LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 1770[1] – 26 March 1827) was a

German composer and pianist. He is considered to have been the most crucial figure in
the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical
music, and remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.

Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and a part of the Holy
Roman Empire of the German Nation in present-day Germany, he moved to Vienna in
his early twenties and settled there, studying with Joseph Haydn and quickly gaining a
reputation as a virtuoso pianist. His hearing began to deteriorate in the late 1790s, yet he
continued to compose, conduct, and perform, even after becoming completely deaf.

Beethoven was the grandson of a musician of Flemish origin named Lodewijk van
Beethoven (1712–1773). Beethoven was named after his grandfather, as Lodewijk is the
Dutch cognate of Ludwig. Beethoven's grandfather was employed as a bass singer at the
court of the Elector of Cologne, rising to become Kapellmeister (music director). He had
one son, Johann van Beethoven (1740–1792), who worked as a tenor in the same
musical establishment, also giving lessons on piano and violin to supplement his income.
Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767; she was the daughter of Johann
Heinrich Keverich, who had been the head chef at the court of the Archbishopric of Trier.

Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn; he was baptized in a Roman

Catholic service on 17 December 1770, and was probably born the previous day, 16
December. Children of that era were usually baptized the day after birth, and it is known
that Beethoven's family and his teacher Johann Albrechtsberger celebrated his birthday
on 16 December. While this evidence supports the case for 16 December 1770 as
Beethoven's date of birth, it cannot be stated with certainty, as there is no documentary
evidence of it (only his baptismal record survives). Of the seven children born to Johann
van Beethoven, only the second-born, Ludwig, and two younger brothers survived
infancy. Caspar Anton Carl was born on 8 April 1774, and Nikolaus Johann, the
youngest, was born on 2 October 1776.

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN

 Franz Joseph Haydn (31 March[1] 1732 – 31 May 1809), known as Joseph
Haydn,was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of
the classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the
String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these genres. He was also
instrumental in the development of the piano trio and in the evolution of sonata form.

A life-long resident of Austria, Haydn spent much of his career as a court

musician for the wealthy Hungarian aristocratic Esterházy family on their remote estate.
Isolated from other composers and trends in music until the later part of his long life, he
was, as he put it, "forced to become original". At the time of his death, he was one of the
most celebrated composers in Europe.

Joseph Haydn was the brother of Michael Haydn, himself a highly regarded
composer, and Johann Evangelist Haydn, a tenor. He was also a close friend of Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart and a teacher of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, a village near the border with
Hungary. His father was Mathias Haydn, a wheelwright who also served as
"Marktrichter", an office akin to village mayor. Haydn's mother Maria, née Koller, had
previously worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of
Rohrau. Neither parent could read music; however, Mathias was an enthusiastic folk
musician, who during the journeyman period of his career had taught himself to play the
harp. According to Haydn's later reminiscences, his childhood family was extremely
musical, and frequently sang together and with their neighbours.

Haydn's parents had noticed that their son was musically gifted and knew that in
Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain any serious musical training. It was for this
reason that they accepted a proposal from their relative Johann Matthias Frankh, the
schoolmaster and choirmaster in Hainburg, that Haydn be apprenticed to Frankh in his
home to train as a musician. Haydn therefore went off with Frankh to Hainburg (seven
miles away) and never again lived with his parents. He was six years old.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), was a prolific
and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many
acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and
choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg.

Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and
performed before European royalty. At 17 he was engaged as a court musician in
Salzburg, but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position, always composing
abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position.
He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security.
During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies,
concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the
time of Mozart's death. The circumstances of his early death have been much
mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.

Mozart learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity
of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate. His
influence on subsequent Western art music is profound. Beethoven wrote his own early
compositions in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will
not see such a talent again in 100 years."

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born to Leopold and Anna Maria Pertl Mozart at
9 Getreidegasse in Salzburg, capital of the sovereign Archbishopric of Salzburg, in what
is now Austria but, at the time, was part of the Bavarian Circle in the Holy Roman
Empire. His only sibling to survive past birth was Maria Anna (1751–1829), called
"Nannerl". Wolfgang was baptized the day after his birth at St. Rupert's Cathedral. The
baptismal record gives his name in Latinized form as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus
Theophilus Mozart. He generally called himself "Wolfgang Amadè Mozart" as an adult,
but there were many variants.

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

 Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March 1685 [O.S. 21 March] – 28 July 1750) was a
German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose ecclesiastical and
secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the
Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity. Although he did not introduce new
forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, an
unrivalled control of harmonic and motivic organisation, and the adaptation of rhythms,
forms and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France.

