I bought John Adams' Naive and Sentimental Music when it was first released on CD in 2002. I bought it on a whim and was immediately taken with it. I had been enamored of Adams' music for quite some time and I'd been buying a lot of it for some time. I liked the piece a lot for a time but I don't think I really "got" it and more-or-less kind of shelved it, listening to it every once in a while.
Then - in 2006 I think - I bought the score. I've been reading it for over four years now and it's slowly revealing itself. Yes, it's a "desert island" piece but for me it's so much more than that. It's a piece that I could just crawl into and live inside for a while. I dare say that this piece might have changed my life. It never gets old, never grows tired. In a way it nurtures me. (It's a little disheartening to know that I'll probably never hear it in my hometown unless it's being played by a touring group.)
There are a handful of other pieces like this but Naive and Sentimental Music is probably the piece that means the most to me in this way.
What do you think? What pieces go beyond being "desert island pieces" for you? What works are a part of you?
3 comments:
It's an interesting question, it's been awhile since I really sat down and crawled inside a piece. I remember certain Mahler symphonies (#2 and 9 especially) that I listened to and studied the scores for in my younger and more impressionable years.
Last summer when I was transcribing the cues from Giacchino's 'Lost' score, I felt really connected to the music that made parts of the final episode really resonante becuase I was picturing how the music all fit together.
But I don't think I've had the same experience as you have had with this piece.
I've given this a lot of thought, and I've come up with nothing. There are many works of music that could be considered integral to my soul, but I honestly don't know what is legitimately that high on the totem pole.
But I have given it a lot of thought. I'll keep thinking...
Strangely enough, until I heard this piece, I was still on my way to being an ardent modernist (is that a paradox?). My shift away from that kind of writing had been underway for some time but in a glacial kind of way. Hearing this piece was the equivalent of a chunk of ice the size of Rhode Island falling off the Greenland ice sheet.
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