Today we will listen to Minuet in G. Several people composed a Minuet (a slow, stately ballroom dance for two in 3/4 time, popular especially in the 18th century) in the key of G including Beethoven, Mozart and Bach.
How are the same? How are they different?
JS Bach’s version
The Bach version also was “acquired” for a popular song in the 1960s
Beethoven
Rowlf from the Muppets plays the Beethoven Minuet
Mozart
So – never say to your teacher that “I already played that” – you never know which version s/he has in mind!
Today we listen to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. The real name for this work is The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C♯ minor “Quasi una fantasia”, Op. 27, No. 2. It was completed in 1801 and dedicated in 1802 to his pupil, Countess Giulietta Guicciardi
The piece is one of Beethoven’s most popular compositions for the piano, and it was a popular favorite even in his own day.
It’s in the Piano Pronto Beethoven book as well as many compilations of classical music.
Arranged for piano and orchestra
An animation
The above were all of the first movement only. Here’s the whole sonata played by Valentina Lisitsa:
Today, we’ll listen to the Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, of Ludwig van Beethoven. It was written between 1804–1808. It is one of the best-known compositions in classical music, and one of the most frequently played symphonies. As is typical of symphonies in the classical period, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is in four movements.
I’m sure you’ve heard the first 8 notes before…
Since it was written for orchestra, each instrument has its own line:
A piano version, transcribed by Liszt
From Disney’s Fantasia 2000:
Pink learns to play the violin, and interrupts a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with the Pink Panther theme played on various instruments.
Beethoven’s Wig:
Arrangements of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony can be found in Piano Maestro and lots of books including Piano Pronto’s Movement 2, Movement 5 (Victory Theme) and Beethoven: Exploring His Life and Music.
• 1915 ~ Laverne Andrews, Pop Singer More information about The Andrews Sisters
• 1915 ~ Dorothy Kirsten, Opera Singer
• 1925 ~ Merv Griffin, Entertainer
• 1925 ~ Bill Haley, American rock-and-roll singer, songwriter and guitarist with Bill Haley and His Comets
• 1932 ~ Della Reese (Delloreese Patricia Early), Pop Singer
• 1937 ~ Vladimir Ashkenazy, Russian-born Icelandic pianist and conductor More information about Ashkenazy Grammy winner
• 1937 ~ Gene Chandler (Eugene Dixon), Singer
• 1937 ~ The big band classic, Sing, Sing, Sing was recorded by Benny Goodman and his band. Sitting in on this famous Victor Records session was Gene Krupa, Ziggy Elman and Harry James.
• 1945 ~ Rik Elswit, Musician, guitarist and singer with Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
• 1954 ~ Nanci Griffith, Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter
• 1957 ~ John Lennon and Paul McCartney met for the first time at The Woolton Church Parish Fete where The Quarry Men were appearing. As The Quarry Men were setting up for their evening performance, McCartney eager to impress Lennon picked up a guitar and played ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ (Eddie Cochran) and ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’ (Gene Vincent). Lennon was impressed, and even more so when McCartney showed Lennon and Eric Griffiths how to tune their guitars, something they’d been paying someone else to do for them.
• 1959 ~ Jon Keeble, Musician, drummer with Spandau Balle
• 1971 ~ Louis Armstrong, Jazz musician, died. His groups, the Hot Five and Hot Seven, from 1925 to 1927, had a revolutionary impact on jazz.
• 1971 ~ Karen and Richard Carpenter hosted the summer series, Make Your Own Kind of Music, on NBC-TV.
• 1973 ~ Otto Klemperer, German conductor particularly known for his interpretations of Beethoven, died.
• 1984 ~ Michael Jackson and his brothers started their Victory Tour in Kansas City, Missouri’s Arrowhead Stadium. The tour turned out to be a victory for the Jacksons when the nationwide concert tour concluded months later.
• 1998 ~ Roy Rogers, U.S. film actor known as “the singing cowboy”, died.
• 2000 ~ Władysław Szpilman, Polish pianist and classical composer, died at the age of 88
• 2020 ~ Country Music legend Charlie Daniels, best known for his monster 1979 hit “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” died at the age of 83.
• 2020 ~ Ennio Morricone wrote the scores for more than 500 movies and TV series, as well as over 100 works for the concert hall. He died following complications from a fall at the age of 91.
