Adagio 1
I like the word “Adagio”, denoting that the passage ought to be played rather slowly, leisurely, and gracefully. If my life were a music, I have always hoped it would be “adagio molto cantabile e dolce."
Anyway, here are some adagios, or sometimes called slow movements, that I like to hear in search of inner peace, with some musical background of each piece. Hope you can see that classical music isn’t too boring and that it is in fact a very romantic form of art.
Let's start with the hopeless romantic: Schumann
This one is from "Paradise and the Peri.”
This prayer is from an oratorio based on Persian Myths. The music is filled with quiet wishes for a peaceful sleep. One of the few compositions of Schumann in his final years; he had been suffering from a severe mental disorder for the second half of his life. In the midst of terrible depression and hallucination, he must have wanted inner peace more than anyone, comforting others with the words he wished to hear. Sadly, after a suicide attempt, he passed away in a mental asylum at the age of 46, leaving behind a wife, Clara, and 5 children.
"Träumerei", a piano piece, is also very much famous for its dreamy harmonic progression. Schumann feverishly sought to integrate music with the realm of literature; It is very unfortunate that he had to die like that.
2. Chopin
This E-minor piano concerto is among the most well-known pieces of classical music. The young Polish genius, Frederic Chopin, composed this extremely delicate, almost unbearably romantic music at the age of 20, before leaving his home country, never to return. It is often said that he was then madly in love with a young soprano, Konstancja Gładkowska, but after all could not even talk to her properly. Was it his shyness? The fear of rejection? Or perhaps something more sorrowful? She must have been on his mind all the time while composing this slow movement, named by himself, "Romanze". He's sometimes too relatable.
The pianist here, Samson François is my favourite interpreter of Chopin’s tender delicacy. It is difficult to imagine a romantic pianist more typical and unique than François- poetic, moody, unreliable, and passionate. He died young too, much like Chopin, probably due to excessive drinking and smoking.
3 Gabriel Fauré and his Requiem
I fear that I might have written so much on the suffocating lyricism of the Romantics. I'll end this chapter with a song, more unadorned and clear, I often listen to before going to sleep.
Pie Jesu, one of the choral songs from his Requiem in D minor, is perhaps the most simple and transparent form of prayer. Fauré himself reveals that "Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest."
The conductor of this performance, Michel Corboz, had just lost his father before the recording. I am not certain how much it affected his musical interpretation of the piece, yet it is certainly worth wondering. I sometime imagine it was perhaps his last dedication to his father, the most moving way of saying goodbye that he could find.
Writing this up, I recall one line from a novel I adore: "Other Voices, Other Rooms" by Truman Capote.
"Are the dead as lonesome as living?"
Perhaps, one day, tell me what you think.
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