Music for Life: 100 Works to Carry You Through

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Assuming “normality” day two will be harder than day one, today’s choice is Schubert. If this speaks to you, try the piano sonatas, especially the late ones, the symphonies, or any – yes, any – of the 600 songs. The song cycle Winterreise captures every aspect of hope and wintry sorrow. A universe of tenderness awaits. 5 January Nagoya Marimbas Robert Nathaniel Dett. Alamy Photograph: Alamy 29 January In the Bottoms: IV. Barcarolle (Morning) Robert Nathaniel Dett The popularity of Vivaldi – usually topping the “most played” classical lists thanks to The Four Seasons – risks obscuring the glory of his expansive genius. The Venetian priest-violinist wrote church music, more than 500 concertos and 50 operas. He died in poverty. Try the exuberant Gloria or the haunting Stabat Mater . But start with this ravishing love aria from his opera Giustino. 19 January Bagatelle Op 33, No 5 Ludwig van Beethoven You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side.

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Taking its name from the Japanese port city, this piece – mallets on wood – is an aural palate cleanser. Reich, a pioneer American minimalist of restless invention, says this 1994 version is similar to pieces he wrote decades earlier but with a difference: this is far harder and needs two virtuoso players. Patterns repeat and slip out of phase in Reich’s mesmerising universe of sound. 6 January Clair de lune Playground Equipment for Ala Moana Park, Hawaii by Isamu Noguchi, 1939. Photograph: Isamu Noguchi FoundationSibelius’s incidental music for Shakespeare’s play was one of his last works, before compositional silence all but fell for the remainder of his life. He had already written seven symphonies, every one a masterpiece. In this music, the spirits of the earth and air, Finnish style, are ever present in the strangeness of harmonium, harps and ghostly voices. Who does Sibelius sound like? Only himself. 28 January Havanaise Pauline Viardot You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

how playing the violin became part From torment to pleasure: how playing the violin became part

A diet implies restriction as well as consumption, nourishment, reward. Omissions first: opera and big symphonic and choral works (with a few breakout moments) are excluded. They are worlds of their own: other diets for other times. They also tend to be long. All the choices here are under 10 minutes, and often under five. I could have selected only works by Bach or Beethoven – and where are Haydn or Brahms or Janáček, among my own favourite composers? – but we are learning to widen the fold, to scan the horizon for new or forgotten names, pushed aside by prejudice or fashion. Don’t assume you are alone in not knowing all the composers that follow. Some of these pieces are new to me too. In compiling the list for this book, I had one rule: the music comes first. I resist the idea of expecting music to feed or prompt an emotional state, so I tried to turn the matter on its head. Why do I want to listen to a particular work at any given moment? What is the imperative? Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata was the name of the first piece I wrote down. Soon I had a couple of hundred absolute dead certainties and a mild sense of panic. To help narrow the field, I laid down a few guidelines: no operas, as they have their own narrative already (though one or two overtures have crept in). No song cycles for the same reason, though they too slipped in surreptitiously. Naturally the more rules I made, the more I broke, even concerning the title itself (why stop at 100? There are more if you count. The short round-ups discussing, or confessing, what I left out add a few hundred more). For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.The coat would never be removed from its bag. In the short time I was away, Tom had suffered a catastrophic haemorrhage. Ambulance, hospital, blood transfusions and other interventions followed. It was the dramatic start to a serious decline in his health. I attended the constant round of medical appointments with a sense of watching time and life disappear through a sieve. Somehow I forced myself to finish a draft of the book. Somehow, he read it, making detailed comments, sometimes too detailed for the frazzled author. (“I think here you mean ‘this’, not ‘that’.” “Yes, but what about the whole thing? Does any of it make any sense?”) Left Russia with his wife, Natalya, and two daughters in the 1917 revolution, losing all his possessions and his Ivanovka estate. In the US he began a new career as a virtuoso pianist, with celebrity status. He built a house in Switzerland and travelled the world but wrote few new compositions. Shrove Tuesday is on the horizon. Stravinsky’s ballet about the loves and losses of three puppets was written for large, spectacular orchestra but the recommendation here is the two-piano version. Imagine a carnival bustle of sideshows, ferris wheel, food stalls and a carousel. The festive energy is irrepressible. This is your warm-up for the greatest work of the 20th century: Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. 31 January Vespers for a New Dark Age: VIII, Postlude Missy Mazzoli

