[Today: Some dude named Bach kicks it with strings...]
The story of the Brandenburg Concertos begins at a spa in Karlsbad, Germany around the year 1719, where two noblemen were hosting an olde school version of ‘battle of the bands’. The winning combo featured one JS Bach, and by way of complimenting him on his groovy sounds, the Margrave of Brandenburg suggested that Bach compose some music in honor of the Margrave’s homelands. Two years later, a Fed-Ex envelope (or whatever they were using back then) bearing several master tapes (see previous note) arrived at the Margrave’s humble abode. And that was how the Brandenburg Concertos came to be…
And a very good thing indeed for us, because there’s hardly a piece of music out there that’s better suited for blunting the hectic pace of our do-everything, always-connected, instant-bananas culture. A listen to these soothing concertos will not only reduce your blood pressure and stimulate activity in your brain, they are absolutely guaranteed to calm your jangled nerves after some idiot carpool driver causes your life to flash before your eyes three times during an eighteen minute commute – or at least they’re guaranteed to do that for me.
Which is a very roundabout way of saying that even after nearly 300 years, the Brandenburg Concertos can touch the human spirit in places that other music just can’t get to. Listen and see…
Listen: Brandenburg Concerto #1 – in F
Tags: Bach, Brandenburg Concertos, carpool, instant bananas
27 September 2007 at 7:35 pm |
I used to play the third Brandenberg Concerto during my years of service to the Hamlin Middle School orchestra. Up until recently I considered it — amazingly — to be a clunky piece of repetitive, obvious music. Just last month, though, I found it on a Bach sampler CD and listened to the way it should REALLY be played (not, as it turns out, by 13-year-olds). It was sublime, of course. The reason I had thought it clunky was due to my memory of us sawing away on our instruments with none of the lightness of touch or breeziness required.
22 December 2009 at 1:28 pm |
[...] kind of mood for the holidays, and two of my personal favorite examples of it are Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and Wynton Marsalis’ Baroque Music For Trumpets. The obvious huge disclaimer here is that if [...]