Appropriate Musics

I was listening to Music Restored as I drove home last night and they played loads of gorgeous early music, folk/Gregorian Chants etc. It reminded me of when I was at college and used to listen to Gregorian Chant on my Walkman as I walked out to the phone box (The heady pre-mobile days). In the winter of 1983, we had the coldest spell of weather I have ever known, and I remember those walks in the evenings with the most calming music you could imagine. All this got me to thinking more about the appropriateness of various bits of music for the situation in which you hear them. Of course this is often the other way round and simply that you associate a piece with a certain situation and it becomes 'right'. However, sometimes, some music genuinely fits the ambience exactly and the Gergorian Chant was such a case. Another one was when I listened to Drumming by Steve Reich while reading the last chapters of Bitter Fame, a biography of Sylvia Plath. The music fitted perfectly though of course the association is now so strong it has become a form of synthesesia of even something reminiscent of Pavlov's Dogs. As I have said before, maybe it is just that some music always fits the situations over which it is played. If you want to listen to the relevant piece then click here but of course you can't listen to it on just any old Tin boxes no matter what they are fitted with. I suppose you could listen to it on a Sony Walkman at a pinch.

All of which has led me to the 'proper' version of the Sailor's Hornpipe.

Absolutely no integrity and absolutely no poetry. Absolutely no will whatsoever.