Sweelinck’s pupils: Scheidemann, Jacob Praetorius, Scheidt, Siefert, Schildt

[pjme]

Melchior Schildt, 1592 -28.5.1667   

After reading the newspapers this morning...
this music has restorative powers....!

[AnotherSpin]

I think Sweelinck's music, and the music of his pupils, is nearly always sweet and stimulating and fun and instantly enjoyable.

Yes, exactly so, it's enjoyable. And this raises a question: why was music once joyful, and then ceased to be? Why, in the 20th century, did it come to be widely accepted that music must embody afflictive emotions, fracture, anxiety, pain?

Yes, human life unfolds in many forms — joyful and painful, clear and confused. But should music merely reflect, or rather imitate, despair, sorrow, and illness? Should it serve as a depiction of suffering, of the inevitable decline of mind and body into defeat? Or can music, and perhaps must it, guide us elsewhere, to a place where nothing ever happens, into a realm of bliss?

Music turns inward. It is a conversation with God, with that which remains unchanged within us. In the true I, there are no moving parts, no disturbance. There is balance, light, peace. Sickness, despair, and grief belong to the body-mind system, not to the essence itself.

Yes, the sorrow of an abandoned lover is real, and it, too, can find a place in music. But the energy of any experience, regardless of its emotional tone, still carries a kind of radiance. It is still energy, still a movement of life, not its negation.

[Harry]

Yes, exactly so, it's enjoyable. And this raises a question: why was music once joyful, and then ceased to be? Why, in the 20th century, did it come to be widely accepted that music must embody afflictive emotions, fracture, anxiety, pain?

Yes, human life unfolds in many forms — joyful and painful, clear and confused. But should music merely reflect, or rather imitate, despair, sorrow, and illness? Should it serve as a depiction of suffering, of the inevitable decline of mind and body into defeat? Or can music, and perhaps must it, guide us elsewhere, to a place where nothing ever happens, into a realm of bliss?

Music turns inward. It is a conversation with God, with that which remains unchanged within us. In the true I, there are no moving parts, no disturbance. There is balance, light, peace. Sickness, despair, and grief belong to the body-mind system, not to the essence itself.

Yes, the sorrow of an abandoned lover is real, and it, too, can find a place in music. But the energy of any experience, regardless of its emotional tone, still carries a kind of radiance. It is still energy, still a movement of life, not its negation.

Well said, I could not have done it any better