Aug 15, 20232 min read

A First Book of Classical Music: 29 Themes by Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and Other Great Composers in

Anthologies are perfect for students who are just being introduced to classical music. They allow you to expose students a variety of styles and composers at a great value. Even if the student does not study all of the pieces in the anthology, they can use the others for sight-reading practice or play them just-for-fun later in their piano study.

From his earliest years Mozart had a gift for imitating the music he heard; since he traveled widely, he acquired a rare collection of experiences from which to create his unique compositional language. When he went to London as a child, he met J.C. Bach and heard his music; when he went to Paris, Mannheim, and Vienna, he heard the work of composers active there, as well as the spectacular Mannheim orchestra; when he went to Italy, he encountered the Italian overture and opera buffa, both of which were to be hugely influential on his development. Both in London and Italy, the galant style was all the rage: simple, light music, with a mania for cadencing, an emphasis on tonic, dominant, and subdominant to the exclusion of other chords, symmetrical phrases, and clearly articulated structures.[citation needed] This style, out of which the classical style evolved, was a reaction against the complexity of late Baroque music. Some of Mozart's early symphonies are Italian overtures, with three movements running into each other; many are "homotonal" (each movement in the same key, with the slow movement in the parallel minor). Others mimic the works of J.C. Bach, and others show the simple rounded binary forms commonly being written by composers in Vienna. One of the most recognizable features of Mozart's works is a sequence of harmonies or modes that usually leads to a cadence in the dominant or tonic key. This sequence is essentially borrowed from Baroque music, especially J. S. Bach. But Mozart shifted the sequence so that the cadence ended on the stronger half, i.e., the first beat of the bar. Mozart's understanding of modes such as Phrygian is evident in such passages.[citation needed]