No News Is Good News

Finding considerably less than nothing on NPR live radio broadcasts, I said to myself, "Damn it! I want to hear some--Oh, let's say Sammartini!"   So I googled "Sammartini, music online"--And Lo!  as I write, I'm listening to an original-instruments-and-(castrati)-voices, purely heavenly Il Pianto degli Angeli della Pace.  I exaggerate (solo pochissimo!) when I say there are castrati in this recording.  There is something odd about the few, suspiciously high, male-like voices I think I hear, full of character, distinctive; such as might resulted from castration--but it's probably just wishful thinking on my part.  Anyway, this is music I love--I scarcely knew when the name occurred to me that I would love it so much.   Once, long ago, living in penurious, splendid isolation (for a month--but oh how long a month lasted in those days!) in an apartment on Pine Street on Nob Hill in San Francisco, having only an f. m. radio, besides my books and journals, to occupy me--I heard a symphony of Sammartini's, and found it delightful and remarkable.  I was into Gluck in those days, and of course knew that he had been in some manner 'apprenticed' to Sammartini....

But shut up a minute!  This tenor aria--"Dal profundo de' squalidi Abissi"--impossible in the demands of range and agility to singers with normal genitalia, is sheer castrato tour de force. There are things about the 18th Century that I miss.