# What pieces always bring you back to a time in your life?



## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

Music has its way of sticking with us through events in our lives, through the good, the bad, and the ugly. It has a way of making itself the vivid snapshot of events in our lives, almost like flashbulb memories. That's one reason, I believe, we have no reason to fret about classical music dying. It lives on in humans and in humans' music, and something like that is spiritual and immortal.

For me, the piece that will stick with me throughout my musical career will be the first piece I performed as a collaboration with other musicians. It was the summer of 2012, the summer I was 10 years old and entering sixth grade. It was my first time at music camp. It was Crane Youth Music, to be specific, and it was hands down one of the most incredible experiences of my life, especially given it was the first two weeks I spent far from home, able to have so much independence and so much fun, surrounded by incredible musicians near enough to my age to have great friendships with, but all older than I was, so I really was able to look up to all of them.

The piece I played was the first movement of Holst's Second Suite in F for military band, and we played it in our tuba and euphonium ensemble, which must've been 10 - 14 people in total. At the time, I didn't have a very worldly or extensive view of music — the extent of it was band music — and I wasn't as absorbed in it as I was when I performed it three years later, with a proper wind symphony, and yet it was enthralling and engaging and I loved every minute of it.

My lack of a lot of musical maturity didn't make it any less of a vivid and wondrous experience. It was probably the hardest thing I'd played by that point, being 10, but the difficulty truly stemmed from the collaboration aspect. It taught me about the consideration and empathy in music; the need to feel and offer the spirit of the music in order to make it the best it could be. 

The bright and joyous first movement with its noble euphonium solo will always bring me back to those weeks, weeks in which I explored myself, gained self-awareness, experienced larger, more collaborative, more diverse ensembles, and got to feel this spirituality and ease I never had before. Though it was only the first movement then, I would later play all four, and the solemn Song Without Words brings me back to that summer as well. That suite is reading a book in the quad as the sky burns away in the twilight, and talking about my fears to my roommate in the dark, and looking up at the moon through a screened window with my three friends after I'd had a nightmare. And that suite is everything that's ever happened in my life.


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

When I was in second grade (2011), I was going on a camping trip with my Dad in Illinois, and I remember us playing Capriccio Italiaen (Tchaikovsky) in the car on the way there. We made up a whole story that went along with the music and had a lot of fun. Now whenever I hear that piece it reminds me of that story and the fun camping trip.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Tchaikov6 said:


> When I was in second grade (2011), I was going on a camping trip with my Dad in Illinois, and I remember us playing Capriccio Italiaen (Tchaikovsky) in the car on the way there. We made up a whole story that went along with the music and had a lot of fun. Now whenever I hear that piece it reminds me of that story and the fun camping trip.


You only a teen still? :lol: Further proof it's hard to know someone by their posts.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

The Ritual Fire Dance was one of the few classical vinyl 78s that our family owned. When I was five or six, I loved dancing round the sitting room to our gramophone records and this was one of my favourite ones to dance to. One night of the Christmas holidays, when my grandmother was staying, I'd been enjoying myself dancing & wearing a skirt that Mum had made for me, a floral print of roses on cotton and covered with a film of pink veil. Bedtime came, and I was put to bed, protesting. But evidently Granny put in a word for me, because after I was in bed (and ironically just peacefully drifting off) my father came, got me up, put the rosy skirt over my pyjamas, and I was carried downstairs to dance again before my doting grandparents.

Since I had two elder brothers who were also part of the audience, I expect that they were smirking up their sleeves at what I quite seriously thought was a fine balletic performance. 

Still, the Ritual Fire Dance brings back that happy era of 1950s family life. My granny (a late Victorian) was a wonderful person, so warm & loving.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

Satie's _Gymnopédies_ bring me back to my childhood.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Vivaldi's 4 seasons were the first works I've heard when I was a kid. The slow movement in Spring conjures up Nature like no other for me. I think it actually determined the course of my personality: I'm much less of a people person than a place person.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Mozart's clarinet concerto always brings back to mind my mother who passed away in 1992. It was her favourite piece.


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## Zingara62 (Apr 20, 2017)

Stravinsky's petrushka brings me memories of my father


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I've had this experience with music, just not Classical music yet. Sometimes I dislike nostalgic feelings; the concept of them and experiencing them. I feel if we are nostalgic about something, we are not happy in the present for often times nostalgia implies remembering a greater experience from the past. I like to look at all my experiences in life thus far critically and the feelings from those experiences as they are still present in me, from different or the same stimuli.

