Era: Baroque
Year: 1720
Form: Concerto
Score: 84
Thoughts: This is easily the best thing I've heard from Telemann so far. Finally something with some soul/not just running through some scales.
Era: Baroque
Year: 1715
Form: Sonata
Score: 86
Thoughts: It was a nice change of pace to hear the guitar enter the scene. I've heard plenty of lute music up till now, but not guitar. Scarlatti is definitely a composer I want to know more about as I find his works as good if not better than some of his contemporaries. I feel his works are never stale. Having said that I havne't found anything extremely impressive. But definitely always a breath of fresh air.
Quote:
Wikipedia info:
Other distinctive attributes of Scarlatti's style are the following:
The influence of Iberian (Portuguese and Spanish) folk music. An example is Scarlatti's use of the Phrygian mode and other tonal inflections more or less alien to European art music. Many of Scarlatti's figurations and dissonances are suggestive of the guitar.
Scarlatti's compositions were influenced by the Spanish guitar as can be seen in notes being played repetitively in a rapid manner.[6]
A formal device in which each half of a sonata leads to a pivotal point, which Kirkpatrick termed "the crux", and which is sometimes underlined by a pause or fermata. Before the crux, Scarlatti sonatas often contain their main thematic variety, and after the crux the music makes more use of repetitive figurations as it modulates away from the home key (in the first half) or back to the home key (in the second half).
Scarlatti played in the galant style.
(issue playing here... if you have the time, click the watch on youtube button as it loads there for me, but not here)
And then wanted to know more, and found out I was listening to a "best of" version of the piece, and then found the full recording in this (suitte d'un gout etranger)... which is what the above is an abkürzung of, and that the title Pièces De Viole Du Quatrième Livre is acutally a much larger body of work that this is just a subsection of.
Era: Baroque
Year: 1717
Form: Suite
Score: 84
Thoughts: Suite in a Strange Style is a fitting title to this body of work, which I felt attempted to break norms of music of the time and do something a little unique, especially with dance music. It seemed a bit more passionate and purposeful. I also don't know anything about the viola da gamba other than it has six strings. In the renaissance I didn't really see the instrument pushed like it was on this record, and properly showed the full range of the instrument. Jordi Savall is a master of the instrument and it shows. I'm torn on this... the abkürzung is very good, but the full work at times goes on and loses my attention.
About the Suite from Wikipedia:
Quote:
The Suite in a Strange Style was included in Marin Marais's Livre IV of pieces for viol and continuo, and which also included the pieces for three viols, which Marais referred to in the Avertissement as 'a completely new departure in France.' The first suites in Livre IV are charming and simple and closely resemble Livre III, where Marais had endeavored to present pieces of an easy and accessible nature for the less proficient players. However, these suites are followed immediately by the Suitte d'un Goût Étranger, which is famous for its technical and musical demands.
The suite is remarkable in many aspects. For one, in it Marais did away with conventional forms and structures and instead presented the public with a collection of what are essentially pièces de charactère, a clear departure from his previous suites which were built around the typical dance forms preferred and upheld by his contemporaries.[citation needed] The thirty-three pieces are arranged by keys, but not as separate suites in the traditional sense. Rather, they are a succession of small groups of pieces in thirteen different keys (McDowell 1974, 7. In addition to this formal and structural iconoclasm, the suite is filled with music that is supremely virtuosic, descriptive, and adventurous—both melodically and harmonically (Thompson 1960, 495).
One might expect that, in an effort to 'fill in' Livre IV, Marais inserted some especially difficult or highly favored pieces that he had been saving, and put them all into their own suite. It might also be postulated that Marais was responding to the French penchant for highly descriptive and idiomatic orchestral music—a tradition upheld by the likes of Jean-Philippe Rameau and Jean-Féry Rebel—with virtuosic chamber music, as opposed to his earlier works which mimic the older generation of French Baroque composers.[citation needed]
The Suitte also bears some resemblance to François Couperin's intimate style cultivated in his music for the harpsichord. In any case, the Suitte d'un Goût Étranger with all of its garish flair and supreme elegance, might be viewed as a culmination in French Baroque chamber music.
Era: Baroque
Year: Rebel (1737) & Destouches (1721)
Form: Suite
Score: 86
Thoughts: These are two different pieces and I totally had the years wrong before so a bit out of order. Correct years above. The Rebel piece is not only fantastic but it's first movement is incredibly modern for it's time. This reminds me of the logic that's like, oh the Beatles are crap cuz this garage band did what they did 3 years before, see they aren't innovative. So anyway, Rebel does something very modern in the first movement, so all music after this isn't innovative. Sorry Beatles or Shostakovitch. Rebel did it first, so you suck. Anyway, there are two works and Rebel's is fantastic. Not only is it a bit ahead of it's time, but is really a gamut of all things baroque... and well done at that. Orchestration is never dull. Tonality is never dull. It's just fantastic.
