Soundtrack of my youth

image: Johann Sebastian Bach, Goldberg Variations - Aria (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Songs of innocence

I grew up believing that all good music was written before 1750. My dad has a great collection of records with “Early Music” played by Leonhardt, Brüggen, etc. He would also regularly take us to the Saturday Afternoon Music in the Dom church in Utrecht.

I heard a lot of the ‘great’ works live before I got them on CD or on the internet. I still remember hearing the great Passacallia (BWV 582) the first time in the late 80’s in Utrecht. This is a recent recording from the AllOfBach.com project:

I really love St. John’s Passion, it is so poignant and sharp. The final choral always makes me cry. In my youth I would listen to the Leonhardt/Harnoncourt version. This performance by Bach Collegium Japan / Masaaki Suzuki is particularly fine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiKgrevzT-g&t=6384s

But we also had other composers such as Couperin, Vivaldi and Teleman. I remember making cassette tapes with Teleman’s recorder sonatas, I would fall asleep with this music:

(Telemann - Recorder sonata TWV 41:f1 - Brüggen / Bylsma / Leonhardt)

There was not much Early Music on Dutch Public Radio, but I did discover some music on the radio, such as this Pavane by Tieleman Susato (c. 1510/15 - after 1570):

Another nice discovery was Jordi Savall, who made this recording of the Llibre Vermell de Montserrat. Here O Virgo splendens:

(This Stabat Mater by Marc-Antoine Charpentier is a more recent discovery, but it should be included here:

I spend most time wandering around in the great keyboard works of JSB. I could (and still can) spend days with Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, Kunst der Fuge, the Goldberg Variations. The Gustav Leonhardt recordings are etched in my soul/ear forever. The Aria from the Goldberg-Variationen (BWV 988) is divine:

Songs of experience

In the late 90’s I was a student and not doing so well. I discovered 20th Century music. It started with Pärt. His De Profundis literally restored my soul:

(Theatre of Voices conducted by Paul Hillier, who also wrote a monograph about Pärt)

I knew the Lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae from older settings, but this one by Ernst Krenek somehow struck me.

A friend introduced me to the world of Olivier Messiaen. His Quartet for the End of Time is one of his characteristic works, written in captivity during World War II:

I have always been intrigued by music from ‘behind the Iron Curtain’ (blame Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn.) In Croce by Sofia Gubaidulina was one of the pieces which discovered in a fine CD shop in Utrecht.

The Polish composer Henryk Górecki wrote a moving Symphony of Sorrowful Songs which for a time spoke to me more than anything else.

The most significant work in this second list is Credo by Krzysztof Penderecki. In particular, the Crucifixus always ‘gets’ me. (Wait for the quote from Aus tiefer Not):

Postludium

If you think that the sub-titles have something to do with a recent U2 album, you are not entirely mistaken. Different genre, different soundtrack. Perhaps later?