Articles | M5 Music

The Greatest Violinist: Jascha Heifetz

More than a century after his public debut, the name Jascha Heifetz continues to evoke awe and excitement among fellow musicians. In a performing career that spanned 65 years, he established an unparalleled standard of violin playing to which violinists around the world still aspire.

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Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer, the predominant musical figure during the transition between the Classical to Romantic eras. He occupies an unprecedented dominance in the history of Western music history, and has been widely regarded as the greatest, most influential and most popular musician who ever lived.

Beethoven's music inherited the artistic atmosphere of Haydn and Mozart, penetrated the desire for dignity, vented the anger tortured by fate, and demonstrated his determination to fight with fate.

Compared to other musicians, Beethoven is effectively to interact the philosophy of life with audience through music. Although he was not a romantic, he had become the object followed by other romantics.

As a musician, Beethoven suffered from ear diseases. However, he was unwilling to succumb to fate, vowing to take fate by the throat, and continue to complete his career. In the last ten years of his life, without hearing any sound, his compositions influenced the development of music for nearly two hundred years.

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Canon in D

Canon in D, one of the most widely known classical music pieces of contemporary times, is composed by German composer Johann Pachelbel. The original version of Canon in D is composed for three violins, accompanied by one (or more) bass instrument(s). Over time, the piece has been arranged into various versions, such as piano solo and orchestral versions. The exact date of its composition is not recorded but it is generally believed to be composed between 1680-1706.

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Common Practice Guide

After many years of being a student first and a teacher after, we often noticed that in our every day practice we can make small mistakes that may slow us down or might not bring the best out of our music. With these short tips we tried to go through some of them, hoping it will help students (and not only!) in their daily practice.

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G Song by Terry Riley

As an iconic American composer, Terry Riley (born 1935) is always considered as a minimalist. However, this kind of thoughts would be ignoring part of his creativity. In fact, Riley added plenty elements in his compositions since 1970s, especially when he started collaborating with the Kronos Quartet. Riley's composing style is very extensive, including improvisation, polyrhythm and jazz. He adopted classical elements, such as instrumentation, musical forms, structure and tonality. He also combined the elements from different periods to create unique musical textures. This research focuses on Terry Riley’s String Quartet, G Song. The research will be divided into two parts. The first part introduces Riley’s life and the background of G Song. The second part focuses on music analysis, including the musical structure "Two forms in one work"; The harmony "Unresolved Dissonance"; The rhythm "Metric Modulation"; The baroque "Canon"; The modern "Pointillism". The purpose of this study is to discuss how Riley combined classicism and modernism into a work, and discuss why the statement "Terry Riley is considered as minimalist" would be ignoring part of his story.

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