A friend of mine recently started a great email discussion about what your earliest musical influences were and what you wanted to pass on the next generation. Its based on a radio programme in Scotland, you need to recollect the person who introduced you to the earliest piece of music you can remember, then you need to think about what music you would now introduce to a child and why.
Here was my answer.....
My earliest memory of a piece of music that I really loved and was passed on to me by my father was the andante from Sibelius’ 3rd Symphony. It’s a wonderfully gentle, minimal, sparse, a delicate weft and waft of strings and woodwind. I used to ask for it to be played on my dad’s ‘Binatone Music Centre’ again and again when I was about 7 or 8, maybe 8 or 9?
It puts you in mind of crystal clear lakes and sunsets in the artic north, of floating over jaggy snow capped peaks and fjords. Being Finnish I suppose gave Sibelius that clarity and subtlety. Its fairly repetitive for orchestral music but the rhythms are so lulling and soothing, layering up to a very pleasing uplifting crescendo. Such a contrast to Finlandia and En Saga with their Viking like brass blasts. But if you’re familiar with the Swan of Tuonela you’ll have a sense of the 3rd’s simplicity and striking clarity.
The other piece was the theme tune from M*A*S*H which for a period of about 6 months marked my bedtime. I wasn’t allowed to watch it but I was allowed to listen to the theme and watch the helicopters swoosh about and land in the army hospital. I had no idea it was called ‘Suicide is Painless’ or indeed what M*A*S*H was about. That was also true even when I watched it when older!
Well from there I developed eclectic and seasonal tastes, dipping in and out of everything; pop, rock, heavy metal, progressive rock(!) jazz, folk, country and classical. . Went with the crowd on a lot of the time, so much so that I actually did go and see Simple Minds three times!
Many of the songs l love are melancholic, wistful, turning on unrequited love and the bittersweet. I’m not sure why. I suppose these kind of songs have a realism and rooting in emotional reality that I felt connected with me and my experience in the world. Its so difficult to pin down a song that I would pass on but I have picked out two that may serve the task in hand.
The first is this lovely album track from Crowded House – just recently gloriously reformed again. It’s the sentiment of not being imprisoned by the past that I like. This track also has soaring strings and maybe that harps back to my early exposure to classical.
All I Ask
Crowded House
Written By N. Finn & T. Finn
All I ask is to live each moment
Free from the last
Take the road forgotten
Don't leave me here
Oh please let me stay
Far from familiar things
All I ask is to live each moment
All I ask is to live each moment
Free from the last
Strange roads going nowhere in particular
All I ask is to live each moment
All I ask is to live each moment
Free from the last
Free from the last
All I ask
I am an unashamed U2 fan. I saw them in Hampden Park, Glasgow two years ago. Undoubtedly the best concert I have ever been to. I can air guitar and sing so many of their tracks better than Bono and the Edge (but only alone in the living room.) Bono to me is one of the most inspirational Christians alive. He has a streetwise sassy faith unbound by tradition and form. Many of the U2 songs are better than the dreadful contemporary worship splurging out from the Matt Redman school of blessed navel gazing.
U2 deliver songs racked with doubt, raw energy and spirit. Anthems that reverberating in your mind. Words that speak about the search and hunger for more of God and for more out of life. And the best of all of these…………..
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
U2
I have climbed the highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you.
I have run, I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you.
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.
I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her finger tips
It burned like fire
(I was) burning inside her.
I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone.
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.
I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colours will bleed into one
Bleed into one.
But yes, I'm still running.
You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross of my shame
Oh my shame, you know I believe it.
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.
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