3. Church Music
By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger
Like many people my age, I used to love hanging out in record stores. Occasionally an album cover would catch my eye, and I would contemplate buying it. This didn't happen too often with classical albums, but it did with Jame Levine's 1991 album of Haydn The Creation. After years of reading Robert Anton Wilson, the eye in the pyramid design jumped out at me. I thought about buying it for decades, but I never did. Spotify doesn't seem to have that recording. Instead I put on one conducted by Kurt Moll. That album's cover uses a close-up of God and Adam's hands from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Oh well. I do plan to listen to it this week.
My friend Father Tim Lamm once gave a talk focused on Beethoven's Missa Solemnis for Catholic school teachers which I really enjoyed. Father Tim lent me Beethoven: His Spiritual Development, and I lent him Kerman's The Beethoven Quartets. I enjoyed Sullivan's book, and my copy of the Kerman still has a few softly penciled notes by Father Tim.
2 comments:
Rosen doesn't seem particularly enthused about the quality of church music in the time period under discussion. He says composers borrowed from the Baroque era and mentions Handel in particular. I went through a period in the 90s of listening to the Messiah quite a bit. A few years ago I saw and heard highlights from it performed live at a church in South Lake Tahoe; my friend was singing in it and I had a front row seat. The quality of musicianship and singing astonished me coming from a group well outside a major metropolitan center. I enjoyed it immensely.
Work has taken all my time this past week so haven't had a chance to listen to anything mentioned in the book. I do enjoy what they call pastoral music. This sentence: "The Seasons and Creation are descriptions of the entire universe as Hayden knew it" makes me want to listen to both when an opportunity presents. The sentence that immediately follows also compels.
Thank you for your comment. As a teen I loved how Rick Wakeman quoted from the Messiah during his "Six Wives of Henry VIII" segment in the movie "Yessongs". I had a book of Yes music for piano, and I learned the piano version of that solo. I still play bits of it when I sit down at the piano, especialy the silent movie music section and the Messiah section.
Even outside major metropolitan centers, one can hear wonderful music. These days I don't get to hear live music much. I feel so grateful that I got to hear Roscoe Mitchell in 2019 and then Anthony Braxton that same year.
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