Music for the end of the world

Just some music for your weekend…

Go here if you’d like the produced version.

I must thank batman for this one.

I don’t even know what to say about this one. Wow…

Do kids still sing these songs?

My favorite version is, of course, Glenn Gould’s.

Haydn deserves more love. This is performed on “period instruments,” so animals likely died to provide these strings.

I’m told the first violinist on this Haydn recording is Gottfried von der Goltz. He gives a killer performance of “Winter” by Vivaldi in this recording…the best recording out there of The Four Seasons. What makes it so rich is the continuo band; the expanded group of plucked instruments, including the harpsichord, that are improvising (as is the historical practice) along to the bass line.

Let’s go back to the 1600s for some Monteverdi.

“Possente spirto, e formidabil nume” (“Mighty spirit and formidable god”) is a key aria from Act 3 of Claudio Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo, where Orpheus attempts to persuade Charon to allow him to pass into Hades and find his [beloved (dead)] wife Euridice.

Notice that instrument at 3:50? That’s a lirone which was used in the Vivaldi recording above. It has this creepy, metallic-organ-like sound.

Notice how the singer was using this weird vocal technique of repeated articulations on one note? Thankfully, Post Malone has brought this 17th century (likely ancient) vocal style back to the radio for the kiddos, today. Language Warning: