Can you, personally, tell something about the people who composed the music you listen to? Have you formed a feeling about them from listening to them? I shall start as I realise it's quite difficult to write about these things sometimes. I would be interested to know what impressions of composers you have developed in your minds eye over the years. As a blind person builds a picture of someones face by touching it we can build an idea of a person by listening to their music?
Vivaldi is the one I have the strongest feelings about, the one I'm most certain of, you see to me I hear his love of God. In The Four Seasons he is at one with each of them more than I could have imagined possible but more pertinant than the changing of the seasons is the passage of time to this piece. The melancholy of time passing, never ever to return, is what he communicates to me, this wisdom is simple but profound if you actually understand what it means. This is a scripture in music, showing me that each period has it's own type of beauty the ebb and flow of life the ups and downs but always passing by and oh so very much more precious because of this.
I also have some Lute concertos by him and these also combine to form my opinion that he had a good heart.
Bach is so very very painfully romantic to me. Torment and turmoil and strength combine to release something he cannot express any other way. I feel he had to write music. His subconcious breaking out from within when we think he is calculating each and every note he is really unaware that it is not he at all but this thing inside him this energy for want of a better word. The direction of his feelings stays not in one direction long enough to truely flow like others music, always suggestions and half finished sentances even in his most volatile work. Not really of this world.
These ideas are most probably far from the truth but I do think about the poeple who wrote the music that I listen to, admitedly avoiding reading much about them for fear I read something bad about them which ruins the listening for me.
If anyone has formed impressions of a composers personality through listening I would very much like to hear them, if only to know I'm not the only one who has done so.
