The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, is a piece of organ music written, according to its oldest extant sources, by Johann Sebastian Bach. The piece opens with a toccata section, followed by a fugue that ends in a coda. It is one of the most famous works in the organ repertoire.
Scholars differ as to when it was composed. It could have been as early as c.1704 (when the presumed composer was still in his teens), which would be one explanation for the unusual features; alternatively, a date as late as the 1750s has been suggested (Bach died in 1750). To a large extent, the piece conforms to the characteristics deemed typical for the north German organ school of the Baroque era with divergent stylistic influences, such as south German characteristics.
Despite a profusion of educated guesswork, there is not much that can be said with certainty about the first century of the composition's existence other than that it survived that period in a manuscript written by Johannes Ringk. The first publication of the piece, in the Bach Revival era, was in 1833, through the efforts of Felix Mendelssohn, who also performed the piece in an acclaimed concert in 1840. Familiarity with the piece was enhanced in the second half of the 19th century by a fairly successful piano version by Carl Tausig, but it was not until the 20th century that its popularity rose above that of other organ compositions by Bach. That popularity further increased, due for example to its inclusion in Walt Disney's Fantasia (in Stokowski's orchestral transcription), until this composition came to be considered the most famous work in the organ repertoire.
A wide, and often conflicting, variety of analyses has been published about the piece: for instance, in literature on organ music, it is often described as some sort of program music depicting a storm, while in the context of Disney's Fantasia, it was promoted as absolute music, nothing like program music depicting a storm. In the last quarter of the 20th century, scholars such as Peter Williams and Rolf-Dietrich Claus published their studies on the piece and argued against its authenticity. Bach scholars like Christoph Wolff defended the attribution to Bach. Other commentators ignored the authenticity doubts or considered the attribution issue undecided. No edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis listed the Toccata and Fugue among the doubtful works, nor does its entry on the website of the Bach Archiv Leipzig even mention alternative views on the attribution issue.
Bach - Toccata and Fugue BWV 565
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The String Quartet in F major, Op. 96, nicknamed the American Quartet, is the 12th string quartet composed by Antonín Dvořák. It was written in 1893, during Dvořák's time in the United States. The quartet is one of the most popular in the chamber music repertoire.
Dvořák composed the quartet in 1893 during a summer vacation from his position as director (1892–1895) of the National Conservatory in New York City. He spent his vacation in the town of Spillville, Iowa, which was home to a Czech immigrant community. Dvořák had come to Spillville through Josef Jan Kovařík who had finished violin studies at the Prague Conservatory and was about to return to Spillville, his home in the United States, when Dvořák offered him a position as secretary, which Josef Jan accepted, so he came to live with the Dvořák family in New York. He told Dvořák about Spillville, where his father Jan Josef was a schoolmaster, which led to Dvořák deciding to spend the summer of 1893 there.
In that environment, and surrounded by beautiful nature, Dvořák felt very much at ease. Writing to a friend he described his state of mind, away from hectic New York: "I have been on vacation since 3 June here in the Czech village of Spillville and I won’t be returning to New York until the latter half of September. The children arrived safely from Europe and we’re all happy together. We like it very much here and, thank God, I am working hard and I’m healthy and in good spirits." He composed the quartet shortly after the New World Symphony, before that work had been performed.
Dvořák sketched the quartet in three days and completed it in thirteen more days, finishing the score with the comment "Thank God! I am content. It was fast." It was his second attempt to write a quartet in F major: his first effort, 12 years earlier, produced only one movement. The American Quartet proved a turning point in Dvořák's chamber music output: for decades he had toiled unsuccessfully to find a balance between his overflowing melodic invention and a clear structure. In the American Quartet it finally came together. Dvořák defended the apparent simplicity of the piece: "When I wrote this quartet in the Czech community of Spillville in 1893, I wanted to write something for once that was very melodious and straightforward, and dear Papa Haydn kept appearing before my eyes, and that is why it all turned out so simply. And it’s good that it did."
