Hello everyone,
What's often said about businesses is also true when you're seeking understanding of a musical composition.
Location, location, location!
Locate the piece in space and time. When was it composed? Where? What was going on in that place and in the composer's life at the time the piece was composed?
With religious music, it's very interesting to research historical context.
What does art from the period look like (visual art, sculpture, architecture)?
Do you feel any "glass-bead-game" connection between the architecture and music of the period? Is there a particular piece of architecture that really connects itself with the music in your mind?
Connections of this kind put you into a mood-space that enhances your understanding of the music.
If the music were a movie soundtrack, what would be happening while it is playing?
Can you establish other types of sensory connections (smell, touch, taste) with the piece? Our concerts are like dinner menus. What dish is the piece you're currently working on?
If you conceive of the music as touchable, what is it? Sleek fur? Crumbly rock? Rushing water? Warm velvet?
Does the music unfurl in an interior landscape? Explore that landscape. Make it part of your own interpretive connection to the piece.
(Example: I'm always in St. Basil's Cathedral when our group sings the Rachmaninoff "Bogoroditse" or "Nunc Dimittis." And when I listen to or play Schubert, I'm always trekking across country, headed to one place by way of another place that is several hundred miles distant)
I'll provide an example: Tomas Luis de Victoria
First, let's get some background from the fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1s_Luis_de_Victoria
Although Sturgeon's Law generally applies to everything online, this is a good wiki.
There are many hyperlinked words and phrases that pique one's interest. Follow a few!
How about:
Counter-Reformation
Avila, Castile
Word-painting in musical works
What's happening around this time, in general?
http://www.timelines.ws/
http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/30/lineal-timeline-lets-you-visualize-history-or-the-future-on-your-ipad/
http://www.timemaps.com/apps
Another wonderful way to immerse in a musical period is simply to listen to more music by the same composer and by others working around the same time period.
Well, there's - YOUTUBE!!
I would say more, but I'm about to pull up some Mahler on YouTube (Leonard Bernstein conducting, OF COURSE!). I want to do some online time-travel to fin-de-siecle Vienna and become a fly on the wall on the afternoon Freud and Mahler had a most interesting analytic conversation.
Happy sleuthing,
Lee
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