We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Not all Baroque is cheery, but lots of it is. Not lots of catchy tunes or riffs, so a lot of it sounds like inventive ornamentation. Filigree. Must be great fun to play, if you can.
Mrs. BD and I have been attending a Baroque Chamber Concerto series (Handel, Vivaldi, Bach) at Lincoln Center this month. It helps me greatly to watch the musicians to see who is doing what. With only a handful of musicians at a time, that's easy to see. A few violins and violas, a bass, a harpsichord, rarely a harp, and sometimes bassoon ad/or oboe. Occasional horns too.
In a large space it's hard to hear the harpsichord but it's mostly a continuo. Pianny was a great invention. Big noise. Chamber music was/is meant for small spaces.
A few facts (I am not well-educated musically, and am tone deaf with zero musical talent):
- The famous baroque composers wrote tons of secular music. That was mainly for courts. Lots of the chamber music was written for pedagogical purposes. Through his entire career, Bach complained about the quality of musicians. They seemed to approximate the scores.
At the heart of Bach's pursuit of chamber music in Cöthen was the rare genre of unaccompanied solo works in sonata and suite genres beginning with the violin and cello works, BWV 1001-1012, followed primarily in Leipzig with the duo sonatas for violin, flute, and viola da gamba, as well as 24 transcriptions of 14 of these works for different instruments and the perfection of the solo pieces. During much of this time Bach also composed works for lute or lute harpsichord while focusing on the flute in Leipzig. The music was intended for varied purposes: to teach composition to family members, students, and friends; to develop a repertory to reflect emerging genres and tastes, and to meet the needs of a growing general public to experience music first-hand.
I'll let rhhardin comment on the oboe d'amore, but the viola da gamba is an unfretted string instrument played with a bow between the knees. It has roughly the range of a contemporary cello, I believe. The unique thing about it is that it has "sympathetic" or resonator strings beneath the bowed strings. They pick up energy from the bowed strings and sing along with them. Bach's Brandenburg Cto. #6 is scored for gambas. Such an ensemble of them has quite a unique sound.
Is it not strange and wonderful that some people devote their lives to mastering these ancient instruments and keeping their music alive?
You can thank Felix Mendelssohn for rediscovering Bach in the mid-19th century. Of course, Beethoven and Mozart knew his music well and learned much from it, but many at the time thought his contrapuntal style "old-fashioned".
For myself, Bach is the alpha and the omega of all Music. It never tires, and it "refreshes the spirit" has he himself expressed it.
Agreed that "Messiah", while a great work, is perhaps overplayed, as are Handel's "Water Music" and "Royal Fireworks" suites. Turn to his Op. 2 or 6 sets of Concertos Grossi, or his keyboard sonatas, for Handel at his instrumental finest (IMO).
It seems rather mean-spirited to suggest the Messiah is overplayed. It is played because people like me love it! Handel's other works are excellent, but the Hallelujah chorus moves me to feel (as the composer reportedly said), as if "I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself seated on His throne, with His company of Angels!"
Bach's six solo violiin partitas were not played in his day largely because they were unplayable for that time. They were written by commission from a wealthy fellow and to be conceived without the ordinary technical restrictions of the day. Joachim first played them at concert two centuries later and one critic wrote that he felt he was in the presence of something great between the scratching and squaking of the performance. Since that time they are perfomed without a blemish but only once were they transformed into something uncannily beautiful, and that person was Kreisler. Only one adagio was recorded, which is special. But the great German violinist Huberman described Kreisler perfoming the Chaconne as something beyond his imagination.
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james wilson
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2022-12-22 15:01
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I don't know the Kreisler, James, but I think that Nathan Milstein came close. The Chaconne is both madly difficult and sublime beyond words, but today even students try to learn it.
Great art travels close to the edge of both human capability and understanding, and seems to suggest something that may lie beyond. Why people spend their short time with anything less is a mystery to me.
Not all Baroque is cheery, but lots of it is. Not lots of catchy tunes or riffs, so a lot of it sounds like inventive ornamentation. Filigree. Must be great fun to play, if you can.
I have had limited experience playing Bach- mostly 2-part inventions on piano. Yes, they are fun to play, because you can see the variations written out on the page.
