5 X 5

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5 Facts About the Great Composers

(My choices may be disputed).

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Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)

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Beethoven’s father, a music teacher, planned all along for Beethoven to be a child prodigy throwing him into the world of music from a very young age. He made his public performance debut at age 7 and was subject to regular emotional and physical abuse, sometimes forced to practice for days on end.

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At age 26 he started hearing a ringing and a buzzing in his ears, things worsening from there. He had nearly completely lost his hearing by the time he was 44. He tried to hide this from everyone, even his closest friends, Beethoven writing “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.”

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Even though his hearing was steadily deteriorating, he managed to compose an opera, six symphonies, four solo concerti, five string quartets, six string sonatas, seven piano sonatas, five sets of piano variations, four overtures, four trios, two sextets, and 72 songs. Because he had been immersed in music from such a young age and because he was exceptional, even after he lost his hearing he could still ‘hear’ the music in his head.

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Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, one of his most complex pieces, was written when he was almost entirely deaf. Even so, he insisted on conducting the first performance of this work. However the orchestra arranged another conductor, Michael Umlauf to stand beside him and it’s believed Umlauf told the orchestra to ‘ignore Beethoven’ and follow him instead.

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Beethoven died at the age of 56 during a thunderstorm that his friend likened to one of the composer’s great symphonies, saying “crashes that sound like hammering on the portals of Fate”.

Beethoven was plagued with poor health including chronic hepatitis, jaundice, colitis, various skin diseases, rheumatic fever and cirrhosis of the liver, but his actual cause of his death is still unknown.

Like the cause of his death, Beethoven’s final words are also a mystery.

Some report that after receiving a case of wine as a gift, he said “Pity, pity, too late”. Others speculate these words were “Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est” meaning, “applaud, my friends, the comedy is over”. Some say his final statement was “I shall hear in heaven”.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)

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Mozart showed prodigious musical talent from a young age. He composed his first piece, a minuet, at the age of 5 and started performing in front of European royalty by the time he was 6.

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Mozart’s musical output was nothing short of remarkable. Over his short life, he composed more than 600 works, including symphonies, concertos, operas, chamber music, and choral compositions.

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Mozart was fluent in multiple languages, including German, Italian, French, and Latin. This linguistic versatility enabled him to compose and perform in different countries and connect with diverse audiences.

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His final and unfinished composition was the Requiem in D minor. Commissioned anonymously, the circumstances surrounding its composition and the extent of Mozart’s involvement remain the subject of intrigue and speculation.

The cause of Mozart's death is not known with certainty. Researchers have suggested more than a hundred causes of death, including acute rheumatic fever, streptococcal infection, trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment.

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He had a unique ability to compose music in his mind before putting it on paper. He would envision entire orchestral scores, complete with multiple instruments and intricate harmonies, without the need for extensive revisions.

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A digression:

Speilberg told Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnie Schwarzenegger that he was going to make a film, The Great Composers, and that he wanted them to play the lead roles.

"I wanna be Beethoven," said Stallone.

"I gotta be Mozart," retorted Willis.

"What about you, Arnie?" they asked....

“I‘ll be Bach,” Schwarzenegger replied.

(I’ll see myself out).

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893)

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Tchaikovsky became fascinated with music at an early age, beginning with an orchestrina (a group of small keyboard instruments) in his family home. He began improvising on the piano and wrote his first attempt at a recorded composition in 1844 at age 4, a song he collaborated on with his younger sister Alexandra. His parents supported his musical curiosity, and he would go on to begin piano lessons in 1845, at age 5. However, his father would not realize his true musical talents until a few years later.

He would grow up to compose some of the most notable pieces from the Romantic era, his music featuring catchy melodies, powerful harmonies, and colourful compositions. He is best known for his ballets, symphonies, and overtures. Today, his most recognized works include “Swan Lake,” “The Nutcracker,” the “1812 Overture” and “The Sleeping Beauty.”

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He was left speechless upon first hearing Mozart's opera Don Giovanni at the age of 16, a work which heavily influenced him. Mozart’s unfinished masterpiece, the Requiem, also made a long-lasting impression on him – so much so, in fact, that Tchaikovsky once referred to the Austrian composer as his “musical Christ”.

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In 1880, Tchaikovsky wrote the “1812 Overture” as a commemoration of the Battle of Borodino, a key battle of the Napoleonic Wars. The piece made him a household name and has become a symbol of patriotism. One of the unique characteristics of the “1812 Overture” is its use of real cannons as part of the instrumentation.

Despite its critical acclaim, Tchaikovsky despised how it sounded. Interestingly, the real cannons were his idea. He described the composition as lacking artistic merit “written without warmth or love” and thought it was “very loud” and “noisy.”

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Swan Lake, the first ballet in what was to become an incredibly popular trilogy, premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1877 but turned out to be a complete fiasco. The orchestra was unable to correctly perform the score, reputed too complex and unusual, the scene staging was done poorly and the choreography was trivial. The critics went as far as to call the ballet’s music "boring".

