This month has been a total bitch. Cruellest I’ve known. I can’t say here exactly why, but those of you who know me closely know what’s been going on and how wrecked I am. When I was twenty-one I lost one of my closest school friends in a hang gliding accident. When we’d been together for about two or three years Sall dropped me saying she had other things to do. I have had upper-storey family dramas that have really tested my mental health. What I’ve been going through this month is worse than any of that.
So. Let’s talk about music.
Richard Strauss, Four last songs
Okay so for heart-on-your-sleeve indulgence it doesn’t get any better than this. Strauss, near death himself, produces these four miraculous pieces, so deeply affecting, and concluding with some of the most poetic music he ever imagined: ‘Im Abendrot’. Once there was a documentary about the Second World War and footage of destruction was accompanied by a performance of this song, in its entirety. I cry a lot but that evening set some kind of record. My first acquaintance with this music was actually at the ballet, and as ‘Im Abendrot’ was coming to an end I didn’t want it to end – I wanted it to continue forever. Observant listeners – if there are any of those left in the world – will have heard me nicking from this guy all over the place, but particularly towards the end of ‘So even though’ on Life’s undertow. B major to E-flat major. So few changes, but so essential.
The Go-Betweens
You meet music when you’re very young that seems to be saying all you’d hoped might be said. Matters of the heart, which you’re only just becoming acquainted with or used to, relations with other people, the dimensions of friendship, whatever. I met the Go-Bs with ‘Right here’ from their album Tallulah, because it used to play when it was released pretty much every morning on 3RRR, to which I woke before getting off to school. That album I procured, and the standout track for me was ‘Bye bye pride’. (It still is.) The following album was 16 Lovers Lane and that had some cracking tunes: the first three in particular are superb. I’d say I prefer Grant to Robert as a songwriter but this record has Robert’s best ever tune on it: ‘Love is a sign’. Eventually I collected all the Go-Betweens’ albums and Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express is another absolute banger. Grant’s ‘Apology accepted’ has so much in it. ‘Time and time again your soft eyes close in trust above me. Such a simple question! I pretended I was sleeping. I didn’t know anything – but you I’m keeping.’
Bach Brandenburg Concerto no. 3 (final movement)
Sometimes there’s music that you cry over simply because of how well-made it is. The final movement of the third Brandenburg Concerto is one such piece. Following the form of this piece is an education; Bach is so in command of everything, all the time, and while that’s true of all his work there’s something about this movement that is particularly stunning. After a development section that cycles through several key areas he reaches the recapitulation with such ease – determination, but no fuss at all – and then when you would have heard the secondary dominant the first time round but it goes to a ii chord I find this absolutely breathtaking. He makes it sound so damn’ easy.
Tom Waits, ‘Somewhere’ from Blue Valentine
This I first heard at the wedding of a very dear friend, and it was said that she and her partner played it when he drove her to the airport after she’d visited him in Sydney. Knowing all this, and given the occasion, it was overwhelming. ‘Somewhere’ is one of the great songs of all time, and Bernstein’s work in West Side Story is probably his best, compositionally; I’ve seen this show performed by high school kids and been totally knocked out by it. Waits’s voice is so idiosyncratic, and so unsuited, you might think, to anything he himself hadn’t written, but he carries this tune off with a staggering style and I love it.
Mitski, ‘I guess’ from Laurel Hell
Brevity being the soul of wit, this 2’15” tune says it all. I’m only a very recent convert to Mitski; our third kid is a huge fan and they and I attended Mitski’s performance movie, The Land on the eve of my birthday, which was apparently its release date. I’m not as familiar with the music as they are, so I didn’t get as much from the film, but since then I’ve been acquainting myself and I am very impressed with the emotional depth to Mitski’s work. For this selection, Mitski has kindly chosen one of my absolute favourite keys, D-flat, and then she sings
I guess, I guess, I guess this is the end
I’ll have to learn to be somebody else
It’s been you and me since before I was me
Without you, I don’t yet know quite how to live
If I could keep anything of you
I would keep just this quiet after you
It’s still as a pond I am staring into
From here, I can say thank you
From here, I can tell you thank you
Now perhaps you know what’s been happening this month, if you didn’t. I’ll see you in December, which I can only hope will be happier.