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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 1840 -- 1893) was a Russian composer whose works included symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets, chamber music, and a choral setting of the Russian Orthodox Divine Liturgy. Some of these are among the most popular theatrical music in the classical repertoire. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, which he bolstered with appearances as a guest conductor later in his career in Europe and the United States. One of these appearances was at the inaugural concert of Carnegie Hall in New York City in 1891. Tchaikovsky was honored in 1884 by Emperor Alexander III, and awarded a lifetime pension in the late 1880s. Tchaikovsky created his Children's Album: 24 Easy Pieces for piano (Op. 39) to be played "by" children, rather than "for" them. They're extremely short, all but two clocking in at ell under a minute. No. 1 is a slow, tender "Morning Prayer" in 3/4 time. Things pick up with the second item, a moderately-paced but stimulating "Winter Morning." No. 3 is a brisk, highly staccato 3/8 picture of a "Little Horseman." No. 4 is "Mama," an expressive, lingering portrait. A balance for such feminine material comes with No. 5, a sprightly "March of the Wooden Soldiers." All may be quiet on the battle front, but there's trouble back home. The sixth piece, "The Sick Doll," is a languishing Lento in G minor. The unfortunate sequel is "Dolly's Funeral," a C minor march marked, appropriately, Grave. Something of a wake comes with No. 8, a lively waltz. Then, the nursery being a fickle place, "The New Doll" arrives in a charming Andantino movement. A series of folk-inspired pieces begins with No. 10, a D minor Mazurka. No. 11 is a simple, extremely short (ten bars) "Russian Folksong," one that Tchaikovsky had included in the 50 Russian folk songs he'd arranged for piano duet in 1869. No. 12 is a sentimental "Peasant's Song," in which Tchaikovsky evokes a concertina wheezing back and forth between two chords. No. 13 is called, generically, "Folk Song" (Russian Dance), and employs the same tune Glinka used in his orchestral Kamarinskaya. No. 14 is a rousing little polka. The next piece heads south; it's a lively "Italian Ditty" with the staccato oom-pah-pah accompaniment one hears in many early and middle Verdi arias. No. 16 swings northwest for a placid, antique-sounding, G minor "French Melody." No. 17 is a "German Song" with a hint of yodeling, and for No. 18 it's back to Italy for a "Neapolitan Dance Tune," a stripped-down version of part of the "Neapolitan Dance" in Swan Lake. No. 19 returns to the nursery at bedtime with an evocative C major "Old Nurse's Song." When the lights go out, the witch "Baba-Yaga" appears in E minor -- yet she seems to have arrived from Liadov's quirky little orchestral piece of the same name rather than from the terrifying penultimate movement of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. No. 21 brings lovely, melodic "Sweet Dreams," the set's longest piece. Soon it's time to wake up to the "Song of the Lark," a relatively bravura piece full of right-hand arabesques. It's Sunday morning, as we'll soon discover, and upon leaving the house we encounter "The Organ-Grinder," Tchaikovsky picked up this Moderato 3/4 tune from a Venetian street singer and would soon incorporate it into the middle section of the "Rêverie interrompue" closing his Opus 40 set of piano pieces. Finally, No. 24 finds us "In Church" -- Russian Orthodox, of course, as we can tell from the E minor chanting and low pedal-point tolling of a bell toward the end. Source: AllMusic (https://www.allmusic.com/composition/... ). Although these pieces were originally written for Piano, I created this arrangement of "The Doll's Burial" (Op. 39 No. 8) for String Quartet (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).

George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel (1685 – 1759) was a German, later British, baroque composer who spent the bulk of his career in London, becoming well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, and organ concertos. Handel received important training in Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712; he became a naturalised British subject in 1727. He was strongly influenced both by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and by the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition. Handel’s three anthems (My song shall be alway HWV 252, O come let us sing HWV 253, O praise the Lord HWV 254) were composed in 1717 and 1718 for Cannons, a country estate near to London. They take their nickname, the “ Chandos Anthems”, from the owner of the estate, the First Duke of Chandos . The three pieces are noteworthy for their festive character and their varied orchestral accompaniment. Handel borrows older material from his Italian period and his earlier works for the Chapel Royal in London – a standard procedure for this composer, who reused particularly successful pieces as starting points for his later works. The scoring for solo voices, chorus, oboe, strings, and continuo was tailored to the musical resources of the small country estate. Two additional recorders are needed for “O come let us sing unto the Lord”. The anthems present the Urtext from the “Halle Handel Edition” and include uncomplicated and easy-to-play piano reductions. In addition to the original English words, the full scores and vocal scores also include a singing translation in German. Although originally written for Accompanied Voice, I created this Interpretation of the Chorus: "Glory and worship are before him" from Chandos Anthem No. 8 (HWV 253 Mvt. 4) for Winds (Flute, Oboe, French Horn & Bassoon) & Strings (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).

