Notes On Noteworthy Notes

I thought I would share notes on six compositions from six different composers of Classical music (Western here, and Indian in a different note).

I will submit to you that these six composers belong to the all time greats. And these six compositions belong to all time great compositions (although not exclusively the only all time great compositions). The composers are Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, Brahms, Vivaldi and Bach. I do regret that I have not included such equal greats as Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Wagner, Hendel, Mahler - but they await another note!

A quick word on what to expect and what not to expect from these selections. You should expect drama. These pieces have a singularly dramatic way of presenting their main theme - and you will be presented with it in the first one to two minutes. Second, the melodies are going to be catchy. Third, they will not have percussion. So the beats are implicit rather than explicit.

Finally, you may find seemingly unnatural breaks between one part of the movement to the next, and if you expect it, you will hear the transitions and know that you are going to be taken to another area of the composition.

I. Introduction

Have you seen a sheet of musical score? It is a series of black symbols written on ruled lines on a sheet of paper. When you apply that to a muscial instrument, and close your eyes and listen to it you experience something fundamental - you feel like you are sound, and nothing else. Yet, leave the earth's atmosphere, and there is no sound. So this precious gift is a function of life on this earth, and an instrument through which, we can perhaps reach to the essence of who we are.

To the ear that is used to spontaenity with some guidelines for structure, the world of western classical music, with its overwhelming definition and structure and lack of percussion can seem unwelcoming, and frankly, alien. However, it represents a world that is deep and enchanting and that has evolved over many hundred years and continues to evolve.

So here in random order, are six great composers of Western classical music and six of their compositions.

II. Mozart

Mozart's Home in Prague

We took a vacation in Prague in the late 90s. It is a wonderful place to visit, a mix of the modern and ancient Europe. At that time it was eminently more affordable than Paris or London. But I was not
complaining, because in those days, all our vacations were paid with frequent flier miles! One of the hightlights of the Prague trip was a visit to Mozart's estate. They have restored the place and have preserved it as it was in the 1700s and have a small garden where they host concerts on a regular basis.


It was wonderful to be on the grounds tread by the prodigy and most prolific genius of Western Classical music. Mozart died in his thirties. I highly recommend the movie Amadeus, that is a wonderful dramatization of Mozart's life.

Eine kleine Nachtmusik (A little night music) is one of the most popular compositions by Mozart. Mozart wrote it in 1787 in Vienna while working on his master composition Don Giovanni.


III. Beethoven

While we are astounded by Mozart's genius when we listen to his compositions, Beethoven seduces you into loving music for its own sake. He belongs to the Romantic age, and his compositions are just
dripping with sweet melody. The fifth symphony starts dramatically.

In fact it will shock you with how dramatically it starts. You will walk around all day, after listening to this and go, "ta ta ta daannn, TA TA TA DAANN! (trust me, you will!)

Beethoven grew deaf. And it is astounding that he composed many of his most beloved compositions after he became deaf! I also recommend the 1994 movie Immortal Beloven, a movie produced on Beethoven's life. While as not well done as the oscar winning Amadeus, this movie give you a good perspective and context on his life and works.

The Fifth Symphony is considered one of Beethoven's greatest musical works. For Hector Berlioz, a critic, Beethoven's Fifth,"emanates directly and solely from the genius of Beethoven. It is his own intimate thought that is developed; and his secret sorrows, his pent- up rage, his dreams so full of melancholy oppression, his nocturnal visions and his bursts of enthusiasm furnish its entire subject, while the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and orchestral forms are there delineated with essential novelty and individuality, endowing them also with considerable power and nobility."

Reviewer E.T.A. Hoffmann described the music with dramatic imagery: Radiant beams shoot through the deep night of this region, and we become aware of gigantic shadows which, rocking back and forth, close in on us and destroy all within us except the pain of endless longing— a longing in which every pleasure that rose up amid jubilant tones sinks and succumbs. Only through this pain, which, while consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our breasts with a full-voiced general cry from all the passions, do we live on and are captivated beholders of the spirits.


IV. Johan Strauss

If you have heard the Blue Danube, as I did for the first time in 1986, you would have entered what was my portal into a whole new world of notes and melodies that utlizes structure and transcends itself into tapping emotions that you did not think you possessed. I asked myself what was this genre of music that was so transporting, yet different from anything I had heard up until that point. Then coincidentally, I saw the Blue Danube played as background score in the ground breaking movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. And the image that Stanley Kubrick, the director, had utilized, was one of
transportation, space transportation. Satellites waltzing in space around earth.

I quickly discovered that the composer of this wonderful melody was Johann Strauss of Austria, and more, that this form of composition was called a Waltz. Thus began my journey exploring what can be termed 'Western' Classical music for whom the term classical music essentially means Hindustani or Carnatic music.

The Blue Danube is the common English title of An der schönen blauen Donau (On the Beautiful Blue Danube). It is one of the most consistently popular pieces of music in the classical repertoire. The sentimental Viennese connotations of the piece have made it into a sort of unofficial Austrian national anthem. It is a traditional encore piece at the annual Vienna New Year's Concert.

The Danube

The composer Johannes Brahms loved this waltz. It is reported that when asked by Frau Strauss for an autograph, Brahms autographed Mrs. Strauss's fan by writing on it the first few bars of the Blue Danube. Under it he wrote "Unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms."




AR Rahman composed a waltz for the movie Lagaan, a fairly nice piece.


