An odd holiday memory

[Roland Flessner]

Greetings, friends!

In my high school years, my family lived in a medium-sized town in downstate Illinois. I was a typically alienated teen, the more so because I hadn’t grown up there and was used to larger cities.

One year during the holiday break, a long walk took me through the city park, where a Christmas display included a PA system usually emitting insipid holiday fare. On this day, something had obviously gone awry with the sound feed and emerging from the speaker was turbulent modern orchestral music, vividly orchestrated with lots of percussion, expressing the demonic rather than the angelic. I was delighted by the incongruity, and I stood listening as long as I could in the cold.

I don’t have a specific recollection that would help identify the composer or work, and I wonder if it may since have become familiar to me. It makes a holiday memory that I will always cherish, while almost all the others have long since faded.

Thanks to all forum denizens for sharing the joy of great music. However you spend your holidays, spin up some good tunes!

[erikwilson7]

Thanks for sharing that fun memory. I wish I had a classical/orchestral-related memory like that to cherish.

I did, however, happen to spin some good tunes around the holidays. I created something this year called a "composer advent calendar," which is a series of playlists on Spotify. I made a playlist for a different composer each day, and I sent them out to a bunch of friends, family, and coworkers every morning of December. The last day, of course, had to be Gustav Mahler (I extended the advent project through the end of December instead of finishing on Christmas like a proper advent calendar). If anyone is interested in what I included it was as follows: M5 Adagietto, M2 Scherzo, "Von der Schönheit", M6 Andante moderato, "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen", and finally M8 "Alles Vergängliche" to wrap up 2019. The most fulfilling part of this entire project/experiment was that on New Years Eve my friend messaged me saying, "We need to talk about Mahler... every other composer you sent me was recognizable and enjoyable, but Mahler made me cry. It was the most beautiful thing." Turns out she was referring to "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen." It sounds like we have a new potential Mahlerite!

[Roland Flessner]

That's very cool! You can never have too many Mahler enthusiasts.