Tuesday, December 03, 2024

Music for Advent: Albinoni's Adagio, for Organ

I bought a recording of this my sophomore year in college (first year away from home.) in the campus bookstore, before campus bookstores were owned by chains bookstores. Back when I knew NOTHING (I know less now). But it was cheap and it was “classical” Xmas music (i.e., not Andy Williams or Der Bingle), so how could I lose?

It’s mostly Bach and Torelli, Corelli and Manfredi. Nothing recognizably “Christmas” at all. Exactly what I was going for.  Oh, and the Pachelbel Canon, which was all the rage back then and probably why I bought it. I had no idea what the “Albinoni Adagio” was. But it quickly became the reason I played the album over and over, and still have it.

This recording is not that one, but it is, as that one, a version scored for organ. Odd, since everything else on the album is performed by a small string orchestra. That recording has accompanied me in Advent every year since…1974?

50 years? Damn, I’m getting old.


(The interesting thing about this memory is that I can still recall the moment I picked this album. I still see the (long gone, long since replaced) bookstore where I indulged my desire to buy literature I would read for class (and how quickly I got tired of that!). My excitement at buying a record for no better reason than that it was Xmas music. I’ve added to that collection quite a bit since. My marriage was only 3 years in the future. “Only.” At the time that was oceans of time away, as inconceivable as old age. Funny what time does to the perception of time.)

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