For his symphony Dvořák gave the subtitle himself: "From the New World". To the quartet he gave no subtitle himself, but there is the comment "The second composition written in America."
Dvorak - String Quartet No. 12 in F major
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Oberon, or The Elf King's Oath is a 3-act romantic opera in English with spoken dialogue and music by Carl Maria von Weber. The libretto by James Robinson Planché was based on a German poem, Oberon, by Christoph Martin Wieland, which itself was based on the epic romance Huon de Bordeaux, a French medieval tale.
Against his doctor's advice, Weber undertook the project commissioned by the actor-impresario Charles Kemble for financial reasons. Having been offered the choice of Faust or Oberon as subject matter, he travelled to London to complete the music, learning English to be better able to follow the libretto, before the premiere of the opera. However, the pressure of rehearsals, social engagements and composing extra numbers destroyed his health, and Weber died in London on 5 June 1826.
First performed at Covent Garden, London, on 12 April 1826, with Miss Paton as Reiza, Mme. Vestris as Fatima, Braham as Huon, Bland as Oberon and the composer conducting, it was a triumph with many encores, and the production was frequently revived. The libretto was later translated into German by Theodor Hell, and it is in this German translation that the opera is most frequently performed. While it is logical to assume that the German translation would have had the composer's approval - and that it would have been in that language that revisions would have been made - he heard it only in English, and did not work on a translation before his death.
The opera was soon mounted elsewhere: Leipzig in 1826, Dublin, Edinburgh and Vienna in 1827, Prague in 1828 and Budapest in 1829, with many other performances in western Europe from the 1830s to the 1860s.
Weber was dissatisfied by the structure of the opera as it was produced in London, and intended to revise the work on his return to Germany, but died in London before starting work on the revision. Since then, other composers and librettists have revised the work, notably Franz Wüllner, Gustav Mahler (who, preparing a new performing version, rearranged some of the numbers and composed some linking music based on material from the existing score) and novelist-composer Anthony Burgess, who wrote a new libretto for Oberon and arranged the overture for guitar quartet. Franz Liszt made an arrangement of the overture in 1846 for solo piano (S.574).
The first performance of Oberon in America took place in New York at the Park Theatre on 20 September 1826. It was first seen in Paris in 1830 at the Théâtre Italien (in German). A lavish production was mounted in French at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris on 27 February 1857, conducted by Adolphe Deloffre, and was praised by Berlioz.
In the 20th century, the Metropolitan Opera premiere was on 28 December 1918 (accumulating 13 performances up to 1921) with Rosa Ponselle as Reiza, conducted Artur Bodanzky, who also composed recitatives in place of original spoken dialogue. The opera was staged at the Salzburg Festival in 1932 and 1934 under Walter, at the 1950 Holland Festival with Monteux conducting, the Florence Festival in 1952 under Stiedry and at the Paris Opera in 1953 with Cluytens. Although the opera has been staged intermittently in the 20th century, it has been often been performed successfully in concert.
Weber - Oberon (or The Elf King's Oath), J. 306 - Overture
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La mer, trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre (French for The sea, three symphonic sketches for orchestra), or simply La mer (The Sea), L. 109, CD. 111, is an orchestral composition by the French composer Claude Debussy.
Composed between 1903 and 1905, the piece was premiered in Paris in October 1905. It was initially not well received. Even some who had been strong supporters of Debussy's work were unenthusiastic, even though La mer presented three key aspects of Debussy's aesthetic: Impressionism, Symbolism and Japonism. But the work was performed in the US in 1907 and Britain in 1908; after its second performance in Paris, in 1908, it quickly became one of Debussy's most admired and frequently performed orchestral works.
The first audio recording of the work was made in 1928. Since then, orchestras and conductors from around the world have set it down in many studio or live concert recordings.