Humoresques Op. 101 (B. 187), is a piano cycle by the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, written during the summer of 1894. One writer says “the seventh Humoresque is probably the most famous small piano work ever written after Beethoven’s Für Elise.
Orchestra:
Ragtime:
Jazz with Wynton Marsalis on trumpet
Zez Confrey gave this a makeover and included Way Down Upon the Swanee River:
Find the original Humoresque on IMSLP. The O’Connor Music Studio Lending Library has versions of Humoresque available at several levels and Confey’s Humorestless played in the video above.
Today we listen to the third movement Mozart’s Piano Sonata No.11 III (Turkish March) with just a bit of the first movement near the end.
The Turkish influence on western music came through the Turkish military band music (Mehter), which was at the time was the only military band in Europe. It was once popular among western composers like Mozart to write Turkish-style (alla Turca) works, Turkish music being known at that time as Turkish band music. That’s why the Turkish-influenced music works by Mozart, Beethoven or Strauss are in march rhythm as they are called march.
A rondo is a piece of music where the musical material stated at the beginning of the piece keeps returning. This opening music can be called either the theme or the refrain; they are the same thing. The form can be A, B, A or A, B, C, A – anything as long as the “A” theme returns
The Turkish March movement:
On guitar:
Harmonica, anyone?
Vocal:
Find the Turkish march movement of this sonata in these Piano Pronto books: Encore, Mozart: Exploring His Life and Music,
The first movement can be found in Keyboard Kickoff, Movement 2
Today’s piece is one of those that piano students often try to learn on their own – or a friend will teach them the first 9 notes. It’s usually played too fast and, often in the wrong octave, or the first couple notes are repeated too many times.
This is one of two pieces that are so often played incorrectly that they have the distinction of being banned from competition in Northern Virginia Piano Teacher competitions.
Stay tuned for the other one!
Für Elise was not published during Beethoven’s lifetime, having been discovered by Ludwig Nohl 40 years after the composer’s death. The identity of “Elise” is unknown.
The very basic melody:
From Wunderkeys – The Elise Session
The actual beginning is a little more involved.
And, there’s more!
If you’d like to learn to play this piece correctly, find the sheet music at IMSLP, Beethoven: Exploring His Life and Music, and countless compilations of classical music available at the O’Connor Music Studio.
Follow along:
By Valentina Lisitsa:
Ragtime!
The Big Piano at FAO Schwartz in NYC:
Glass harp:
The Mystery Behind Für Elise:
Youtube has many, many more versions. Beethoven would probably go nuts!
“Ode to Joy” was written in the summer of 1785 by German poet, playwright, and historian Friedrich Schiller and published the following year in Thalia. A slightly revised version appeared in 1808, changing two lines of the first and omitting the last stanza.
“Ode to Joy” is best known for its use by Ludwig van Beethoven in the final (fourth) movement of his Ninth Symphony, completed in 1824. This was Beethoven’s final symphony and lasts over an hour for the whole thing.
The entire final movement:
Beethoven’s text is not based entirely on Schiller’s poem, and introduces a few new sections. His melody (but not Schiller’s words) was adopted as the Anthem of Europe by the Council of Europe in 1972 and subsequently by the European Union.
If your student is in Wunderkeys, this is a classical pop piano solo based on Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. This Level 4 piano solo is from the book The Beethoven Sessions; a collection of 7 classical pop piano solos inspired by the music of Beethoven.
It is often called Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee (You) in hymnbooks.
Find Ode to Joy in Piano Maestro, Prelude, Beethoven: Exploring His Life and Music and several hym books.
By now, you know I love flashmobs:
And Muppets (note the metronome going wild!):
And Barbershop:
An animated score:
Boomwhackers:
The Piano Guys combined Ode to Joy with Joy to the World for a new Christmas arrangement:
As the European Anthem:
And, finally Joyful, Joyful we Adore Thee by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Do a search on youtube – lots and lots of people have played this famous Beethoven melody.
Happy Birthday is a song that I like to have each of my students learn at various levels appropriate to their level. When a friend or family member has a birthday, it’s great to be able to sit down and play.
It’s only been fairly recently that piano students could have this music in their books.
“Happy Birthday to You”, more commonly known as simply “Happy Birthday”, is a song that is traditionally sung to celebrate the anniversary of a person’s birth. According to the 1998 Guinness World Records, “Happy Birthday to You” is the most recognized song in the English language, followed by “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”.