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Tchaikovsky married Antonina Milyukova, a former Conservatory student of his, but the marriage was extremely short-lived: Tchaikovsky was gay and the couple separated after just six weeks. However, the laws of Imperial Russia only contemplated divorce in the case of adultery, so the two formally remained husband and wife until Pyotr's death.

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Tchaikovsky died on November 6, 1893. His death was about nine days after the premiere of his sixth symphony, the “Pathétique.”

It was concluded he died from cholera, a bacterial infection of the intestines. His consumption of an unboiled glass of water is the suspected culprit.

However, many of his contemporaries believed Tchaikovsky died of suicide by arsenic poisoning. He was tormented by his homosexuality his entire life, as he feared it being publicized, and for a time, many thought this inner turmoil led to suicide.

It has since been proven that he fell victim to the cholera epidemic of St. Petersburg and not suicide. There hasn’t been any evidence to prove the suicide theory.

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Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948 - )

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Not only was Webber playing the piano and violin at the age of three, he began playing the French horn and writing his own music at age six. He composed his first musical, called Cinderella Up The Beanstalk And Most Everywhere Else, when he was 13. His first staged musical was written with Tim Rice when he was 19. That musical was Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. When he first presented it, it was a short 20-minute show. The following year, at 20 years old, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice wrote Jesus Christ Superstar.

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Webber married Madeleine Gurdon, a former equestrian sportswoman, in 1991. They are still married, she is his third wife. His first wife was Sarah Hugill, married from 1971 to 1983. His second wife was singer and actress Sarah Brightman, and they were married from 1984 to 1990. He met Sarah when she joined the cast of Cats in 1981. She originated the character of Christine Daaé in The Phantom Of The Opera in 1986 – a role that was written specifically for her by him.

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In 2017, it was announced that Webber was the second richest musician in the UK. He came above mainstream musicians Elton John, U2, and Mick Jagger, with only Paul McCartney above him.

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In 1991, Webber became the first and only musical composer to have six productions run simultaneously in the West End. In 2017 he had four productions running at the same time on Broadway. The shows were: Sunset Boulevard, Cats, The Phantom Of The Opera, and School Of Rock – The Musical. He now holds the record for most concurrent shows on Broadway, a record he shares with Rodgers and Hammerstein.

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Webber’s theatre company, Really Useful Group, owns seven London theatres: The Adelphi Theatre, Cambridge Theatre, London Palladium, New London Theatre, Her Majesty’s Theatre, Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and The Other Palace.

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Ennio Morriconi (1928 – 2020)

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Ennio Morricone was encouraged to develop his natural musical abilities at a young age, creating his first compositions at age 6. He was taught music by his father and learned several instruments, but gravitated toward the trumpet. When he was 12 years old, Morricone enrolled in a four-year program at the prestigious National Academy of St. Cecilia in Rome, where he was born, and completed his studies within six months.

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Morricone made music for 85 of his 91 years.

He was a composer, orchestrator, conductor, trumpeter, and pianist who wrote music in a wide range of styles. With more than 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as more than 100 classical works, Morricone is widely considered one of the most prolific and greatest film composers of all time. He received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, three Grammy Awards, three Golden Globes and six BAFTAs.

His filmography includes more than 70 award-winning films, including all Sergio Leone's films since A Fistful of Dollars. He received Academy Award for Best Original Score nominations for Days of Heaven (1978), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Bugsy (1991), Malèna (2000) and The Hateful Eight (2015), winning for the latter. He won the Academy Honorary Award in 2007. And his score to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) is regarded as one of the most recognisable and influential soundtracks in history. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

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The music in Leone’s films is at once one of their most distinctive features, and also one of their most inextricable. Later in his career, Morricone explained that he would often compose portions of the music for Leone’s films before shooting began, and then scenes were staged and shot to match the timing and rhythm of the composer’s music. “That’s why the films are so slow,” Morricone joked in 2007. His use of so many then-unconventional instruments, including electric guitars, the mouth harp, and sound effects like gunshots redefined the musical landscape of the genre, while Leone used traditional morality tales to explore darker, more complex stories.

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Quentin Tarantino has used cues from Morricone scores in many of his films, beginning with Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2. Tarantino first hoped to work with the composer on Inglorious Basterds, but when the timing couldn’t be worked out, the filmmaker utilised eight older tracks by Morricone on the soundtrack.

Morricone composed the song “Ancora Qui” for Django Unchained, but it wasn’t until The Hateful Eight that he composed a full score for Tarantino, in 2016 his first competitive Oscar for his work on Tarantino's film after being nominated six times over the course of nearly 40 years. Morricone also earned an Honorary Oscar in 2007 "For his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music."

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Morricone loved chess, having learned the game when he was 11. Before his musical career took off, he played in club tournaments in Rome in the mid-1950s. His first official tournament was in 1964, where he won a prize in the third category for amateurs. Over the years, Morricone played chess with many big names including Grand Masters Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, Judit Polgar, and Peter Leko. He once held Grand Master Boris Spassky to a draw in a simultaneous competition with 27 players, where Morricone was the last one standing.

Morricone died aged 91 as a result of injuries sustained to his femur during a fall.