La mer was the second of Debussy's three orchestral works in three sections, the other being Nocturnes (1892–1899) and Images pour orchestre (1905-1912). The first, the Nocturnes, was premiered in Paris in 1901, and though it had not made any great impact with the public it was well reviewed by musicians including Paul Dukas, Alfred Bruneau, and Pierre de Bréville. Debussy conceived the idea of a more complex tripartite orchestral piece, and began work in August 1903. He was usually a slow worker, and although the composition of La mer took him more than a year and a half, this was unusually quick progress by his standards, particularly at a time of upheaval in his personal life. He began composing the work while visiting his parents-in-law in Burgundy; by the time it was complete, he had left his wife and was living with Emma Bardac, who was pregnant with Debussy's child.
Debussy retained fond childhood memories of the beauties of the sea, but when composing La mer he rarely visited it, spending most of his time far away from large bodies of water. He drew inspiration from art, "preferring the seascapes available in painting and literature" to the physical sea. Although the detailed scheme of the work changed during its composition, Debussy decided from the outset that it was to be "three symphonic sketches" with the title La mer. In a letter to André Messager, he described the planned sections as "Mère belle aux Îles Sanguinaires", "Jeu de vagues", and "Le vent fait danser la mer". The first of these, inspired by a short story of the same name by Camille Mauclair, was abandoned in favour of a less restrictive theme, the sea from dawn to midday. The last was also dropped, as too reminiscent of ballet, and the less specific theme of the dialogue between the wind and the sea took its place.
Debussy completed La mer 5 March 1905 and took the proofs to correct on holiday at the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne on the English Channel coast, at which he arrived 23 July 1905, he described Eastbourne to his publisher, Durand, as "a charming peaceful spot: the sea unfurls itself with an utterly British correctness." He arranged the piece for piano four hands in 1905, and in 1909 Durand published a second edition of La mer with the composer's revisions.
Debussy - La Mer - Music | History
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The Boléro, Op. 19, is a short piano work written by Frédéric Chopin and published in 1834. It is one of his lesser-known piano pieces, although it has been recorded numerous times.
The overall key of the Boléro is difficult to establish. It was often listed as Boléro in C major - A minor, as the work opens with three unison octaves in G (dominant chords of C major) in fortissimo, then a lengthy Introduction in C major, moving to A minor (relative minor) for the Boléro proper. It is interrupted by sections in A major, A-flat major and B-flat minor before returning to A minor. It ends triumphantly in A major (parallel major).
The work was dedicated to the Scottish-born but half-French Mademoiselle la Comtesse Émilie de Flahaut, then aged only 14, and a pupil of Chopin's. She was later to become Countess of Shelburne.The apparent inspiration for the Boléro was Chopin's friendship with the French soprano Pauline Viardot, whose father, the famed Spanish tenor Manuel García, had introduced boleros to Paris by the time of Chopin's arrival there. His biographer Frederick Niecks speculated that it was inspired by the Bolero in Daniel Auber's La muette de Portici (1828). Despite the ostensibly Spanish flavour of the piece, it has been described as a polonaise in disguise, or a boléro à la polonaise, as its rhythms are more redolent of the national dance of Chopin's homeland than anything Spanish. It was written five years before Chopin first visited Spain (1838).
Frédéric Chopin, French in full Frédéric François Chopin, Polish Fryderyk Franciszek Szopen, (born March 1, 1810 , Żelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, Duchy of Warsaw [now in Poland]—died October 17, 1849, Paris, France), Polish French composer and pianist of the Romantic period, best known for his solo pieces for piano and his piano concerti. Although he wrote little but piano works, many of them brief, Chopin ranks as one of music’s greatest tone poets by reason of his superfine imagination and fastidious craftsmanship.
