The Acoustics Of Christmas Eve Music
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
A bar holiday may be tinged with melancholy,
but it’s a sweet sort of melancholy. (Its tone is captured perfectly, I’m
compelled to say, in John Denver and Rowlf the Dog’s rendition of “Have
Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” on the “John Denver and the Muppets: A
Christmas Together” TV special in 1979.)
This very record (we have it as both a
record and as a CD) is my family’s favourite music to open presents by the
Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. We follow (as I am originally from Argentina
and my daughters were born in Mexico) the custom of celebrating nochebuena and
leaving Christmas day as a day to stay in bed, do nothing except eat Belgian
chocolates and Spanish marzipan.
But there is another piece of music that is
dear to my heart for Christmas. This is Vivaldi’s Gloria (he wrote two) RV 589.
I first heard it a few days before
Christmas in Mexico City.
It might have been 1973. This was the year that my friend Jorge Urrechaga told
me my sound system was not adequate. What hackers do now, Urrechaga did then
with smuggling. He had a transistor amplifier(one of the first at the time) that banged over 50 watts per channel RMS. The brand was Acoustic Research and
the amplifier had a brass front piece (I like the word escutcheon) and exactly
five knobs. It was beautiful. Urrechaga harped on the idea that Acoustic
Research with its amplifiers, turntables (I bought the lovely XA-1) and
speakers would reproduce music accurately. Urrechaga sold me (cheap) that AR amplifier.
I like to think that the age of
enlightenment which began in the latter part of the 17th century and
ended in the beginning of the 19th represented an age of scientific discovery
and where the idea that all was knowable and possible produced an explosion of
activity in which man was the center of all things. I like the sound of the
Alejo Carpentier’s version of the term enlightenment as Siglo de las Luces (the
century of lights) and the name of one of his most famous novels which follows
the first appearance of a French guillotine in the West
Indies.
The idea of a century of lights and of the
fact that the music of the time was the early baroque and the baroque, produces
in my ears, when I listen to Vivaldi’s Gloria, an explosion of positive
thinking. Christmas music should give us cheer and hope and baroque music has
that in spades.
In the beginning of the 1980 I did not lock
my front door. This was a habit. I paid the penalty in that someone walked in
one night and took my CD collection and my Acoustic Research AR-3A speakers. The
insurance company replaced them with JBL monitors that were supposed to be
better. I have never been that sure.
I find the present situation of musical
sound suspect. I cannot understand how music can sound at its best with ear
buds and with that sound coming out from a digital phone. I do not buy the idea
of “enhanced” sound or “enhanced deep bass”. Nor do I accept the idea that
music has to come from all sides.
It was on Sunday’s The Bach Cantata Project
brought by Early Music Vancouver at the Chan that my idea was further
reinforced.
I was centre-front row and very close to
violinist Marc Destrubé and his
superb group of musicians who specialize in baroque music placed in period
instruments.
One of the warmest but
most delicate sounding (as in never loud) was Ray Nurse’s lute. And yet while
surrounded by a loud baroque chamber organ, a couple of cellos, a bassoon, etc
I could hear that lute.
Back in the middle of
that cavernous Chan Centre I am sure the lute could not compete.
Baroque music is music
to be heard in a large living room or a king’s chamber. Earbuds will not create
the reverberation of a chamber’s walls no matter how good your surround sound
is.
If I am to follow the
path of the now defunct Boston Sound of Acoustic Research I need to be facing a
wall of sound coming to me from the front and I will accept that some of it
will pass through and bounce back.
At the same time I
want to be able to hear that violin, that viola, that cello and the bass
without any of those instruments being enhanced in any way. Perhaps if there
are two cellos, one might be a better instrument and sound better. I don’t want
to make that cello sound better (enhance it) by turning a knob.
For Christmas my
eldest daughter will no longer listen to music in her Lillooet home through the
tiny speakers of her computer. She will have my AR amplifier and a very good
used CD player that I purchased at Lotusland Electronics & Music. But there
is more. As I was about to leave with the Technics CD player (perhaps not as
good as a Denon I recently purchased there to replace my Sony that finally
failed) I made the wrong question to the friendly associate Mitch, “You wouldn’t
happen to have any AR speakers, would you?”
As a matter of fact I
have these recently restored (they are 35 years old) AR-2ax speakers. We
connected them and played my recently fave recording of Colin MacDonald playing
Handel with a baritone sax in a trio with a harpsichordist and a cellist. I was
blown away by the presence of the sound.
I have been listening
to them now for a week as my JBLs are in the basement. My daughter Ale will not
note the difference when we open presents on Christmas Eve. The ARs are about
the same size. At some point once I give her the amplifier and CD player I will
tell her, “You might was as well take my speakers, too.”
My heart will be wrenched but my JBLs will do just fine.
