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by
Jessica
(new)
Jan 19, 2009 02:32AM

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I fell in love with Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique even before I watched Sleeping with the Enemy. My parents would often play Jaques Offenbach's Gaiete Parisienne when I was a baby and I evidently loved it as there are horribly embarrassing videos of me dancing!
I was always a fan of Bach and played the Brandenburg Concerti over and over as I wrote my papers in graduate school. No one ever complained and I credit that to the incredible beauty of the music. When i discovered the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, I was convinced that I had heard Bach take us to the very edge of sanity and bring us back again: there is one chord where it is almost like he leans across the organ keyboard. The St Matthew Passion and the Magnificat are works for someone who already understands the body of his work, but they never cease to evoke tears.
I learned to love Beethoven next and often played the Nine Symphonies back to back when I was working on scholarly things. I do not believe that there is any more beautiful piece of music than the ninth symphony but it takes a while to understand it, I think. Yes, I cry at that too!
Beautiful music reaches past the miseries of earth into the sublime world of our creator. I have difficulty envisioning this with the Black Eyed Peas or anything which has "Yo bitch!" for words.
One more thing;if you ever read A Clockwork Orange, you MUST play Beethoven in the background. Alex loved the ninth. (See my review of the book.)