Halloween marks the transition from the light part of the year into the dark part. How better to celebrate than with music that reflects darkness, strangeness and profound sadness? But don't think that this means sparse or depressing music. On the contrary, composers have always been itching to express fully and vigorously any human experience they could find.
Vivaldi brilliantly depicts all the things that spook the night, from "fantasmi" (ghosts) to "il sonno" (clues from the most famous version in The Four Seasons inform us that this is a deep sleep filled with drunken dreams). Rebel's idea of Chaos is to sound all the notes of the musical scale simultaneously.
Berkeley composer Sheli Nan has written a new piece for us. The piece touches all our sore spots and is called Requiem for the Ancestors: Dia de Los Muertos.
And how could we not include Dowland's Lachrymae and Tartini's Devil's Trill violin sonata. Tartini tells the story of the Devil's Trill like this: One night I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil. I gave him my violin to see if he could play. How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy. I awoke. I immediately grasped my violin in order to retain, in part at least, the impression of my dream. In vain! The music which I at this time composed is indeed the best that I ever wrote, and I still call it the "Devil's Trill", but the difference between it and that which so moved me is so great that I would have destroyed my instrument and have said farewell to music forever if it had been possible for me to live without the enjoyment it affords me.
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