music

Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song,
That old and antique song we heard last night;
Methought it did relieve my passion much,
More than light airs and recollected terms
Of these most brisk and giddy-pacèd times.
W Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)

If you have read my other web pages, you will not be surprised that my taste in music is mainly classical. Course, I enjoyed pop music as a teenager. We're talkin' about Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, the Weavers, here. Ah, those were the days. But by the time the Beatles split up and Bob Dylan went religious I had almost entirely lost interest in pop music. When my kids were teenagers I listened to the music they enjoyed (couldn't avoid it, the house was throbbing with it), and I got to like Billy Joel's music. In fact, I have nearly all his LPs, and I still listen to them from time to time. But most evenings I like to settle down to read a book and listen to a classical CD or the excellent BBC Radio 3. So here are a few of my likes and dislikes.

Favourite opera: Beethoven's Fidelio. Beethoven was the greatest composer ever, because not only did he write the most wonderful music but also he had a seriousness of purpose and a nobility of spirit that shine through everything that he wrote. He grew up during the time of the American and French revolutions, and he fervently believed in the revolutionary ideals of freedom and brotherhood. His only opera, Fidelio, tells how Leonora disguises herself as a man, Fidelio, in order to gain access to the dungeon where her husband Florestan is unjustly being held as a political prisoner. The climax of the opera comes when the virtuous Minister Don Fernando arrives to order the release of the prisoner and sings the words

Let's all take that as our motto.

Second favourite opera: Britten's Peter Grimes. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) is the greatest British composer since Purcell (admittedly, there's not much competition), and Peter Grimes is his masterpiece. I identify very strongly with the main character, the fisherman Peter Grimes, a lone outsider whose only friend in a narrow-minded intolerant community is the schoolteacher Ellen Orford. But after the accidental death of two of his apprentices even she cannot save him from the vengeance of the townspeople, who suspect that he has been abusing the boys. The evocative music perfectly captures the atmosphere of an East Anglian fishing village.

At a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence in Britain, Benjamin Britten lived in an openly gay relationship with the tenor Peter Pears (who sang the title role in the first performance of Peter Grimes). As I cower in the closet, I can only admire their courage and integrity.

Least favourite opera: Mozart's Cosi fan tutte. Mozart wrote beautiful music, but most of his operas (in fact, all of them except The Magic Flute) are spoiled for me by an obtrusive adolescent heterosexuality that he seems to revel in. Even Don Giovanni suffers from this, though the music is so beautiful that you can sit back and enjoy that, provided you forget about the plot. But Cosi fan tutte is the pits. Avoid it.

Favourite singers: Janet Baker, Catherine Bott, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Favourite Schubert song: Du bist die Ruh'.

Favourite Mahler song: Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.

Favourite piano/keyboard composers: Scarlatti, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Janacek, Debussy, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Joplin, Ravel, Shostakovich, Messiaen, ... . You name it, I like it (even Mozart).

Favourite string quartets: Haydn's Op. 33 and Op. 76 sets; any of Beethoven's quartets, but especially Op. 130 and Op. 132; Schubert's string quintet (Okay, that's a quintet, not a quartet, but it is one of the greatest pieces of music ever written).