It's crazy to think that this was written in 1936 and yet it is one of the most popular pieces of American "classical"music and enhances the stories of some of my favorite movies: Platoon, The Crow, Gattaca, Amélie - the list goes on and it's always appropriately gut wrenching.
I hadn't been thinking about such an emotional track for this week but I was skimming through another writing playlist on Spotify: Essay Writing Classical Music - curated by Anders Eidem and I just happened to look at the latest track he added. I knew the title rang a bell and then when you hear the opening bars you immediately realize just how much you love this track!
My theory for essay writing music is more about repeating the same track rather than pulling together a perfectly curated progression - I just don't think that works for many people - to me it's about finding tracks that can take you to a certain place and keep you there while you get the work done. If you want to set the mood for a deeply emotional piece - this is a great track, at just under 8 minutes you don't really notice when it repeats and after 3 or 4 listens you've been writing for 30 minutes solid - at that point you can choose to keep on going or change the track if needs be.
For me - it flows beautifully ;-)
You can learn more about Samuel Barber here:
About the Curator - Andrew McCluskey
The first visual memory I have is that of the white upright piano in Singapore, Hell and the dark forces lived at the bottom, Heaven and the Angels at the top. They would play battles through my fingers and I was hooked.
Although I've always played, I haven't always been a musician. Most of my twenties were spent working with people, buying and selling and learning how the world works. It was in my thirties that I came to America and focused on music and began to develop music2work2.
