Is it me, or are these songs a little "weird" musically?
I find that Handel, Bach, Schuetz, Pergolesi, and Monteverdi all wrote in musical idioms that are pretty easy to grasp and internalise, making the music relatively "self-learning". But I'm finding that these Purcell songs - specifically "Blessed Virgin's Expostulation", "What is Man?", "We Sing to Him", and "Evening Hymn" - are just kind of eluding me. I've read through them all several times each, and nothing seems to "stick" in my memory. Contrast this with Handel arias, which I can read through once, then generally reproduce fairly accurately. Schuetz has been more challenging, but it still hasn't taken me this long to "get" what the music is about, where the melody is going, etc.
I love Purcell, but I just can't figure out what I'm missing in these pieces - what is the "key" that will make them make sense to me musically. Even listening to a recording (something I never like to do when learning a piece, but which I've started to resort to with these out of desperation) doesn't seem to be helping "break the code".
Has anyone else sung these pieces. Was there some "lightbulb on" moment that happened that made you finally be able to internalise the music - or was it pretty clear to you from the start.
What is it about certain pieces of music that make them so much harder to learn than others, anyway?
Karen Mercedes http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html ________________________________ One must be something if one wishes to put on appearances. - Ludwig von Beethoven
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