Classical music provides one of the most
warming medicines to help see us through Lockdown. I happen to be particularly
enamoured by late 17th and 18th century music up to about 1750,
nowadays styled Baroque. I love its stylistic formality and grand celebratory
emotions. It is something all Europeans can share, coming as it does from
London, Paris, Venice, Naples and those most musical towns in Saxony and
Brandenburg. We are part of a great cultural family, despite recent idiocies
from Brussels, and we will all thrive in our own way. My 10 choices are tabled
more or less chronologically. What pleasure they generate in the hearts of we
true Europeans!
A Baroque Pavilion at the Zwinger,
Dresden
(1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxZQ1ODN1iU&ab_channel=FelicesCantusBaroque
I begin with Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Te
Deum, composed in 1688 whose opening section has been the signature
tune of Eurovision (OMG)! It is a wonderful piece, performed beautifully here
by Les Arts Florissants, the ensemble based in Caen, Normandy and conducted by
the American William Christie. They were masters of the Baroque repertoire and
I loved their performances in London in the 2000s.
(2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Up3cZa0wI&ab_channel=LevonManukyan
My next Baroque piece is Come, Come ye Sons
of Art by Henry Purcell, written to commemorate the Birthday of Mary II in
1694. Purcell is always densely tuneful, wry in a characteristically English
manner, duly flattering to his royal patron and bang up-to-date with his
Baroque elaboration, no doubt influenced by the brilliant contemporary French
court of Louis XIV.
I skip over the seminal career of the Venetian
Claudio Monteverdi and give you the lovely Sancta Mater, istud agas of
1736 from the Stabat Mater by the Neapolitan prodigy Giovanni Pergolesi.
This particular recording was made at the Dresden Frauenkirche and features the
soaring soprano of the Russian Anna Netrebko and the warm mezzo of the Italian
Marianna Pizzolato.
(4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zegtH-acXE&ab_channel=Ambasciatrice
While it is true that much of the finest
Baroque music was devotional and religious, the age also accommodated comic
opera and theatre. I attach a piece from prolific Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les
Indes Galantes (The Amorous Indies) of 1735, which captures the frivolous
spirit of pleasure-seeking Paris. It is performed here with commendable French
verve!
(5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LiztfE1X7E&ab_channel=VoicesofMusic
The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi is a perennial favourite of
the Baroque repertoire. The Venetian Vivaldi wrote this piece for a Bohemian
patron in 1723 and it comprises 4 violin concertos illustrating the sonnets
written by Vivaldi to describe the seasons. He wrote it in the Ospedale della
Pièta, (The Hospital of Mercy), abutting the Metropole Hotel, where we
often stayed on trips to Venice. To underline the ecumenical nature of the
music, the video above shows a performance by the Voices of Music ensemble,
a Californian ensemble blissfully using period instruments, which often sings
at St Mary’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco. Vivaldi was an ordained Catholic
priest.
The Grandeur of Baroque Versailles
I move on to two giants of Baroque music, indeed of the whole musical world, George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).
(h https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h4mAceHmrI&ab_channel=VoicesofMusic
I begin with the very familiar and much-loved Hornpipe
from Handel’s Water Music of 1717. Handel enjoyed the patronage of
George I, King of the United Kingdom and erstwhile Elector of Hanover. He would
move on to many entrepreneurial ventures in Italian operas, oratorios, suites
for grand occasions. He had a restless and rumbustious spirit and in later
years was somewhat irascible, but only a true genius could have written the wonderful
Messiah in 3 weeks in 1741 in a hurricane of creative inspiration.
(7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kucFS9Gafk&ab_channel=AcademyofAncientMusic
To raise our spirits I include Handel’s anthem Zadok
the Priest written for the Coronation of George II in 1727. It is a stirringly
triumphant piece and is sung at every British Coronation and at many other
gatherings of the great and the good. The British Academy of Ancient Music does
it full justice.
(8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwGWocp80-o&ab_channel=BatClips
Bach was a complex composer, stretching the
musician’s technical skills, and a complete master of his art. His Cantatas are
guaranteed to cheer and uplift and the one above from 1731 is Wir danken
dir, Gott, wir danken dir and is a total joy.
Kapellmeister Bach was a more predictable
character, pious by our standards, and a committed Lutheran. His famous 1713
cantata Sheep may safely graze, here sung by the Mormon Tabernacle
Choir, will give serenity to many in these dark times.
(1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvNQLJ1_HQ0&ab_channel=VoicesofMusic
Finally, I bring you Pachelbel’s Canon in D
Major. Pachelbel was a musician in Nuremberg, but was totally obscure.
Nobody knows when the Canon was written, probably in about 1700. Pachelbel left
a large opus of work but it was only collected in the 19th century
and he remained overlooked until a French group made a disc of the Canon in
1968. The Canon took off and by the 1980s the Canon became familiar as
background muzak in shopping centres, and elevators. Soon lush
orchestrations swelled its over-familiar fame and it was used as the music at
weddings and some funerals. Its insistent themes have a hypnotic effect, giving
pleasure to its multitude of listeners.
Baroque Music is a high-point of our
civilization and deep draughts of its sublime beauty are just what the doctor
ordered!
SMD
2.02.21
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald
2021
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