CMP Review 2024-01-04

January 4, 2024

When Montenegrin classical guitarist Miloš began planning his most recent album, he knew what the theme would be: music of the baroque. But interestingly, his vision was to make “an album of baroque without Bach.” Why would he leave out the most famous baroque composer of all? “Because originally I felt that Bach is something that I’m going to deal with later,” he explained, “and that deserves its own space and its own time and it just goes into that box.”

So Miloš began his “tour around Europe, … musically searching and picking and trying to find these pearls of the repertoire.” He looked at the music of Germany, London, and France. He hand-selected pieces by Handel, Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Couperin, and others.

And “when that whole process was over,” he recalled, “and when I had the arrangements, when I had the transcripts, when I was ready to sit there, I knew which Vivaldi movements I wanted to do… I felt like, this is so fascinating and is such a wonderful journey of different influences but in the end…”

In the end, something was missing. An album of eight composers and yet something was missing. And then he figured it out.

“The one thing that unites it all is Bach. And the moment I put the Chaconne in the mix, I felt that suddenly my solar system of composers and music had its sun, and that all of the other things were in that system like the planets are around the sun. Bach is the beginning and the end. It’s where it all comes together.”

And so his October 2023 album entitled Baroque includes a ninth composer: Johann Sebastian Bach.

Is your musical appreciation program missing its sun? Be sure to spend time with your children listening to Bach. Then it will all come together.

@artmiddlekauff