Another victim

It's been cool (relatively speaking) here in Florida. I've been wearing sweaters and drinking hot chocolate hoping to trick myself into believing that I'm back up north and that it's fall.

At the same time I've begun my holiday listening with the obligatory recording of Handel's Messiah. Unfortunately I decided to take a walk on the beach and no continuo or fleet baroque choruses could dispel the feeling that it was just wrong.

It was then that I realized that I had become of the victim of the same marketing hype that I peddle these days. Handel, who wrote Messiah for Lent after all, would be surprised that people associated Messiah with a specific time and that to some performing it at another time would seem wrong. After all, when was the last performance that you've heard in July?

Apart from a few, very specific examples (Amahl in the Night Visitors and Bach Cantatas excepted), I don't imagine that any work was intended by its composer to be limited to performances during one particular time of year, in one particular place, or some other very specific circumstance. I think we have all become victim of marketing hype that suggests that we should listen to Messiah in December, Bolero when making love, or the 1812 Overture on the Fourth of July.

So I think I'll listen to The Rite of Spring instead of Winterreise.