Music Monday - Halloween Music No. 6

The following music is probably more appropriate for Hallowmas rather than its eve, but it is so gorgeous I can't resist sharing it:

A recording of this March from the Funeral Music for Queen Mary as recorded by Harry Christophers and the Sixteen, plus the Symphony of Harmony and Invention can be found here. The entire recording is filled with the music of Purcell and is titled Love's Goddess Sure Was Blind from the title of a birthday ode to the same queen.

Called "England's most gifted and important composer of the Baroque period" by my undergraduate history of music professor (in the hallowed days of yore), British composer, singer, and organist Henry Purcell was born and lived and died in 17th century London. His best known work is the opera Dido and Aeneas (1689), from which this aria, sung by Emma Kirkby, comes. Just listen to the opening line descend into the Underworld:

Normally I use excerpts from Amazon, but this particular YouTube video has the vocal line scrolling in front of me while I'm listening--I'm in music-geek heaven. ☺ Not to mention that the CD of Kirkby singing Dido and Aeneas is no longer being released, though it is available via iTunes in the form of four very long tracks. But here is a recent recording of German-born coloratura soprano Simone Kermes, who treats Purcell's lament with a sensibility similar to Kirkby's, though their voices are quite different, on a CD also featuring Dimitris Tiliakos, Deborah York, Music Aeterna, and the New Siberian Singers under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

More information about Purcell can be found here and here.

Music Monday - Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

It's not a big anniversary year for J.S. Bach this year (though 2010 is the 300th birthday of lesser-known son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach), but I've been playing and listening to some of The Well-Tempered Clavier the past couple of weeks, and am wondering what else I might want to listen to of Bach, Sr.'s music. I've always liked Baroque music, and finally, as an adult, seem to have acquired enough patience to learn a fugue or two on the keyboard. As a teenager, I played the Inventions and some of the Preludes, but only ever started a fugue (most of which have three to five distinct parts, often playing simultaneously), and never finished it. Right now I'm working on the C Major Fugue (BWV 846) and the C Minor Prelude and Fugue (BWV 847) (might as well start at the beginning). I think I played three of Bach's violin concerti as a young violinist, and went on to work on Partita No. 3 for unaccompanied violin as a grad. student. Perhaps I've found the patience needed for the rest of the sonatas and partitas, too, but I doubt it--they are extremely challenging.

Mendelssohn was a great admirer of Bach's, and his (Mendelssohn's) Magnificat seems especially influenced by the Baroque composer's music. It would be fun to listen to both Mendelssohn's and Bach's Magnificats sequentially see what similarities there might be.

Bach wrote so very much music it's hard to pick a few favorites out of the bunch. But my favorite recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier is, hands-down, Glenn Gould's. Here is the C Minor fugue I'm currently working on (at about half the speed Gould plays it):


And every violinist knows "The Bach Double," or Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, the first movement played here as I first remember hearing it, by Isaac Stern and Itzahk Perlman:


One choral work of Bach's that I haven't sung but would love to is the secular canata nicknamed, "The Coffee Cantata," performed here by The Academy of Ancient Music under the direction of Christopher Hogwood, with soloists Emma Kirkby and David Thomas: