing out in the memory of all who attended them. Schubert and Schwind remained particularly close during this time, sharing lodgings, food, clothes and money. To Schubert, Schwind was "seine Geliebte" (his beloved).

Early 1827 was memorable for Schubert's commencement of the first songs in Die Winterreise and for the death of Beethoven. Schubert had visited the fading genius shortly before his death, and was one of the torchbearers in his funeral procession. Notices of Schubert's numerous lieder publications at this time continued to multiply and spread across the German-speaking countries, yet his major instrumental achievements were hardly known outside his circle of close friends. He completed Winterreise by the end of 1827, the emotional profundity of the music echoing the bleak depths of the verses being set. His health was again poor, with random headaches and dizziness; his moods were clearly reflected in his songs. The complexities of the Impromptus written at around this time are perhaps a prism through which his melancholia can be glimpsed.

In March 1828 a concert was organized in one of the Vienna Gesellschaft's private rooms, which was the first-ever Schubert-only event. It was sold-out and filled with Schubert's friends, patrons and admirers. The program was exclusively made up of lieder and chamber music. Schubert completed his Symphony #9 "The Great" in C Major and for a time hoped it would receive a performance in Vienna, but this came to nothing. In September he moved in with his brother Ferdinand. Now suffering from regular headaches and nausea, he composed his last three Piano Sonatas, D. 958, 959 & 960, as well as the famous song "Der Hirt auf dem Felsen" (with clarinet obbligato). By now he was close to exhaustion, and a short walking tour confined him to bed. The syphilis was now claiming him, and on 19 November he died in his brother's bed. The funeral was a modest affair, his coffin borne by students to St. Margaret's Church, and from then on to Währing cemetery.

Ferdinand went to every conceivable effort to see his brother's music published (mostly by Caspi et Diabelli Co), but it was 1835 before a visit by Robert Schumann, by then an influential critic and budding composer, discovered the symphony manuscripts in Ferdinand's house and wrote about Schubert's genius after reading the score of the Ninth Symphony. He then arranged for its world premiere and a complete re-evaluation of Schubert's achievements began that paved the way for his true musical worth to at last reach a wider audience. A complete edition of his works appeared for the first time between 1884 and 1897.

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Frédéric François Chopin (1810-1849)

Although a few major pianists, notably Glenn Gould, have dismissed his music as excessively ornamental and trivial, Frédéric Chopin has long been recognized as one of the most significant and individual composers of the Romantic age. The bulk of his reputation rests on small-scale works that in other hands would have been mere salon trifles: waltzes, nocturnes, preludes, mazurkas, and polonaises (the last-named two groups reflecting his fervent Polish nationalism). These works link poetically expressive melody and restless harmony to high technical demands. Even his etudes survive as highly appealing concert pieces by emphasizing musical as well as technical values.


His birth date is a matter of controversy; the town registration of his birth specifies February 22, but Chopin always gave the date as March 1. His father was French, his mother Polish; he was raised in Warsaw by a family that mingled with intellectuals and members of the middle and upper classes, and as a teenager he spent two summers in the country, where he was exposed to Polish folk music. By the age of eight he was recognized as a child prodigy, performing in elegant salons and beginning to write his own pieces. Early on he studied composition with Josef Elsner, then took classes in various other music subjects as well as art and literature at the Warsaw Lyceum. In 1826 he enrolled at the University of Warsaw. He gave his first recital in Vienna in 1829, and over the next few years he performed at home and through much of German and Austria as well as in Paris. Feeling limited by Warsaw's cultural provincialism and uncomfortable with the publicity surrounding his performances there, he settled in Paris in 1832 and established himself as an exorbitantly paid piano teacher. In Paris he composed extensively, but limited his performances mainly to private salons.

In 1838 he began an affair with French novelist George Sand. The couple, along with Sand's children, spent a harsh winter in Majorca, where Chopin's health plummeted and he was diagnosed with consumption (tuberculosis). Chopin settled in with Sand in France, composing steadily although his increasing perfectionism slowed his output. By the mid-1840s, though, his health and romantic situation both had deteriorated. The affair ended in 1847 after, among other things, Sand had portrayed their relationship unflatteringly in her 1846 novel Lucrezia Floriani. Chopin then made an extended visit to the British Isles, but returned to Paris to die in 1849.

