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Music by
David von Thyssen
United States of America
What to say. Well... I am a sixteen-year-old composer/concert pianist/violinist and music has been a significant part of my life for as long as I can remember.
I first was introduced to music at age three by my cousin-in-law's father who was a concert pianist. The story, according to my family, goes that he played part of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto for me and I was enthralled with it (still am today, in fact) and I demanded that he teach it to me. Naturally, being three years old, I didn't realize that it was far beyond my grasp. So he began teaching me anyway though not quite starting out with Rach hehe. I've been playing the piano ever since. I've reached the point in my studies to where I could probably take the virtuoso's test and pass with flying colors but I want to hold off on that until college. I'd rather learn the Rach3 first :-) Anyway, at age four I introduced myself to composition and at five I wrote my first solo piano pieces. At that point I began formally studying the piano and composition and I have been ever since. I'm currently sixteen and I've written a few hundred works but destroyed most of them. I'm kind of a perfectionist so it's difficult for me to ever call anything I write 'good' even though everyone around me says I'm a 'Mozart'. They have some audacity, hmmm? At any rate, Mozart is, in fact, my orchestral idol and Rachmaninoff remains my idol for the piano. I've also studied the violin for seven years and there my tastes run to Mr. Paganini who's works are a great joy to play. A good deal of them are still beyond my grasp, though. One day, perhaps.
I've composed a good deal of solo piano work and chamber music (string quartets, piano trios, etc.) as well as a bit of choral music but my favorite music to compose is orchestral. I finished my Piano Concerto in A Minor in the Summer of 2002 and it echoes, to an extent, the concertos of Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky though I have a very distinct style of my own which clearly sets it apart. I've also begun work on another Concerto for Piano & Orchestra, this one in G Minor. I've written about half of a Requiem Mass in D Minor for 8 to 12-part SATB Chorus & Symphony Orchestra but I shelved that project indefinitely until I find reason to finish it (hopefully I won't... it's a Mass for the Dead). I wrote a Flute Concerto in G Major for a dear friend of mine who is a virtuoso flautist and made a bet that I couldn't stump her. Well... I won the bet. But I'm currently rewriting some of it so that more then three people in the world will be able to play it :-) I just finished a Horn Concerto in F Major and I'm starting a Trumpet Concerto in D Major to better acquaint me with the full capabilities of the brass section as I'm starting my first opera in the fall and I intend to use a great deal of brass throughout the entirety of the work.
In 2003, after I've finished my opera (which I'm expecting to be in the neighborhood of April or May), I intend to continue writing chamber and solo pieces but I'd also like to compose a symphony and a violin concerto... both before the year's end. We'll see. I write fairly quickly so it's well within my musical grasp.
Music is more then symphonies, concertos, and operas to me, however. Music is the sole outlet for my emotions and my feelings. Everything I am... everything that I can be... everything that I believe humanity can be... is embodied in my music. Music, as Ludwig van Beethoven once said, is a higher revelation then all religions, philosophies, and ideologies in the world put together.
Could anyone have put it more succinctly?
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10 Original Compositions
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Sheet Music
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Band
Big Band
Broadway Shows Sound of Music, Wicked, Mamma Mia,
Children's Mary Poppins, Harry Potter
Choral
Christian Christian MercyMe, Chris Tomlin, Ave Maria, Amy Grant
Christmas
Classical Scores
Country Rascal Flatts, Taylor Swift, Shania Twain Elvis Presley
Disney
Easter
Easy Listening
Folk Music
Halloween
Hip-Hop
Irish - Celtic Irish Tenors
Jazz Michael Buble,Gershwin,
Cole Porter,
Rodgers Hart,
Duke Ellington,
Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hart
Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett
Love Songs
Motown
Movies, TV Shrek, Star Wars, John Williams, Classics
Latin
Oldies Four Seasons
Patriotic
Anthems
Rhythm & Blues Four Tops, Diana Ross, Temptations, Motown Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder
Ragtime
Rock guitar
Pop Pop
Josh Groban, Sara Bareilles, Coldplay, Mariah Carey, Green Day, Elton John, Plain White T's,
Richard Marx,
The Beatles,
Robbie Williams,
Celine Dion,
Regina Spektor,
Leona Lewis,
Evanescence,
Daniel Powter,
Rihanna, Billy Joel, Andrea Bocelli, Bob Dylan, Streisand,
Sports/Fight Songs
Wedding
Wedding
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Documentary
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