Why do I like Baroque music?
For most of my adult life, I’ve been hooked on Baroque music. However, I’ve not examined the reason why—until now.
When I listen to Baroque music, I don’t hear the style of the music or the reality of the Baroque period; I hear an idea, a fabrication I’ve created. I hear a fictitious narrative of a time that my brain has romanticised into a socio-emotional concept, which is a deluded idealism of that period. Due to the aesthetic nature of Baroque music, I imagine it to be superior on most levels compared to other music. To me, it portrays a highly cultured expression through its sound.
When I listen to it I hear refinement, a casual and cool calm. I hear grace and beauty of form through an aural landscape painted with immaculate perfection, like in the picture above.
What I don’t hear or see is a period of significant social divisions. I don’t hear the highly stratified society with aristocrats and lords at the pinnacle and the majority of folk at the bottom.
I certainly don’t equate Baroque music as a reflection of most of the population, which were peasants and labourers. Oh, and artisans, of course, hey, a lot like today.
This was a time of absolute monarchies and a catholic church as the dominant force throughout the region where most Baroque music came from, which was central and southern Europe. The “people” of the Baroque period were tied to landowners or lords, paying heavy taxes and living at, well, of course, poverty levels.
Let’s not forget the diseases, filthy water, shocking living conditions, epidemics, the Bubonic Plague, and other wonderful human inventions created by poverty and lack of sanitary conditions.
Shall we discuss women’s rights of the time? I'm sorry we can’t. There weren’t any, or there were so few that they don’t warrant discussion.
But despite these inhumanities, there it was, a flourishing period of the most ornamented art and music we have ever created. Was it a way to escape from the horrible time had by most?
So, why have I developed this huge blind spot when it comes to me sitting in my comfortable home listening to the sounds of this period?
Baroque music has become a sedative, like Valium or some other anxiety-reducing muscle relaxant sedation. And like Valium, I now depend on Baroque music to get me through my daily struggles.
Baroque music, I’ve made into a substance that I cannot live without. But maybe, like Valium, it should only be used under medical supervision. Baroque music distorts the truth of the times, and it tells me nothing about the folk who lived in that era.
It just leaves me craving more of this aural relaxant, which wipes out the history of the world and replaces it with a feeling of blissful, ignorant nothingness.