Today is the anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach‘s death in 1750, making it his day of commemoration in the Lutheran calendar (for Lutherans who tend a little higher church than I do). As good a reason as any to post some Bach music, as if I needed a reason. My intention was to find some footage of E. Power Biggs playing Bach on the organ, but there don’t seem to be any live performances on YouTube.
However, I found the clip above. It’s Air on the G String, performed on original period instruments by the Early Music Ensemble of a group called Voices of Music. If you go to their YouTube channel, you can contribute to their work if you like.
Somebody also said it was National Chocolate Day. I can get behind that too.
Tomorrow and Sunday, for those in the area, the Vikings and I will be at the Antique Power Show at the Little Log House Museum in Hastings, Minnesota.
Your post brings to mind a signal experience. Years ago I noticed how a young person can be taken by some great work of music or pictorial art spontaneously and unexpectedly. This was one such work.
I didn’t go to movies at the theater, but one of the TV networks broadcast the cartoon “Yellow Submarine” (many years ago). I was interested in the Beatles and recorded the whole thing as broadcast, on an audiotape (cassette, I think — I’d move on from reel to reel). Anyway, at one point in the movie just a few notes from the beginning of the Air are played as part of the musical soundtrack. The orchestra then emits a sort of Ha, Ha, Ha. But just those few notes really pleased me. At the time I didn’t know they were a quotation from Bach. It might have been months or years before I realized that.
Likewise I liked some of the classical music bits in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons.