Flow and Ebb and Flow and...

The beginning of a musical odyssey

When I started this newsletter I promised myself (and, I think, also promised all of you) that it wouldn’t entirely be about New York and its history. So far, I haven’t done a very good job of straying from NYC topics, but a couple of years ago I bought a boatload of records at an estate sale:

A small boat, perhaps...

And, I have to confess, I haven’t gotten around to listening to them…until today. They are mostly classical compilations, with a bit of jazz and big band thrown in for good measure.

When the LPs first came into our home, all I managed to do was unpack them and try, somewhat haphazardly, to organize them.

Then they just sat there—hundreds of hours of unheard music. But borne from a desire to inventory them properly, I’ve just put the needle down on the first record from the first shelf.

I grew up in a house steeped in classical music. Wherever we lived, the local classical station was on throughout the day; we listened to the Met Opera broadcasts on many Saturday afternoons; and—as my father was an Episcopal priest—liturgical music was part of our everyday lives. And, despite the fact that I am a composer myself (of a sort of quasi-classical/ambient/minimalist/soundtrack-y music), I’m no expert in the field. I am at peace with the fact that there’s more about the world of classical music that I’ll never know than I can possibly learn. All that being said, music plays a central role in my life. According to Spotify, I’m in the top 5% of listeners globally (and Spotify doesn’t even know how often I listen to vinyl or Pandora instead).

So, as I go through this collection, I thought I’d share some music and thoughts about that music.

I’m not sure of the provenance of many of these box sets, but the ones I shelved first are from a Time Life series from the 1960s called “Concerts of Great Music.” The first number on the first side of this set is Georg Philipp Telemann’s Water Music, also known as Hamburg Ebb and Flow. It’s delightful.

Telemann was one of the most prolific composers of the Baroque era. He was concertmaster for five churches in Hamburg and wrote reams of secular and sacred music. (You can read a capsule biography at Britannica.) He seems to have been unlucky in love: his first wife died after two years of marriage, and his second wife was a compulsive gambler who ran off with a Swedish officer, leaving Telemann to pay her debts (which were more than his annual salary). Telemann is woefully under-appreciated and I think someone should write a potboiler novel about his life. Think about how great the Hollywood adaptation would sound!

Hamburg Ebb and Flow is a ten-movement evocation of the Elbe River, first performed in 1723 to mark the centennial of the Hamburg Admiralty. The overture (below) is the most famous movement of the piece, but the entire work is worth seeking out.

Stay tuned for future installments as we plough¹ through hundreds of hours of music. I won’t give you a play-by-play, but I will share favorites and discoveries.

---

[NOTE: Yesterday’s post for paid subscribers only, but today’s musings are for everyone. If you’d like to read yesterday’s newsletter, I’m linking it here. Thank you for your support.]

1. Plow? That always looks wrong to me.