Any fans of classical (and other periods and genres often lumped in with classical: early music, mediaeval, chant, baroque, classical, opera, romantic, modern, etc) - and any curious listeners - this thread is for you
I think of this aria often in my recovery: “Nessun Dorma” (“None shall sleep!”), from Turandot - and this performance is my favourite (Pavarotti, 1972):
I think of it in my recovery because of its closing line:
“… vincero, vincero, vincero!” (I will win, I will win, I will win!)
Calaf (the character singing the aria) has fallen in love at first sight with Princess Turandot, whose suitors must solve her three riddles: the suitor who solves them wins her hand; failing to solve them, however, means death.
What are some of your favourite pieces in the classical canon? Doesn’t have to have a recovery connection; the fact that my share in this post has a connection is just a coincidence; that aria was one of my favourites long before I made a connection with recovery.
Here’s another one. I sang this in my choir when I was in secondary school. It is one of those pieces which is so masterfully assembled - a constellation of harmonies, one after another, immaculate - that for the time you’re singing it, everything is perfect: the universe is in the music, in perfect order.
This one is a setting of the poem “In Flanders Fields”, by Canadian poet John McCrae. The poem is a lament: McCrae wrote it in 1915 after presiding over the funeral of a friend who died in World War I; it was published that year, in the English magazine, Punch.
Flanders Fields was a blanket term used in England at the time for the WWI battlefields of Europe (it refers to the Flanders region of Belgium).
Glenn Gould performs Bach better than anyone else. There, I said it
This specific piece of piano music is one of my favourites (both the piece itself - I think Bach here captures the beauty in simple things, in two minutes of music - and the performance: Gould captures something in his playing here that I haven’t heard in any other performance of this piece):
Plus, Gould was super playful (and weird, and many other things - he was intense). I love it. Check out this chair - handmade by his father - that he brought to all his performances and recordings. He wouldn’t play without it. (And this is just one of his quirks. There are many more!)
Life is beautiful, but it’s also a total mystery sometimes. Why things happen the way they do is anybody’s guess - but still, somehow, things work out. (The fact that any of us is able to turn our lives around and find our way to recovery is proof of this magnificent and powerful mystery in action: there is a “click” to the human psyche as it acts in the world, how we work as individuals, and as communities and groups. I’ve always marvelled at it. How do we do it? How are humans so capable, and so confusing, at the same time?)
The text in this piece is about a moment of reverence and wonder, but I think it applies to anyone who marvels in wonder at the universe and at human capability and connection and compassion:
A favourite piece of mine is Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana”, in particular the version performed by Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony. Very moody, intense, dramatic choral piece…sung partially in Latin and in German. Interesting backstory to it, too.
I love music. Period. Maybe especially when different genres meet and mix. Too many genres and styles to mention. Anyhow. I love Max Richter for example.
I love classical music. I was reading a book ‘12 birds to save your life’ and it talked about The Lark Ascending, I found it and just cried through it. Beautiful. I couldn’t believe I’d never heard it before
If you like the avant-garde stuff, check out John Cage some time. He has this one song (if you can call it that) entitled “4’33”. It’s four minutes and thirty-three seconds of SILENCE. Can’t get more avant-garde than that!
I’ve listened to classical music since I was a child, also played it a lot on the
piano, happily struggling through the original compositions one chord every five minutes.
Listened to a lot of Wagner and Gregorian chants in college. Satie. All of it. Love it all.
For years I put lights on many outdoor trees, usually freezing, and always listening to Pavarotti.
