Dancing About Architecture

My taste in music is pretty horrendous, and my knowledge of classical music is atrocious. I've made efforts to improve it, over the decades, but they were rather spasmodic efforts and they never got very far. I won't convince myself that I'm enjoying something when I'm not.

It seems to me axiomatic that one's response to beauty (of any kind) should be involuntary. It can be trained, but it should still be involuntary. As an example: if you don't get a joke, but somebody explains it to you, and you spontaneously laugh, then your response is still involuntary-- even though it's been "educated".

As I said, I'm not going to pretend to enjoy something that I don't. Unfortunately, this includes the overwhelming majority of classical music, including the most famous and celebrated compositions. I regret my tin ear, and I hope I some day overcome this deficiency, but that's the state of play.

Among the vanishingly few classical compositions I do enjoy is "Gympnopédie No. 1" by Erik Satie-- a piece that everybody recognizes, I'm sure.

I can't remember where I first heard it. It came to my attention in the film My Dinner with André, an excellent film which is literally about two guys having dinner and talking. On other occasions, I heard it playing in the shop Sostrene Grene, at a particularly emotional interlude in my life.

To say I enjoy it, in fact, is an understatement. It captivates me. I can listen to it over and over and never get tired of it-- although, as with all forms of art, it moves me especially when I'm in the right mood.

The best things in life, I think, are those which always seem to exceed our hopes-- even when we've experienced them before.

Is it possible to put the experience of music into words? I've looked for analysis of this composition. I can find musical analysis, but I couldn't find any analysis of the experience of listening to it, although some people take a stab at it in the comments section of YouTube. Here are some of the comments:

This piece evokes the feelings of being in a dream, like floating amongst clouds in ultimate tranquility, I hope it brightens your day.

This is either: A. The most relaxing piece ever B. The most depressing piece ever.

This piece feels like walking alone through an empty forest on a quiet night under the big, bright moon, feeling lonely and nostalgic, yet tranquil and at peace.

It feels like someone I love is dying in few minutes and we're making the best out of the remaining moments.

I personally don't find this piece depressing or sad at all. I think everybody would agree that it's melancholy, but I experience it as a sweet kind of melancholy. A very sweet kind of melancholy.

The comment that comes closest to my own reaction, of those above, is the third one: "This piece feels like walking alone through an empty forest on a quiet night under the big, bright moon, feeling lonely and nostalgic, yet tranquil and at peace."

It definitely has a lonely feeling to it. It seems very pensive and reflective, and at a distance from the hurly-burly of life. (Something that always feels delicious to  me. Indeed, it makes the hurly-burly itself seem move loveable, to be viewed from a distance.)

The last comment, about trying to make the most of someone's dying moments, is the furthest from my own reactions. This composition gives me a sense of timelessness, of a total lack of urgency or anxiety or haste. (Sometimes I suspect whether the goal of all art, or one of its goals, is to heal or abate the wounds of transience and loss).

The gentle tinkling of piano keys evokes for me the image of drops falling into a body of liquid-- but drops falling very slowly and gently. "Peace comes dropping slow." Indeed, I imagine a sea of amber-golden-sepia liquid, in some imaginary realm, lit by a dim but rich light.

Similarly, the piece makes me think of of a timeless world of abstract but harmonious forms, such as the canvases of Mondrian. Not precisely like Mondrian, but that sort of thing.

On the plane of the human world, the world of nature... I think this composition has a very autumnal atmosphere. It makes me think of walking through autumnal fields, brown leaves crunching under my feet, perhaps scenting the smoke of a far-off bonfire, and feeling dreamy and reflective, but at peace. 

And it has the same effect on me that all powerful beauty does...a deep excitement, a near-expectation that the whole world can, should and will be beautiful, that I'm just not looking at it from the right angle, or doing the right thing, or playing my part in the creation of a world of total beauty and meaning.