Big finish to 60th summer of music

Verdi’s “Requiem” closed the Aspen Music Festival this afternoon with wind, rain sprinkles, bracing air, thunder and commercial flights landing into the wind by circling over the tent en route to the runway.

The music as was beautiful and an ethereal full chorus gave the performance a glossy punch throughout.

It was sixty years ago this summer that a classic music audience was first given the chance to listen to music in a tent surrounded by the mountain air of Aspen.

The summer was a serendipitous success.

Walter Paepcke, who put the event together, looked back on the nascent festival in 1950 in the forward to “Goethe and the Modern Age, ” a collection of the speeches given at the Goethe Bicentennial Convocation and Music Festival, as the 1949 gathering was called.

Paepcke’s festival had been planned to cover the work of a German poet. And music, and then magic, was added.

“It was decided to add a musical program to offer Goethe ‘Lieder,’ compositions from the Goethe era, and other musical works of a monumental character, representative of the stature of the man,” Paepcke wrote. “While the meeting was a convocation to render earnest and solemn tribute to genius, it took place in an atmosphere of numerous quickly found friendships, of serenity, even of joie de vivre. So many new acquaintances created a lively stream of conversation; in the mountain fastness of Aspen, the cares and apprehensions of the plains were left behind.”

That spirit, that “mountain fastness,” was evident in Aspen today. Locals, seasonals and visitors were all sorry to see the summer season end, but the stirring air and swirling music will long be treasured.