Chopin - Bolero, Op. 19
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The Partitas, BWV 825–830, are a set of six harpsichord suites written by Johann Sebastian Bach, published individually beginning in 1726, then together as Clavier-Übung I in 1731, the first of his works to be published under his own direction. They were, however, among the last of his keyboard suites to be composed, the others being the six English Suites, BWV 806-811 and the six French Suites, BWV 812-817, as well as the Overture in the French style, BWV 831.
The six partitas for keyboard form the last set of suites that Bach composed, and are the most technically demanding of the three. They were composed between 1725 and 1730 or 1731. As with the French and English Suites, the autograph manuscript of the Partitas is no longer extant.
In keeping with a nineteenth-century naming tradition that labelled Bach's first set of Suites English and the second French, the Partitas are sometimes referred to as the German Suites. This title, however, is a publishing convenience; there is nothing particularly German about the Partitas. In comparison with the two earlier sets of suites, the Partitas are by far the most free-ranging in terms of structure. Unlike the English Suites, for example, wherein each opens with a strict prelude, the Partitas feature a number of different opening styles including an ornamental Overture and a Toccata.
Although each of the Partitas was published separately under the name Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice), they were subsequently collected into a single volume in 1731 with the same name, which Bach himself chose to label his Opus 1. Unlike the earlier sets of suites, Bach originally intended to publish seven Partitas, advertising in the Spring of 1730 upon the publication of the fifth Partita that the promised collected volume would contain two more such pieces. The plan was then revised to include a total of eight works: six Partitas in Part I (1731) and two larger works in Part II (1735), the Italian Concerto, BWV 971, and the Overture in the French style, BWV 831. The second of these is an eleven-movement partita, the largest such keyboard work Bach ever composed, and may in fact be the elusive "seventh partita" mentioned in 1730. The Overture in the French style was originally written in C minor, but was transposed a half step down for publication to complete the tonal scheme of Parts I and II as described below.
The tonalities of the six Partitas (B♭ major, C minor, A minor, D major, G major, E minor) may seem to be irregular, but in fact they form a sequence of intervals going up and then down by increasing amounts: a second up (B♭ to C), a third down (C to A), a fourth up (A to D), a fifth down (D to G), and finally a sixth up (G to E). This key sequence continues into Clavier-Übung II (1735) with the two larger works: the Italian Concerto, a seventh down (E to F), and the Overture in the French style, an augmented fourth up (F to B♮). Thus this sequence of tonalities customary for 18th-century keyboard compositions is complete, beginning with the first letter of his name (B in German is Bach's "home" key of B♭) and ending with the last letter (H in German is B♮) while including both A and C along the way.
Bach - Partita No. 2 BWV 826
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Grand duo concertant sur la Romance de M. Lafont 'Le marin', S.128 is a piece for solo violin and piano composed around 1849 by Franz Liszt. It has 2 sections which last 15 minutes in a typical performance.
Franz Liszt was a Hungarian pianist and composer of enormous influence and originality. He was renowned in Europe during the Romantic movement.
By the time Franz Liszt was 9 years old, he was performing in concert halls. As an adult, he toured extensively throughout Europe. He had an affair and children with Marie díAgoult and later lived with Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. By his death, he had written more than 700 compositions.
Liszt was born on October 22, 1811, in Raiding, Hungary. His father, Adam, played the cello, as well as several other instruments, and passionately taught Franz how to play piano. By the age of 6, young Liszt was recognized as a child prodigy; by the age of 8, he was composing elementary works; and by the age of 9, he was appearing in concerts. His father worked as a secretary for Prince Nicholas Esterhazy, and, after the boy played for a group of wealthy sponsors, he asked the prince for extended leave so he could devote his time to enriching his son's musical education.
