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Ludwig Van Beethoven: Character, Cultural Restrictions, and his Immortal Beloved           Who hasn't heard Beethoven's Ode to Joy? Completed in 1824 and just three years before his death, his Ninth Symphony is one of the best-known works in classical music. Actually, many consider it to be one of “the greatest compositions in the western musical canon.” Currently, its last movement is part of the national anthem of the European Union. But while musicologists locate Beethoven as the “last master of complex compositions,” two film directors locate him in the last years of a vexing, miserable life. Read More

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: His Musical Proclivity, Don Giovanni, and a Requiem Masked in Mystery           Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed over six hundred musical works that included comic operas intertwined in solemn themes; a form most suited to his personality.  He was a musical prodigy and apparently his sister “Nannerl” was too. Yet when he died in 1791, at the age of thirty five, he was thrown into an unmarked “communal” grave.  Historically, interest had centered on Mozart’s chief rival: Antonio Salieri, another Royal Court composer who had initially confessed to poisoning Mozart. But why would Salieri or anyone else seek to murder him? Read More