.What I've also always hoped to find is someone else (apart from Tim Lund) who is prepared to fess up to an interest in classical music. More specifically, I have this fantasy of starting an amateur (very, in my case) group in Sydenham to meet occasionally to sing madrigals (yes, yes, hopelessly uncool at the moment, I know, even in musical circles), which I used to love but haven't recently had the opportunity of doing. Perhaps this thread will encourage others to put their heads above the parapet
chrisj1948 replied:
Certainly, Chris. I had a real pash (as we used to say in those days) on pre-classical music in my teens and early twenties. This goes back to the very beginning of the early music revival, when even a harpischord was a rarity. I was first hooked by a performance of an early Tudor mass setting (I wish I could remember which one) performed by Henry Washington's Schola Polyphonica on the Third Programme. I think it was the combination of purity and transparency of sound and plangency of harmony which first attracted me.Would an interest in pre-Classical music (more specifically late Baroque) count?
Later I got interested in early instrumental music as well; my father and I seriously looked into the possibility of going to Arnold Dolmetsch's pioneering Haslemere Early Music Festival, but in the end he decided we couldn't afford it!
Later again, if I may briefly name drop, the highlight for me of an otherside hellish Outward Bound course in the Lake District was getting friendly with the seventeen year old David Munrow. He was still at King Edward's School Birmingham, played the bassoon in the CBSO and was already an early music devotee - I remember singing Purcells's 'Sound the trumpet' duet (from 'Come, all ye sons of art') with him in the Outward Bound school bog (excellent acoustics). I met him once again when I was at university and his Cambridge group came to give a concert; I think I remember (though memory may be embellishing itself here) having a pint with him and the yet-to-be famous counter-tenor James Bowman, whom I also vaguely knew.
Even later, I went out for some time with a viola da gamba player!
However, I guess all this may be a bit peripheral to your special interest, late baroque. Is that Bach, Handel and Vivaldi? I love them all, particularly the first two. At one time in fact, I turned my nose up at anything post-classical - for reasons of snobbery (in the case of the early romantics like Mendelssohn and Schumann) ) and incomprehension (in the case of the late romantics and modernists). But then I had my moment of Wagner Epiphany - quite common amongst middle-aged men, I believe- and the world of music suddenly got a lot, lot bigger for me.
My impression is that nowadays there is quite a lot of not very good late baroque music played on the likes of Classic FM, because it' sounds nice and undemanding as background music - sounds a lot better than it is, in fact. Do you agree?
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to take this little trip down Memory Lane.