Music + time + place: perfect conjunctions

[Nick Armstrong]

Sometimes, with the ability to listen to music 'on the move', perfect conjunctions occur.

I had one this morning, about 5.45am. Having dropped French family off at Liverpool St for an early train to the airport following my father's funeral yesterday, I drove back through dark, pre-dawn London with RVW's 'London' Symphony on the system.

The pulsing string accompaniment plus horn/trumpet/flute solos in the Lento second movement (2' 20" onwards in the Haitink/LPO recording) as I drove up a completely deserted Constitution Hill provided one such perfect conjunction.

You can drive up the grey lane in the very centre of the road (view by day below), with Wellington Arch at the end, and through the central pair of lamps at the Memorial Gate at the upper end; along each side the whole length of Constitution Hill are perfectly symmetrical lines of 'Victorian style' street lamps, their light slightly hazy in the chill morning damp and dark.

Unforgettable.

Anyone else got any perfect 'time and place and music' moments?


.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It was just over three weeks after I'd passed my driving test, and less than a fortnight after I'd "bought" my first car. I was travelling down from Lancashire, back to my digs in Leyton after the Christmas/New Year break and I had Der Rosenkavalier on the tape player (the brand-new Karajan/VPO recording). It was a long journey, and just as I pulled off the motorway the fanfares heralding the Presentation of the Silver Rose rang out, accompanying the lights of North London seen from the flyover.


(The thrill of the occasion survives even the memory of the dense fog I almost immediately drove into - I couldn't see a darn thing, and quickly learnt that fog lights are positively dangerous in fog. Fortunately, I could see "C'ford" on the road in front of me - "Oh good! I can find my way home from Chingford; I just follow these signs."

Now I'm sure that, on a fine day, Chelmsford is a lovely place to visit ....

[gradus]

Rather longer than momentary but seeing Peter Grimes performed on the beach at Aldeburgh worked it's magic.

[Serial_Apologist]

Sitting by Amberley Wild Brooks in the car next to my then-girlfriend, one warm summer day, listening to Eric Parkin play John Ireland's "Amberley Wild Brooks" on one of my cassettes.

[Nick Armstrong]

All the above

S_A - was that serendipity? I guess you played the piece at the place deliberately?

Reminds me of another of mine - listening to Ives's 'The Housatonic at Stockbridge' while standing on the bank of the Housatonic at Stockbridge (Mass.)

[pastoralguy]

Walking from Worcester to Lower Broadheath with Elgar's symphony 1, conducted by the man himself, on the headphones! (Actually, iirc, some of the road doesn't have pavement so it can be quite risky!)

When I got there, the cottage hadn't opened yet so I listened to the slow movement in he garden. A truly magical moment!

[pastoralguy]

Also, my late Uncle Bob, who pretty much introduced me to classical music, had a 7" EP of Sibelius' 'Karelia Suite' played by Thomas Jensen with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra which I used to listen to relentlessly as a child. After his funeral, I was driving home and Rob Cowan played that recording on the radio!

[Serial_Apologist]

S_A - was that serendipity? I guess you played the piece at the place deliberately?

Reminds me of another of mine - listening to Ives's 'The Housatonic at Stockbridge' while standing on the bank of the Housatonic at Stockbridge (Mass.)

No it wasn't, Cali: Jane was living down in Brighton by that time, and I here, and I'd planned to pick her up at her place; we'd drive to Ditchling Beacon, gaze across the shimmering Weald, then down to lunch in a pub in the village before wandering round to the somewhat secluded Windmill on the S Downs escarpment where Ireland lived his later years, then motoring the short distance to Amberley in time for tea. I'd surreptitiously slipped the cassette into the glove compartment before leaving home, intending it as a surprise, which it was!

I hope seeing your dad off went all right - inasfar as these things ever can.

[Lat-Literal]

I tried to take Van Morrison onto a beach and into the countryside via walkman and was surprised that it didn't work for me.

Think it was too contrived an effort, he probably benefits from being representational, and my friends alongside me nattered.

But..................

[Lat-Literal]

A moving post Caliban - and given that I have been composing this post in my head for more than an hour Serial_Apologist, your one is extraordinary. Perhaps it is the place!

