Have some concerti grossi
Happy Palm Sunday! I won't say I enjoy, exactly, the Passion reading, but I do look forward to it every year. I could go on about how "O Sacred Head Sore Wounded" makes my top ten list of hymns, but instead I'm going to indulge a secular music obsession.
Every so often, I need a reminder of why the Baroque composers are my favorites. I've been trying to expand my Renaissance collection lately (I <3 Thomas Tallis), and Chopin's 200th birthday sent me on a Romantic kick, but yesterday I found this video. This is, in four minutes, why I love Baroque music:
They are so good. The rest of that concerto is also available on their YouTube page. It's especially fun being able to see it, as you can watch the two violinists tossing the melody back and forth. One of the great things about string ensembles is how very obvious it is, visually speaking, when the whole group is playing perfectly as one. I went looking for their CDs after finding this. Sadly, they don't seem to be available on this side of the pond, but anyway I don't think it would be quite as fun without being able to watch them play. You really can't beat a live performance. I wonder if they do many North American tours.
Mozart is fantastic and the Renaissance composers are sublime, and I have a well-documented weakness for really bombastic orchestral music of the Romantic period and early 20th Century, but Baroque is where it's at. It's very cerebral music, which adjective is not always a compliment, but it combines that intricacy and intellectualism with passion. The Romantics are always trying to overwhelm you with some emotion or other, but the Baroque composers aren't trying to overwhelm you with anything but the music. It's all, "Look what I can do!" and, delightedly, "Isn't this cool?" Which is not to say they can't convey emotion. The movement above, from Corelli's Concerto Grosso no. 4, is pure joy made audible. Or see the rather more famous movement, also from his Op. 6--the Adagio from the Christmas Concerto. (Sorry about the link. You'll have to put up with Russell Crowe staring at you while you listen, but they used a really superb rendition of the movement in Master and Commander, so.) That piece conveys such longing without ever becoming saccharine. Take that, Rachmaninov. (I love you, Sergei dear, but you know it's so much easier to get an emotional response if you've got rubato and an actual fortepiano to work with. Try it on a harpsichord with the Bologna School breathing down your neck.)
And then there are the composers themselves. Handel wrote his Messiah in just over three weeks. Three weeks. Have you listened to that thing? And the Bach family is love. I don't actually know if their personal life was as happy as I like to imagine it being, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Check the Notebooks. I'd marry a man who gave me gifts like that.
I'll leave you with some Geminiani, also played by L'Aura Soave. It's ten minutes of variations on the same theme, but it never gets old. I think my favorite bit is just after the 9:20 mark, when the tempo kicks right up and suddenly it starts resolving into a major key. Or maybe around 2:30, when the principal violinist just takes off. Watch his face!
Every so often, I need a reminder of why the Baroque composers are my favorites. I've been trying to expand my Renaissance collection lately (I <3 Thomas Tallis), and Chopin's 200th birthday sent me on a Romantic kick, but yesterday I found this video. This is, in four minutes, why I love Baroque music:
Click to viewThey are so good. The rest of that concerto is also available on their YouTube page. It's especially fun being able to see it, as you can watch the two violinists tossing the melody back and forth. One of the great things about string ensembles is how very obvious it is, visually speaking, when the whole group is playing perfectly as one. I went looking for their CDs after finding this. Sadly, they don't seem to be available on this side of the pond, but anyway I don't think it would be quite as fun without being able to watch them play. You really can't beat a live performance. I wonder if they do many North American tours.
Mozart is fantastic and the Renaissance composers are sublime, and I have a well-documented weakness for really bombastic orchestral music of the Romantic period and early 20th Century, but Baroque is where it's at. It's very cerebral music, which adjective is not always a compliment, but it combines that intricacy and intellectualism with passion. The Romantics are always trying to overwhelm you with some emotion or other, but the Baroque composers aren't trying to overwhelm you with anything but the music. It's all, "Look what I can do!" and, delightedly, "Isn't this cool?" Which is not to say they can't convey emotion. The movement above, from Corelli's Concerto Grosso no. 4, is pure joy made audible. Or see the rather more famous movement, also from his Op. 6--the Adagio from the Christmas Concerto. (Sorry about the link. You'll have to put up with Russell Crowe staring at you while you listen, but they used a really superb rendition of the movement in Master and Commander, so.) That piece conveys such longing without ever becoming saccharine. Take that, Rachmaninov. (I love you, Sergei dear, but you know it's so much easier to get an emotional response if you've got rubato and an actual fortepiano to work with. Try it on a harpsichord with the Bologna School breathing down your neck.)
And then there are the composers themselves. Handel wrote his Messiah in just over three weeks. Three weeks. Have you listened to that thing? And the Bach family is love. I don't actually know if their personal life was as happy as I like to imagine it being, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Check the Notebooks. I'd marry a man who gave me gifts like that.
I'll leave you with some Geminiani, also played by L'Aura Soave. It's ten minutes of variations on the same theme, but it never gets old. I think my favorite bit is just after the 9:20 mark, when the tempo kicks right up and suddenly it starts resolving into a major key. Or maybe around 2:30, when the principal violinist just takes off. Watch his face!