Today is my birthday. I’m not really into birthdays, despite what my wife will tell you. The natural thing for a birthday, I suppose, would be to post my favorite piece of music, or perhaps a piece that is who I am. This, of course, brings up all sorts of questions: who am I? who am I supposed to be? who do you expect or want me to be? whose opinion matters, anyway?

It feels a bit clichéd, but Wagner‘s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde speaks to me more than any other piece of music. The Prelude begins not knowing where it is going, and after a long twisted journey, the only resolution you get is a return to the beginning state of unknowingness. And then, the Liebestod: possibly the longest delayed climax in history (4 hours) – but when it hits you, it’s like bliss you never even knew existed. Crying, of course, is optional.

Personal preference for this piece – the brass can simply not be loud enough. If the trombones haven’t made you deaf, then it’s a failure.

Nobody understands me …

Well, Berlioz, let’s start with your hair. With a haircut like that, nobody is going to take you seriously!

Forget my hair! The hair is nothing. What I want is for people to understand my music!

Fair enough. So, what sort of music do you have for us today?

Ah, it’s my Damnation of Faust! I just adore this book by Goethe, even though it’s by a wretched German. As soon as I read it, I knew I had to write music for it.

Sounds good! So what did you write? a Faust Symphony like Lizst? an opera like Gounod?

Of course not! It has soloists, a choir, an orchestra …

Ah, so you wrote an oratorio! You know Schumann did that too …

Absolutely not an oratorio! Nobody wants another bloody boring cantata. My audiences made that clear when they first heard my masterpiece.

An opera then?

Well, it’s … eh … sort of … a “dramatic legend.”

Ok. So it’s an oratorio.

No, it is much more than that. My roles are to be acted and lived, not merely sung.

Ok, so let’s make it an opera.

We tried that already. My music is too magnificent to be brought down to the level of mere tomfoolery on a stage with idiotic costumes. *sigh* nobody understands me …

*pause* Well then, let’s talk about ways you might improve your hairstyle.

It was 1750. For nearly a century, Baroque piety and gravity weighed heavily on European aristocrats. “Hey, enough of this square, complex music that makes me think about death and stuff. Don’t you know anything, you know, hummable? Something light and upbeat? We just want to party.” Poor aristocrats. What was there to do? The colonies were colonial, the soldiers were soldiering, the peasants were peasanting. They desperately needed a new entertainment – something their parents and grandparents would despise.

Thankfully, the tides were about to change, and the classical era was about to explode. Complex musical patterns gave way to simple, transparent forms. Rich harmony gave way to (essentially) three or four chord functions. Serious, “what is the meaning of life” oratorio gave way to light “let’s see how many people I can sleep with in three hours” opera. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times (quite literally, too.) And, generally speaking, it didn’t end well for those poor aristocrats.

Perhaps it was more “worst of times” than “best of times”. Even so, plenty of real treasures of astounding beauty remain from the classical era, including this well-loved dance from the opera Orfeo ed Euridice by Christoph von Gluck.