By Betsy Schwarm

Peter Tchaikovsky

Peter Tchaikovsky is one of the most popular of all classical composers. That's probably because he wrote The Nutcracker, a Christmas ballet that is, for many people, the first piece of classical music they ever hear. Their parents take them to see The Nutcracker as a special Christmas-season treat, and they become enchanted by the sights and sounds. Even a small child can appreciate the joy of seeing and hearing The Nutcracker. It may even serve as the beginning of a life-long love of music.

The composer, too, began to love music when he was a small boy. Born in 1840, young Peter learned to play the piano, and even tried composing. He wrote a song called "Our Mama in Petersburg" when he was not yet five years old. Later, he enjoyed attending the opera with his mother. He would have loved to study music in school. However, when Peter was a boy in the 1850s, very few Russians worked professionally as composers. So Peter's family decided that there was no reason for him to become a composer. Instead, he was sent to law school. After graduation, he worked as a clerk for the Russian government, but never forgot his love of music. Before long, he began studying music again, with dreams of becoming an important composer.

It was a very difficult time. Not only were the studies challenging, but he also had to fight against the fact that there had never been an important Russian composer. Why, people asked, did Tchaikovsky think he would be the first? But he persevered. He worked hard at his compositions every night and earned a living during the day by teaching music at the university. Only rarely did he have the chance to hear his music performed in concerts, but that was enough to convince him that he was on the right path. He only needed more time.

One day in 1876, Tchaikovsky received a letter from a wealthy woman named Nadezhda von Meck. She wrote that she had heard some of his music and liked it very much. Because of this, she offered to help Tchaikovsky. She said she would like to pay him a regular salary so he could give up teaching and spend all his time on composition. In exchange, she asked if he would write to her about his music so she could better understand it. Tchaikovsky agreed. For fourteen years, he and Madame von Meck wrote letters about music. These letters still exist today. Thanks to the letters, historians have been able to learn a great deal about how Tchaikovsky composed. For example, they know from the letters that he was often very uncertain about his music. He was afraid people wouldn't like it and that he would run out of interesting ideas for compositions. With his music being so popular today, it seems strange that he would have had such fears.

Throughout his life, Tchaikovsky wrote many wonderful compositions, including symphonies and operas, but most people remember him for his ballets. He composed three ballets: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker. All three are still great favorites today and are performed around the world. These ballets show how a composer can use music and dance to tell a story. For example, The Nutcracker tells the story of a little girl who receives a magical Christmas gift. The dancing is pleasure to watch; the music is a joy to hear. That may be why ballets are so popular: both the ears and the eyes can enjoy the experience. Although Tchaikovsky was uncertain about his music while he was writing it, it is still being enjoyed over a century after his death, which was in 1893, shortly after the premiere of his Symphony no. 6.

Antonio Vivaldi

This Italian composer was born in Venice in 1678 during an earthquake. His father taught him to play violin. Young Vivaldi worked as a violinist when he was a teenager, but his parents wanted him to become a priest, and so he did. He managed to put together his two interests by becoming violin teacher at a church-run girl's orphanage called The Ospedale della Pietà. Later, he conducted the school's orchestra. It was an excellent orchestra, one of the best in all of Venice, and Vivaldi was delighted to hear the girls playing his compositions. When one listens today to the music he wrote for the girls, it's easy to hear that they were wonderful musicians.

Vivaldi also played his music himself. He would take months off from the school and travel with his violin to play concerts. Considered one of the greatest violinists of the time, he could play fast and exciting music, but could also play slowly and beautifully. This talent is clear in his violin concertos, which have both fast and slow parts. One can listen for this in Vivaldi's most famous compositions, a set of four concertos called The Four Seasons. His music was so admired that other composers, including the very famous Johann Sebastian Bach, studied it to see how Vivaldi had done it.

Late in life, Vivaldi got in trouble with his employer, the Catholic Church. Church leaders were saying that, because Vivaldi traveled so much as a violinist, he was neglecting his job as a priest. They made it harder for him to play concerts, so in his last years, he became very poor. His music, which had been very popular, was slowly forgotten. Only in the last sixty years or so have music lovers rediscovered how beautiful and joyful his compositions are. Now, Vivaldi is as popular as he was long ago. Even people who don't know very much about classical music have heard The Four Seasons, which shows how famous and beloved his music is today.

Richard Wagner

Born in 1813, Richard Wagner was a German composer, and he wouldn't let anyone forget it. He wanted his music to sound German and to tell German stories. He didn't want people to confuse his compositions with other compositions from Italy or France or anywhere else. He was so proud of his country that he wanted him music to sound German and only German. Although it was popular at the time to make one's music sound like one's country, Wagner was going to an even greater extreme than his colleagues, reinventing musical ideas that had stood for a century.

There was only one problem with this plan. In the late 1800s when Wagner lived, no one had done so much of this before in opera, and it was opera that Wagner liked best. So he had to develop his own ideas. He started using a big, brassy orchestra in his operas, so that it would sound like a German symphony. He began to write long melodies that fit better with the long German sentences that the singers would be singing. Also, he decided to research old German history and legends so that he could tell those stories in his music.

Because his ideas were so different from what had been done before, many people were confused by Wagner's music. But other people thought it was exciting. The King of Bavaria thought it was such wonderful music that he built a special opera house for Wagner. That opera house is still in business today, and the Wagner family still runs it. Wagner's strong and powerful music is still performed over one hundred years after his death. Some observers turn away from Wagner's music because of all the evidence of his anti-Semitic views and actions; others maintain that the music is grand enough to stand on its own, regardless of the composer's personal philosophy.

John Williams

Even people who don't know the name of John Williams are familiar with his music. That's because this American composer has written music for some of the most famous movies of the past thirty years, so millions of people have heard his music in movie theaters. All the Harry Potter movies have music written by John Williams. So do all the Star Wars movies, the Indiana Jones movies, ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, Home Alone, JFK, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, and Memoirs of a Geisha . Williams has composed the music for over one hundred movies, and has won five Academy Awards for his music. He has also won awards for his television music and his recordings.

Although John Williams was born in New York in 1932, his family moved to Los Angeles, California, when he was a teenager. Living so near Hollywood may be why young John became interested in writing music for movies. He learned how to compose at the famous Juilliard School in New York City, then came back to Hollywood to pursue his career.

Williams has also worked outside of Hollywood. He conducted the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980 to 1993, and made many recordings of famous classical compositions. He also writes orchestra music that has nothing to do with movies. His orchestra compositions include a violin concerto, a bassoon concerto, and even a tuba concerto. This most widely performed of American composers has composed music to be performed at four different Olympics held in the US: the Summer Games of 1984, 1988, and 1996; and the Winter Games of 2002. This fact proves that even sports fans know the music of John Williams.

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