Camille Saint-Saëns was something of an anomaly among French composers of the nineteenth century in that he wrote in virtually all genres, including opera, symphonies, concertos, songs, sacred and secular choral music, solo piano, and chamber music. He was generally not a pioneer, though he did help to revive some earlier and largely forgotten dance forms, like the bourée and gavotte. He was a conservative who wrote many popular scores scattered throughout the various genres: the Piano Concerto No. 2, Symphony No. 3 ("Organ"), the symphonic poem Danse macabre, the opera Samson et Dalila, and probably his most widely performed work, The Carnival of The Animals. While he remained a composer closely tied to tradition and traditional forms in his later years, he did develop a more arid style, less colorful and, in the end, less appealing. He was also a poet and playwright of some distinction. Composed on La Palma in April 1890, the Valse canariote by Camille Saint-Saëns was dedicated to Mademoiselle Candelaria Navarro Sigala (1870-1945), a young pianist from one of the wealthiest families in the Canary Islands. Before introducing the actual waltz rhythm, the work begins with a solemn, slow introduction in common time above which the composer has noted “O Canaria! Gran Canaria!”. This leads into the first waltz section marked vivace. With six melodic sections alternating in irregular sequences and a varied harmonic trajectory (Aminor, C major, A major, F major, E major, E flat major, B major, G major), this waltz is undoubtedly the composer’s most sophisticated work in this genre. According to Sabina Teller Ratner, Saint-Saëns’ melodic writing in this piece shows, as often in his work, a liking for symmetry and balance. Four years after the composition of the Valse canariote, Camille Saint-Saëns wrote to his publisher, Durand: “I met up again with Señorita Candelaria Navarro who is married, extremely well married at that, and mother to a pretty little girl of two months; she played my waltz in an entirely satisfactory fashion, although it didn’t equal the marvellous performance by Madame de Guitaut; she has neglected her piano a great deal since she married, but she has started singing instead, and her voice is mellow and agreeable.” (10 January 1894). Source: Bru Zane Mediabase (http://www.bruzanemediabase.com/eng/W...). Although originally composed for piano, I created this interpretation of the "Valse Canariote" (Canary Island Waltz) in A Minor (Op. 88) for String Quartet (2 Violins, Viola & Cello). Download the sheet music here: https://musescore.com/user/13216/scor...

Johann Hermann Schein (1586 – 1630) was a German composer of the early Baroque era. He was born in Grünhain and died in Leipzig. He was one of the first to import the early Italian stylistic innovations into German music, and was one of the most polished composers of the period. Schein was one of the first to absorb the innovations of the Italian Baroque—monody, the concertato style, figured bass—and use them effectively in a German Lutheran context. While Schütz made more than one trip to Italy, Schein apparently spent his entire life in Germany, making his grasp of the Italianate style all the more remarkable. His early concertato music seems to have been modeled on Lodovico Grossi da Viadana's Cento concerti ecclesiastici, which was available in an edition prepared in Germany. Unlike Schütz, who concentrated mainly on sacred music (although it must be borne in mind that at least two operas composed by him, among other secular works, have been lost), Schein wrote sacred and secular music in approximately equal quantities, and almost all of it was vocal. In his secular vocal music he wrote all of his own texts. Throughout his life he published alternating collections of sacred and secular music, in accordance with an intention he stated early on — in the preface to the Banchetto musicale — to publish alternately music for use in worship and social gatherings. The contrast between the two kinds of music can be quite extreme. While some of his sacred music uses the most sophisticated techniques of the Italian madrigal for a devotional purpose, several of his secular collections include such things as drinking songs of a surprising simplicity and humor. Some of his works attain an expressive intensity matched in Germany only by those of Schütz, for example the spectacular Fontana d'Israel or Israel's Brünnlein (1623), in which Schein declared his intent to exhaust the possibilities of German word-painting "in the style of the Italian madrigal." Possibly his most famous collection was his only collection of instrumental music, the Banchetto musicale (Musical banquet) (1617) which contains twenty separate variation suites; they are among the earliest, and most perfect, representatives of the form. Most likely they were composed as dinner music for the courts of Weissenfels and Weimar, and were intended to be performed on viols. They consist of dances: a pavan-galliard (a normal early Baroque pair), a courante, and then an allemande-tripla. Each suite in the Banchetto is unified by mode as well as by theme. Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_... ). Although originally written for five (5) Recorders (Canto, Quinta, Alto, Tenore & Basso), I created this Interpretation of the Suite XIII from "Banchetto Musicale" for Oboe & Strings (2 Violins, Viola & Cello). Download the sheet music here: https://musescore.com/user/13216/scor...