Music and Memories: Classical Favorites Write-OffMar 01 '07 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Some music wends its way into your heart and just stays there. For me, music and memories are always inextricably connected. It's sometimes hard for me to understand where my love for a certain piece of music started, but with the pieces etched most profoundly on my heart, I can usually think back clearly to a certain time and place -- either the first time I ever heard that particular music, or a time when I heard it again and it spoke to me in a new and deeper way. When I read about captaind’s Classical Favourites write-off, I started thinking about some of those favorite compositions that have lodged themselves permanently in my memory and on my heart's inner maps. I'm listing these as they come to me, so this isn't a traditional top ten. Ludwig van Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. I love a lot of Beethoven's work, most especially his Pastoral Symphony and Ode to Joy (from the Ninth Symphony), but the Moonlight Sonata was the first piece of classical music that ever pierced my consciousness and I will always love it best. My oldest sister, at that time a serious student of piano, was preparing this piece of a recital for a number of months when I was a preschooler. The piano was central in our small living room, and it felt like the slow, lovely (and sometimes lilting) piano notes followed me around the house, almost like the moon itself can sometimes seem to follow you when you're walking outdoors at night. Johann Sebastian Bach -- Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring; Sheep May Safely Graze; Magnificat in D, and many others. Bach was really the first classical composer I ever fell in love with. Around the time I was sixteen, my dad had the presence of mind to strike a deal with me whereby he listened to some of "my" music and I had to listen to some of "his" music in return. So we did a sort of cultural exchange; he listened to U2 and I listened to Bach. I still love U2, but I think I got the best end of the deal. Although I enjoy a number of recordings of Bach compositions, my favorite is still the first one my dad gave me on my sweet 16th birthday, a sort of Bach's "greatest hits" played by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy. Bach's music is always deeply and profoundly moving, and always seeks to glorify the Great Composer. Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky -- The Nutcracker Suite; The Swan Lake Suite. Tchaikovsky has written some of the most emotionally accessible classical music there is. I love both of these Suites, but have a special fondness for the Waltz from Swan Lake, which my daughter became especially fond of during her infancy. We danced to this music before she could walk. At the age of four, she still loves to cavort with me around the kitchen to this wonderful spirited piece. Johann Strauss -- Overtures (especially The Gyspy Baron; Die Fledermaus; Vienna Blood) ...and I really do love The Radetzky March. Speaking of music I love to dance to with my little girl! We enjoy Strauss immensely, especially his upbeat, swirling overtures and the cheerfully martial Radetzky March. For a while I was pretty sure we would wear out the CD on that one. Antonio Vivaldi -- The Four Seasons (all of it, but especially "Spring") and the Concerto for two trumpets in C Major. I got married fifteen springs ago in a lovely little white church with a cherry tree blooming pink outside. While people were being seated in the pews before our wedding, Vivaldi's "Spring" was one of the pieces that they listened to. (Ask me sometime what else we included in the prelude. We were silly and in love and very eclectic!) Johann Pachelbel -- Canon in D. I'm not going to apologize for including this composition. I know it's been "done to death" (including its use in advertisements, of all things!) but I was really awed by its loveliness the first time I ever heard it (at the home of our neighborhood rabbi) and I still love its tidy and complete sense of beauty. I also walked down the aisle to it at my wedding, which will forever cement its place in my heart. Antonin Dvorak -- Symphony No. 9 "From the New World". There's something marvelously narrative ("storied") about this dramatic music. Some of it is just hauntingly lovely, especially in the second movement, where the melody is so gentle and heart-rending that it almost hurts to listen. This is one of those rare pieces of music that I cannot connect a concrete memory to, though I'm not sure why. I just know how much I enjoy it. Ralph Vaughn Williams -- Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. This too is a piece that just haunts my heart. It stays with me long after the notes fade. I first learned about it while reading a book by one of my favorite authors, Madeleine L'Engle. She spoke so glowingly about her family's love for it that I had to hear it. I will always be glad I did! Franz Joseph Haydn -- "The Heavens are Telling" from The Creation. Truly music of wonder and praise. George Gershwin -- Rhapsody in Blue; An American in Paris; Piano Concerto in F; various Piano Preludes. Dad gave me Gershwin on my sixteenth birthday too, and I will be forever grateful. The first time I ever attempted to write a novel, I wrote it to Gershwin. He helps me me hear the poetry even in my tiny post-industrial city. He makes me wish I really knew how to dance. Aaron Copeland -- Appalachian Spring Suite. I love other Copeland too, but this is possibly my favorite composition of all time. My parents hail from Appalachia -- I've got roots sunk deep in the Blue Ridge mountains -- and this music always sends me back to that landscape. I am hopelessly American when it comes to my love of Copeland. And I have wonderful memories of listening to this performed live at the Tanglewood Music Center many years ago. Yo Yo Ma was their guest cellist that evening, and it was the first time I had ever heard classical music performed outdoors under the stars. It doesn't get much better than that! ~befus, 2007  |
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