Rach and the Dean

There are places one can be where it feels like having been temporarily moved into another world. An obvious example would be the Yorkshire Dales in which cities are completely forgotten unless they are suddenly recalled. But some are not off the beaten track. The drive - or walk - up Ditchling Beacon is always a wonderful experience as is the walk to the Jack and Jill windmills at its top. Some miles ahead of them, there is a reach to the sea and ideally that is Rottingdean with a windmill of its own on the pitch and putt "links" course. As a child I was taken there several times each year. After a few years, I introduced it to a group of friends. We settled into a similar routine across decades with the only difference being that we had a pub lunch rather taking packed lunches. I also continued to visit it with my parents with boxes of memories and salads prepared with great care.

In autumn or winter, the pitch and putt empties by mid afternoon. There are just a few people dotted around. It is so quiet you would be able to hear a pin drop if it wasn't for the sound of the waves and traffic on the road between sea and greens. The latter sounds like a part of the sea itself. There is often the hint of a sun beginning to set, even when for the most part it has been rainy. It is as if the seaside always finds fine weather after 3.30pm. The air cools slightly but not sharply. There is a visual haze looking sidewards to the land beyond the flags while the sea decides to gloom or remain just the same. The immediate building - not especially close even to the hedge at hole number seven - is that of St Dunstans. The home for many blind people. One wonders sometimes how they experience such an atmospheric place and whether their experiences are for the better or worse.

Further in the distance towards Brighton is Roedean, a place that functions presumably with reference to etiquette or St Trinians or both those things in equal measure. And then a mile or two beyond it, Brighton. There is nothing of its detailed character from this perspective. It looks strangely modern. I'd swear that chunks of the Wellesley Road in Croydon had been positioned there for the effect albeit not that they are at all sure themselves why they are there. Certainly there is no evidence of the existence of those buildings if one drives to the main pier. None of it is noticed or even felt when putting on one of the greens. It is all in the pitching and the waiting for friends to tee off. But because there is considerable pitching and waiting and, of course, hacking, it can seem constant atmospherically. There is a piquancy. It is pleasant and unnerving. It's a place for musing on I am not sure what except that it is a bit like being in an environmental frame. There are no divots or mud or overgrowth in the immediacy. Time and place are mostly somewhere else.

Well, we enjoyed those games. We enjoyed them even at hole number 14 or 16 when there were signs that we were not enjoying them as earlier. Maybe we would prefer to be at the final hole. And at the end of all eighteen - we were normally the only ones there now except for the man in the shed - we handed in our clubs and did our best to keep short the inevitable dialogue about the winners and losers. At least, the losers did. The car which long before Ditchling on the journey down had become its characteristic all-confinement looked like blessed relief. It might get us three quarters of the way to home before the onset of icy darkness. There was never any need to venture into Brighton. It was a sideline.

Would it have been Woodingdean and then Falmer before the beacon back? Perhaps. And it is probably either side of Falmer where there are reasonably lengthy stretches of road with downland rolling away from the racing traffic. Invariably, they would as we reached them be ablaze, the low sun so red-orange that only the darker greenery below reminded us that it was now cold out there. Indeed, its tropical appearance somehow evened up the grimmer evening elements so in its see-saw balance it conveyed a comforting warmth.

Anyhow, the new stadium for Brighton and Hove Albion was built controversially on a small part of it so there is a ready made spaceship for those who need such things to sail. Being a supporter of football, I have never got hot under the collar about its construction. The university is close. It is another place of learning. But in the days of the far away Goldstone Ground and hence no blot or blemish, we did switch on the radio. The winners had ceased their dialogue on where the losers made mistakes. And it was as good fortune would have it this music which rolled towards the vehicle windows. It burst from the sky's fire as it scorched bracken into acre upon acre not of course but of well-tended nature:

Sergei Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 2, First Movement - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8l37utZxMQ

[Nick Armstrong]

Thanks for those posts, Lat!

I tried to take Van Morrison onto a beach

You remind me of another 'moment' - beach-based - and again involving RVW. Easiest just to quote my post in 2013 about the opening Prom, dear old Ralph's Sea Symphony:

But the slow movement, and the cosmic calm of the start of the last movement, are just as great in another way.

I've told this once before here, but the slow movement gave me one of the best musical epiphanic moments - I once spent a month in Polynesia, and one night on one island, it was too hot to sleep - at about 4 in the morning, I crept out, and went the few yards to the sea's edge with the portable CD player in which was the Haitink / LPO 'Sea Symphony'. Sitting on that beach at night alone, looking up at the Southern Cross and millions of other stars, I played the slow movement...

