With most of us confined, once again, to our homes, I thought I would invite you to spend a little time reflecting on the situation through the experiences of some of history’s greatest classical composers.
Now, I 100% whack on a bit of Chopin when I need to focus on work, but the following playlist isn’t really one for having on in the background. In fact, my suggested listening state would be that of a dark room, alone. Or even better: headphones, sitting in a dark room, alone. You are permitted a cup of tea, but it will get cold. Everything does in the end.
The theme is Oppression and Pain (as you may have guessed from the tea metaphor). This is not to exacerbate our current misery, but merely to offer some perspective. Also, like, why not just lean the fuck in. This is music that reaches out across time and shows us that all experience is universal, despite feeling deeply personal. It’s music that moves me, at least. I hope it does you, too.
I have written loadsa sleeve notes, if you are so inclined – let’s face it, we’ve got the time… I love having a bit of context but they are optional, obviously.
Anyway, we begin with one of the greatest Russian composers, Dmitri Shostakovich, who once described life under Stalin’s regime as “unbelievably mean and hard. Every day brought more bad news and I felt so much pain. I was so lonely and afraid.” Bloody hell Shosty.
Welcome to Lockdown 2.0, friends!
*at the time of writing, Trump has just been kicked out. Hoorah hooray, things are looking up already!
Sleeve Notes
Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 in D minor 3rd movement (1937):
This piece was written under Stalin, when Shostakovich had been denounced as an “enemy of the people” and lived in permanent fear of arrest. He was so paranoid and afraid, in fact, that he packed a suitcase and spent his nights on the stairwell outside his apartment to spare his pregnant wife and young family the horror of him being taken away.
This piece debuted in St Petersburg in November 1937 and despite the fact that authorities interpreted crying in public as a criticism of the regime’s actions (and therefore as a punishable offence) many people wept openly at its premiere… which is pretty fucking great.
I think it might be one of the most excruciating and beautiful pieces ever written – the swells of strings (written to mimic a Russian Orthodox choir) clash into each other like a storm-torn waves, pulling you with them. They are followed by an exceptionally lonely motif, played by an oboe (which, I think, really encapsulates the utter isolation Shostakovich was feeling – I mean, his friends would cross the street so as to not be associated with him ffs). These swells return again and again throughout the piece, building to an almost grotesque climax section (from about 8 minutes). The piece finishes with a shiver of strings and a xylophone bringing back the earlier oboe’s motif, only to finish with a major chord – leaving us with, perhaps, hope? Certainly exhaustion.
Further listening: Piano Concerto no. 2 in F-major. It was written in happier times – i.e. after the death of Stalin – for his son, a concert pianist, to play and full of family jokes and references. The second movement is particularly exquisite.
Gorecki – Symphony No. 3 aka “Sorrowful Songs”, 2nd movement (1977):
This is a beautiful, plaintive set of three symphonic songs for which Gorecki became famous in the early 90s having been little known outside of Poland before.
The first and third movements are written from the perspective of a parent who has lost a child, whereas the second is that of a child separated from a parent. For the text, he used words that had been etched into the walls of a Gestapo prison by an 18-year-old girl during the second world war.
He contrasts almost funereal drone-like notes with moments of shimmering, light-filled strings (the opening section that reappears throughout) – this contrast perhaps to suggest the enclosed, doomed cell versus the window with light and life beyond. The soprano solo over the top (performed here by Dawn Upshaw in the landmark 1992 recording) expresses the longing and desperation of the prisoner, while also – I think – suggesting her youth and hope.
These pieces pop up on screen a lot, too – notably Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty and tv’s The Sopranos.
Further listening: The rest of the Sorrowful Songs, obvs. They’re glorious. But also his choral music is stunning – try the 5 Kurpian Songs.
Janacek – String Quartet No.2 “Intimate Letters” 1st movement (1928):
Leos Janacek, pronounced Ya-na-Czech (which is also his nationality, helpfully), wrote his “Intimate Letters” during a period of intense creativity in his early 60s.
He was completely obsessed with a woman 37 years his junior called Kamila Stösslová who, amusingly, wasn’t that bovv’d about him or his music. Despite her ambivalence, he wrote her over 700 desperately passionate letters, saying such sexy things as:
”You stand behind every note, you, living, forceful, loving. The fragrance of your body, the glow of your kisses – no, really of mine. Those notes of mine kiss all of you. They call for you passionately…”
It seems this unrequited love fuelled him and you can really hear his ardour in the tumult of notes – which must’ve been a bit shit for his wife and children. The viola was supposed to represent Kamila so it takes quite a prominent role across all the pieces.
