The snow that, this time of year should be rain, tumbles in vertical lines from the sky, pretty and enchanting, more than compatible with the music on this morning’s Performance Today. Rather than shower to warm up, I shiver instead to keep on listening: Handel’s Symphonia in D flat major, written in 1707 after he went to Italy (where he met Domenico Scarlatti) followed by a crisp sonata by Scarlatti himself written originally for the harsichord but now, played on a piano, Fred Childs notes how the music sighs and weeps. Maybe that’s what this snow is, the sky sighing, the fog weeping. I want to find my way to words I want to live with this morning, words that enchant and beguile and entice. But shivering takes precedence instead.
The public domain image above is a woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige, “Clear Weather after Snow.”
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