bucolic strains

Isn't this lovely? Don't you just want to be there, maybe sitting under a tree?
Oh, the pleasure of the plains!

Saw Handel's 'Acis & Galatea' the other day - and couldn't help but chuckle at the opening scene: a group of shepherds and nymphs, swathed in lace and velvet and buckles and ribbons and great flowing wigs, gesturing daintily and singing, "Oh, the pleasure of the plains!" Oh yes, the pleasure, oh the pleasure.

I love Handel, but to be honest, this production was wasted on me. I'm not sure if it was just the story (ie. lack of story), or all the florid embellishments and prudish undertones. Two men love the same woman. One of them is evil - a cyclops in fact. Woman won't have the cyclops, and so the cyclops kills her lover. Too much passion over too little, maybe that's it. The lover is made immortal in the end, and everyone is sad but happy. Oh boy. Just too many perfect cadences and too many ornaments and too much delightful musicality for this sordid little scene. I dunno - maybe I was just too sleepy and dense to appreciate it properly. Everyone else thought it was spectacular, and I felt like a fraud. Which happens rather frequently at these concerts, actually.

The St. John Passion last week, on the other hand, was glorious. Now there's some serious subject matter. An innocent life gruesomely and cruelly taken - that's a reason for passion. Forget the fact that I'm not a Christian - I've never heard any composer imbue the word 'crucifixus' with more pain and depth than Bach. Just excruciatingly evocative.
It was Bach's birthday on that same day - March 21st. Good old Bach. Nobody really paid too much attention to him during his lifetime. His far less talented sons achieved more fame. If there's any character from the past I'd love to have met, it's Johann Sebastian. I'll just bet he was a lovely man. Humble as anything. Brilliant, slavish, perhaps eccentric, but modest. I doubt that Handel was modest.

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