1680 – what a time to have been alive! Antonio Vivaldi was a tot of age two; J.S. Bach, G.F. Handel and D. Scarlatti were born five years later, following and participating in a period of creativity unprecedented in all of Western music. And science… seven years later, Newton’s Principia was published and laid the foundation of classical physics. What a ride that must have been!

When I was younger, people in my circle occasionally entertained themselves in conversation by imagining what earlier era they would like to have lived in. I inevitably chose somewhere between 1600 and 1770: that period includes music’s entire Baroque and Classical periods and Beethoven’s birth year, 1770, the year at which, according to my old musician colleague Robert Wayne Moss, all composition of great music stopped. 🙂 (Actually, Wayne’s instrument, viola da gamba, had already passed from the scene a good while before that. 😈 ) And on and on…

What a great pastime! Is everybody’s palate cleansed?