As a musician, it is not surprising that many pieces of music are associated with particular events\/memories.\u00a0 However, it never ceases to amaze me of the wealth of different ways in which the musical memories come about \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
For this post I don\u2019t particularly intend to analyse the memories, rather to pull some examples of different ways music has entered my life \u2013 or more specifically has entered my mind.\u00a0 I should also say that there are other things that trigger memories \u2013 places, films, even smells! \u2013 but this post will limit itself to music.<\/p>\n
I guess the \u201cthey\u2019re playing our song\u201d reaction is a very common one \u2013 associating a particular piece of music with your thoughts and feelings for a loved one or a close friend.\u00a0 Sometimes the connection is VERY obvious \u2013 so many \u2018pop\u2019 songs are about love and friendship anyway \u2013 three that are particularly poignant for me are\u00a0Ae Fond Kiss<\/strong>,\u00a0You\u2019re the meaning in my life, You\u2019re my inspiration<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0With you on my mind<\/strong>.\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t take much imagination there!!\u00a0 Very direct associations.<\/p>\n Less obvious would be Haydn\u2019s\u00a0Cello Concerto in C<\/strong>, Mozart\u2019s\u00a04th Horn Concerto<\/strong>\u00a0or Vaughan Williams\u2019\u00a0English Folk Song Suite<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 none of which have any overtly romantic theme, but they all remind me of particular people – as does the brass band piece\u00a0Great and Glorious<\/strong>\u00a0and even Bruckner\u2019s\u00a07th Symphony<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Dvorak\u2019s marvellous\u00a08th symphony<\/strong>\u00a0immediately evokes my very first \u2018real\u2019 orchestral concert as a player.\u00a0 The whole programme does actually, but the symphony conjures up specific memories.\u00a0 There are lots of other pieces of music that have no particular memory other than having played them in a particular place \u2013 although that, of course, then triggers secondary memories about other things that happened.<\/p>\n For instance, performing Schubert\u2019s\u00a0\u201cGreat\u201d Symphony<\/strong>\u00a0at Snape Maltings \u2013 then having to make sure that my section principal made it back to his billet safely \u2013 he was rather the worse for drink!<\/p>\n Performing the brass band piece\u00a0The Holy War<\/strong>\u00a0at the Royal Albert Hall, Mendelssohn\u2019s\u00a0Scotch Symphony<\/strong>\u00a0in Aberdeen, being part of a big Horn section for\u00a0Mahler 1<\/strong>\u00a0in Glasgow, Sibelius\u2019\u00a0Karelia Suite<\/strong>\u00a0at Meadowbank in Edinburgh, Walton\u2019s\u00a0Spitfire Prelude and Fugue<\/strong>\u00a0in Coventry Cathedral and Berlioz\u2019\u00a0Symphony Fantastique<\/strong>\u00a0at York Minster are all performances that immediately come to mind when I hear the music again \u2013 even though in some cases at least I played the music elsewhere.<\/p>\n Also a performance of the\u00a01812 Overture<\/strong>\u00a0in Poole complete with some of the loudest bang\u2019s I\u2019ve ever heard!\u00a0 Made even more memorable when the entire string section could be seen to flinch at each bang \u2013 even the one that didn\u2019t go off at all!!<\/p>\n Then there are the concert\u2019s that I attended that have associated memories (not all direct ones).\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n The Canadian Brass I have heard several times, but the arrangement of\u00a0Just a Closer Walk with Thee<\/strong>\u00a0takes me back to Vienna (and the same concert hall as I was at for the Steve Reich concert).<\/p>\n Vaughan Williams\u00a0Mass in C<\/strong>\u00a0performed in the Karlskirche \u2013 the choir in the organ loft behind the audience who were facing the altar.<\/p>\n Britten\u2019s\u00a0War Requiem<\/strong>\u00a0also, 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.\u00a0 The War Requiem also has another memory associated with it though \u2013 and this is interesting how it can invoke two completely separate memories.\u00a0 The second one is of walking to a football match when I was younger \u2013 often listened to the radio on the way \u2013 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.\u00a0 It was on that programme that I first heard the haunting and ethereal \u201cLet us Sleep Now\u201d and the ending of the War Requiem.<\/p>\n That leads me neatly on to some memories that are seemingly out of context \u2013 a vision of the Alps out of a plane window while listening to the hymn\u00a0Shepherds Arise<\/strong>\u00a0from The Mysteries production at the National Theatre.\u00a0 Or what about humour?\u00a0 The Grieg\u00a0Piano Concerto<\/strong>\u00a0immediately invokes memories of Andre Previn and Morecambe and Wise \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order\u201d!!!!<\/p>\n Then there is Beethoven\u2019s\u00a0Egmont Overture<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 forever linked in my mind with the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics.\u00a0 It was played at the memorial service.<\/p>\n A couple of Sibelius symphonies are characterised by memories of listening to them in specific places \u2013\u00a0No.2<\/strong>\u00a0at school in the \u2018cupboard\u2019 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 \u2013\u00a0No.5<\/strong>\u00a0listened to in hospital after an op.<\/p>\n West Side Story<\/strong>,\u00a0The Pirates of Penzance<\/strong>,\u00a0Schumann 4<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Beethoven 4<\/strong>\u00a0all trigger humorous memories of various sorts \u2013 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 \u2018forgetting\u2019 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.<\/p>\n There are lots more \u2013 but this is enough to be going on with.<\/p>\n UPDATE : During the Covid lockdown times I started posting some music memories on Facebook and these are now being copied across to the Music<\/a> categoryof this blog.\u00a0 I think that most of the music I mentioned in this post reappears there with greater detail on the memories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a musician, it is not surprising that many pieces of music are associated with particular events\/memories.\u00a0 However, it never ceases to amaze me of the wealth of different ways in which the musical memories come about \u2013 sometimes it has been through a concert taken part in, sometimes just listening, sometimes music in the … Continue reading “Music Memories”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[79,97],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ignorance","tag-cognition","tag-musical-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3388,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions\/3388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}