FREE ESSAY ON ALESSANDRO SCARLATTI - CHRISTOPH GLUCK - WOLFGANG MOZART

ALESSANDRO SCARLATTI - CHRISTOPH GLUCK - WOLFGANG MOZART

Alessandro Scarlatti
He was born in Palmero Italy in 1660. He was the music director of the court of Naples.
He also served as the court composer for Queen Christina of Sweden. He was a great
conductor and was later named the most prolific composer of Italian opera of his time. He
is known as the greatest of the composers to carry Italian Opera into its second period,
as number opera. He is also known as the creator of the Italian Overture and a major
figure in the development of classical harmony. He made many modifications of the current
operatic style of his time, some of which include the increased use of instruments to
accompany the voices in his operas, and introducing horns to the ensemble. The Italian
overture that he developed is a form which moves from fast to slow, to fast. It was the
forerunner of the classical symphony. He wrote approximately 114 operas one of which
being Mitridate Eupatore in 1707. He died in 1725, in Naples.
Christoph Willibald Gluck
In the early 18th century, opera was merely a sophisticated kind of variety show. It
generally consisted of disorganized presentations of arias, choral singing, ballets and
orchestral music. Christoph Willilbald Gluck pioneered reform Operas in which music
enhanced the drama of a powerful and poetic story. His productions included artistic
stage craft and dramatic direction. Gluck's new opera form was adopted by most opera
composers of his time as well as later composers. He was born in 1714, in Bavaria. He was
not considered a prodigy, and had no family musical background. In 1737 he was sent to
Milan to study opera, and in 1754 he was appointed opera director of the court theater in
Vienna. His first reform work Orfeo ed Euridice presented in 1763, was produced in
Vienna. His reform works won high praise with the French critics. He died in Vienna in
1787.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
He was a central figure of the Viennese classical school, and is often considered the
greatest musical genius' of all time. Perhaps his greatest single musical achievement is
in the development of his operatic figures. He was born in 1756 in Austria. He was a
child prodigy, coming from a very musical family. Mozart's insights into human emotion
and motivations were profound, and he had the ability to express these insights through
his music. In the marriage of Figaro composed in 1786, he not only created characters
whose actions are explained by and through the music, but who gain in dramatic dimensions
when they engage in ensembles. It is in these larger numbers, even more than in the solo
arias that Mozart presents his characters in all their complexity.He presented characters
recognizable in everyday life rather than remote mythological figures. More than any
other composer, Mozart increased the role of the opera orchestra. He also set new
standards for fusing operatic structure and symphonic forms. Mozart died in Vienna in
1791, and was buried in a multiple grave.