The melody, or part you sing, of “Happy Birthday to You” comes from the song “Good Morning to All”, which has traditionally been attributed to American sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill in 1893, although the claim that the sisters composed the tune is disputed.
Patty Hill was a kindergarten principal and her sister Mildred was a pianist and composer. The sisters used “Good Morning to All” as a song that young children would find easy to sing. The combination of melody and lyrics in “Happy Birthday to You” first appeared in print in 1912, and probably existed even earlier.
“Happy Birthday” in the style of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Dvorak, and Stravinsky. Find the melody!
Lots of legal stuff below which you can skip…
None of the early appearances of the “Happy Birthday to You” lyrics included credits or copyright notices. The Summy Company registered a copyright in 1935, crediting authors Preston Ware Orem and Mrs. R. R. Forman. In 1988, Warner/Chappell Music purchased the company owning the copyright for US$25 million, with the value of “Happy Birthday” estimated at US$5 million. Based on the 1935 copyright registration, Warner claimed that the United States copyright will not expire until 2030, and that unauthorized public performances of the song are illegal unless royalties are paid to Warner. In one specific instance in February 2010, these royalties were said to amount to US$700. By one estimate, the song is the highest-earning single song in history, with estimated earnings since its creation of US$50 million.In the European Union, the copyright for the song expired on January 1, 2017.
The American copyright status of “Happy Birthday to You” began to draw more attention with the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998. When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Act in Eldred v. Ashcroft in 2003, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer specifically mentioned “Happy Birthday to You” in his dissenting opinion. American law professor Robert Brauneis, who extensively researched the song, concluded in 2010 that “It is almost certainly no longer under copyright.”
In 2013, based in large part on Brauneis’s research, Good Morning to You Productions, a company producing a documentary about “Good Morning to All”, sued Warner/Chappell for falsely claiming copyright to the song. In September 2015, a federal judge declared that the Warner/Chappell copyright claim was invalid, ruling that the copyright registration applied only to a specific piano arrangement of the song, and not to its lyrics and melody.
In 2016, Warner/Chappell settled for US $14 million, and the court declared that “Happy Birthday to You” was in the public domain.
Legal stuff is finished and people can now sing and play “Happy Birthday to You” whenever and wherever they want.
Students in Wunderkeys may play this version from Remix: Teen Hits from Kids Tunes
One of my all-time versions of Happy Birthday, in duet form – and I have the music if you want to tackle it.
• 1813 ~ (Wilhelm) Richard Wagner, German composer
Read quotes by and about Wagner
More information about Wagner
Happy Birthday Wagner-Style
• 1820 ~ Alexander Ernst Fesca, Composer
• 1850 ~ Johann Schrammel, Composer
• 1852 ~ Emile Sauret, Composer
• 1865 ~ Enrique Morera, Composer
• 1879 ~ Eastwood Lane, Composer
• 1879 ~ Jean Emile Paul Cras, Composer
• 1884 ~ Alceo Toni, Composer
• 1885 ~ Julio Fonseca, Composer
• 1900 ~ Edwin S. Votey of Detroit, MI patented his pianola, a pneumatic piano player. The device could be attached to any piano. Batteries not included.
• 1914 ~ Sun Ra (Herman Blount), American jazz composer and keyboard player who led a free jazz big band known for its innovative instrumentation and the theatricality of its performances. He passed away in 1993.
• 1916 ~ Gordon Binkerd, Composer
• 1924 ~ Charles Aznavour, French chanteur and composer
• 1924 ~ Claude Andre Francois Ballif, French composer
• 1926 ~ Elaine Leighton, Drummer, played with Billie Holiday
• 1966 ~ Iva Davies (1955) Guitarist, singer with Icehouse
• 1958 ~ Wedding vows were taken by rock ’n’ roll star, Jerry Lee Lewis and his thirteen-year-old cousin, Myra.
• 1965 ~ The Beatles got their eighth consecutive number one hit as Ticket to Ride rode to the top of the singles list. The song topped the charts for one week and became their eighth consecutive number one hit.
• 1966 ~ Bruce Springsteen recorded his very first song at the age of 16, along with his band, The Castilles. It was titled, That’s What You’ll Get. The song was never released.
• 2003 ~ The final manuscript of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which was annotated by the composer, sold at auction for $3.47 million.
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