Music Theory Essay example

Submitted By shoobiey
Words: 604
Pages: 3

1) http://www.bestpianolessons.com/piano-history/grand-piano-history.html
Today’s grand pianos are direct descendants of harpsichords built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Around 1700, Bartolomeo Cristofori experimented with creating a harpsichord that could play music more expressively, and devised an action that struck the strings with hammers, differing from harpsichords that plucked the strings with quills. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cris/hd_cris.htm Christofori's designs were not capitalized upon until later in the 1700's, when accounts of his piano designs were published. Manufacturers such as noted German organ builder Gottfried Silbermann and his students Christian Friederici and Johannes Zumpe began to develop the piano as a distinctive instrument from the harpsichord. Although unimpressed initially, J. S. Bach approved of the new instrument in 1747. Music began to be written specifically for the piano in 1732, and the true career of the piano as a concert and ensemble instrument began.
2) http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/beethoven.html
Ludwig Van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, Beethoven displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and Christian Gottlob Neefe http://www.biography.com/people/stevie-wonder-9536078 Born blind on May 13, 1950, in Saginaw, Michigan, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Steve Wonder made his recording debut at age 12. He recorded his first hit single in 1963. Stevie Wonder was born Steveland Hardaway Judkins on May 13, 1950, in Saginaw, Michigan. Blind as a result of receiving too much oxygen in the incubator as a premature baby, Wonder showed an early gift for music, first with a church choir in Detroit, Michigan, where he and his family had moved to when he was 4 years old, and later with a bevy of instruments, including the harmonica, piano and drums, all of which he taught himself before age 10.
3) http://www.biography.com/people/wolfgang-mozart-9417115
Born on January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a musician capable of playing multiple instruments who started playing in public at the age of 6. Over the years, Mozart aligned himself with a variety