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In 1940 Sergei Rachmaninoff, living in exile in America, broke his creative silence and composed a swan song to his Russian homeland. What happened in those final haunted years and how did he come to write his farewell masterpiece, the Symphonic Dances? After I’d stopped lessons and the drudge of exams, everything changed – too late, yet just in time. I went on exciting music courses and spent every spare moment playing in student ensembles. No one shouted at me. There was, even, laughter. Music came alive, it became life. I began to play in string quartets (that is, usually, two violins, viola and cello) with friends and sometimes strangers. There’s an unrivalled pleasure in playing chamber music: a joint venture in which merely getting through can be harder, and more rewarding, than you’d ever think. New worlds opened. To forge the link between myself and the violin – by now in my first job as a journalist – I commissioned a new instrument, not a common procedure, for amateurs or professionals. I was introduced to a violin-maker, Juliet Barker, who was just establishing an important English violin-making school in Cambridge. I saved my meagre earnings each month to pay for it, and watched as, over two or more years, seasoned white wood turned to varnished gold and became an instrument. No one else has ever played that violin. It’s far superior to any I could otherwise have afforded, old Italian instruments being preeminent. It remains my prized possession. I began to play in string quartets with friends. There’s an unrivalled pleasure in playing chamber music. A separate, quiet tune’… a vintage postcard featuring ‘anonymous figures from the past, their stories songs without words’. Photograph: courtesy Tom PhillipsCling on to this last day of holiday before the general return to work. Time to act on those resolutions. Running maybe? Or maybe just rolling off the sofa. This blithe, galloping piece from a dance suite by Norwegian composer Grieg conjures open landscapes and a spirit of adventure. Too feelgood? The next choice is for you… 3 January Nautilus Pictures of Rachmaninov from this period show a tall, handsome man, suavely dressed, usually unsmiling, often with a cigarette between the beautiful long fingers of his famously large hands. This film-star image was only the outer garb of another existence entirely: of tireless, dogged hard work, rigorous hours of practice with associated painful hands, anxiety and chronic health issues. Despite his success and celebrity, he felt divorced from the act of composition that had for so long been his core activity. This Ethiopian nun (b.1923), once a singer to Haile Selassie, imprisoned when her country was under Italian rule, has acquired cult status; once on the margins of classical music but now moving into mainstream consciousness. The Song of the Sea merges gentle arpeggios with a wash of rising chords and a plaintive song waving and weaving through all. 18 January Giustino: Act 1: Vedrò con mio diletto Antonio Vivaldi Twentieth-Century Classical Music: A Ladybird Expert Book. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1-4059-3241-7. Mozart, with Bach, Beethoven, Schubert (and more – don’t write in) is at the centre of western classical music. Mozart loved riddles, wordplay, card games, billiards. The two players, on two pianos, share the opening, bold statement then joyfully interweave and alternate, as if playing chasing games with each other. After this exhilarating opening, move on to the heavenly slow movement. Then the concertos, symphonies, operas, songs… 25 January What power art thou (Cold Song) Henry Purcell

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After the disastrous premiere of his Symphony No 1 in 1897, Rachmaninov suffered depression and a breakdown. He attributed his recovery to the hypnotherapy treatments of Dr Nikolai Dahl, to whom he dedicated his Piano Concerto No 2 (1901). Lccn 2018379471 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.8827 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000516 Openlibrary_edition urn:lcp:musicforlife100w0000madd:epub:57bc5507-e1ec-4d9c-92da-0a09da66ba81 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier musicforlife100w0000madd Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2ng73bqghv Invoice 1652 Isbn 0571329381 Byrd, who perilously kept his Catholic faith hidden in Protestant England, was a contemporary of Shakespeare. 2023 is the 400th anniversary of his death. Serene, soaring, unworldly, there will be plenty of Byrd around this year. As well as sacred music he wrote keyboard works and madrigals, leading the way in a golden age for composers of the first Elizabethan era. 16 January Candide Overture Leonard BernsteinFebruary 2021). "No Simon Rattle, and no new concert hall for London ... but we will survive". The Guardian. Born Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov in 1873 into a musical-military family, the fourth of six children, in Novgorod, Russia. Escaped an anticipated army career when his dissolute father lost his fortune, sold the family estate and abandoned his wife, who took the children to live in a small flat in St Petersburg. Musically gifted from an early age, Rachmaninov went to the Moscow Conservatory to study with the great guru, Nikolai Zverev and caught the attention of Tchaikovsky. Once signed up to the cause, he was a dedicated supporter’: Tom Phillips RA in his studio in 2017. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian For the first full moon of 2023, the orbed choice is Fauré’s Clair de lune, an ethereal setting of words by the poet Paul Verlaine from his collection Fêtes galantes (also set by Debussy). The voice creeps in long after the rippling piano. Think of the gardens and statues of Versailles, ghostly by moonlight. French song, or mélodie, comes no better. 7 January Hymn of the Cherubim