Two piano pieces for Saturday, one from the 1880s and one from the 2020s, both finding a stillness, sadness and a delicate beauty in single piano notes played slowly.
The first is Gymnopedies No. 3, composed by Erik Satie in 1888 and played here by Reinbert de Leeuw in 1980.
Gymnopedies No. 3 Lent et Triste
The second is thirteen minutes of Roger Eno playing piano, seemingly endlessly, while The Orb offer some background found sounds, FX and ambience.
The Weekend In Rained Forever In Dub (The Waterbed Experience Mix)
4 comments:
There is something about the sound of rainfall as in that Eno piece which is very comforting. Someone once suggested that it was a deeply embedded evolutionary emotional response - that we are gladdened by the sound of the rain because it means the crops will grow, we have water to drink, etc. Who knows?!
Gymnopedies No. 3 is beautiful but so tinged with sadness too. I grew up hearing this quite a lot as my mum loved her Satie album, but I have a more disturbing abiding memory of her obsessing over it during one of her more severe mental breakdowns and she played it rather too often (alongside Bowie's Aladdin Sane, of all things!) Funny how hard it is to disassociate music from certain things, however long ago they were!
The sound of rain is very comforting as part of a song, it's strange given how much we groan when we look out of the window and see it. Hardwired stuff.
Sorry about the Satie association, sounds traumatic. Music really has the power to transport us doesn't it
https://youtu.be/UrnJwvBoYhw
New to me Michael and very nice indeed
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