Further listening: Kreutzer Sonata – also written during this period, though earlier. He wrote about it in letters to Kamila, describing the piece as an interpretation of Tolstoy’s novella of the same name. He wanted it to represent a “poor woman, tormented and run down.”
Lili Boulanger – “Nocturne” (1911):
Lili Boulanger was just 18 when she wrote this duet for piano and violin. Sickening! She was also the first woman to ever win the prestigious Prix-de-Rome composition prize.
Boulanger suffered all her life with respiratory problems and was finally carried off by TB at the fartoo-young age of 24. However, in this time she managed to be impressively prolific, writing over 50 works before 1918. She was encouraged by her musician parents and very influential family friends like, for example, Gabriel Fauré – a highly celebrated and prominent French composer.
She was overlooked for years, having been outstripped somewhat by her sister, Nadia, also a musician/composer who went on to teach many other famous composers (eg. Aaron Copland,
Philip Glass and Quincy Jones…) but who also was, crucially, alive so… she had that on Lili. Anyway, she’s making a very worthwhile comeback now.
In this piece, you can hear her impressionist influences, that of other frenchies Claude Débussy and Maurice Ravel for example – it’s just all luscious swells and delicate twinkling piano notes.
Like all nocturnes, it’s very sleepy and lullabic. Mmmmmmm.
Further listening: I love her Psalms, particularly no. 129 which has some real crunchy chords in it, as well as sounding a little like a Hitchcock film score…
Messiaen – “Quartet For The End of Time” 5th Movement (1941):
Get this: Messiaen wrote this piece (8 movements) WHILE HE WAS IN A POW CAMP. It’s a great story.
Enlisted with the French army, he was captured in Germany in 1940 and imprisoned. While there, he would listen to bird song and emulate it in music scratched on to paper obtained from a sympathetic guard. You can hear that more obviously in some of the other pieces that comprise the 4tet for the end of time, but I think this movement – a duet for cello and piano – is the most haunting and beautiful.
He wrote for what he had. Imprisoned alongside him were a clarinetist, a cellist, violinist and he himself played piano. The instruments were extremely shonky – bartered for by camp members – but was performed for other inmates and prison guards in the bleak mid-winter and Messiaen said he never had a more rapt audience. (Me passing any busker after lockdown).
Further listening: All the other pieces in this work. Sometimes sparse and atonal, they are challenging pieces but ultimately very evocative.
Schubert – Piano Trio No. 2 in D minor 3rd movement (1827):
Franz Schubert suffered ill health all his adult life and in his final years was almost definitely experiencing the horrific symptoms of syphilis.
On his death bed at a mere 31, he invited some friends to play for him and the piece he wanted to hear was Beethoven’s String 4tet No. 14. One of the players commented that “The King of Harmony has sent the King of Song a friendly bidding to the crossing”.
Fun fact – Schubert requested to be buried near his hero Beethoven in Vienna on his death. Both graves were exhumed years later, in order to be moved to another cemetery. Present at the exhumation was another composer, Anton Bruckner, who reached into the very coffins and HELD BOTH BEETHOVEN AND SCHUBERT’S SKULLS IN HIS HANDS. It is… a bit much.
Further listening: As mentioned, Schubert was famous for his beautiful songs. I would highly recommend the following if you wanted to delve… Standchen (D.889), Im fruhling (op. 101), Wintereisse song cycle (about a man going slowly mad – this was, unsurprisingly, written when Schubert was in the late stages of syphilis)
Beethoven – Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor opening movement (1826):
Well, I thought appropes to hear what Schubert heard as his light was fading… fun!
Ludwig van Beethoven. Whaddayagonnado? His music was so influential, both to audiences (popularity has barely waned since he was alive for crying out loud) but also to musicians and all the composers that followed him that it’s impossible to sum it all up in a pithy paragraph.
Beethoven, as many will know, went deaf in his lifetime. When he first realised what was happening, he wrote a long letter to his brothers saying that he was going to commit suicide. He didn’t (thank god) but by the time he wrote this piece he was completely deaf and near death. Astonishing. He didn’t survive to be present at its premiere… but he wouldn’t have heard it anyway. TOO SOON?
