# Music to decompress with



## papsrus (Oct 7, 2014)

You've just gone through a few hours (or more) of intense listening and you need to dial things way back. You want something light, soothing, gentle played at low volume. What do you reach for?

I'm thinking along the lines of piano sonatas, nocturnes, even (gulp) something minimalist maybe? Solo woodwind comes to mind.

It should be music you don't even really "listen" to, if that makes sense. Just gentle, simple and pleasant.

What do you listen to in order to decompress?


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Classical music. Any classical music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

After a few hours or more of intense listening (sounds like _Gotterdammerung_) I want _silence_ - preferably a quiet walk, or maybe dinner and a good book. I know the young folks can listen all day. More power to them!


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Silence sounds good. Maybe some Cage. 




This post does not contain a joke.


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

Vaughan WIlliams' Lark Ascending is very nice. So are quite a few Bach airs.

On the other hand, I listen to 4'33'' almost every night as I go to sleep.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

In my most active working era, after anywhere from four to eight hours of piano practice per day, the additional giving of piano lessons, accompanying chamber choirs, singers and instrumentalists, playing rehearsals and /performances of some musical theater, the last thing I would want at the end of that day would be any sort of sound at all, whether it be music, the audio inherent in watching a television program, so silence, sometimes staring at a blank area of a wall (maybe that was a form of meditation?), or if an activity, _quietly_ reading a book, or 'just silence' were the best anodyne / solutions to what was needed / wanted.

I still feel the same way after a long period of intense listening... while,

I do catch your drift, and for that other tonic remedy, I go to works which are generally more quiet, and antithetical to the older music of any stripe, with its lovely slow movements included. Instead, I avoid any of the older rep, or newer music cast in older forms, which has a more old-style formal structure, or any the more standard common practice form and construction.

Morton Feldman: his later pieces which take quite their own time, have their own inner logic. (Which to date have defied analysis other than those few who have tried to find statistics on occurrence of gestures and relate them to some maths ratios (with a composer whose compositional choices were so utterly intuitive, to try and find anything of a more formal M.O, statistical or through the standards of all types of analysis generally employed, the analyses via maths, etc. are so far a pretty meaningless effort and 'fail' in my book
Why Patterns
Piano and String Quartet
Triadic Memories / For Bunita Marcus / Palais de Mari (all for solo piano)
For Philip Guston

Georg Friedrich Haas ~ In Vain

This is the sort of music I would put on for the 'function' you propose.


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## pianississimo (Nov 24, 2014)

I'll go with the silence thing too.

When I'm not at work, where we're not allowed to listen to music, or asleep, then I'm normally plugged into my music.
I'm either practicing piano or listening to the ipod or I have music on at home - or I'm at a concert.
My weekly piano lesson comes after a lot of preparation at home, my 25 minute walk to the lesson where I listen to recordings of the music I'm playing at the moment, then my hour of listening to myself and my teacher.

Following all that is when I need to decompress. I walk home with no ipod on. I listen to the birds and the traffic and people and find myself really focused on these things.
When I arrive home I find myself refreshed and ready to start again.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

What is described is what I've called a "nightcap" or "call for the last round." It's when a piece I hear too close to bedtime got me worked up and I need a kind of denouement. It is hard to find just the right thing. 

John Field's piano nocturnes fit the bill pretty well.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I can appreciate the question but I can't say I've ever really felt the need for 'winding down' or 'nightcap' music - I've often retired for the night with a symphony by Bruckner, Mahler or Shostakovich ringing in my ears and rarely felt any the less relaxed for it. I guess my idea of 'decompression' is not to listen to anything at all, rather than conclude the session with something softer.


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## papsrus (Oct 7, 2014)

Weston said:


> What is described is what I've called a "nightcap" or "call for the last round." It's when a piece I hear too close to bedtime got me worked up and I need a kind of denouement. It is hard to find just the right thing.
> 
> John Field's piano nocturnes fit the bill pretty well.


Yes, that's it.

I understand those who want silence or the random sounds of the world around them to decompress after prolonged or focused listening. I find that I often enjoy this "nightcap" first though. If I've just listened to a particularly intense piece of music, whether it be a symphony with the volume turned up high or an intricate string quartet, it's almost too jarring to go straight to silence immediately afterward. (The silence is deafening?) So it's just nice to have a slow, light piece of music to ease back with.

I like the Field nocturnes.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Any of J.S. Bach Keyboard Partitas as played on the harpsichord by Benjamin Alard.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

hpowders said:


> Any of J.S. Bach Keyboard Partitas as played on the harpsichord by Benjamin Alard.


Working your way through a New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle I think yields the same affect, without the intrusive bother of sound at all, let alone the incredibly irritating rattle of Thuringian counterpoint as played on the most annoying variety of plinkety-plonk keyboard instruments in existence. Just sayin'


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## Giordano (Aug 10, 2014)

For me, "decompressing" with music after after intense listening does not work; it's either silence or whale songs.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

If it must be sound rather than silence, I suggest a journey into the beyond with Jonn Serrie. Light a candle, sit back, empty your mind, forget music, forget everything, just go where it takes you, to the outer edge, the far country.

For "real" music there's always tomorrow - unless you never make it back.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

My favorite _decompression_ music is actually the old soundtrack from Walt Disney's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.

Sometime back, I had trouble finding a copy, but I _bends_ over backwards and persistence paid off.


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## papsrus (Oct 7, 2014)

With this somewhat in mind, ordered this the other day:

Arthur Rubinstein - Chopin 19 Nocturnes (Vol. 49)









Chopin: 4 Ballades, Krystian Zimerman


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## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

Erik Satie, Gymnopedies
played by Leeuw, nice and slooowly


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I don't have to "decompress" from listening to other music, but from daily life...and about half of the time I listen to music, I'm "decompressing" with ambient music.


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