When I had felt nostalgic about something, it accompanied me with sad feelings because I was no longer experiencing those great emotions anymore. Perhaps this is more to do with how I see it and experience it than anything though.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I have many different memories triggered by various pieces of music, but one I'll mention is Respighi's _Ancient Airs and Dances_ and cleaning my fish tank. I had, from early on, a fairly large aquarium that I stocked with small native freshwater fish that I would net in local ponds and streams--killies, darters, dace, mudminnows, sunfish, etc. The tank required periodic cleaning of the glass, the sand, the filters, resetting the aquatic vegetation, setting everything back up again--a ritual that was always accompanied by the Respighi. Not wildly sentimental, but the memory (quite pleasant) sticks in my mind. It was a really nice aquarium.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Elgar's Nimrod, my late grandfather could talk about this piece ( and lots of other music as well )as if he wroth it himself.
Still miss you Grandpa P.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

The Brandenburg Concerto no.3 - it was the first full classical work that I listened to over and over again from start to finish, discovering the beauty of what great pieces of classical music is.


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## Casebearer (Jan 19, 2016)

Eine kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart (from my parents collection). I had taken a hot bath as a teenager before wanting to go out and then put on Eine kleine Nachtmusik. I woke up a few hours later and missed out on the fun. I've never played it again.


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

Pugg said:


> Elgar's Nimrod, my late grandfather could talk about this piece ( and lots of other music as well )as if he wroth it himself.
> Still miss you Grandpa P.


Oh, this piece reminds me of my grandfather as well! Me and my Dad played it at his funeral... every time I hear it it makes me sad, but the music makes me realize that my Grandfather would have wanted me to move on in life...


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Tchaikov6 said:


> Oh, this piece reminds me of my grandfather as well! Me and my Dad played it at his funeral... every time I hear it it makes me sad, but the music makes me realize that my Grandfather would have wanted me to move on in life...


The same here, but his memory lives on.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Great thread topic - I can think of 2 works that are associated with particular times of my life - and had special significance at those times -

1.) Mahler Sym #2 - November 1963 - IIRC, I was c. sophomore in high school when the news of JFK's assassination hit us all. We were all dumbstruck, school was cancelled as the nation went into a full mode of shock, grief, and mourning. However, kids are kids, so we would watch the news with all its memorials, processions, ceremonies, commentaries, etc...until we wanted to play and go about our lives....We agreed to have a big football game the next morning. As I was getting ready to go - the TV was on, Leonard Bernstein was conducting the NYPO playing some powerful music I had never before heard...I was mesmerized, totally fascinated - I later learned this was, for contractual reasons, billed as the Columbia Symphony - but it was the NYPO - all the big guns were playing - Gomberg, Vacchiano, Chambers, Drucker, Zegler, etc, etc, - and they were really going at it....I learned that the music was Mahler Sym #2/I, played in memoriam for JFK. I had never heard such music before!! I couldn't pull myself away. Right then, looking back - I told myself, I want to do that, I want to play music like that, to be able to perform such a work. I didn't know it at the time, it took a few years to materialize - but I had made my career choice!! I fell in love with Mahler 2, got a hold of the Walter recording, and played it every day for weeks. Bless my parents, they never objected or uttered the slightest negative comment!! [they were great music lovers]. Oh, and yes, we did play football, had a great game, really rough, tho - two kids suffered broken bones - we were getting too big to play tackle football without proper equipment!!

2.) Shostakovich Sym #9 - it is now 3 years later - I'm a freshman at Eastman School of Music, majoring in bassoon performance. I'm assigned to play principal bassoon for upcoming concert - which features Shostakovich Sym #9 - great !! huge bassoon solo, basically, a whole movement[IV] dedicated to the bassoon. Conducting the concert will be Walter Hendl, director of the school - a great conductor, a clone of Fritz Reiner, whose assistant Hendl had been in Chicago. This is scary - Hendl was a great conductor, he knew exactly what he wanted, how to fix things, but he was a real prick on the podium - intimidating, sarcastic, domineering, tyrannical - he employed the same tactics Reiner did to get his musicians to play. We'd all seen him reduce errant students to quivering blobs of jelly, humiliated, embarrassed, rendered nearly helpless with his intimidation. If you got thru a Hendl rehearsal, and he never noticed you, that was a major success!! Another thing with Hendl - if you made a mistake - wrong entrance, cracked note, sloppy execution, he would notice of course, and give you grief - but...if you were real wimpy, and tentative about it, you were totally screwed...He would swoop right in with the full treatment. if you screwed up, you'd better do it with lots of balls, courage and panache...you'd at least be spared the worst.
Anyway - that first rehearsal I'll never forget - I was so nervous, more nervous than I'd ever been before or since..I just didn't want to embarrass myself and be torn apart. But things went well, he had only a few minor suggestions regarding interpretation - and at the conclusion of the rehearsal paid me an off-hand compliment - something like - to orchestra: << bassoon solo was not bad was it??>> orchestra members give me "shuffle" [approval] I had made it thru!! Maybe I'd get thru the concert!! Well, sure enough, I did, and it went very well. I always figured this to be my "acid test" - do you have the "chops", the nerves, the grit - to make it as a professional musician??
Apparently I did, and I continued on with my studies and my career. 
Hendl was a real sob, a real prick - rehearsals were murder - but the concerts were great - every one had the chance to be cosmic, to be superlative - he could inspire musicians to put forth their best...and - he couldn't stop in the concert to rip you to pieces!! LOL!!
I am thankful to him, however, because he showed us where "the bar was set" - what you will face in the professional world. He showed us what real pressure was - and I have to say - after playing for Hendl, we all knew what a tough sob really was. Any other time in my career, when a conductor tried to act tough, or domineering, I found it rather comical - <<you're nothing dude, just conduct and get on with it; you're not scaring anyone.......we've seen "tough", you ain't it!!>>