"On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different..."

As I played it, I heard footsteps on the sand - a local fisherman approached, smiled, sat down cross-legged next to me, and listened for a few moments, his bare knee just touching mine... He then got up, we nodded at each other, and he padded off... No words were spoken, but that connection, there, with that music and those lines, was a big moment for me.

Great piece, important piece in my life. Looking forward!


"O vast Rondure, swimming in space,
Cover'd all over with visible power and beauty,
Alternate light and day and the teeming spiritual darkness,
Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above,
Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees,
With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention,
Now first it seems my thought begins to span thee."

[BBMmk2]

Travelling back from Lancashire, after a brass band contest, managed to have Borodin's Prince Igor on which lasted about the whole journey! Been a fan of it ever since. One of Radio 3's 'Livwe from the met' programmes, iirr.

[ardcarp]

Interesting how many contributions to this thread involve being in the car. Is this because, in our busy lives, the car is the only place we get to hear, alone, a piece of music at length and uninterrupted?

Not this one though.

Walking from Worcester to Lower Broadheath with Elgar's symphony 1, conducted by the man himself, on the headphones!

I'm glad it worked for you Pastoralguy. I don't much like hearing music outdoors, even when the particular 'outdoors' is supposed to match he music. I can't explain why.

I'm very pushed to think of an example from my life to add to this thread. I am very often moved, sometimes to tears, by music. Indeed some pieces almost always do it (Byrd's Lullaby, Eccard's When to the Temple Mary went never fail) but I'm finding the music+time+place difficult, and the only ones I can think of involve funerals.

[Flay]

Walking the West Highland Way a few years ago, getting towards the end of the 23-ish mile stretch from Kinlochleven to Bridge of Orchy (we did it north to south), I was straggling behind the rest, cold, miserably exhausted and soaked. I put the Alpine Symphony on the iPod. Just as Strauss reached the summit, I too made it to the top of a hill; the rain cleared, and I could see my destination not too far away. Absolutely uplifting!

Then it started lashing down again but it didn't bother me any more

[Lat-Literal]

Thanks for those posts, Lat!



You remind me of another 'moment' - beach-based - and again involving RVW. Easiest just to quote my post in 2013 about the opening Prom, dear old Ralph's Sea Symphony:

That's a great post, Cali - thank you very much for it!

For a completely different atmosphere, I know I put on a selection of the Clash coming into Toledo.

At getting on for 26, I had hardly been abroad. Just a day trip to France with the school at 12 and a coach holiday to Austria at 14. The cut-off point for an inter-rail ticket was 26 then. I was the oldest in our group. Six of us decided that if we were all to do such a holiday it would have to be in that summer otherwise I would be too old. There was one night in Bordeaux and a couple of very brief stops - at the Spanish border and at railway stations in Madrid. But it was the entry into Toledo with its extraordinarily different terrain that confirmed that we were really in another part of the planet, it having been signalled earlier by train guards waking us up to check tickets, each with a significant looking gun.

I wouldn't say that I felt any sort of revolutionary spirit but to my mind it was like having been placed in the wilds of America. I have never been beyond Europe. Strummer, the son of a diplomat, was very well-travelled and there was almost a swashbuckling aspect to what they did. Much of it was in various ways surprisingly cinematic. From memory - and my memory could be wrong - the outskirts of Toledo from the windows of the train looked watery and yet a place of desert moon rock. The music in those moments did make sense to me. Of course, one gets into a city or a town and the emphasis changes. It was then cafes and cathedrals and history and tourists and it seemed more identifiable.

Other than the deliberate, there has been considerable synchronicity where music has been involved but my mind is currently a bit blank in that area. What I have already realised because of your thread is that a lot of the music I associate strongly with place and time - other than concerts etc - has been linked from the perspective of indoors in what I suppose has been subconsciously a slightly poetic way. But here's a more amusing one in terms of actuality. The longest wait I ever had for a meal having decided to dine out was in Keswick. I reckon it was three hours between the order and the first plate. Throughout.....throughout...Al Martino's "Spanish Eyes". If I don't know it word for word, I should do!

Al Martino - Spanish Eyes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enIdTGckjKs