Era: Baroque
Year: 1680
Form: Cantata
Score: 85
Thoughts: Wow - talk about your dedication to the body of christ. Each body part. Anyway, this was an ok thing. It was well written, but also a bit dry. Still recommend a listen.
Era: Baroque
Year: 1678
Form: Opera
Score: 85
Thoughts: The story probably would be an ok read. Basically Venus tortures Psyché cuz she's a jealous mom - marriage stuff. The music itself is pretty good, although nothing to be excited about. Basically adapted from Molière's play.
Era: Baroque
Year: 1666
Form: Mostly Concerto
Score: 86
Thoughts: Pretty good comp on a time and place. Lively stuff with some somber stuff... you know, like music. hehe - no but I do recommend, even if not the most incredible.
Era: Baroque
Year: 1676
Form: Opera
Score: 83
Thoughts: idk... I guess I'm just not an opera dude in general to be honest... I'd rather watch/read it than listen to it most of the time. I didn't have a chance to read much more than just a synopsis. It didn't seem terribly interesting from a literature standpoint either. It was still musically solid (and the performance as well), even if enough recitative to be a bit boring.
Era: Baroque
Year: 1676
Form: Abendmusik ("evening" music)
Score: 87
Thoughts: This was quite the touching work. Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning too. Polophony was beautiful and not overbearing. A predecessor to Bach for sure.
wikipedia:
Quote:
Abendmusik (German for "evening music", plural Abendmusiken) is an evening concert, usually performed in a church.
Specifically, this designation refers to a series of performances at the St. Mary's Church, Lübeck (Marienkirche), Germany, begun in the 17th century and lasting until 1810. Paid for by local businessmen and therefore with free admission for the public, Franz Tunder (organist at the Marienkirche from 1641 to 1667) was the first to perform the Abendmusiken with organ music and a variety of vocal music. Under his successor Dieterich Buxtehude (organist at Lübeck from 1668 until 1707), these concerts came to prominence and were established on the five Sundays preceding Christmas. Buxtehude and his successors even composed five-part oratorios to be performed over the course of the five Sundays.
Organist Walter Kraft (1905–1977) renewed this Lübeck tradition at St. Mary's in 1926.
Era: Baroque
Year: 1676
Form: Abendmusik ("evening" music)
Score: 87
Thoughts: This was quite the touching work. Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning too. Polophony was beautiful and not overbearing. A predecessor to Bach for sure.
wikipedia:
Quote:
Abendmusik (German for "evening music", plural Abendmusiken) is an evening concert, usually performed in a church.
Specifically, this designation refers to a series of performances at the St. Mary's Church, Lübeck (Marienkirche), Germany, begun in the 17th century and lasting until 1810. Paid for by local businessmen and therefore with free admission for the public, Franz Tunder (organist at the Marienkirche from 1641 to 1667) was the first to perform the Abendmusiken with organ music and a variety of vocal music. Under his successor Dieterich Buxtehude (organist at Lübeck from 1668 until 1707), these concerts came to prominence and were established on the five Sundays preceding Christmas. Buxtehude and his successors even composed five-part oratorios to be performed over the course of the five Sundays.
Organist Walter Kraft (1905–1977) renewed this Lübeck tradition at St. Mary's in 1926.
Era: Baroque
Year: ~1670
Form: Mixed (organ music)
Score: 86
Thoughts: This was pretty good, but not as good as Abendmusiken, even if great organ music. I loved going to the old cathedrals in Germany and listening these massive sounding organs.
