L’estro Armonico by Vivaldi. He was really my first true classical music love. I kind of hate to admit this, but I first got turned onto Vivaldi because of one stupid little section of a movie: 1981’s Looker. There’s a little tiny snippet of a scene where the main character played by Albert Finney come into the operating room and asks for Vivalvi to play that day. I think one other scene may have had some Vivaldi playing in it as well. I really liked that movie at the time and for whatever reason I started listening for Vivaldi after that and was totally hooked.
Matter of fact, I first got hooked on classical music because of archaeology. Shortly after I decided to major in archaeology I started doing work-study work for an anthropologist at Wisconsin named Aidan Southall. He had me typing up index cards for his collection of off-print journal articles. I’d usually start my day doing that for a couple of hours and I had one of the early Walkmans (radio only) and I’d tune it to the local public radio station that would be playing classical music in the morning and just pass a pleasant couple of hours listening to this great new music I’d just discovered and doing something vaguely academic.
Anyway, he’s still one of my favorites (see here for another). Never did get much into anything past the Baroque, generally, and even Bach is second on my list. He also wrote some excellent choral music, especially the Gloria. Definitely worth having a go.
I discovered Vivaldi through the solo albums of Steve Howe guitarist for Yes and Asia. The\Red Monk\ is still my favorite as is the Baroque period and, like you, some of the Romantic period. It is amazing that different music can be rock and roll while not being, uh, rock and roll. lol
Comment by Frank Suggs — April 8, 2009 @ 2:27 am
I don’t think I have heard L’estro Armonico but I will search it out. I came to Vivaldi via the usual route, Four Seasons. I began collecting different versions of it, my favourite being one by four French guitarists, the quartet’s name escapes me at the moment.
Bach is by far my favourite, his six Cello Suites are like aural medicine. I’ve been collecting many different versions of them too. I must have heard them hundreds of times.
Walkman, hehe. The iPod of the 80’s. There seemed to be a whole decade between the Walkman and the iPod in the 90s where the only people you’d see with little earbuds in their ears were old men listening to the horse races on their transistor radios.
Comment by Vincent — April 8, 2009 @ 4:33 pm
Yes, and I went through soooooo many Walkmans (Walkmen?) because the input jack for the headphones would keep shorting out. I tried to find a photo of the sort I had but can’t.
The classical station out here used to have a listener’s favorite list every year and the perennial favorite was the Four Seasons. The other one I really REALLY like iare the lute and mandolin concerti. Just excellent.
Comment by acagle — April 8, 2009 @ 7:06 pm