The west wind ripples on a verdant wall as an attendance of starlings forms in the ancient grove…

A heady aroma of fresh citrus blossoms saturates the orangerie, only occasionally broken by the perfumed maloder of a fading courtesan, a beauty who once enticed a king…

Frozen nymphs and tritons splash in a fountain reverie, a secret play acted out daily for the lone explorer of the vast Eden that extends well into the afternoon haze…

The click-clack of heeled silk slippers echoes in the maddened search for an errant lover as a convoy of porters like desert camels, confections in tow, silently ascends a herculean staircase…

Ancestral stalactites of crystal and bronze diffuse a dozen candles into a thousand fireflies, the resplendence of which transforms the stately hall of gold leaf and faux marble into the Temple of Apollo, at least until dawn…

All the while costumed noble ladies with mountainous powdered coifs held up by latticed pins of silver and pearl and gentilshommes with the plumage of peacocks parade through the enfilade of formal rooms… A sylphic consort, regal ghosts of a bygone era and place…

. . .

My earliest memories of daydreams, from the age of 3 or so, are populated by such visions. I imagined myself, while wide awake in my required “afternoon naps,” as a voyeur into a long-gone world of 17th-century courtiers, lavish utopian entertainments, and horticultural displays the likes of which I’ve never truly seen. The visions were so real and fluid, the smells so intense (both good and bad), and the music – the music of purest perfection – that I still sometimes wonder if the infant I used to be had somehow fallen into a portal to the Ancien Regime.

This lifelong fascination with a Golden Age, though tempered by an educated reality of the extreme difficulty most people endured in those days, especially those not lucky enough to win the lottery of birth, inspires nearly everything I do and create in my adult life. I live in a period house with period French, Italian, and German furnishings. I wear contemporary clothes, though I’ve been known to adorn myself with silk stockings and velvet knickers for Halloween. I once threw a “Bal des Vampires” in which I imagined myself as Lestat and my guests all showed up in the requisite dress of 18th century French vampires. I’ve been know to research a dish or two that Louis XIV would have been served, but couldn’t concoct as the exotic ingredients are just not available any more, or out of my price range if they were to be found. While at concerts, I imagine how much better the performances would seem if the musicians were wearing powdered wigs and played from stands lit by candles. In my mind’s eye I wish away all the under-dressed audience members fidgeting with their paper programs and unwrapping their hard candies during the quietest moments. I replace them with frolicking socialites of the 18th century opera house carousing with harlots in the relative velvet lined darkness of private boxes, spitting their tobacco and hurling their pheasant bones onto the unlucky and unknowing who bought the cheap seats below. In my fantasy, no one pays any more attention to the performance on stage, but what a sight that must have been compared to the boredom I often experience in a modern hall with it’s stodgy 19th-century rules.

I have always been drawn to Baroque architecture, Baroque art, 17th century social history, and most enthusiastically, Baroque music. There is something about this music of the Baroque that seems complete to me, that warms my heart while expanding my brain. I love all genres and styles of music, classical, Romantic, Impressionistic, and contemporary, but the sounds of the Baroque open up my mind to new possibilities more than music of other periods does – possibly it’s the complexity of the counterpoint, or perhaps the imitation of birdcalls and thunderstorms. I wonder about a world in which the other eras of style that followed didn’t happen, as if the history of the world had unfolded in a different way. Had the love of invention and technology not replaced the love of God, country, art and tradition, would the Sun King have succeeding in spreading the perfection of Versailles throughout France like he probably dreamed? Had a Revolution and two World Wars not happened, would this beautiful palace be left a ruin until late into the 20th century? Or would have morphed into something else even more majestic and unreal?

What would Bach have composed if he had lived another 25 years, or had access to a modern Steinway? What did Rameau throw into the fire? – he only found success after 40. What if at the Pieta school in Venice, Vivaldi had access to a modern Flentrop organ? Would his most violinistic of concerto styles have translated into something else entirely? We are aware that Vivaldi wrote figured-bass organ parts to accompany many of his works, but it wasn’t until Bach transposed several concerti for harpsichord and organ, adding interesting internal counterpoint, that these masterpieces found their way outside of the tiny serene island. Bach’s transcriptions after Vivaldi are some the greatest pieces written for the instrument.

These are things I contemplate while composing. Do I want to see a return to neo-Baroque age in music? Not necessarily – I appreciate the diversity of musical styles available today, but I do yearn for more music that I can enjoy on a simple and sensual level. A piece doesn’t have to exacerbate my brain or offend my senses with a battery of percussion to get my attention or admiration. I don’t need a bombastic Hollywood melody played by a hundred horns to get my juices going. Two horns hitting all the overtones of simple harmony can have the most elegant and natural of effects. Add a shimmer of tremolo strings and there you have it – a moment of shear nobility with no more than 6 or 7 players. It is simple gestures like this that I miss in much of avant-garde contemporary music. In my music I strive for the simplicity and clarity that I admire in a Corelli concerto grosso or an aria of Handel. That isn’t to say that there might not be in my music any modern harmony or rhythm, or an expansion of the requirements for the instrumentalist as compared to 300 years ago. I also try to achieve a sense of proportion and balance in the music much like architects of the Baroque tried to correct older Medieval structures by adding a Corinthian column here or a matching pediment there; or like Le Notre, tamed a wilderness, drained a bog, move a thousand full-grown trees to create a 2 mile-long allee. In no way do I want to compare my meager attempts to the great masterpieces produced in the era that I dream of and admire, but I hope at the very least that I provide the listener with something pleasurable, something capricious, and something that maybe takes them away from the humdrum and horror of modern life, to a time a place somehow more perfect, where music, and art, and architecture combine in a most sublime way.