Quote:
This double-disc set offers a group of Buxtehude organ works, opening with the celebrated Praeludium in C major, BuxWV 137, performed on a magnificent Swedish organ tuned in so-called mean-tone tuning. The booklet, which contains a good deal of fascinating information about Buxtehude and about the role organs played in North Germany's mercantile society, might have addressed for general listeners exactly what mean-tone tuning is, but organists have a tendency to speak to their own kind with their recordings. Mean-tone tuning, in a word, is based on perfectly tuned major thirds rather than on the perfect fifths from which earlier tuning systems were mostly derived, and which gave birth to the circle-of-fifths theoretical concept that beginning musicians still learn today. It takes its name from the fact that the whole step in this system is defined as the mean between the two tones of a major third. The "advantage" of mean-tone tuning is that the big major chords of Buxtehude's music have an unusually pure, bright quality. The "disadvantages" are that 1) keys sound different from one another (the problem Bach's equal temperament sought to eliminate) and 2) the fifths are less than perfect to various degrees. The listener will also notice that some of the leading tones have a low-hanging quality, resting further from the tonic and seeming distinct from it rather than drawing toward it strongly. Scholars will have to decide whether organist Hans Davidsson's blanket conclusion that Buxtehude would have used an organ with this tuning, even though several pieces have to be transposed to avoid the delightfully named "wolf" intervals (bad fifths), is justified. But the average listener will find his renditions extremely interesting. The tuning introduces a high degree of contrast into Buxtehude's music that is absent from equal-temperament recordings -- the big pieces like the opening prelude seem luxuriant in their consonances, while the more meditative chorale-based short pieces have a correspondingly intense murky quality. And the relationship between Buxtehude and Bach, which the modern listener tends to think of as close, is somewhat redefined by this disc. The music here seems, more so than usual, to embody a kind of free drama that Bach discarded in favor of more rational procedures. The great Swedish organ is beautifully recorded, and the registrants and bellows treaders are not only credited but also shown in a photograph. This recording will be of interest to anyone whose attention has ever been snared by Buxtehude's monumental organ music.
Era: Baroque
Year: 1664
Form: Variations
Score: 75
Thoughts: Possibly my least favorite record of the Baroque... and probably not correct of me to say... I think I just had a solid run from Buxtehude, that this seems way less interesting in comparison. It's not bad and the recording from Alessandrini is solid (he's top notch), but the music itself isn't as interesting as Bach's variations. I suppose give this a listen if variations are your thing.
RoundTheBendI miss the comfort in being sadProfile Ground Control
Era: Baroque
Year: 1654
Form: Opera
Score: 83
Thoughts: This is an interesting one. The music is actually really good for opera, but it still was nearly 4 hours (ugh). At the very least, I felt like the opera really went somewhere, and that was intriguing. Sometimes it's just "stale conversation". This opera was redone by Handel, and I honestly think this one was better than his... dunno for sure.
Era: Baroque
Year: 1650
Form: chamber/consort music
Score: 86
Thoughts: Fantastic string arrangements and a fantastic performer (Jordi Savall).
Quote:
Matthew Locke first made his mark in 1638, carving his name into the organ screen at Exeter Cathedral, where he was a chorister. Later he put his name to more worthwhile pursuits, becoming a pioneer of English opera and a distinguished composer of chamber music – his Consort of Fower Parts is one of the last great works for viol consort. The Consort’s six suites – each comprising a multi-section fantasie, followed by courante, ayre and saraband – were probably composed in the 1650s, by which time the violin’s growing popularity had left the viol consort almost obsolete. Ironically, Locke’s music was modern and idiosyncratic, full of unexpected harmonies, angular lines and rapid shifts of focus. Phantasm’s treatment of the suites, while typically assured and stylish, may divide opinion. The group plays without a continuo, giving the music a lithe, buoyant feel, and it plays the fantasies and, especially, the ayres at relatively quick tempi. The outstanding rival recording by Jordi Savall’s Hespèrion XX (Astrée) offers clear alternatives: the organ/double harp continuo lends textural richness and gravitas, while the ayres are slowly spun into dark, mesmerising arabesques. For me, the Savall – currently available at mid-price in Astrée’s Savall Edition – is the more eloquent, more compelling reading. Graham Lock -classical-music.com
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RoundTheBend
Fischman
