Water Music

Handel’s “Water Music”: Akademie für alte Musik Berlin

by

Handel’s festive Water Music springs to life with an infectious sense of joy and celebration in this January, 2016 live performance featuring the Akademie für alte Musik Berlin at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. This has to be some of the most enduring and magical party music ever written. As I outlined in a previous post, this collection of three Baroque dance suites was written for King George I’s pleasure excursion up the Thames River on the evening of July …

Read more

Handel’s “Water Music” Turns 300

by

Today marks the three-hundredth anniversary of the premiere of Handel’s Water Music. The collection of festive orchestral dance movements, published in three suites, was written for King George I’s pleasure excursion up the Thames River on the evening of July 17, 1717. The elaborate summer boating party was intended to lift the King’s flagging poll numbers. As an incoming tide swept the aristocratic party upriver towards Chelsea, around 50 musicians performed on a separate …

Read more

Music and the Heartbeat

by

Repetition is based on body rhythms, so we identify with the heartbeat, or with walking, or with breathing. -Karlheinz Stockhausen In 2008, researchers at the University of Illinois medical school discovered that the 103 beat-per-minute pulse of the Bee Gees’ 1977 disco hit Stayin’ Alive provided the perfect tempo for resuscitating the heart through CPR. From the satisfying groove of a disco or techno beat to a Bach Brandenburg Concerto, musical rhythm has long been …

Read more