Kevin Lin
Mr. Ross
4th Period Chamber
Honors Credit Research Paper
Brahms and Paganini Research Paper
Paganini was born in Genoa, at the time a geographic principality within the kingdom of Italy. Although Paganini is well known for his virtuosic caprices on the violin, paganini also played the guitar as a major cornerstone of his musical achievement, as well as the mandolin, which he learned from his father. Although one would expect Paganini to have a musical upbringing, his father was actually a trader who, due to the lack of success in his trading career, supplemented the family’s income with mandolin playing on the streets of Genoa. Thus, Paganini’s early life found him searching for violin lessons from local violin teachers since his …show more content…
Brahms was born into a Lutheran family in the German region but spent most of his compositions in the Vienna, Austria region of Europe. He composed mostly Romantic music, leaving behind four major symphonies of sonata allegro form posthumously. This allowed Brahms to be well known as the major Romantic composer of his era. Of German descent, Brahms is well known for highly emotional works that combine the form of earlier classical eras with the form of the Romantic era. Contrary to popular belief, Brahms was not encouraged to pursue music as a major pillarstone of his career. His family actually encouraged him to drop music in favor of a more lucrative and safe career, but Brahms persisted with his passion and that caused him to be …show more content…
In the characteristic of Brahms, the most lauded piece consisting of both an incredible Sonata Allegro form of modulation of a chordal theme--reverent to the passacaglia or chaconne style--and Romantic expression is the Brahms Number 4 Symphony. As the last piece composed by Brahms before his death, this Symphony Number 4 is an extremely commendable work for its use of emotion yet truthfulness of sticking to the Classical roots and proper form. Additionally, the use of Brahms’ expression of emotion can be found in the numerous solis present within his fourth symphony. Take movement three, for instance. The characteristics of long, lyrical melodic lines are present, interweaving between the strings and winds seamlessly. There is, in fact, a viola soli that is preceded by the same theme just of a differing variation by the french horns and oboe, which overlap ever-so-precisely as to not leave any gaps in between the lyrical lines and break the musical form. As a common characteristic of Brahms, the use of long melodic lines and lyrical themes being variegated in variations in between the winds and strings is a signature characteristic of Brahms, a title he adopted through sole innovation alone. After all, Brahms is well known for his musical revelations of composing unheard of and original themes that blend together Sonata Allegro form as well as