There have been many memorable concerts performances throughout my career, but those two very early occasions had profound effects on my life, and the path I chose to follow. Those two particular works - Mahler 2, Shostakovich 9, will always have special significance for me.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

"Tears On My Pillow" heard when I was a HS freshman boarding a public bus to go to school. That song always brings me back to that wonderful/scary time.

Copland's Appalachian Spring Suite/ Bernstein, NY Philharmonic always brings me back.... I was 15; I fell in love for the first time, and this was the music I was listening to.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

When I was first a student in London, rather solitary and out of my depth, I was amazed and delighted to discover a record library. One of my first borrowings included Poulenc's 'Les Biches' suite, my introduction to Les Six. Now whenever I hear those vibrant, lively opening bars, I am transported, just for a moment and for better or worse, to a grotty flat in early-1970s London.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

The Adagio of Mahler's Tenth. Eugene Ormandy, Philadelphia Orchestra. Fall of my senior year of high school. A love that was never to be. Rain. Don't choose to say more.


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## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

Pugg said:


> Elgar's Nimrod, my late grandfather could talk about this piece ( and lots of other music as well )as if he wroth it himself.
> Still miss you Grandpa P.


It's such wonderful art. My philharmonic is currently preparing to present Nimrod at our concert as a tribute to our late conductor, who died in March of leukemia. He had last April performed it beautifully for a Carnegie Hall audience, and so we will perform it sans conductor to pay respect to his spirit and legacy in the most genuine way we can.
I'll be thinking of your grandfather.


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## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

Totenfeier said:


> The Adagio of Mahler's Tenth. Eugene Ormandy, Philadelphia Orchestra. Fall of my senior year of high school. A love that was never to be. Rain. Don't choose to say more.


There's a melancholy in this post that I can't really ignore. If you truly won't explain, then let me know if you can put it into musical terms. I'd love a listen.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Minor Sixthist said:


> It's such wonderful art. My philharmonic is currently preparing to present Nimrod at our concert as a tribute to our late conductor, who died in March of leukemia. He had last April performed it beautifully for a Carnegie Hall audience, and so we will perform it sans conductor to pay respect to his spirit and legacy in the most genuine way we can.
> I'll be thinking of your grandfather.


Great idea, what a wonderful tribute. 
I thank you for your kind words also.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Minor Sixthist said:


> There's a melancholy in this post that I can't really ignore. If you truly won't explain, then let me know if you can put it into musical terms. I'd love a listen.


Have you seen the movie _Dead Poets Society_, and have you ever heard of the New Age pianist George Winston?


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

One of my very earliest memories - dancing around my parents' dining room table to Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers."

Sitting with high school friends as we were heading off in different directions - listening to "Sweet Baby James" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water."

Getting as stoned on marijuana as I ever got and listening to Klemperer conducting Beethoven's Fifth.

A lot from seeing memorable Broadway shows, but just one example - seeing Tyne Daly in "Gypsy" go off her rocker while singing "Everything's Coming Up Roses" as her daughter and Herbie look on aghast.


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## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

Totenfeier said:


> Have you seen the movie _Dead Poets Society_, and have you ever heard of the New Age pianist George Winston?


I've seen Dead Poets Society but I'm not familiar with George Winston.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Bruch's Violin Concerto No 1 takes me right back to a biology field trip on the Gower Peninsula, South Wales, when I was 16. Two friends, our biology teacher and I stayed behind after a barn-dance in the communal hall and found the only classical LP on site, which was of said concerto, which we played on a battered portable record player. I distinctly recall that it was a _Classics for Pleasure_ record which, after a bit of googling, was probably made by Nathan Milstein, paired with the Mendelssohn. I vaguely recall playing the latter, but it's the Bruch that sticks in my mind. It was a clear, still summer night and we were listening to this wonderful music in a beautiful part of the world. Quite magical.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

I guess I am somewhat of an anomaly, but when it comes to music, I have almost no nostalgia connected to it. 

