Branching Out / Vol. 1

What to listen to next, based on our experiences with the melancholy music of Górecki, Debussy, and Tchaikovsky.

Photo by Lucas van Oort on Unsplash

I've found that one of the reasons many people don't take a deeper dive into classical music is not knowing which pool to dip their toes in next. (I should know — I have the exact same problem with jazz.)

Say you recently heard a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The work electrified you as its many moments of heaven-storming majesty coursed through your veins — and now you're hungry for more. What should you listen to next? 

You decide to explore Beethoven's Eighth Symphony. It's the symphony he wrote just before the Ninth, so the emotional experience has to be similar, right? Well, not exactly. (Good ol' Ludwig Van wrote more than 200 other works in his lifetime, and only a handful of those achieve the awe of his final symphony.)

So you start listening to a recording of the Eighth. The music is crisp, buoyant, and energetic. It kind of sounds like ballet music at times — not at all the life-affirming emotional experience you had hoped for. (And where's the choir?) Let down, you end your exploration of Beethoven's music and stick to listening to the Ninth every now and then.

If this has been your experience exploring classical music so far, fret not! Here at Shades of Blue, I won't leave you in the dark about where to take your listening next. That's why I'm starting a new series, "Branching Out," where I'll take three works recently featured in this newsletter and show you where to go next to grow your tree of classical music knowledge.¹

Let's get started!

If you loved hearing Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and its exploration of the ways love can eclipse grief and how our lives are driven by forces outside of our control, then queue up ...

Samuel Barber / Andromache's Farewell

Just like Górecki's symphony, Samuel Barber's Andromache's Farewell for soprano and orchestra expresses the strong bonds between mother and child. 

Based on an English translation of a text from Euripides's The Trojan Women, Barber's work transports us to the bloody aftermath of the Trojan War. Andromache, whose husband Hector was killed by Achilles, has learned that the Greek army plans to murder the couple's son, Astyanax, by throwing him from the towering walls surrounding the city. Knowing she has no choice but to accept her son's fate, Andromache delivers a monologue to the child that begins with eruptions of pain and anguish but, about halfway through the work, becomes both a searing lament and a moving profession of love. 

That's the moment that gets me every single time I listen. After a solo oboe introduces its weeping melody of sorrow, Andromache sings:

Oh dearest embrace, sweet breathing of your body,
Was it for nothing that I nursed you, that I suffered?
Consumed my heart with cares, all for nothing?

Now, and never again, kiss your Mother.
Come close, embrace me, who gave you life.
Put your arms around me, your mouth to mine . . .
And then no more.

If you were transfixed by the pastoral calm, smoldering sensuality, and kaleidoscopic colors of Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, then be sure to check out ...

Claude Debussy / La Mer

If Debussy hadn't become a composer, he likely would have spent his life as a sailor at sea. But he was actually nowhere near a large body of water when writing La Mer — a vivid work for orchestra he composed while in landlocked Burgundy and Paris.

The first movement, "From dawn to noon on the sea" (De l'aube à midi sur la mer), traces the sun's journey from a faint glimmer of light on the horizon to its radiant zenith. As we experienced in the Prelude, Debussy doesn't aim to create conventionally representational music. So instead of employing cymbal crashes and fluttering flutes to evoke literal sounds of the sea, the composer breathes life into his work with heaving, slowly blossoming chorales, shimmering sonorities, and melodies that evoke the wonder and immensity we feel looking out on a vast seascape.

If you were intrigued listening to Tchaikovsky's "Winter Daydreams" Symphony and its slow movement inspired by the composer's trip to the remote island of Valaam, then continue your journey with ...

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky / Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom 

Tchaikovsky's time on Valaam — in his words, a "land of gloom, land of mists" — gave him the chance to hear the chanting of the monks in the island's centuries-old monastery. Although the composer rarely attended church services, he was attracted to the pageantry, rituals, and music of the Russian Orthodox Church, writing to his patron Nadezhda von Meck: 

"I am still bound to the Church by strong ties, but on the other hand I have long ceased to believe in the dogma. ... There is nothing like entering a church on a Saturday, standing in the semi-darkness with the scent of incense wafting through the air, lost in deep contemplation searching for an answer to those perennial questions: wherefore, when, whither, and why?"

One of a small handful of sacred works Tchaikovsky composed, the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom retains the simplicity and transparency of Orthodox chanting while amplifying the music's dramatic possibilities with 19th-century harmonies. 

The movement I recommend starting with is the "Cherubic Hymn," which marks the grand entrance of the clergy into the sanctuary, a moment meant to welcome worshippers into the legions of angels gathered around the throne of God. For a composer revered for his complex counterpoint and lavish melodies, Tchaikovsky displays in this hymn an acute ability to strip music down to its bare essentials without sacrificing its emotional power.

What was your experience listening to these works? Drop me a note in the comments below. 👇

And let me know what you think of this format! I'm still mapping out different approaches for sharing music that helps you cultivate calm, connection, and healing — I'd love to hear your input.

1. If you are in fact wild about Beethoven's Ninth, give Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony a spin. There's a choir, vocal soloists, offstage brass bands — and like Beethoven's Ninth, a soul-stirring ending that will produce tears of joy.