(no subject)
I'm listening to Ockeghem's Requiem again, and the end of the Graduale has left me absolutely lost for words. I'd forgotten just how beautiful it is. The last minute or so, when the lower voices enter on 'consolata sunt' and make the texture really rich, is just so profoundly, exquisitely, devastatingly and beautifully sad, but comforting as well. It's like an ice cold feather duvet, or soft marble. I've never found a piece of music quite like it. I love the way Ockeghem's polyphony tumbles along endlessly, almost as if the singers didn't have to breathe at all.
One of the things I love so much about pre-baroque music is the freedom in the harmony and tonality, or at the very least a completely different approach to the music. The baroque era produced some astonishing masterpieces, and paved the way for everything written since, but I feel music since then has completely lost that fluidity and ethereal quality. The systems and rules are beautiful in themselves, but it made music far more physical than it was. The physical can definitely be a vehicle for transcendence in music, but there's something wonderful about the free, unrestricted and almost spiritual music by composers like Ockeghem.
One of the things I love so much about pre-baroque music is the freedom in the harmony and tonality, or at the very least a completely different approach to the music. The baroque era produced some astonishing masterpieces, and paved the way for everything written since, but I feel music since then has completely lost that fluidity and ethereal quality. The systems and rules are beautiful in themselves, but it made music far more physical than it was. The physical can definitely be a vehicle for transcendence in music, but there's something wonderful about the free, unrestricted and almost spiritual music by composers like Ockeghem.