Yay for Early Music!!
Ticket & Program at Musikverein: €34.70
Laughing with Kelsey over the phone like always: Priceless
First, the concert: well, actually, first the boring first part of my day. I was awoken by the sound of Frau Hinteregger's in the foyet talking to my roommates about the attempted break-in.....after talking to her about what I had seen and speculated, I showered, packed up my stuff, and headed to school to drop off my stuff before AA&A tour. Today we went to the lower Belvedere to look at their collection of medieval art, which was pretty interesting. There were a couple of pieces, like this early gothic Madonna which really grabbed me, and the rest were really just generic medieval. The tour finished ridiculously late, so I was late relieving Laura at work, which I felt really bad about. I worked until Music History, which was as interesting as it ever is.....after that I ran to the opera to see if there were any tickets for La Traviata on a different day, but the same thing: only really expensive seats were left. Tomorrow I'm going to figure out an opera I want to see in December and buy tickets to it now....I want to sit down at an opera before I leave, by gum! After that I went to Jeunesse over by the Musikverein to buy tickets for the early music concert in the MV's Brahmssaal, one of their smaller venues. Apparently Jeunesse doesn't sell tickets to those events, so I went to the regular ticket counter and got a €32 parterre (orchestra level) seat to the concert. I was pretty psyched about going, since it was a concert of Franco-flemish high renaissance sacred music.
Indeed, the concert was quite good! I had never been to the Brahmssaal, and following the signs I found my way to the second floor (European)....I asked the Garderobe woman where the Brahmssaal and she pointed to the open door, so I checked my jacket and went in, only to find that it was the balcony of the Brahmssaal! I had to go all the way back down tot he ground level and then back up a separate flight of stairs to the first floor and the parterre of the Brahmssaal.....my seats were good, though....row 16 in the middle! It's a pretty small venue as those things go, and it was sort of intimate (nothing like Heiligenkreuz, though....) The conductor was ridiculously old and strange, and the three brass players were normal looking, except for their instruments, which looked like strange small versions of the modern trombone. One of them played this recorder/trumpet thing that sounded like a cross between a C trumpet and a clarinet....it was bizarre! The choir, which was the something something part of the Vienna Boy's Choir, was dressed in these weird get-ups.....pictures will be uploaded eventually....they really defy description....I wonder if they wear these all the time or if they were like period dress things...I don't know. Anyway, they did some stuff by de la Rue, Josquin, Obrecht, Isaac, and a bunch of other people I'd never heard of. They basically did one instrumental piece, then a vocal piece, etc. The Josquin and Isaac pieces were far, far better than the other stuff they played. It wasn't until the intermission that I discovered that no-one, singers, brass players, nor conductor, was reading from a score, or even from music in modern notation! Everyone was reading what looked like 19th-century-or-later reprintings of the original parts, even in the original notation style....diamond note-heads, no bar lines, and no looking at what other people are doing! As an encore they did a piece from reading one piece of music which stood on a special double-music stand. (hard to describe, but once again, there are pictures) It was generally a good concert, and stylistically very faithful to our understanding of performance practice. All in all, a really worthwhile experience!
After I got home I watched South Park with Jess and the flatmates, and then I called Kelsey at work.....we hadn't talked in a very very long time, and it was great to talk to her again. Really great. I haven't laughed that hard in a very long time! It made me miss her, and home, a lot more than I have been. Anywho, it was a riotously good time, and now I'm so tired that I really must go to bed right now....I have my first organ lesson tomorrow, and I can't fall asleep in Gottfried's lap!
Laughing with Kelsey over the phone like always: Priceless
First, the concert: well, actually, first the boring first part of my day. I was awoken by the sound of Frau Hinteregger's in the foyet talking to my roommates about the attempted break-in.....after talking to her about what I had seen and speculated, I showered, packed up my stuff, and headed to school to drop off my stuff before AA&A tour. Today we went to the lower Belvedere to look at their collection of medieval art, which was pretty interesting. There were a couple of pieces, like this early gothic Madonna which really grabbed me, and the rest were really just generic medieval. The tour finished ridiculously late, so I was late relieving Laura at work, which I felt really bad about. I worked until Music History, which was as interesting as it ever is.....after that I ran to the opera to see if there were any tickets for La Traviata on a different day, but the same thing: only really expensive seats were left. Tomorrow I'm going to figure out an opera I want to see in December and buy tickets to it now....I want to sit down at an opera before I leave, by gum! After that I went to Jeunesse over by the Musikverein to buy tickets for the early music concert in the MV's Brahmssaal, one of their smaller venues. Apparently Jeunesse doesn't sell tickets to those events, so I went to the regular ticket counter and got a €32 parterre (orchestra level) seat to the concert. I was pretty psyched about going, since it was a concert of Franco-flemish high renaissance sacred music.
Indeed, the concert was quite good! I had never been to the Brahmssaal, and following the signs I found my way to the second floor (European)....I asked the Garderobe woman where the Brahmssaal and she pointed to the open door, so I checked my jacket and went in, only to find that it was the balcony of the Brahmssaal! I had to go all the way back down tot he ground level and then back up a separate flight of stairs to the first floor and the parterre of the Brahmssaal.....my seats were good, though....row 16 in the middle! It's a pretty small venue as those things go, and it was sort of intimate (nothing like Heiligenkreuz, though....) The conductor was ridiculously old and strange, and the three brass players were normal looking, except for their instruments, which looked like strange small versions of the modern trombone. One of them played this recorder/trumpet thing that sounded like a cross between a C trumpet and a clarinet....it was bizarre! The choir, which was the something something part of the Vienna Boy's Choir, was dressed in these weird get-ups.....pictures will be uploaded eventually....they really defy description....I wonder if they wear these all the time or if they were like period dress things...I don't know. Anyway, they did some stuff by de la Rue, Josquin, Obrecht, Isaac, and a bunch of other people I'd never heard of. They basically did one instrumental piece, then a vocal piece, etc. The Josquin and Isaac pieces were far, far better than the other stuff they played. It wasn't until the intermission that I discovered that no-one, singers, brass players, nor conductor, was reading from a score, or even from music in modern notation! Everyone was reading what looked like 19th-century-or-later reprintings of the original parts, even in the original notation style....diamond note-heads, no bar lines, and no looking at what other people are doing! As an encore they did a piece from reading one piece of music which stood on a special double-music stand. (hard to describe, but once again, there are pictures) It was generally a good concert, and stylistically very faithful to our understanding of performance practice. All in all, a really worthwhile experience!
After I got home I watched South Park with Jess and the flatmates, and then I called Kelsey at work.....we hadn't talked in a very very long time, and it was great to talk to her again. Really great. I haven't laughed that hard in a very long time! It made me miss her, and home, a lot more than I have been. Anywho, it was a riotously good time, and now I'm so tired that I really must go to bed right now....I have my first organ lesson tomorrow, and I can't fall asleep in Gottfried's lap!
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