Word: bache
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GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL was a prodigal master, an adaptive musical fountainhead who composed vast quantities of epic choral dramas, superb operas, incidental and instrumental works. His creative fertility was so prodigious that his 97 volumes of autographs exceed the combined complete works of Bach and Beethoven. Although a contemporary of Corelli, Vivaldi, Scarlatti, and Telemann. Handel beggared their combined achievements with his limitless genius. Yet while the scope of Bach, Handel's only contemporary equal, is now fully grasped, the boundless wealth of Handel has been reduced to one or two operatic arias, a couple of organ concertos, the Water...
...Bach Society Orchestra's programming of two of the Opus 6 concerto grossi was a welcome step into the edifice of Handel's creations. The set of twelve concertos comprise the finest English instrumental music written until this century. There can be no doubt that Handel, although born in Saxony and raised on Italian opera, is a thoroughly English composer. He arrived in London during the interregnum left by the death of Purcell in 1695 and the first works of Thomas Arne twenty years later. By 1710 Handel had subsumed into his Italianate idiom the brilliant scoring, deep love...
...BACH SOCIETY had considerable difficulties with the first of the concerto grossi, which was hampered by dynamic monotony, struggling second violins, inaudible violas, and a methodical trio of soloists. All of these problems unhappily converged in the second and fifth movements. Miss Lisa Sandow, the first solo violin, and Miss Ruth Rubinow, the solo cello, rivalled each other for tonal monotony and absolute abandonment of nuance. Miss Janet Packer, the second solo violin apparently sensed this lackluster playing and performed with considerable artistic concern. The second concerto, distinguished by a beautiful first movement, fared much better with Tison Street...
...that Schonberg rescued music from its careening plunge into the decadence of diatonic gigantism by his systematic formulation of the liberating discipline of dodecaphony. People tend to divide into apostles of either Schonberg-the-Savior or Schonberg-the-Antichrist. And so the apostolic succession of innovative geniuses passed from Bach to Beethoven to Wagner to Schonberg (or the Devil) and then to sleep. The common antinomy sets Schonberg against Stravinsky, coalescing all music into two schools in a priceless display of Manichaean passion. Schonberg is seen as the seminal prime mover, and Stravinsky [and to a lesser extent Berg...
Debussy reawakened among all musicians an awareness of harmony. Beethoven revealed the meaning of progressive form, and Bach the transcendent significance of counterpoint. I am always asking myself: is it possible to make a synthesis of these great masters, a synthesis that is valid for our time...