With me, either music holds up on it's own merit, or it doesn't. There are plenty of bands and artists that I loved during some of the best times of my life, that I have no interest in listening to any longer. And if I do hear them now, I don't get taken back to a previous time.

Believe me, this has never ceased to amaze girlfriends, family members, friends, etc. They just don't understand.

There is only one other person I know of that is similar, and that is a friend of mine that is a Berklee grad, and top LA session musician.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

This may or may not be strictly in keeping with the theme, but it does seem more or less relevant, so here goes. When I bought my first house, it needed a good deal of work before I could move in. In particular, the previous owners had been heavy smokers, and I had to repeatedly wash the walls, ceiling (a _real_ pain), and floors. I took off from work on the day after settlement, and went over to begin the cleaning in earnest, carrying with me a small portable radio to help pass the time. The house was completely empty, with wood floors, no carpeting or window coverings. Because I was working on the walls, and the edge of the floor (around where there had been carpeting), I put the radio in the middle of the room. The local classical radio station was doing a daytime opera special. In this case, they were going to play Treemonisha (Scott Joplin's Ragtime Opera). It began with a fairly detailed discussion about the background of the music, and Joplin's tragic illness and death. As part of the discussion, they played one sample, "A Real Slow Drag." It is hardly the finest song ever written, but at that moment and in that place it was quite distinctive, and the way it echoed through the empty house gave it a real presence that I always remember.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Minor Sixthist said:


> I've seen Dead Poets Society but I'm not familiar with George Winston.


O.K.; so, in DPS, Knox Overstreet "carpes" his "diem" and goes for the girl, Chris, who is out of his league?

I didn't. She was even farther out of my league. More pathetic than romantic, actually.

Winston's solo piano albums _Autumn_ (especially the tracks "Colors/Dance" and "Longing/Love"), and the track "Rain" from _Winter into Spring_ symbolize my memories of her, along with Mahler's Tenth. If you wanted to sample my experience, those are the basic ingredients (along with an unhealthy dose of general teenage angst).

Really nothing to see here. Move along, move along.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Simon Moon said:


> I guess I am somewhat of an anomaly, but when it comes to music, I have almost no nostalgia connected to it.
> 
> With me, either music holds up on it's own merit, or it doesn't. There are plenty of bands and artists that I loved during some of the best times of my life, that I have no interest in listening to any longer. And if I do hear them now, I don't get taken back to a previous time.
> 
> ...


I'm similar! I was just about to write an "I'm strange" post to this thread, just like your one. It amazes both myself and other people! It's not like I don't connect to art personally, because I do, and I suspect it's the same with you.

OK, now I remember, it has (sort of) happened once. When I went to see the first Lord of the Rings film, and it begun... there's this black screen, and the female narrator speaks slowly... then, I was suddenly taken back to when I was 10 or 11, and read Lord of the Rings for the first time. Tears started flowing, not because of the power of the artwork in question, but because I so vividly, totally and suddenly remembered what it was like to be 11 years old again. Funny enough, this never happens if I re-read Lord of the Rings. But it happened with the film, once, just once, like this. I treasure this memory.


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

Der Rosenkavalier. I was in my early twenties, and it was my first encounter with this work. I vividly remember sitting there in the San Francisco opera house, watching the events unfold on stage, and I felt deeply moved by the Marschallin's angst about getting older. For the first time I (still quite young) fully realized - on a deep, existential level - that I would someday get old. Particularly when the Marschallin sang "how is it that I was once little Resi, and I will someday be an old woman," it really hit me that this would happen to me too. I'm glad that I had that experience with Der Rosenkavalier, because it allowed me to come to terms with the aging process before it had even begun! :lol:


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

^

I had the same thing with first seeing Otello, my mum still recall me asking her: " why are people so nasty when they are jealous."

Her answer: jalousie is a waste of time son.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

"Joy to the World" Three Dog Night.

I was going through a bad stretch, in-between relationships; very down.

I couldn't believe the incredible irony of this song.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I was 15 and offered (my brother and I) prime orchestra seats (center aisle, about 15 rows back) to see/hear Die Walküre for the first time at a Saturday afternoon matinee performance at the Met in NYC.

When Siegmund pulled Notung out of the tree as he ecstatically sang at ff.... as the orgasmic music swelled up; the staging; the scenery....just an incredible experience and one of the happiest days of my young life!!


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