A Baroque Concert and How I came to love Baroque

Appolo's Fire
The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra

Jeannette Sorrell with the Harpsichord

It took me some time to learn to love Baroque music. To my untrained ear, Baroque music sounded exotic, complicated, too polyphonic, and in a sense, over embellished. I preferred something that was simpler.

After I spent weeks and months listening to a music course on-tape by Prof. Greenberg (thanks to Ping for introducing me to this great course) on my commute, I finally was equipped with the knowledge to understand Baroque music. Music is like sports; if you know the rules, you’ll understand and enjoy it. It took me a long time, too, but I learned the rules of baseball and football in time to watch the Red Sox and the Patriots win and to experience the excitement of competitive sports. Now I know the rules of music, I really enjoy Baroque music.

Baroque music also falls into certain forms. They are usually short and easier for me to figure out what is going on (the rules of the game). I now quite like to hear the polyphonic nature of the Baroque music and I love Bach's fugues. What I didn't know was that Baroque music can also be very descriptive. This concert I went to in Feburary clearly demonstrated to me how wrong I was:


Earth, Wind & Fire: Vivaldi and Rameau do battle with Nature
Taking its name from the classical god of music and the sun, Apollo's Fire is known for its brilliant performances of 17th- and 18th-century music. For this program of turbulent orchestral showpieces representing the drama of the French Baroque stage to a storm at sea, Apollo's Fire is joined by Baroque dancers Catherine Turocy and Carlos Fittante masterfully recreating the struggles of Nature from Rameau and Vivaldi's colorful musical depictions.

I went with H and her mom. The concert was at the First Church in Cambridge. The church is quite impressive, but I only brought one fixed lens and could not get the full view. The director of the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, Jeannette Sorrell, came out early to tune the harpsichord. It turned out that during the concert they moved that instrument quite several times and each time tuning was required after the move. The orchestra played on period instruments, enabling us to hear how the music was supposed to be heard when it was written. The choice of the music was amazing. I never thought that Baroque could be so vivid and modern sounding. The two dancers were truly fantastic. I also learned that back then in the 18th century, composers wanted to sound hip, too.


(As you can see that it took me a long time to write this post -- three months. And at this late hour at night (it's actually early Wednesday rather than the posting day Saturday) my brain isn't functioning right. But here it is, a belated posting on a concert that I really enjoyed.)