On Thanksgiving day, my wife and I drove up to (and back from) Reston, VA, and when we were in the northern Virginia area, we listened to a "Top 100" listener countdown on WETA. The countdown is HERE -- and spoiler alert: Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" scored quite an upset by knocking Beethoven's Choral Symphony out of its perennial top position. Of course, I didn't hear every work included on the list, so when I got home, I pulled up the inventory on my trusty Google machine and perused it. I was surprised to find three pieces I have never heard, and the highest ranking of them is #41, "The Bells of St. Geneviève" by Marin Marais. Not only have I not heard this piece before, but I've also never heard of Marin Marais. Therefore, I thought I'd give the piece a listen this week, and then I'll listen to the other two works in the coming weeks: #94, Symphony #1 by Vasily Kalinnikov, and #100, Symphony #3 in C Minor by Florence Price. So I've listened to Marais' work a few times now, and I have one word: Seriously?
Seriously -- "The Bells of St. Genevieve" nabbed the number 41 spot on the WETA's Classical Countdown of the "Top 100" listener favorites? Imma be honest -- there are several comments under the video I linked above where listeners said something like, "I've never heard this before." How did such an unfamiliar piece take the #41 spot? It beat out Mahler's Symphony Number 5, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto Number 3, and Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, "Eroica" -- just to name of the few 59 pieces it bested. As an aside, I'll add that I'm not a big Mahler fan myself, but the Adagietto from his Symphony Number 5 is both transcendentally sublime and sublimely transcendent. And Marais' work topped that? "The Bells of St. Genevieve" was written in 1723 for viol, violin and harpsichord with basso continuo. It can be considered a passacaglia (info HERE) or a chaconne (info HERE), with a repeating D, F, E bass line -- which repeats and repeats and repeats. As a matter of fact, if there were such a genre as Baroque Minimalism, then this piece would be a model if not the pinnacle of the style. Now don't get me wrong -- I didn't hate the piece -- it was okay. It had a haunting melody line and did offer some first-rate background music (LOL -- am I being too harsh) -- but #41 on a "Top 100" of celebrated classical music hits? In a word -- no.
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A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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