As a musician, it is not surprising that many pieces of music are associated with particular events/memories. However, it never ceases to amaze me of the wealth of different ways in which the musical memories come about – sometimes it has been through a concert taken part in, sometimes just listening, sometimes music in the background when something has happened and a host of other ways.
For this post I don’t particularly intend to analyse the memories, rather to pull some examples of different ways music has entered my life – or more specifically has entered my mind. I should also say that there are other things that trigger memories – places, films, even smells! – but this post will limit itself to music.
I guess the “they’re playing our song” reaction is a very common one – associating a particular piece of music with your thoughts and feelings for a loved one or a close friend. Sometimes the connection is VERY obvious – so many ‘pop’ songs are about love and friendship anyway – three that are particularly poignant for me are Ae Fond Kiss, You’re the meaning in my life, You’re my inspiration and With you on my mind. Doesn’t take much imagination there!! Very direct associations.
Less obvious would be Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C, Mozart’s 4th Horn Concerto or Vaughan Williams’ English Folk Song Suite – none of which have any overtly romantic theme, but they all remind me of particular people – as does the brass band piece Great and Glorious and even Bruckner’s 7th Symphony.
Dvorak’s marvellous 8th symphony immediately evokes my very first ‘real’ orchestral concert as a player. The whole programme does actually, but the symphony conjures up specific memories. There are lots of other pieces of music that have no particular memory other than having played them in a particular place – although that, of course, then triggers secondary memories about other things that happened.
For instance, performing Schubert’s “Great” Symphony at Snape Maltings – then having to make sure that my section principal made it back to his billet safely – he was rather the worse for drink!
Performing the brass band piece The Holy War at the Royal Albert Hall, Mendelssohn’s Scotch Symphony in Aberdeen, being part of a big Horn section for Mahler 1 in Glasgow, Sibelius’ Karelia Suite at Meadowbank in Edinburgh, Walton’s Spitfire Prelude and Fugue in Coventry Cathedral and Berlioz’ Symphony Fantastique at York Minster are all performances that immediately come to mind when I hear the music again – even though in some cases at least I played the music elsewhere.
Also a performance of the 1812 Overture in Poole complete with some of the loudest bang’s I’ve ever heard! Made even more memorable when the entire string section could be seen to flinch at each bang – even the one that didn’t go off at all!!
Then there are the concert’s that I attended that have associated memories (not all direct ones). Steve Reich in Vienna associated with the sounds (and flickering lights) of a storm outside during the concert and leaving the concert hall to find a foot or so of snow had fallen.
The Canadian Brass I have heard several times, but the arrangement of Just a Closer Walk with Thee takes me back to Vienna (and the same concert hall as I was at for the Steve Reich concert).
Vaughan Williams Mass in C performed in the Karlskirche – the choir in the organ loft behind the audience who were facing the altar.
Britten’s War Requiem also, perhaps perversely, has associations with Vienna and a wonderful performance by the Wiener Symphoniker and a choir from Bratislava and soloists (if I remember correctly) also from Eastern Europe. The War Requiem also has another memory associated with it though – and this is interesting how it can invoke two completely separate memories. The second one is of walking to a football match when I was younger – often listened to the radio on the way – it was a programme called (I think) My Music where a celebrity chose a couple of hours worth of music and talked about why it was important to them. It was on that programme that I first heard the haunting and ethereal “Let us Sleep Now” and the ending of the War Requiem.
That leads me neatly on to some memories that are seemingly out of context – a vision of the Alps out of a plane window while listening to the hymn Shepherds Arise from The Mysteries production at the National Theatre. Or what about humour? The Grieg Piano Concerto immediately invokes memories of Andre Previn and Morecambe and Wise – “I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”!!!!
Then there is Beethoven’s Egmont Overture – forever linked in my mind with the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics. It was played at the memorial service.
A couple of Sibelius symphonies are characterised by memories of listening to them in specific places – No.2 at school in the ‘cupboard’ between the two music rooms with loads of extraneous noises from outside (because you had to have the window open) and it has always been associated in my mind with the outdoors – No.5 listened to in hospital after an op.
West Side Story, The Pirates of Penzance, Schumann 4 and Beethoven 4 all trigger humorous memories of various sorts – In West Side Story having my music stand spun round by the trumpet player pushing his seat back as we stood up to play the mambo; Pirates of Penzance with the smallest orchestra you could imagine and a very long note at the end of the first act on the final night (because the conductor had a habit of ‘forgetting’ to bring us off, so we decided to wait until she did); Schumann 4 without a trumpet section for the first couple of movements because they were in the pub too long during the interval; and Beethoven 4 where myself and the principal Horn had to sit almost back to back at the start to avoid making each other laugh whilst playing the opening pedal notes.
There are lots more – but this is enough to be going on with.
UPDATE : During the Covid lockdown times I started posting some music memories on Facebook and these are now being copied across to the Music tag of this blog. I think that most of the music I mentioned in this post reappears there with greater detail on the memories.