Classical Music, Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi

Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi – take your pick. Composers from all three classical music groups are frequently heard on radios, television, and movies. These compositions are relatively light and springy or loud and dramatic with the occasional dark requiem every so often. However, film directors and authors have chosen to associate these popular and seemly harmless pieces with humanity’s dark side: villains. Many films have shown villains reveling in the classical composers immortal words while deeply immersed in their devious plots to enact chaos in the world. Why is such a theme so common? The answer lies in popular culture. Most might assume that the reason has to do with cerebral improvement, however, the real reason is that villains

There are actually three primary classical music branches. The Baroque Era was the earliest in this genre, dating from c. 1600 to c. 1740, and is characterized as having a very rigid note structure (Paterson). “Baroque art is considered excessively decorative, dramatic, flamboyant and emotional” (Kauble). The Baroque period also introduced new musical orchestrations including concertos, operas, and sonatas (Kauble). “It was during the early part of the seventeenth century that the genre of opera was first created by a group of composers in Florence, Italy, and the earliest operatic masterpieces were composed by Claudio Monteverdi” (Sherrane). One can easily recognize this style because the very prominent instruments used at the time including the harpsicord and the organ. The piano did not come in to play until the early 1700s when it was invented in the year 1700 by harpsicord maker

1750 and lasted till the 1820s (Sherrane). This music is a much lighter version with respect to the Baroque Era where the notes seem to flow and bounce from one octave to the next with grace and finesse. “From roughly 1750 to 1820, artists, [architects (typo)], and musicians moved away from the heavily ornamented styles of the Baroque and the Rococo, and instead embraced a clean, uncluttered style they thought reminiscent of Classical Greece.” (Sherrane). As previously mentioned, the piano had just been invented and with this new genre’s popularity, several compositions included this revolutionary instrument while in others it was the only instrument used. Again this era included many well-known composers including the immortal Wolfgang A. Mozart. “The great composers of this period were Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, Johann Christian Bach, Johann Stamitz, Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Luigi Boccherini and Christoph von Gluck” (Paterson). Music from this era is not as popular a repertoire for villains as the next period in music