Music Preference 1 - Brent Hugh's personal and business web pages

Music Preference 86
moment [brief illustrations from various themes in the Fantasy]. Finally he alights on a theme he
really likes, and, as all pianists in those days were expected to be able to do, he improvises a set
of variations on it [different variations are illustrated at the piano]. This story (that Beethoven
improvised the Fantasy in a situation similar to the one described in this situation, and only later
wrote it down), is confirmed by writings of friends of Beethoven and really is how this piece was
written. [Total length of presentation: 5 minutes 0 seconds]
Performance
seconds]
Fantasy, Ludwig van Beethoven (entire). [Total length of performance: 10 minutes 40
Outline of informational introduction
Schuman: Carnaval
All performances today (except Fantasy) are excerpts of longer works that will be played in
their entirety in a community concert.
Carnaval is a long piece made up of a series of short character pieces. A character piece is
short and usually about a person, like a character sketch. A carnaval is a German masked ball.
The twenty movements of Carnaval represent different people Schumann might have met at such
a ball, for instance his fiancé, his future wife (at that time just a friend), and many others.
Schumann was a writer who advocated against mindless music and wrote very passionately
and emotionally on this subject. He used various imaginary characters in his writing. The
characters had conversations and discussions among themselves, with each character
representing different sides of Schumann's personality. Schumann called this group of characters
the "League of David" and imagined them doing battle against musical "Philistines".