Musical Explorations

Interestingly enough... the duel between the arch-Modernists and those who refused to abandon Romanticism. The Modernists too a progressive approach, abandoning tonality and harmony and pushing ever forward into increasingly challenging and difficult musical languages that often left even the educated audiences baffled. The Romantics continued to champion traditional tonality and harmony as essential... even natural to music. Many Modernists would accuse their Romantic rivals of being reactionaries... ...

Today yet another Bach purchase arrived in the mail... although in this instance the work is something of the Holy Grail of Bach recordings:



Last December I had planned upon purchasing this set of Bach recordings by Gardiner...



... but I ended up putting off this purchase wanting to save the money ...

With summer having arrived I am on break from teaching and have a goodly amount of time to spend in my studio working on my own artistic endeavors (painting). Perhaps it is that feeling of freedom linked with a bit of remembered youthful rebellion that we all felt when the school year wound to a close... but for whatever reason, I have been spending a lot of time recently listening more to rock, jazz, gospel, blues and even bluegrass. Among my recent purchases are the following:

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French Mélodies Part 3

I was looking over my CD shelves today and found myself somewhat (OK... not really) surprised that I own far more music by Russian composers than I do by French composers... in spite of my expressed preference (and in spite of the fact that my collection of the greatest Russian composer, Tchaikovsky, is woefully malnourished). What I have come to recognize is that there is a huge gaping void in French music that limits the amount of music I have by French composers ...

French Mélodies Part 2: Gérard Souzay

My preference has long been for female singers... at least when dealing with the repertoire of the French Mélodies. The music and the poems both have such a degree of sensuality that they seem to call out for the female voice. Obviously with Philippe Jaroussky I have made an exception... then again, his artful and artificial countertenor is almost a perversely decadent exception.

Recently, however, I discovered Gérard Souzay. ...