V. Vivaldi - Four Seasons

Tanglewood in The Berkshires, MA

Up in the New England mountains of the Berkshires lies Tanglewood. Mention Tanglewood to any music afficianado, and you will get an immediate nod of recognition. The Boston Symphony moves from the city to the mountains and plays in Tanglewood during the summer. We decided once to spend a long weekend in the Berkshires and literally stumbled into Tanglewood. We attended a concert there among the lush green mountains. Listening to the music and seeing nature in full bloom, my mind turned automatically to the four seasons composition of Antonio Vivaldi.

Antonio Vivaldi

If you mention Western Classical music, the Four Seasons is the piece that most easily comes to mind. I think there are a couple of reasons why this is true. First is that it is extremely accessible.
When you listen to this work, you don't feel like, "OK, I am now listening to classical music". This piece is so welcoming, that it is like eating candy - of course you are going to listen to it, you
cannot resist it. Second, it explicitly is connected to a natural phenomenon, therefore not abstract. This is about the four seasons, and Vivaldi wants you to directly know why it is so.



This is not an intellectual quest that yields to emotion, but a direct emotional appeal, by obviating the need for the intellectual. Of all the Western Classical compostions, this is the one I have heard the most (my iPod says so!)

Penned in 1723, The Four Seasons is Vivaldi's best-known work, and is among the most popular pieces of classical music. They were a revolution in musical conception: in them he represented flowing creeks, singing birds (of different species, each exactly characterised), barking dogs, buzzing mosquitoes, crying shepherds, storms, drunken dancers, silent nights, hunting parties (both from
the hunter's and the prey's point of view), frozen landscapes, children ice-skating, and burning fires.

An amazon reviewer nicely captures what I feel about this eternally fresh composition by Vivaldi, "The spring movement is by far the most joyful. The trees are full of leaves again, the snow has melted and the flowers bloom in the fields. The country folk return to their activities and romance seems to be in the air. The summer and fall movements are chalk-full of rich melody, the summer "storm" movement dark and lush, its theme on the rapid violin scale has been featured in films. The winter movements are appropriately slow, bleak, chilly, you can almost feel the frost on the ground and the snow falling slowly over hazy skies. The faster movements denote a snowstorm, there is no one out in such invernal conditions. It is truly Vivaldi's most romantic piece"


VI. Johannes Brahms

I remember listening to Brahms at the Lincoln Center in New York. The Lincoln Center is a special place for the arts. It houses three different major stages, one for Opera, the other for concerts and a third for dance performances. There are more auditoriums too. In fact Shabana Azmi and also Amitabh Bhachan have been honored here.

Listening to a classical music in a concert hall is a special experience. One might say that in the age of high quality headphones like the one Bose offers and with iPods, who needs the fuss of going to a concert hall. I believe that there is a certain magic to the concert hall that is touch to recreate even with the best home theatre systems. I was mesmerized by Brahms when I heard him here.

Joahannes Brahms in my opinion, is the musical heir to Beethoven. His fourth symphony is lushly romantic, lyric piece and is considered by many to be his magnum opus. Brahms venerated Beethoven, perhaps even more than other Romantic composers did. In the composer's home, a marble bust of Beethoven looked down on the spot where he composed. His works contain a number of apparent imitations of Beethoven.

By all accounts, Brahms was perhaps the major practitioner of the symphony during the latter half of the 19th century.

VII. Bach

Philly from the Mann Music Center

Whenever I think of Philadelphia, I have an enduring image. I thinkof the Mann Music Center, the open air theatre. I was there on a student ticket. I was sitting on the open grounds on a blanket
looking into the theatre, listening to music. Above the roof of the theatre you could see the night time skyline of Philadelphia city.




The notes from the stage emanating into the atmosphere, and me listening to it under the star lit sky gazing at the city I am so fond of - it is the enduring image of classical music I carry with me. And when one thinks of classical music in its trues sense, one has to acknowledge the first well known and original master of that art - Johann Sebastian Bach.

Let me admit to you right upfront. When you listen to Bach, you know you are listening to 'classical music', unlike Vivaldi's Four Seasons for example. However, if you have managed to get this far, you are ready to take on the foremost musical genius of all time in the Western World - Johann Sebastian Bach.

Bach's music is mathematics made beautiful. It is worth repeating this point again. Bach's music is mathematics made beautiful. His melodies are so inticately structured, that if you follow them closely, you will enter a world of unbelievable complexity and beauty. My own way of thinking about this is Bach is prose to Mozart's poetry.  Bach's music has been entertainingly captured by Professor Douglas Hofstadter in his blockbuster book 'Godel, Escher and Bach.'

Few musical works of Bach are as loved--and as often performed--as the six "Brandenburg" Concertos. These six works display a lighter side of Bach's imperishable genius. The Brandenburg Concertos became a benchmark of Baroque music and still have the power to move people almost three centuries later. The Brandenburg Concertos are a highlight of one of the happiest and most productive periods in
Bach's life.

VIII. Summary:

As entre in this world, a few collections that one might enjoy include:

1. Ravi Shankar and Andre Previn - Sitar and Orchestra
2. Classics Meet Hollywood
3. Mozart at the Movies
4. Impromptu (a movie with Hugh Grant playing the role of FredricvChopin)

It felt to me that these masterpieces were not only great introductions to this tradition , but indeed a portal into a world of noteworthy notes.