I’ve chosen a version of the quartet that is arranged for a string orchestra, because.. more juicy.. but the quartet proper is very worth a listen.
Further listening: Everything. B spanned two periods of compositional style: classical and romantic. Personally, I prefer the later more romantic stuff. Would recommend Piano concerto No. 5 (second movement). Or the Symphony No. 9 (particularly 3rd movement) – it was the last symphony he ever wrote.
Ligeti – Musica Ricercata No. 7 Cantabile (1951-1953):
György Ligeti was a Hungarian composer, who, like Shostakovich, lived and worked in the Eastern bloc under the restrictions of the communist, Soviet regime. He fled to Vienna in 1956 following the Hungarian Revolution which saw 2,500 Hungarians killed by a violent conflict with the Soviet army that were sent in to crush the uprising.
Ligeti survived all of this and became a leading proponent of the 20th Century minimalist movement, alongside other influential composers like Stockhausen and Koenig. Minimalism is known for repetitive patterns or pulses, steady drones and minimal musical materials. Not necessarily small ones though, Stockhausen famously used a helicopter in one of his pieces.
This piece is written for solo piano and you might recognise the similarities between Ligeti and other minimalist composers like Steve Reich and Philip Glass. It’s hypnotic and if you’re in your dark room, clutching your cold cup of tea, you could very well get lost in a mind-maze. Be careful.
Further listening: Atmosphères is an unconventional orchestral piece that was used by Kubrick in his 2001: A Space Odyssey and premiered in New York by Leonard Bernstein. A weird and great listen.
Florence Price – Fantasie Nègre (1932):
Price was one of the first African-American women to be recognised as a symphonic composer by her peers in the first half of the 20th century.
She was a prodigy who played her first piano concert at 4 and had her first composition published at 11. In a letter to a conductor at the time, Price herself outlines some of the obstacles she faced in her career: “My dear Dr. Koussevitzky, To begin with I have two handicaps—those of sex and race. I am a woman; and I have some Negro blood in my veins.” He never got back to her.
However, despite some significant hurdles – Jim Crow’s south should also be flagged (she and her family fled to Chicago to escape the rampant violence and lynchings) – she became the first African-American woman to have a symphony played by a major orchestra.
That being said, much of her music was overlooked for decades and has only recently been unearthed and given more air time, although there is still definitely a way to go.
In this very American piece, you can hear the influences of European classical music, as well as
African spiritual and blues. The Fantasie Nègre is also a genre of music that she coined and she no doubt paved the way for other African-American musicians, including in the 1930s a certain young Miss. Simone (then Eunice Waymon), who dreamed of becoming a concert pianist.
Further listening: Her Symphony in E-minor which catapulted her to fame when it was played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933.
Mahler – Ich Bin Der Welt Abhanden Gekommen
Mahler might be my favourite composer. His music is sweeping, romantic and filled with dark notes to make you tingle.
This song I chose to end with, because despite its title’s literal translation (“I am lost to the world”), it is actually a positive message for us to take with us into this – and all potential future – lockdown(s). This is a 1952 recording by a home-grown, Lancashire mezzo-soprano Kathleen Ferrier, which is a bit old-fashioned but I loves it.
He set the song to a poem, in which the poet celebrates his escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. People tend to assume that it’s sad because it’s about solitude, but I would argue that it’s actually commenting on how solitude and reflection can provide us with some of the most important discoveries and deepen our understanding of ourselves. I certainly found that with the first lockdown. Forced, finally, to STOP.
So, I will leave you with the translated lyrics of the song and wish you a wonderful lockdown, rich in contemplation, kindness and Schitt’s Creek.
I am lost to the world
with which I used to waste so much time,
It has heard nothing from me for so long that it may very well believe that I am dead!
It is of no consequence to me
Whether it thinks me dead;
I cannot deny it, for I really am dead to the world.
I am dead to the world’s tumult,
And I rest in a quiet realm! I live alone in my heaven,
In my love and in my song!
Further listening: Possibly the most beautiful piece of music ever written and used in the 1971 film Death in Venice based on the novella of the same name by Thomas Mann, Mahler’s 5th symphony (4th movement) is pure dream stuff.