Originally posted by Azrael
what do you mean by "one like Azrael" ??? *L*

I think you stepped out of your skin on that one, and broke the mold of the old Azreal or something. HAHA just kidding. Great Stuff though. :) I read similar stuff in a book on the Analysis of Bach, he had some crazy ways to come up with compositions. In the way I don't think of him much for his composing but his theory on music.

To the main question of what happened to works of the caliber of Mozart, bach, and paganini. I agree with everyone that they're probably are people who still write amazing symphonies without having them being noticed to the world. Remember it's a different world then and now, just like you don't hear anyone becoming BIG from writing grunge anymore. You're not going hear about any great Classical composers coming out now. Also life was a lot simpler then, and they’re was much time to pursue such a level of skill. Also the tools used in composition in those times are becoming history.

One is music today doesn't have much variation. Variation is taking one theme or motif and changing it in several different ways. By adding notes, taking out notes, changing notes, etc, but without changing the theme. The effect is making it new but still having it sound familiar. Beethoven was a master of this skill. Just listen to the 5th symphony, it's the same throughout the entire first movement but slightly altered in pitch each time. Same with Ode to Joy, it's the same motif for the first 8 minutes of the piece. The part that seems different in the middle is actually just a variation of the cello part under the main melody.

Counterpoint is a tool of variation. Most counterpoint in those times was reintroducing a theme already established but adding something new over top of it to create novelty. A composer would do this several times throughout the piece, introducing several variations of theme while adding different counterpoints. Today's music lacks this severely because most can’t take a simple theme that may be 1 minute long, and lengthen it to 10 minutes. Another thing that should be understood about adding counterpoint is which point will be in the foreground and which in the background. A hard lesson to learn in composing is balancing this from one theme to the next, and even knowing which will be in the foreground and background. They both can’t.

Development of theme is also not used much in today's music. Now if Ode to joy was written today, an artist would probably start it right with the climax instead of letting it develop for 2 or 3 minutes. Which is the average time for an entire song today. So developing a theme is a tool that is lost in most modern music.

I would write many others but it would just never end, and probably be too much for a post. That's just a few of the skills used then more than today. Both of these skills together is what made symphonies 15-20 minutes long, rather than 2-3 minutes. A big difference in music today and music then.

Another thing that made those guys great artists is a skill called Perfect pitch. Having this skill allows you to completely understand a pitch in sense far deeper than an average person. Guys like Mozart and Bach said each pitch has a personality, color, or any sort of description. Imagine hearing a pitch so deeply that it makes you relive something in life. Some are even quoted as a note like C, makes them think of sitting on a park bench looking out onto a beach. This insight dramatically enhances artistic creativity. Sounds like bull but you also hear people who look at paintings and say similar things, not different when it comes to hearing.

What made Mozart so great was his ability to bring character to his music. His music just wasn’t a sequence of notes and harmonies that sound good together, he gave his music life that was never there before. Just listen to the Giovanni Opera, I don’t like Opera that much either. But that opera, you can completely sense what is going on in the play without even seeing it but hearing it. It’s amazing, there’s a part where the characters in the play become panicked and how the music goes is what is interesting. Mozart plays a string of staccato notes in a nervous manner. You’ll get nervous just listening to it. Makes sense yes but the part is also written in free time instead of structured like Bach did and many before. Mozart changed the way we looked at music, from the art to bringing it to life.

[Edited by noticingthemistake on 09-09-2003 at 08:34 PM]