Music + time + place: perfect conjunctions

[Serial_Apologist]

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.

I always reckons he understood something of Quantum Physics, did our Whitman...

[EdgeleyRob]

Listening to Britten's Sea Interludes via I pod on Aldeburgh beach was special.
Leningrad Symphony,1st movement (up to the start of the invasion music) on a portable cd player.
Didn't have time for any more as we were on a guided tour of St Petersburgh at the time (15 years ago)
Very emotional.

[oddoneout]

A few years ago I attended a lunchtime recital of solo guitar pieces in a church. The setting is sublime acoustically and visually so any music there is a joy but this is etched on my visual and aural memory. It was a beautiful spring day and through the clear glass of a side window I could see blue sky and sunshine, and there was a muted sound of birds in their spring urgency. The soloist started to play a piece by a Japanese composer depicting cherry blossom time, and as he did so cherry blossom petals started to drift past the window from the trees in the churchyard outside.
Serendipity of the highest order as far as I am concerned.

[Lat-Literal]

Schooldays - End of Term, Croydon Parish Church:

Ralph Vaughan Williams - Rhosymedre - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WttaIhugsIo

[gurnemanz]

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:

"Beach-based" reminds me of August 1968. Four of us aged 19 had driven from England in a rather dodgy Hillman Minx for a camping holiday around the the Adriatic. Our first stop was Jesolo just round the bay from Venice. We put up our tents, went for a swim, had some sort of meal and as it got dark we sat around drinking red wine and watching the phosphorescence on the sea. We were tuned to Radio Luxembourg and on came the new, just issued Beatles single. It was quite a setting to hear the startlingly original Hey Jude for the first time.

[Ferretfancy]

I have two vivid conjunctions with the music of Vaughan Williams, once while listening, and once in my imagination.

While doing National Service I was stationed in Egypt, and one lonely Sunday morning I heard the BBC Third Programme review of the first complete set of the symphonies conducted by Adrian Boult. I remember standing by the rediffusion speaker hearing the Pastoral for the first time, and being carried away by a homesick response to something that spoke deeply of England.

The second occasion was much more recent, sailing down to McMurdo Sound and the Ross Ice Shelf, while the Sinfonia Antartica surged through my mind. Ten years later I can still recapture the moment.