OTA-Berlin Constituency Blog » composer http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog The Blog provides OTA-Berlin guests a quick overview of the cultural, sports, social and other related activities taking place in Berlin during their stay. Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:45:02 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 Mini Biography of Johann Sebastian Bach http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/05/21/biography-of-johann-sebastian-bach/ http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/05/21/biography-of-johann-sebastian-bach/#comments Wed, 21 May 2008 14:01:26 +0000 OTA-Berlin http://blog.ota-berlin.de/composers/2008/05/21/biography-of-johann-sebastian-bach/ > were mostly a pallid, feebile and often demented lot after generations of inbreeding. However they held the purse strings and controlled the state and anyone who wanted to survive in their midst had to submit to their daftness and hopefully somehow become a benefactor of their largesse. The mis-managment, incompetence, dishonesty, contemptible arrogance, court intrigue, infighting and pure ignorance of these wealthy gentry, the bourgoisie who basically held any artist and his entire family hostage - knew no bounds. And lets not forget the holy church! While not half as bad as the hypocritical Catholic Austian maffia who made life miserable for W A Mozart, the Calvinist but mostly northern German Luthern church heirarchy and masters for whom Bach had to perform and produce works also “put the boot in” when it suited them and assailed Bach’s music for being too long, too modern, too out of fashion, not religious enough, too loud........... and so on. At one point Bach was arrested and imprisoned by his <> Duke for a month before being dismissed <>. Bach had had the temerity to compose some wedding music for another rival Duke. This had been forbidden by his own pay-master and stubbornly and understandably, Bach refused. Apparently slavery had not yet been completely abolished in 18th century Northern Germany! Bach married twice, both happy marriages, his first wife dying prematurely. From both marriages he fathered 20 children of which only 10 survived their infancy. As a person Bach was a good husband and father devoted to his family. He was also known to be demanding and proud, an assiduously hard-worker and generally a no-nonsense type of person with a lot of self discipline and self-control. However in his younger years he did not always control his temper. As a 23 year old Bach was fired from his first job as organist at the Lutheran church in Arnstadt because he got into a fist-fight with an extremely objectionable bassoonist! ]]>
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Johann Sebastian Bach portrait by www.foto-face.com
 
Bach’s place in history – A Titan
Johann Sebastian Bach is rightly considered the greatest German composer. Admired for both its intellectual and technical depth, Bach’s music transcends his own baroque historical period and remains contempory and fresh irrespective of time, no more so than in the 21st century- where if classical CD sales are [...] Continue Reading…

]]> http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/05/21/biography-of-johann-sebastian-bach/feed/ 9 Antonín Dvořák – OTA-Berlin Mini Biography http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/05/21/biography-of-antonin-dvorak/ http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/05/21/biography-of-antonin-dvorak/#comments Wed, 21 May 2008 12:08:22 +0000 OTA-Berlin http://blog.ota-berlin.de/composers/2008/05/21/biography-of-antonin-dvorak/
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Dvořák

 

 

* September 8th 1841, Nelahozeves CZ – † May 1st 1904, Prague 

Antonin Dvorak employed the idioms and melodies of folk music of his native Bohemia and Moravia in symphonic, oratorial, chamber and operatic works.

When Dvořák composed his second string quintet in 1875, and in 1877 it attracted the attention of Johannes Brahms, whom he later befriended.

When asked later in his life why he [...] Continue Reading…

]]> http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/05/21/biography-of-antonin-dvorak/feed/ 0 Biography of Alban Berg http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/05/21/biography-of-alban-berg/ http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/05/21/biography-of-alban-berg/#comments Wed, 21 May 2008 12:01:23 +0000 OTA-Berlin http://blog.ota-berlin.de/uncategorized/2008/05/21/biography-of-alban-berg/
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* February 9th, 1885, Vienna – † December 24th 1935, Vienna
 
Alban Berg an Austrian composer, was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined romanticism with a personal adaptation of other contemporary technique.
 
Berg had little formal music education before [...] Continue Reading…

]]> http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/05/21/biography-of-alban-berg/feed/ 1 Biography of Achille-Claude Debussy http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/05/18/biography-of-achille-claude-debussy/ http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/05/18/biography-of-achille-claude-debussy/#comments Sun, 18 May 2008 22:31:06 +0000 OTA-Berlin debussy debussy streichquartette chausson programmhefte eigenwilliges heft ravel http://blog.ota-berlin.de/uncategorized/2008/05/18/biography-of-achille-claude-debussy/
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*August 22nd 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye – † March 25, 1918, Paris

 

Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel he is considered the most prominent figure working within the style commonly referred to as Impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions. Debussy was not only among the most important of all French composers but also a [...] Continue Reading…

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