MUSIC THAT ENDURES AND ENLIGHTENS

I have a new semester.
Naturally, I also have new classes.

I am loving my humanities class.
Homework so far means listening to music.

THIS I can do!!

We are asked to answer the following question, discuss it with our classmates, and ask at least two of them a question about their choices that is probing, challenging or a follow-up question. And it must be substantive.

Imagine that you are about to be shipwrecked on a desert island for the next thirty years. You are given an iPod—it has unlimited solar powered batteries, but only enough space for five pieces of music. What will you load on this iPod?

First let me state that although I love music that I seldom turn on any noise when I can be alone with simple quiet. I like to hear the world that surrounds me. And I almost never put in both earphones when I do listen privately to music. Besides when I really listen to music, that is ALL I do - I have to remember to breathe and not get so lost in the sounds that I never return. So I answered thus:

THIRTY years? You've got to be kidding! Pick only 5 that wouldn't become drivel after they were memorized? – because surely in that long I would know the pieces intimately note by note.

I would pick a great variety of the longest pieces that I could find, and take nothing that I already know and can sing to myself anytime I want, anyway I like it at the particular time. I keep a list of some of those on my everyday blog so that I can share them (without imposing the sounds of self on anyone’s ears), but I would not choose most of those. I know them very well and they would be with me anyway in my heart and mind.

Since this is a fantasy, I will impose a supposition that a small pocket sized hymnal is on my person and even if it gets wet I can dry out the pages. I know most of the hymns in my mind and this would provide music that I will never tire of and by the time 30 years is over I will know every hymn and have written new verses, versions and hymns. (Like when you sing the words of a hymn to the music of another with the same meter. It describes how to do that in the back of the hymn book at the first of the section titled 'Meters'– it is cool.)

Nevertheless, although I wouldn't select hymns, I think I would take some version of Handel’s Messiah. Perhaps I could find a full version performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square. Maybe I could improve my own voice by listening to what they do with their voices.

Also, I would pick songs that could perhaps be replicated by objects I might find. For sure I would want something with a heavy drum solo. Long before electronics could replicate consistent rhythms being able to do so was a significant talent (as was the ability to ‘jam’ like in jazz and the blues – I suppose my second pick would have to be something like Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue). Could I learn to make rhythms and sounds by making my own “drums” and other ‘instruments” and first mimicking and later expanding the rhythms and sounds from something like In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly? Maybe I could experiment with other sounds the way this band did with electronic sounds . . .

But what else? ‘The Prayer’ seems so content limited and lacking in complexity despite that fabulous talents of Celine Dion and Andrea Botticelli. Pachelbel Canon in D Major; Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring; and Fur Elise are almost imprinted in my mind. Perhaps I should choose something less familiar. But then again, something familiar and loved might by nice – ah – perhaps Peter and the Wolf! YES. This is a story and love affair with music in its own right!

And last – hmmm — other classics? Tchaikovsky? Debussy? Hayden? Rachmaninov? Liszt? Wagner? Bach? or some classic rock like Rare Earth? I would need to put lots of options in a hat and ‘draw lots.’

Ha! Using this method it looks like Tchaikovsky will be going with me. I will need to research which of his compositions might be the most versatile. Maybe, again random, Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker Suite. It is unique and nice and light, but wait, I could choose the whole “Nutcracker Suite” right? The length isn't specified. Can that qualify as ‘one’ piece of music? I pick it!