Hi, everybody, and today we're going to be talking
about the first composer, and it's going to be
François Couperin, a French composer from the late
late 17th century and early 18th century.

Couperin's harpsichord pieces are characterised by their lightness, elegance and expressiveness, thanks to which they gained great popularity not only in France but also abroad during his lifetime.

Hello everyone, today I'm going to show you
the cembalo, the oldest of the keyboard instruments.
of keyboard instruments.

Its range is smaller than that of the modern piano. The harpsichord is characterised by a bright sound rich in overtones. Unlike the piano, the strings are not struck with hammers, but plucked with picks - so-called quills.

This is Johann Sebastian Bach, and he was the greatest composer on the planet Earth, he worked in the church and he composed religious music.
He lived mostly in Germany and he never never travelled abroad.

Bach wrote more than a thousand pieces of music in almost every genre known at the time. Bach did not work only in the genre of opera. Many major composers, such as Mozart and Beethoven, knew and loved Johann Sebastian Bach's work.

C. P. E. Bach, was a German Baroque and Classical period composer and musician, the fifth child and second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach.
C. P. E. Bach was an influential composer working at a time of transition between his father's Baroque style and the Classical style that followed it. He was the principal representative of the 'sensitive style'. The qualities of his keyboard music are forerunners of the expressiveness of Romantic music, in deliberate contrast to the statuesque forms of Baroque music.His organ sonatas mainly come from the galant style.

Anton Walter (1752 - 1826) was born in Neuhausen auf den Fildern in Württemberg. At the end of the 1770s, he moved to Vienna, where he opened his piano-making workshop in the Leimgrube neighbourhood.

His fortepianos are characterised by a fuller sound compared to the equally highly regarded instruments of his Augsburg colleague Johann Andreas Stein (1728 - 1792), which Anton Walter achieved thanks to the use of larger hammer heads, a stronger string covering and corresponding bridge scales.

Felix Mendelssohn was a German composer, pianist, musical conductor, and teacher, one of the most-celebrated figures of the early Romantic period. In his music, Mendelssohn largely observed Classical models and practices while initiating key aspects of Romanticism—the artistic movement that exalted feeling and the imagination above rigid forms and traditions. Among his most famous works are Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1826), Italian Symphony (1833), a violin concerto (1844), two piano concerti (1831, 1837), the oratorio Elijah (1846), and several pieces of chamber music. He was a grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.

Conrad Graf, (1782 - 1851), who held the title of ‘k. k. Hofpiano- und Claviermacher’ from 1824, was born in Riedlingen (Württemberg) and came to Vienna in 1799 as a carpenter. There he became a piano maker and opened his own workshop in 1804. His instruments quickly became famous as the ‘best and most famous in Vienna and the Empire’. Graf not only supplied instruments to all the rooms of the imperial court, but also made a fortepiano for Ludwig van Beethoven in 1825. Chopin, Robert and Clara Schumann, Liszt and Mendelssohn appreciated Graf's pianos.

Alfred Grunfeld lived in Vienna from 1873 and gave concerts throughout Europe and in the United States. He was appointed court pianist to Emperor Wilhelm I of Germany, honoured by Tsar Alexander III and became a professor at the Vienna Conservatory in 1897.
He was an important figure in the world of music and knew Brahms, J. Strauss II and Leschetizky. And he was the first of the great pianists to make commercial recordings. Korngold's op. 3 (see below) was the first commercial recording of a work by this young genius.

Hello everyone, our topic today is the grand piano the grand piano that we're using right now. The piano evolved from earlier technological innovations in keyboard instruments. Pipe organs had been used since antiquity, so the development of pipe organs allowed instrument builders to learn how to create keyboard mechanisms for voicing tones. The first stringed instruments with percussion strings were hammered dulcimers, which appeared in the Middle Ages in Europe.

Crumb was an American composer of avant-garde contemporary classical music. Early in his life he rejected the widespread modernist usage of serialism, developing a highly personal musical language which "range[s] in mood from peaceful to nightmarish".[1] Crumb's compositions are known for pushing the limits of technical prowess by way of frequent use of extended techniques. The unusual timbres he employs evoke a surrealist atmosphere which portray emotions of considerable intensity with vast and sometimes haunting soundscapes.[2]

Cowell became a leading figure in American avant-garde music of the first half of the 20th century - his compositions and music greatly influenced similar performers of the time, including Lou Harrison, George Antheil, John Cage, and others. He is considered one of America's most important and influential composers.

Cowell was largely self-taught and developed a unique musical language, often combining folk melodies, dissonant counterpoint, unconventional orchestration, and themes of Irish paganism.

A MIDI keyboard or controller keyboard is typically a piano-style electronic musical keyboard, often with other buttons, wheels and sliders, used as a MIDI controller for sending Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) commands over a USB or MIDI 5-pin cable to other musical devices or computers.

And the last thing I wanted to do today
is to show you time and how we
work with time in music. This is
metronome, it helps us keep our heart rate
very regular, so when I'm
play three quarters, it helps us feel the pulse
inside of us.

In his compositional work Prins seeks to critique received convention, to break the framework of the usual, and dispose of aesthetic axioms. He envisions a musical art form beyond the safe confines of the »scene«, wherein the connection to the larger cultural discourse has gotten lost. A central pre-condition for the making of a new music with a future is the role of the aware, critical observer, one who is prepared to exploit the technologies and mechanisms of the prefabricated media with a view to their possibilities for new music. – Stefan Prins lives up to this calling.