Rockets and steamrollers

I've been jotting down notes about things I'd like to write about.  If I don't, I'll forget the idea.  These are just a few of the things I've been thinking about this week:

--J. S. Bach, Douglas Hofstadter, and The Art of Fugue and The Goldberg Variations.

--Glenn Gould

--the Mannheim school/Mannheim style

--opus numbers and cataloguing systems for the works of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Haydn.

--music theory history

--Beethoven's symphonies

The only one I'm prepared to talk about right now is the Mannheim school.  I'm sure you've heard of the popular music group Mannheim Steamroller.  The group takes their name from an interesting and important source.  The Mannheim school, of Germany, was influential in the 18th century, and was responsible for the eventual changes in style of the symphonic work of Haydn and Mozart (who in turn influenced everyone else).  The style of symphonic development that the school promoted entails soloistic use of woodwinds, prominent melodic lines, slow moving harmonies, and dramatic dynamic shifts.  This last thing is where the modern group takes its names.  In large scale symphonic works, extended crescendo passages were used, referred to as a Walze, or "roller" (now referred to as a steamroller).  The Mannheim symphonies were highly regarded for their technical precision and large ensemble size (up to about this time in music history, most ensembles weren't very big, not like the modern symphony, which employs between 35-50 musicians). 

Interestingly, Grove Music Online tells me that some of these stylistic innovations were actually originated  from earlier Italian schools and Italian operas (Italian operatic repertoire were used in the Mannheim school).

There is also something called a Mannheim rocket, which is made up of an ascending triad (three notes) theme in equal note lengths, a "sigh", and something called a Bebung, which is a trembling effect, created by a rapid shaking of a finger on a string, or a key on a clavichord.

Now you know.