Beethoven, Moonlight Sonata and Vivaldi,

Beethoven, Moonlight Sonata and Vivaldi, Spring From the Four Seasons The Moonlight of a Young Dancer's Life: A Short Story Inspired by Vivaldi's "Spring" and Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" Exposition Ludwig Van Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" and Antonio Vivaldi's "Spring" movement from "The Four Seasons" Ludwig Van Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" is one of the most famous, and familiar pieces of music ever created. However, beyond the cliches that have been attached to this work of genius lies a great story.

Beethoven is rumored to have written the sonata as a result of an unrequited love affair with a female pupil. As he did so often, Beethoven poured his passionate and stormy feelings about the world into his art, even when he could not express them in his real life.

The fact that the "Moonlight Sonata" has so often been the subject of amateur piano player's repertoires makes hearing it played with feeling by a professional all the more jarring and shocking -- the listener realizes why it has been so popular for so long, and also the potential for the work to convey both gentle and stormy feelings through the sonata form. The melody is haunting and evocative, and if played correctly, forces the listener to consider the emotional subtleness of the piece anew.

A listener reencountering Antonio Vivaldi's "Spring" movement from "The Four Seasons" could think that 'familiarity breeds contempt,' despite the greatness of the work. Although "Spring" lacks what many contemporary listeners might consider a passionate and emotive quality to the music, it is still popular because of the refreshing tone of the piece. Perhaps its popularity is also because of the universality of the subject of "The Four Seasons," as everyone marks the changes within themselves and in the outside world, during seasonal transitions.

The music, despite the fact that it is very much 'of its era' strives to encapsulate what is common to the experience of people long ago and today. A chose these works because they are both seminal, familiar works of past eras of musical composition that reflect profoundly different attitudes about what music should be, as well as mirror the contrasting temperaments and lives of their composers.

Also, the compositions strive to tell stories in their own right, Beethoven's the story of lost love, and Vivaldi's the story of the changing natural environment. I thought that these two narratives told through music, one the narrative of an irretrievable loss, the other a delightful, observational perspective of the cyclical processes of nature, would be an ideal springboard for a story. Development Ludwig Van Beethoven, composer of "Moonlight Sonata" Ludwig Van Beethoven is widely considered one of the greatest composers who ever lived.

However, unlike his immediate musical predecessor, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Beethoven was not a child prodigy. His father, a court musician, tried to beat the young Ludwig into musical greatness, and surprisingly, despite this cruel introduction to the world of music, Beethoven continued to love to play. His determination to create music was steeled through adversary, even at a young age.

Beethoven left his provincial town first to become the pupil of the more conventional classical composer Hayden, a friend of Mozart, but broke with the master because Hayden discouraged Beethoven's radical ideas about musical composition. Instead, Beethoven was forced to use his own talent and musical charisma win patronage and fame. Soon, he impressed Mozart, his boyhood idol, when he played the man -- Mozart proclaimed the young Beethoven a genius. Beethoven appeared uncouth, rough, and angry to the world, but his music moved people's hearts.

Audiences were said to exhibit extraordinary reactions when Beethoven played -- weeping, crying, and transported beyond the accepted, decorous sensibility expected of 19th century gentlemen and ladies. But although Beethoven gave great delight to people through his musical compositions, his personal life was often troubled. While at the height of his career, he became deaf, and thus he was denied the pleasure of hearing his music performed in the real world of the concert hall -- he could only hear it in his mind.

As his musical ideas were imprisoned in the solitude of his tormented mind, and he was unable to hear the appreciative roar of the crowds that loved his music or to perform his own compositions on the piano, he grew angry at the world. But his music was always filled with an appreciation of nature, joy, and hope, and the possibilities of redemption as well as sadness. Beethoven stands on the cusp of the Romantic and Classical eras of Western music.

His music exhibits Classical discipline and love of form, but uses that form in a way that maximizes the expressive potential of music. Antonio Vivaldi, composer of "The Four Seasons" Antonio Vivaldi, unlike Beethoven, was famed for his compositions on the violin not on the piano. He is classified as a Baroque composer, and comes from an era where form, rather than intense emotion, was characteristic of the musical compositions of his era. Vivaldi strove to perfect musical forms, rather than to alter them, unlike Beethoven.

Vivaldi's music sounds light and fresh, in contrast to the darkness of some of Beethoven's works. To characterize his life, one could say that Vivaldi's life was an artistic life of healthy-mindedness, rather than torment like Beethoven's.

Vivaldi's musical organization, contrasting use of moods and movements rather than emotion in all of his works does not mean he lacks emotion, rather he strove to make his music characteristic of the ideals of the more detached Baroque style, although his order and regimentation can be comforting and pleasing to listen to, in the way it paints pictures with music.

Musical Analysis Moonlight Sonata" is a traditional sonata while Vivaldi's work is a traditional 'word picture' of the Baroque era, a slice of musical life in a contrasting style to the other movements that follow it depicting the seasons. Beethoven's sonata begins fairly soft and slow, and the second movement is similarly quiet, but is then followed by a contrasting and more emotive dynamic in a way that jars the listener's attention.

This Beethoven sonata makes use of the traditional tripartite structure of the sonata, but infuses it with innovation and personal meaning that is characteristic of Beethoven's Romantic style. The quiet first two movements are punctuated by a stormier and louder final movement, suggesting radical changes of feeling and temperament on the part of the composer.

