Friday, June 10, 2011

A stately march through immaculate cloisters...

I am missing music.
Music is in my head, always, always has been, but I miss making music. I miss mine wending through a forest of voices, gossamer contrary lines weaving a tapestry of sound that is at once memorable, elusive and always dazzling. I really need to find someone to sing with.

For now, though, the music of others will suffice. I loved singing the music of Henry Purcell, and though this is not a vocal piece, I find this rendering of his Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary to be utterly bewitching.

Five instruments alone, and yet there is such breadth of sound and energy as to delight one. Hear the initial exposition of the mournful tune, then once-more-with-feeling more pronounced rancor at the grief, the outrage of loss. I love that some music is simply too good for words. That won't stop me rattling on, of course.

Suffice to say I love this so hard:



Baroque Brass of London
Mark Bennet (Flatt Trumpet)
Crispian Steele-Perkins (Slide Trumpet)
Michael Laird (Slide Trumpet)
Ron Bryans (Sackbut)
Robert Howes (Percussion)

4 comments:

Thud said...

A fantastic choice, so evocative of things past.

Chris said...

Very nice! Thank you.

Vinogirl said...

You're a deep one Phlemmy!

Auntie J said...

Someone else who understand that music doesn't need words to be extremely profound! Some of my very favorite pieces are instrumental.

That being said, a cappella music has a charm all its own; both Hubby and I sang in a semi-professional college choir in which the bulk of our repertoire was a cappella. (Shoot, we learned new music on tour just to be able to sing it in concert that night. Imagine learning a difficult rendition of the Negro Spiritual "Deep River," underscored in German, only to have your director look at you just before breaking for dinner, when you've toiled over that sucker all day, and saying, "Repeat after me, 'Tiefes wasser...'" He was lucky he made it to dinner and that we all didn't throw our scores at him.) While there is nothing as incredible as precise a cappella, there is nothing as horrible as bad a cappella.

God save me from having to ever sing Duruflé's Requiem ever again. On the other hand, his Quatre Motets were marvelous to sing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoLijZDa5R4