Today I hung out for a while in the Whitworth College music library, listening to Bach cantatas for the purposes of discerning correct baroque performance practices.
I was, of course, blown away. Actually, it was a familiar, almost nostalgic blowing away, as Bach was really the first "classical" composer I started listening to probably when I was around 12. I wouldn't necessarily call his music easily accessible, but you hear various of his Brandenburg Concertos pretty frequently on movies and commercials, and once I bought the CD's I was hooked. I can't explain why. There was just something about it that got into my guts, made me excited, made me feel like a whole new world was opening to me. This excitement continued as i moved onto Mozart and Beethoven and Haydn, and travelling to Germany and Austria when I was 13 made the musical possibilities seem endless. I felt akin to them in some weird way. I wanted to be a part of that whole scary world of music.
Then I learned more music. I went to college and I studied music. I didn't sing any Bach, and I became more concerned with composers like Debussy, Wagner, Berg, Stravinsky, Verdi, Puccini. In fact, the only time I ever really thought of Bach was in music history when I learned about his life and felt bad for him for being a work horse to various courts, and deciding that the sheer VOLUME of his compositions was evidence that they must not be as sophisticated as those later composers.
What a stupid stupid person I was. (am).
No need to lecture me on how Bach is probably the single most influential composer of all time, not to mention one of the most prolific and musically talented himself. The man was a genius. And he wrote some DAMN hard runs for singing, and just sitting and listening to bits of his cantatas was enough to make me excited about music again, and that's saying a lot to a semi-jaded twenty something with a degree in vocal performance.
Also, on a whim I grabbed the score of Tallis's "Spem in Alium" off the shelf, found the CD, and followed along as I listened. It's been a long time since I've heard it...in fact, i don't think I've ever heard it all, just bits and pieces to familiarize myself for music history tests three years ago. I can't imagine what it would be like to hear live, cause on headphones I felt the 40 different voices in polyphony (all different voice parts singing different notes and rhythms) wash over me and it was almost too much, and the moments of homophony (40 different voice parts all singing together rhythmically) almost brought me completely to tears. I was on the verge for the entire song, following one line until the voices stopped, only to have the vocal line picked up somewhere else, perfectly interwoven into the tapestry of the different voice parts. Holy holy crap. This is a 40 part motet. I had a helluva time writing 3 and 4 part counterpoint for short assignments. Kill me now.
Cause, let's face it, i'm never going to be like Bach or Tallis. I'm not going to compose music like that, that cynical discontent girls are going to sit and listen to in corners of music libraries in tiny colleges on cold fall days hundreds of years down the road and have an experience.
But if I can ever sing a song, or a line, or even a WORD that makes someone excited about music, or shows just a GLIMPSE of God in the way I was bombarded by Bach's cantata BWV 36 and Tallis' Spem in Alium, I think I really can die with a sense of accomplishment.
Well, I don't think i can actually die truly happy until I get to hear that piece live. Or it may be okay if I do, cause it'll probably be playing when Jesus comes back. It's that glorious. :-)
yesterday // life goes on
