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What Are You Listening To Right Now?


Guest Black Lotus

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Franz Joseph Haydn was the last person in the world you would think would spark a revolution. Deeply religious, patriotic, and politically conservative, he spent much of his life as the private music director/composer-in-residence for one of the richest noble families in Europe (the Esterhazy family, who owned much of modern Hungary). He lived on their country estate and for the most part didn't get to travel much until he retired, meaning he didn't get to hear what his contemporaries were doing. He would claim this "forced him to be original", and his contemporaries were definitely listening to him. When he finally got to travel, in the late 1780s, Europe embraced him and he got to see and hear some of the things he had been missing and got to meet some of the people he had only heard rumor of. He became "Papa Haydn" -- beloved mentor to classical music's greatest talents. He was almost a second father to Mozart, and tried vainly to curb the roguish tendencies of the young, brash Beethoven while his music showed them both directions they would take -- directions that would alter the way music was written and performed in fundamental ways.

 

And he was writing his own music, and that was often transcendent. On his visit to London in 1790, he was so impressed by a performance of Handel's Messiah that he was inspired to write his own religious oratorio. He chose as his subject the Creation, taking his text from the KJV account in Genesis and Milton's Paradise Lost, and keeping the text in English (which Haydn had learned to speak fluently in his travels). If one work can be said to be the clear bridge between the height of the Classical movement and the beginning embers of what would become the Romantic, you can find it in the Creation oratorio. It's clearly Classical, even bearing some stamps of the Baroque, yet hints of the music Beethoven and his successors would write are there as well.

 

So I've been really impressed with the Creation oratorio. I've been hard pressed to find the short segment thaty would best illustrate exactly what I had in mind to show. The best I can do is suggest anyone with that esoteric interest do a little Google exploration themselves.

 

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I'm getting the roof replaced: hail damage, insurance covered it, no biggie. But the dogs are freaked out by all these people on the roof and walking around and all the hammering and stuff. So we're listening to Karen Olson aka The Most Calming Music On Earth. Seriously,  they were completely spastic 10 minutes ago and by Track 3 they're both sound asleep. Works every time. (Now if *I* can manage to stay awake and get some work done...)

 

 

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