Father and son traveled to Vienna, and Antonio Salieri, Mozart's old rival, quickly became a proponent of Liszt's genius. Upon hearing the boy play at a private home, he offered to train him in composition free of charge. For several months, the young pianist held performances for both musicians and kings. His most impressive talent was his uncanny ability to improvise an original composition from a melody suggested by an audience member. At the age of 12, Liszt traveled with his father to Paris to seek admittance to the Paris Conservatory. The admissions council denied him a place in the school on the grounds that he was a foreigner. His father, ever determined, turned to Ferdinando Paer to teach his son advanced composition. It was during this time that Liszt wrote his first and only opera, Don Sanche.
In 1826, Adam Liszt passed away. The event proved to be extremely traumatic for the 15- year-old Franz Liszt, and it necessitated that he shares their one-bedroom Parisian apartment with his mother. In the years that followed, Franz Liszt lost interest in music to such a degree that he began to question his profession. He turned away from performing and started to read profusely, delving into books on the subjects of art and religion. What he read during that time would greatly influence his later musical works.
In 1833, at the age of 22, Liszt met the Comtesse Marie d'Agoult. Inspired by love and nature, he composed several impressions of the Swiss countryside in "Album d'un voyageur," which would later surface as the "Années de Pèlerinage" ("Years of Pilgrimage"). In 1834, Liszt debuted his piano compositions "Harmonies poétiques et religieuses" and a set of three "Apparitions."
Strengthened by new works and several public performances, Liszt began to take Europe by storm. His reputation was bolstered even further by the fact that he gave away many of his concert proceeds to charities and humanitarian causes. For example, when in 1842 he found out about the Great Fire of Hamburg, which had destroyed much of the city, he gave concerts to create aid for its thousands of homeless. On a personal level, however, matters were less than glorious for Liszt. His relationship with Marie d'Agoult, which by that point had produced three children, finally ended. In 1847, while in Kiev, Liszt met Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. Her influence on him was dramatic; she encouraged him to stop touring and, instead, teach and compose, so he could have a more domestic life with her. Liszt gave his final concert for pay at Elisavetgrad in September, and then spent the winter with the princess at her estate in Woronince.
The next year, the couple moved to Weimar, Germany, and Liszt began to concentrate on a higher missionóthe creation of new musical forms. His most famous achievement during this time was the creation of what would become known as the symphonic poem, a type of orchestral musical piece that illustrates or evokes a poem, a story, a painting, or other nonmusical source. Aesthetically, the symphonic poem is in some ways related to opera; it is not sung, but it does unite music and drama. Liszt's new works inspired eager pupils to seek his guidance. For the next 10 years, Liszt's radical and innovative works found their way into the concert halls of Europe, winning him staunch followers and violent adversaries.
Liszt - Grand duo concertant sur le 'Le marin', S.128
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The Piano Sonata in F major, Hob. XVI/9, L.3, was written in 1758 by Joseph Haydn.
Haydn's piano sonatas were long disseminated solely in the form of copies; it was not until 1774 that a printed edition also appeared, containing the sonatas Hob. XVI:21-26 and dedicated to Haydn's aristocratic employer Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. With an opening movement characterized by two contrasting themes, a sensitive Adagio in F minor and a sparkling Presto Finale, No. 3 of the collection, in F Major, is an outstanding example of the classical sonata. Perhaps this is why this technically challenging work has remained the most popular of the set.
Franz Joseph Haydn (31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio. His contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet".
Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original". Yet his music circulated widely, and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe.
He was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a tutor of Beethoven, and the older brother of composer Michael Haydn.
Haydn - Piano Sonata in F major Hob. XVI
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The Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major, K. 313, was written in 1778 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Commissioned by the Dutch flautist Ferdinand De Jean in 1777, Mozart was supposed to provide four flute quartets and three flute concertos, yet he only completed two of the three concertos, K. 313 being the first. The Andante for Flute and Orchestra K. 315 may have been written as an alternative slow movement for this concerto, but there is no extant manuscript and it is therefore difficult to ascertain Mozart's intentions clearly (this also means that current editions are based on the earliest editions rather than an autograph).
