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Messiah
Topic Started: Oct 14 2006, 08:33 PM (206 Views)
George K
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Finally
So, I'm on call, and stuck here at work. I'm on the computer in the office, and listening to music via iTunes. Random play - "Messiah" has been on for the last 40 minutes or so.

What fabulous music! What emotion. How Handel takes the libretto and shapes the music to fit the text: "Every valley, every valley shall be exalted." or "The rough places plaaaaiiiinnn."

Genius.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
- Klaus, 4/29/18
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DivaDeb
HOLY CARP!!!
indeed

I am just plain nuts for Handel and Messiah is a perfect work.
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George K
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Finally
DivaDeb
Oct 14 2006, 11:38 PM
I am just plain nuts

I prefer salted nuts, but plain will do, if you're involved. :sombrero:
A guide to GKSR: Click

"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
- Klaus, 4/29/18
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Larry
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
Ah... I thought one of the patients might be claiming to be the Messiah....

Overheard in a nuthouse ward, after lights out:

#1:"I am Napoleon!"
#2: "No you're not."
#1: "I am Napoleon!"
#2: "No, you're NOT!"
#1: "I am Napoleon!"
#2: "Who told you that, anyway?"
#1: "God did."
#3, from the other side of the darkened room.....: "I most certainly did not!"......

Of the Pokatwat Tribe

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OperaTenor
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Pisa-Carp
I believe the mere fact of Handel composing Messiah, especially in the short time period(28 days, IIRC), alone was proof of God's exsistence.



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apple
one of the angels
amazing what the sacred has produced. (working on Vivaldi's Gloria and other monumental choral works)
it behooves me to behold
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bachophile
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HOLY CARP!!!
leaves me with an interesting question

what composer besides bach was religious? (not counting medievel religious music which was the only music of the time)


its clear that mozart and beethoven, although they wrote sublime sacred music, were not personal paragons of religious life on a personal level. same i think for handel.

its only because the church was an employer that sacred music was comissioned for the great composers.

vivaldi wrote and taught in a catholic foundling hopsital in vienna but also was not too religious.

certainly the 19th century romantics were not religious in any sense.

so as far as i can tell, bach was the only one who lived a religious life.
"I don't know much about classical music. For years I thought the Goldberg Variations were something Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg did on their wedding night." Woody Allen
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George K
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Finally
Liszt took all the vows of priesthood, save one or two (guess which) and lived a monk-like life in his later years.
A guide to GKSR: Click

"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
- Klaus, 4/29/18
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CrashTest
Pisa-Carp
Mozart and Beethoven were religious - perhaps not like Bach, but in their letters, God is always important. They came at a time of the enlightenment, so their idea of religion was starting to change already.

Messiaen was extremely religious, very catholic indeed.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
I think John Tavener is a practicing Orthodox Christian, and Rachmaninoff seems to have been as well.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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bachophile
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HOLY CARP!!!
found this item, but cant attest to the veracity...

Although Mozart composed memorable church music, even the Catholic Encyclopedia, while claiming him as one of the faithful, laments that these compositions

do not reflect the spirit of the universal Church, but rather the subjective conception and mood of the composer.... What Mozart, with his Raphaelesque imagination and temperament, would have been for church music had he lived at a different time and in different surroundings, or risen above his own, can easily be imagined.
In fact, like Beethoven, Mozart was an apostate from the Church. His membership in the Freemasons would not have been approved (they were banned by the Pope), and several of his biographers note his dismissive attitude toward Catholicism. Victor Van Wilder's biography shows us a 1778 letter Mozart wrote to his family, saying he believes only in the Grand Architect of the Freemasons.* Another biographer, Alexander Ulibischeff, quotes Mozart recalling, "The orthodoxy of my youth is all over and will never come back."**

As he lay dying, his wife Constanze sent for a priest, without Mozart's permission, but none came. He died on 5 December 1791, probably from kidney failure, without a cleric in attendance. There was a cheap funeral at Saint Stephen's Cathedral, and Mozart was buried in an unmarked grave in a Viennese suburb — such an arrangement being legally required for Viennese of the lower classes.

