Thursday, January 17, 2013

Priest Composers


An interesting fact I have noticed is that some of my favorite composers were priests, like Antonio Vivaldi, Tomas Victoria, and Jacob Handl, often called Gallus. Is their spirituality reflected in their music? Today I am listening to Pandora Radio, and since Light Bright is still gone, I am listening to my Monteverdi station. When I looked Claudio Monteverdi up on Wikipedia, it said he was married with children, but his wife died young, and toward the end of his life he became a priest. (Know who else became a priest toward the end? Liszt.) So the pattern seems to be holding up, except of course for the Lutheran composers like Buxtehude and Bach. They never became priests for some reason.  

Famous Hat

2 comments:

Hardingfele said...

Liszt, really? I thought he was a ladies man and women swooned when he played the piano. Perhaps all that got old and towards the end of life he turned to the priesthood. Of course if he had dark chocolate, like Charlie, the bunny, then he would have been friskier

Famous Hat said...

He was a ladies' man, that's what makes it so crazy.