Gustav Mahler

Das klagende Lied (1880)

Kindertotenlieder (1904)

Symphony No. 9 (1909)

Summer of 1907 came as a nightmare for Austrian-Jewish composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). His five year old daughter Maria Anna died of scarlet fever and diphtheria; he lost his job as director of the Vienna Court Opera due to conflicts with the administration and the anti-Semitic press. His wife Alma Schindler, who was known as the most beautiful woman in Vienna, became severely depressed following their daughter’s death. Shortly after, his heart was diagnosed with infective endocarditis. In a matter of months, the Vienna Conservatoire graduate seemed to have lost everything important in his life.
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Stravinsky

Symphony No. 1 in E flat major, Op. 1 (1907)

At age nine, Russian musician Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975) was already a music prodigy. His parents took him to his first opera performance when he was five, only to find him singing several songs from the show the next day. His talent was soon discovered after several piano lessons with his mother, when he displayed perfect pitch and a remarkable musical memory. His unusual talent often encouraged him to pretend to play a piece from score, when in actual fact he was reproducing it from memory. Soon, the young Shostakovich was effortlessly playing the Haydn andante, Tchaikovsky’s Children’s Album, Mozart and much more.
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Do cows understand music? Can animals appreciate the beauty of music? The term “playing music to a cow” (对牛弹琴) is an old Chinese proverb that came about when a man called Gong Mingyi played music to his cow, only to find that it did not respond. Today, the term is used as a metaphor to mock an audience who cannot understand or appreciate what is delivered to them.
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Imagine a world without language — a world where sounds were merely frequencies on a spectrum, and where the rules of writing and speech did not exist. It would be virtually impossible to imagine how human civilization would have developed, how history would have unfolded, or how science and technology would have progressed as we know it today.
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During the Baroque period (1600-1750), male sopranos composed about 70 percent of all opera singers. Crowned as the singing sensations of the 18th century, these men moved audiences with the shrill clarity of their high-pitched voices, and the lung power of a full-grown man. However, behind their success was a painful price to pay.
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Mussorgsky

Khovanshchina (1880) – Prelude

Pictures at an Exhibition. (1874)

Have you ever wondered why so many creative people are associated with alcohol? Beethoven, Vincent van Gogh, Elvis Presley, Andy Warhol, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, are but a handful of many who have been known for their creative output and alcoholism. Likewise, many famous writers such as Dylan Thomas, James Joyce, F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were said to use alcohol as a remedy to overcome the writer’s block. While today we would agree that alcohol abuse is a sickness, excessive drinking has nevertheless been crowned as a powerful catalyst through which many great works have been produced. Can alcohol really grease the wheels of creativity?
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“I am the most unhappy and miserable person in this world… my health will never improve, and in such despair, things will only become worse instead of better…” ~ Franz Schubert

Austrian Composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828) is enshrined as the pillar of Romantic Western Classical Music who follows after Beethoven*. He had completed a tremendous collection of hundreds of lieder, symphonies, operas, and a large body of chamber and piano music that adds up to over 1000 works during his career. This was prolific for a man who only lived for 31 years. Franz Liszt described him as “the most poetic musician who ever lived.” On his deathbed, Beethoven is said to have looked into some of the younger man’s works and exclaimed, “Truly, the spark of divine genius resides in this Schubert!”

Yet, a number of Schubert’s musical works such as ‘Winter Journey’, ‘the Unfinished Symphony’ and ‘Death and the Maiden’ are said to be filled with elements of death. Indeed, Schubert’s despair during his life is reflected in his own writing, “the brightest hopes have come to naught, to whom the joy of love and friendship can offer nothing but pain at most… Every night as I retire to my bed, I always hope that I would not wake up. Yet every day, the morning breaks into the pains of yesterday’s wounds.”

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Beethoven

Symphony no.9 in D minor Op 125 “Choral” (1824)
IV Finale: Presto – Allegro assai

Smetana

String Quartet no. 1 “From my live” (1876)

Má vlast (1879)

“… For two years I have avoided almost all social gatherings because it is impossible for me to say to people “I am deaf”. If I belonged to any other profession it would be easier, but in my profession it is a frightful state…” ~ Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is known as one of the most pivotal classical composers of the 18th century, and is still considered today one of the greatest composers of all time. Für Elise, Moonlight Sonata, and the rich and penetrating Fifth Symphony are amongst some of his famous works.
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“The One-Armed Swordsman” (Dubei dao “獨臂刀”) is an old Chinese film depicting the life of a swordsman of the Golden Sword School. During a ferocious fight, the swordsman’s right arm tragically gets cut off, ending his career as a swordsman. Abandoned in a state of depression, he is rescued by a peasant girl who finds him unconscious in a nearby river. Upon his recovery, she hands him a half burnt kung-fu manual that inspires him to train himself into a master of a new one-armed swordsmanship.

Austrian-born Paul Wittgenstein was an ambitious young man who dedicated his life towards becoming an acclaimed pianist and musician. By the young age of 26, he was already playing with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra performing piano concerts for large audiences.

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Why are there so many songs about love?

Regardless of whether it is country music, pop music or classical music, songs about love and romance have always made up the greatest proportion. In fact, the world’s oldest song ever discovered and documented was indeed a love song inscribed in hieroglyphics on the wall of a 4300 year-old tomb, which was found surrounded by images of singers and musicians playing the harp.

Love comes in many forms. There is patriotic love, paternal love, familial love, platonic love, sibling love, romantic love, and sexual love of eros. Although love begins with the heart in the songs and movies, it all really happens in the head.

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