Revered for their intellectual depth, technical command and artistic beauty, Bach's
works include the Brandenburg concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas, The
Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B Minor, the St Matthew Passion, the St John
Passion, the Magnificat, The Musical Offering, The Art of Fugue, the English and French
Suites, the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, the Cello Suites, more than 200 surviving
cantatas, and a similar number of organ works, including the celebrated Toccata and
Fugue in D minor and Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.

Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected throughout Europe during his
lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of
interest and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now
regarded as the supreme composer of the Baroque style, and as one of the greatest of all
time.

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Saxe-Eisenach. He was the

youngest child of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the Stadtpfeifer or town
musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. His father taught him to play violin and
harpsichord. His uncles were all professional musicians, whose posts ranged from church
organists and court chamber musicians to composers. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach
(1645–93), was especially famous and introduced him to the art of organ playing. Bach
was proud of his family's musical achievements, and around 1735 he drafted a genealogy,
"Origin of the musical Bach family".

GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL

 George Frideric Handel (23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-
British Baroque composer who is famous for his operas, oratorios, and concertos. Handel
was born in Germany in the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti.
He received critical musical training in Italy before settling in London and becoming a
naturalised British subject. His works include Messiah, Water Music, and Music for the
Royal Fireworks. He was strongly influenced by the techniques of the great composers of
the Italian Baroque and the middle-German polyphonic Choral tradition. Handel's music
was well-known to many composers, including Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

Handel was born in Halle (which was then in the Duchy of Magdeburg, a
province of Brandenburg-Prussia) to Georg and Dorothea (née Taust) Händel in 1685.
His father, Georg Händel, 63 when his son was born, was an eminent barber-surgeon who
also served as surgeon to the court of Saxe-Weissenfels and the Margraviate of
[Link] to John Mainwaring, his first biographer, "Handel had
discovered such a strong propensity to Music, that his father who always intended him
for the study of the Civil Law, had reason to be alarmed. He strictly forbade him to
meddle with any musical instrument but Handel found means to get a little clavichord
privately convey'd to a room at the top of the house. To this room he constantly stole
when the family was asleep". At an early age Handel became a skillful performer on the
harpsichord and pipe organ. One day Handel and his father went on a trip to Weissenfels
to visit either his son (Handel's half-brother) Carl, or grandson (Handel's nephew) Georg
Christian, who was serving as a valet to Duke Johann Adolf I. According to legend, the
young Handel attracted the attention of the Duke with his playing on the church organ. At
his urging, Handel's father permitted him to take lessons in musical composition and
keyboard technique from Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, the organist of the Lutheran
Marienkirche. From then on Handel learned about harmony and contemporary styles,
analysed sheet music scores, learned to work fugue subjects and copy music. Sometimes
he would take his teacher's place as organist for services. In 1698 Handel played for
Frederick I of Prussia and met Giovanni Battista Bononcini in Berlin; in 1701 Georg
Philipp Telemann went to Halle to listen to the promising young man.

GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI DA PALESTRINA

 Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (3 February 1525 or 2 February 1526[1] – 2
February 1594) was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known
16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. He had a
lasting influence on the development of church music, and his work has often been seen
as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony.

Palestrina was born in the town of Palestrina, which is near Rome, then part of the
Papal States. Documents suggest that he first visited Rome in 1537, when he is listed as a
chorister at Santa Maria Maggiore basilica. He studied with Robin Mallapert and Firmin
Lebel. He spent most of his career in the city.

Palestrina came of age as a musician under the influence of the northern European
style of polyphony, which owed its dominance in Italy primarily to two influential
Franco-Flemish composers, Guillaume Dufay and Josquin des Prez, who had spent
significant portions of their careers there. Italy itself had yet to produce anyone of
comparable fame or skill in polyphony.

From 1544 to 1551, Palestrina was organist of the principal church (St. Agapito)
of his native city, and in 1551 he became maestro di cappella at the Cappella Giulia, the
papal choir at St. Peter's Basilica. His first published compositions, a book of Masses,
had made so favorable an impression with Pope Julius III (previously the Bishop of
Palestrina) that he appointed Palestrina musical director of the Julian Chapel. This was
the first book of Masses by a native composer: in the Italian states of his day, most
composers of sacred music were from the Low Countries, France, Portugal, or Spain. In
fact the book was modeled on one by Cristóbal de Morales: the woodcut in the front is
almost an exact copy of the one from the book by the Spanish composer.