In contras to Beethoven, Vivaldi is a Baroque-era composer from a time period where there were extremely different musical standards for excellence to our own -- movements of monochromatically emotive pieces were punctuated with long pauses, the tone and quality of the instruments the composers used were profoundly different, and raw emotion was not the goal of most musical composers. The Dancer Dances" 6 am. The young woman placed her fine, spindly hand on top of the harsh, ringing alarm. She arose immediately.

This was a habit, a custom for her every day, since she could remember. She had never pushed snooze. You snooze, you lose. This had been her old ballet teacher's mantra and old habits die hard. Besides, who could snooze on such a day as this? She flung open the curtains of her tiny apartment wide, to let in the force of the sunlight. It spilled in great, bright shards of brightness all through her tiny, dark apartment. She flicked on her CD player, creaky and old.

She could not afford an iPod like her sister, a corporate lawyer who must also be rising, very early on this Saturday morning to put in a half-day's work at her firm. But she, the young woman resolved, could appreciate this fine spring morning without the pressures of a soulless job she hated. The infectious strains of Vivaldi swelled in the room. After a long winter, she could appreciate how the music and the sunlight turned the once-shadowy, dingy wallpaper a brilliant hue of yellow.

She stroked her large, elderly gray cat as she walked to the bathroom, the turnout of her hips perfect, and the way she had walked since she had begun taking ballet since she was three years old. She hummed along with Vivaldi as she brushed her teeth, showered, and drew her damp hair up into a harsh bun that accentuated her high cheekbones. She wore an old leotard beneath her street clothes. No makeup, only sweat clothes that hung off of her angular frame. She walked down the city sidewalk.

The world smelled like damp grass, from the light spring rain that had drizzled overnight, and the freshly-mulched new flowers from the nearby park. One of the great pleasures of her life was that the studio she taught at was within walking distance, and she did not have to ride the grinding, filthy subway to work everyday. For breakfast, she bought some plums from a vendor. He smiled at her, a lovely young woman, so ambulatory, so mobile, in contrast to his stationary cart and life.

Even the large bag she had slung over her shoulder read one, simple word, "dance," like some people select bumper stickers with the words 'Jesus' or 'God' to adorn their cars. She ate one of the plums she had bought, fruit meant to last for both breakfast and lunch. Its surprisingly juicy interior left a long sticky trail down her bony chin. She wiped it away, inhaled the plumy sweetness deeply, and inhaled the air, deeply. Everyone coming today, Sharon?" she asked the receptionist at the desk.

The woman behind the glass pane at the dance studio smiled at her and nodded. No laggards today. She knew how much Bethany hated to have anyone absent, even though the girls she taught were only in grade school. Yes, we had no cancellations. No one is sick with allergies or spring colds -- yet," said Sharon. Sharon, a large, pillowy, matronly woman, gazed at the gazelle-like Bethany and giggled. "You work those little girls to hard," she said. "They're only children." From children, great dancers spring," said Bethany solemnly.

Sharon giggled again and took a bite of her morning jelly doughnut, slurped her creamy coffee. The little girls filtered in, tip-toeing with eagerness, none of them looking back to the mothers who dropped them off. Some of the mothers remained in the waiting room to chat and to peruse the old issues of Good Housekeeping, so they could take little peeps at their darling Suzies and Jennifers and MAdisons while the girls transformed themselves into flowers and swans through the power of Miss Bethany's teaching.

Other mothers departed for early morning yoga classes and salon appointments. In the changing room, the little dancers were full of gossip and giggles, and there were some proud exhibitions of the latest American Girl doll accessories that had been secretly stashed away in their dance bags. But on the blonde, shiny floor of the recital studio, all was seriousness. Miss Bethany placed the CD in the stereo. "Spring" blared across the studio, this time a triumphant burst of joy and feeling.

She explained that this was the music they would be dancing to, for the upcoming recital. They were the littlest, so they would dance spring, while the older girls at the studio would take on the roles of summer, fall, and winter. It was very important, she stressed, that they do a good job at the rehearsal, since they would be opening the show. Warm-up. First position, second position. Tuck your stomach in, Anne," said Miss Bethany.

More turnout, Rachel," she said, and gently guided the girl's feet into the correct, splay-footed carriage. After the little girls had warmed up, she again put on "Spring" and explained the choreography to them. For some young dancers, no doubt, there would have been much eye-rolling at the selection of a classical piece. But these little girls worshipped Miss Bethany. Although only twenty-eight years old, to their impressionable eyes and minds she seemed impossibly old and wise.

They could not imagine being so sophisticated, so pale, with such dark hair, and looking so elegant in torn t-shirts and faded leotards. Miss Bethany even knew how to play piano by ear, and occasionally she would go to the piano in the corner of the room and pound out a few bars of the Vivaldi "Spring" for them to hear more clearly, as she tried to grill them in the first few basic movements of the arrangement before class ended.

When the recital was staged, a professional player would come in, and make them all feel like prima ballerinas with the excellence of his playing. After class, many of the mothers shook their heads. "I don't know how you do it," they said, "how you get so much out of these little girls, Beth. Ariel, I wish you would focus as much on your homework as you do for Miss Bethany." Bethany smiled at these comments, and felt a surge of pride within her heart.

Yes, her choreography was simply, designed to suit the mixed talents of her class, none of whom were likely to go.