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Biography - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-1791

Born in Salzburg, Austria on Jan. 27, 1756; full name- Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Gottlieb Mozart; he was baptized as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. Mozart is named after his grandfather on his mother's side and after the Saint on his date of birth, Johannes Chrysostomus.

Parents: Leopold Mozart - composer and violinist, concertmaster at the archiepiscopal court, and in 1763, vice-kapellmeister at Salzburg court; and Anna Maria Pertl, daughter of Wolfgang Nikolaus Pertl, an official from Sankt Gilgen Sibling: Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart



At his age 3: started to play the keyboard Age 5: started composing minuets

1763-1766: toured Europe with his father and sister played for Louis XV at Versailles and George III in London 1764 wrote his first three symphonies; also met Johann Christian Bach.
By his teenage years, he mastered the piano, violin, and harpsichord 1768 completed first opera, La finta semplice (The Simple Pretense)

1769-1773: made three trips to Italy. In Rome, there was a myth that Mozart attended the performance of Allegri's Misere. He wanted the score but when no one agreed he wrote down the music from memory.

1770: Mitridate, re di Ponte (Mithridates, King of Pontus) performed in Milan which was Mozart's first major opera

1772: appointed concertmaster in the orchestra of Archbishop of Salzburg.. During this period, he wrote many sacred works.

1777: toured with his mother hoping to find a court position; traveled to Mannheim where he met and fell in love with Aloysia Weber

1778, July: Anna Maria Mozart died

1779: unable to find a court position, Mozart went back to Salzburg; appointed as court organist to the Archbishop of Salzburg

1781: resigned from his position due to increasing tension and disagreements between Mozart and the Archbishop. Mozart stayed in Vienna instead of returning to Salzburg. Mozart's resignation and his move to Vienna put a strain in his relationship with his father.

1782: married Constanze Weber in Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral. After Mozart's death, Constanze married Danish diplomat Georg Nikolaus von Nissen. In Vienna, Mozart supported his family by performing in public and private, teaching , and composing. His first opera written after his residency in Vienna, Abduction from Seraglio became a success.

Mozart conducts a rehearsal of his Requiem in this romanticized image of his last day.

1786: The Marriage of Figaro, the first of three operas Mozart collaborated with librettist, Lorenza da Ponte, premiered at the Burg Theater.

1787: became composer of Imperial and Royal Chamber with an annual salary of 800fl. His father, Leopold, died on May 28, 1787. Don Giovanni premiered in Prague at the National Theater.

1790: Cosi fan tutte premiered at Burg Theater. Mozart declined an opportunity to compose in London.

1791: composed dance music for the Vienna Court; publishers began to pay fees for the rights to publish his works; appointed assistant to the Cathedral Kapellmeister at St. Stephens with no pay. Mozart was already feeling ill in Prague while finishing La clemenza di Tito.

Dec. 5, 1791: a few minutes before 1AM, Mozart died of rheumatic fever.

Constanze watches as Mozart, on his deathbed,
works on the Requiem in this idealized depiction created years later.

The Mozart family: Maria Anna, Mozart, painting of Anna Maria, and Leopold.

His Works music in three stages:
- early: 1761-1772
- middle: 1772-1781
- late: 1781-1791 (best known works)
Mozart composed over 600 works including:21 stage and opera works, 15 Masses, over 50 symphonies, 25 piano concertos, 12 violin concertos, 27 concert arias, 17 piano sonatas, 26 string quartets, and many other pieces.

His style was very unique, unlike many of the musical styles of his time. People did not appreciate his radical music because they did not understand

Mozart's complex and extraordinary music. In his later years, Mozart incorporates many musical elements and style from different countries into his works. His late works include three of his most famous operas, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte, written in collaboration with Lorenza da Ponte and his last three church pieces, Mass in C Minor, Ave Verum Corpus, and Requiem. Both the Mass in C Minor and Requiem remain unfinished.

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