Destouches work is also pretty good, but not nearly as good as Rebel's. I felt it followed more a rote baroque thing instead of actually anything creative within the baroque realm.
Yeah - good stuff for sure. Never heard of them both before this journey and glad they were good finds. It'll make up for a few 3 hour stints of Amen I was listening to before (partially kidding).
Era: Baroque
Year: 1715ish (lots of works)
Form: Concerto
Score: 84
Thoughts: This was also very solid and something I hadn't listened to before. Luckily today I needed to get a lot of "me" work done, so I put on my headphones and focused and got this whole thing listened to. It never seemed dull and was a great jam to get stuff done to. I did think if I weren't working to it, it would just be too pleasant to simply listen to. The movement below probably was the most intriguing.
Era: Baroque
Year: 1715
Form: Hymn of Mass
Score: 90
Thoughts: Another master work of Vivaldi many years before Handel and Bach took this form to what some claim to be better. I feel this work to be inspired at every move. It's orchestration and structure is fantastic.
Quote:
Blair Johnston - ALLMUSIC
During the year 1713 there was a shift in Antonio Vivaldi's responsibilities as maestro di violino of Venice's Pio Ospedale della Pietà. Up until that point secular music had been his bread and butter, but he then turned his attention to the composition of sacred choral works, some of which became the finest treasures of his vast musical output. It was sometime during the next few years that Vivaldi put to paper the now-famous Gloria in D major for vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra (RV 589). It is remarkable to think that for two centuries after Vivaldi's death the very existence of this beloved work was unknown even to Baroque scholars, and that it was only rediscovered in the late 1920s. Having been long buried -- with a host of other unknown pieces in a pile of forgotten Vivaldi manuscripts -- the Gloria had its first modern performance in the fall of 1939. The rest, as they say, is history.
In composing, Vivaldi broke the standard Gloria text into 11 sections, each of which is given a discrete musical setting. All the vocal parts, from the two soprano and alto soloists right down to the tenor and bass, were originally written for women's voices, as no men were allowed at the all-female Pio Ospedale della Pietà (Vivaldi and the few other male staff were, of course, members of the priesthood); occasionally the bass part moves so low that even the remarkable female basses of the Pietà must have had to transpose up an octave. Just two wind instruments -- an oboe and a trumpet -- are added to the usual Baroque contingent of strings, and the basso continuo would probably have been played by organ.
A joyous tone is set at the very start of the Gloria, with jubilant shouts of "Gloria in excelsis Deo" from the chorus. "Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis" (section two) is sung in imitation to a less exuberant B minor backdrop; the violins add some pointed rapid-note gestures, quite similar in kind to those found in Vivaldi's many string concertos.
Vivaldi moves back to a rambunctious allegro, this time in G major, for the solo soprano duet of section three ("Laudamus te"); the start of section four ("Gratias agimus te") is slow, dignified, and entirely homophonic, but as the chorus moves on to sing "propter magnam gloriam" it becomes a fugal Allegro.
A wonderful Largo duet between the solo soprano and the solo violin follows ("Domine Deus, Rex coelestis"); the chorus joins again for the very joyful F major section six ("Domine Fili unigente").
The spacious Adagio of section seven ("Domine Deus, Agnus Dei") features both chorus and the alto soloist, who takes the spotlight once again, this time more gregariously, in section nine ("Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris"). Between these sections is the interlude "Qui tollis peccata mundi".
The penultimate portion of the Gloria (section ten, "Quoniam tu solus sanctus") takes the shape of a brief reprise of the broken-octave music from section one, while the stunning double fugue that ends the Gloria (section eleven, "Cum Sancto Spiritu") is in fact an arrangement by Vivaldi of a piece composed in 1708 by Giovanni Maria Ruggieri -- a piece also adapted by Vivaldi for use in his other, lesser-known Gloria RV 588.
Era: Baroque
Year: 1715ish (lots of works)
Form: Concerto
Score: 84
Thoughts: This was also very solid and something I hadn't listened to before. Luckily today I needed to get a lot of "me" work done, so I put on my headphones and focused and got this whole thing listened to. It never seemed dull and was a great jam to get stuff done to. I did think if I weren't working to it, it would just be too pleasant to simply listen to. The movement below probably was the most intriguing.
I love albinoni in general and his oboe works in particular.
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. In addition to this formal and structural iconoclasm, the suite is filled with music that is supremely virtuosic, descriptive, and adventurous—both melodically and harmonically (Thompson 1960, 495).