The piece is scored for a standard set of orchestral strings, two oboes (which are replaced with two flutes in the Adagio movement), and two horns.
The piece is divided into three movements:
1. Allegro maestoso
2. Adagio ma non troppo
3. Rondo: Tempo di Menuetto
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), baptised as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period.
Born in Salzburg, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his early death at the age of 35. The circumstances of his death have been much mythologized.
He composed more than 600 works, many of which are acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is considered among the greatest classical composers of all time, and his influence is profound on subsequent Western art music. Ludwig van Beethoven composed his early works in the shadow of Mozart, and Joseph Haydn wrote: "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years".
Mozart - Flute Concerto in G Major K. 313
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Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 3 in C major, Op. 2, No. 3, is a sonata written for solo piano, composed in 1795. It is dedicated to Joseph Haydn and is often referred to as Beethoven's first virtuosic piano sonata. The three Op. 2 sonatas all contain four movements each, an unusual length which seems to show that Beethoven was aspiring towards composing a symphony. It is both the weightiest and longest of the three Op. 2 sonatas, lasting over 25 minutes, presenting many difficulties, including difficult trills, awkward hand movements, and forearm rotation. It is Beethoven's second longest piano sonata in his early period, only to Beethoven's Grand Sonata in E♭ Major, Op. 7, published a year later.
I. Allegro con brio
The first movement follows the sonata allegro format of the classical period, and borrows thematically from Beethoven's Piano Quartet No. 3 in C major, WoO 36, from a decade earlier. The movement opens with the main theme in the tonic key, beginning with a double-thirds trill-like pattern. This opening passage is infamous for pianists to play, and Arthur Rubinstein even used this passage to test pianos before performing on them. This pattern leads into an energetic outburst of a broken-chord and broken-octave section. The second theme of the exposition begins in the key of G minor, and is repeated in D minor at measure 33. It is not until measure 47 that the traditional dominant key is finally reached, where a subsidiary theme in the second thematic group appears, marked "dolce." A forte shows later, leading to a very rich melody with left and right hand.
Then a similar outburst of a broken-chord and broken-octave sections appears in fortissimo.
Then it ends with some difficult trills and an octave scale. Beethoven opens the development by improvising on trill patterns introduced in the end of the exposition, which are much more difficult to play. Following a broken-chords section filled with harmony changes, the main theme is restated in D major (pianissimo), the supertonic key of C major. Then a fortissimo and Beethoven's very common syncopations appears in the music giving a rhythm, this continues on to the resolution. The recapitulation is a key change from G major to C major, which is finished by a cadenza, which begins with a sudden A-flat major chord. The cadenza is very light and vibrant and it ends with a long trill and descending chromatic scale in the right hand. The first movement is about 10 minutes long and is one of Beethoven's longest movements from his early period.
II. Adagio
The second movement is marked Adagio and written in the key of E major. It is in rondo form, A–B–A–B–A–coda, written in the style of a string quartet, as there are four clear voices. The middle section, in E minor, contains numerous examples of Romanticism, and is considered a prelude to the master's later sonatas. Later in the movement, the E minor passage is repeated in E major.
III. Scherzo: Allegro
The third movement, a scherzo, is written in minuet and trio form. It opens with a joke-like statement, and the composer uses some polyphony. The trio is in the relative minor key of C major (A minor) and contains running arpeggios in the right hand with the left hand playing a melodic line in octave form. The coda of this short movement ends the Scherzo softly with a tritone substitute authentic cadence.
IV. Allegro assai
The final movement, listed as a rondo, is in the sonata rondo form. The movement opens with an ascending run of first inversion chords in the right hand, which is the movement's main theme. Like the first movement, the second theme in the exposition is also written in G major. The great speed of this movement, combined with numerous examples of Beethoven's virtuoso skill such as the triple trill at the very end, makes it challenging for pianists.
Beethoven - Sonata No. 3 in C Major, Op. 2
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