Monthly Playlist: April 2023
I don't know about all of you, but I often discover a new meaning or a perspective after having done something, only to wish I’d discovered them before or at least while I was doing it. I experienced this recently on my trip to Las Cruces, NM.
Living in NYC for 6 years has definitely made me embrace the face-paced, ambitious, hustle-and-bustle lifestyle. It's not unique to NYC as it can exist in any big city, but the intensity of it is something that I've never experienced anywhere else. When I arrived in Las Cruces, NM- a quiet, vast, desert city- I suddenly became so anxious. I just didn't know what to do with myself. The first day was tough, I just wanted to go back to the city and find myself something to do. But as the voices inside me started to quieten down, I started to enjoy the silence. It had been a while since I was able to reach that state of quiet solitude and actually appreciate it. Maybe it helped that I was staying with a lovely old lady with three adorable dogs.
What I realized after a few days was that suddenly, I was thinking and seeing things with more clarity and freedom. As I reflected back on the past weeks and months, I started to discover new meanings and perspectives to things that hadn't crossed my mind when I was actually experiencing them.
But maybe new perspectives generally emerge upon deep reflection of the past, whether it’s your own past or history in general. That got me thinking about musical works that reexamine the past in a new way, and below are some of the works that came to my mind. Perhaps the playlist will inspire you to look at your recent experiences, memories further back in life, or things around you in a new way.
Keep scrolling down to read the explanation to each work in the playlist! Let me know your thoughts :)
Mari
1. Recomposition of 17th-century Italian theater music by the 20th century composer Igor Stravinsky.
“Pulcinella was my discovery of the past…it was a backward look of course…but it was a look in the mirror too.”
2. A contemporary work inspired by plainchant developed in 9th-century Europe.
“Gregorian chant was for me the first impulse [toward a new beginning]. It was unadulterated admiration. I had never heard this music before. And when I came across it by chance, I knew: this is what we now need, what I now need.”
3. Robert Schumann’s approach to fugue, a musical form made famous by the father of music, J.S. Bach.
4. An innovative a cappella work written in 2012 inspired by a 16th-century Baroque dance.
5. A 20th century Viennese composer’s perspective on Renaissance counterpoint (relationship between multiple melodies).
6. A 21st-century perspective on a musical genre created in the 18th century: string quartet.
“I suddenly remembered a Cézanne quote I’d heard years ago: ‘The day will come when a single, freshly observed carrot will start a revolution.’...I envisioned the piece as a celebration of that spirit of fresh observation and of new ways of looking at old things”