From ContraPointsLive.

I’ve taken some time off to pursue decadent and unremunerative activities like playing baroque music.

This 300-year-old piece is “Les Barricades Mystérieuses” by François Couperin. It’s sort of the harpsichord equivalent of Für Elise or Stairway to Heaven, except most people don’t know any harpsichord music so this is probably your first time hearing it.

Scholars remain divided on the meaning of the “mysterious barricades” in the title. Could be sexual innuendo, could be Masonic conspiracy, who knows. To me music is never really “about” anything beyond abstract patterns of emotion. The barricades are the harmonic displacements that sustain cycles of yearning. Usually it’s played at a quicker tempo, but when I try it fast I feel like I’m losing the mystery.

Written for the instrument’s mellow lower register, this is also probably the piece I’d choose to refute the harpsichord skeptics’ “skeletons fucking on a tin roof” allegations.