You can search in vain for any more religious inspiration in Mozart's Requiem than can be found in his Little Night Music, Magic Flute or Jupiter Symphony. Even when Mozart claims to be a believer, it is not as an orthodox Catholic. When he writes to his father —

...take assurance that I certainly am religious, and if I should ever have the misfortune (which God will forefend) to go astray, I shall acquit you, best of fathers, from all blame. I alone would be the scoundrel; to you I owe all my spiritual and temporal welfare and salvation.†
— far from proving Catholic piety, Mozart seems not only to have given his father cause to doubt it, but seems to portray himself as a non-Christian theist.

* Victor Van Wilder, Mozart: The Story of His Life as a Man and Artist, Engl. trans., 1908, pp. 232-3.
** Alexander Ulibischeff, Mozart's Leben und Werke, 2 vols., 1847, p. 243.
† Friedrich Kerst and Henry Krehbiel, eds., Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words, 1905, p. 95-98 (repr. 1965).
NB: A correspondent complained that I had argued that Catholicism was irrelevant to Mozart’s music. I replied that Mozart having understood the fundamentals of Catholicism is irrelevant to judging whether or not he believed in them. Nobody ever died for appearing to agree with the prevailing religious belief. Indeed, many have prospered, whatever their personal beliefs, from catering to the prevailing belief and “sucking up” to those in power — especially when those in power pay good money for good music. That the people with money just happened to be clerics, or kings who liked religious music, does not in any way logically require the creator of that music to be a believer. Mozart was not an orthodox Catholic by contemporary standards. We have to believe the Archbishop who accused him of neglect of religion in his youth. I don’t know what you mean by “Catholic music”: music is music; it is either good or bad. Almost all of Mozart’s music is good and the inspiration for it was both the composer’s love of music and the money he was paid for it. As I said in my essay, “You can search in vain for any more religious inspiration in Mozart's Requiem than can be found in his Little Night Music, Magic Flute or Jupiter Symphony.” Mozart also believed in getting paid for his work. And without his talent and training Mozart could have believed in Jesus more than Augustine did, but he wouldn’t have written a line of memorable music, much less been paid for it. And we wouldn’t be having this conversation about him.

"I don't know much about classical music. For years I thought the Goldberg Variations were something Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg did on their wedding night." Woody Allen
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bachophile
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HOLY CARP!!!
same source on LvB

It was also on this date, December 16, 1770, that we presume the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, although we have only the record of his baptism on December 17. He was reared a Catholic and composed inspired sacred works such as Missa Solemnis and his immortal Choral Symphony (#9). Surely Beethoven was touched by God?

Beethoven wrote many secular works of equal inspiration. He was an apostate from the Christian creed and a follower of the Pantheism espoused by Goethe. This was no secret during his life. Franz Joseph Haydn believed Beethoven was an Atheist. Biographer George Marek, says Catholic-born Beethoven "never became a practicing one. There is no record of his ever attending a church service or observing the orthodoxy of his religion. He never went to confession. ... Generally he viewed priests with mistrust.[1] Anton Felix Schindler, who was Beethoven's friend, described the composer as "inclined to Deism."[2] Once, when violinist Felix Moscheles playfully wrote on one of his manuscripts, "With God's help," Beethoven altered it to read "Man, help thyself."[3]

Another biographer, Ludwig Nohl, says that Beethoven had "no dogma or narrow philosophy of life."[4] As Beethoven lay dying in 1827, friends concerned for his soul hurried a priest to his side to perform the Last Rites. Beethoven endured the superstitious ceremony, then uttered the old Latin formula, "Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over" ("Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est.") He died on 26 March 1827. Sir G. Macferren calls Beethoven a "freethinker" in his article in the Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography[5]; the Catholic Encyclopedia does not dare to claim him.

[1] George Marek, Beethoven: Biography of a Genius, 1969.
[2] Anton Felix Schindler, Beethoven As I Knew Him, 1860.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ludwig Nohl, Life of Beethoven, 1867.
[5] G. Macferren, Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography, 1857.
"I don't know much about classical music. For years I thought the Goldberg Variations were something Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg did on their wedding night." Woody Allen
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