In J. S. Bach’s time, two-thirds of children died before the age of 5 and adults rarely expected to live beyond their 30s.  Unlike our own time, there was no common expectation that life would lead to old age.  Death was more commonly discussed, and minds were focused on it.   In Bach’s Cantata BWV…

Am leuchtenden Sommer Morgen, was composed by Robert Schumann to a poem by Heinrich Heine as part of a series of songs called Dichterliebe, or the Love of a Poet.  Schumann did well to employ Heinrich Heine, the foremost Romantic poet of that era.  I write about it now because I rehearsed the poem in…

This film of the final movement, “Ode to Joy”, of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, was made in Berlin in 1968.  That is one year after I graduated from high school in Vienna Austria.  Before 1965, Karajan had been the principle conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic and in the Staatsoper.  He…

For the fifth time, volunteers in our remote Denman Island community organized and presented a week-long baroque music workshop and festival.  This time we focussed mostly on madrigals composed by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), including a short opera meant to flatter a duke.  I put together a slide show of surtitles with translations so the audience…