The Music of Nostalgia

[Cato]

Through one of the quirks of the Universe, I was able to see an old episode of The Twilight Zone called Walking Distance often considered one of the best ones, written by Rod Serling and - here is the important part - a marvelously nostalgic (if occasionally eerie) score by Bernard Herrmann.

The story is about a "frazzled New Yorker" who revisits his childhood in a small town.

Which musical works evoke for you something from the past, either personally or generically?  i.e. the work may not have a "nostalgic sound" for anyone else but you, vs. the work will evoke a "good ol' days" sentiment in most listeners.

I am taken back "personally" to my early days whenever I hear Smetana's Moldau, Liszt's Les Preludes Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, and the Tchaikovsky Third Symphony.

I think most people would agree that Dvorak's Serenade for Strings,  Bernard Herrmann's String Quartet Echoes, Aaron Copland's scores for Our Town and The Red Pony sound "nostalgic."  The Tchaikovsky First Symphony might be included as well.

Any other candidates for either category?

[Wilhelm Richard]

Randy Newman's score for Ragtime...simple genius.

[Cato]

Randy Newman's score for Ragtime...simple genius.

That jogs a memory: the score for Field of Dreams by James Horner.

[henry]

For me it's the slow section of the 3rd movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto no.22.  I was almost in tears at one time.

[Dr. Dread]

Probably my favorite music from the good old days.  Too much to list...

[karlhenning]

Cool thread!

Carry on.

[DavidRoss]

Randy Newman's score for Ragtime...simple genius.

Good call.  And thanks for the reminder for I haven't seen that film in many a year, though I reread Doctorow's books just a few years ago.

Classical music that takes me back to childhood:  Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.    Stockhausen's Hymnen and Stimmung take me back to my late teens.  Certain pieces, like Mahler's 4th, Mozart's 40th, Pachelbel's Canon in D, evoke Proustian memories of certain women and lazy mornings with the Sunday Times.  And lots of pop recordings stir powerful memories of social movements, politics, travels, the spirit of the times, and the people and places, all writ indelibly in memory but as distant as former lives, as unreal as memories of movies rather than tracks laid down by experience.

[owlice]

Dave, what a beautifully phrased and evocative post!

Cato, one of my strongest musical associations is for the March from the Love for Three Oranges Suite, as it was used for an egg commercial that appeared on television when I was a girl.  I cannot help but think of marching eggs when I hear the music! I don't mind this, actually, as I thought the commercial fun and liked the music. When I heard the music, I didn't know what it was, but it stuck in my head for years; I heard it again on the car radio when in my late teens/early twenties -- somewhere in there -- and almost ran off the road, I was so excited to finally know what the music was!

When in my 30s I finally got a stereo and finally finally had some money to spend on CDs (I won $500 in a contest and spent it all on CDs), that Prokofiev work was one of the must-haves on my list.

[Dr. Dread]

Oh. We're talking classical. Well then, where it all began...

[Cato]

Dave, what a beautifully phrased and evocative post!

Cato, one of my strongest musical associations is for the March from the Love for Three Oranges Suite, as it was used for an egg commercial that appeared on television when I was a girl.  I cannot help but think of marching eggs when I hear the music! I don't mind this, actually, as I thought the commercial fun and liked the music. When I heard the music, I didn't know what it was, but it stuck in my head for years; I heard it again on the car radio when in my late teens/early twenties -- somewhere in there -- and almost ran off the road, I was so excited to finally know what the music was!

When in my 30s I finally got a stereo and finally finally had some money to spend on CDs (I won $500 in a contest and spent it all on CDs), that Prokofiev work was one of the must-haves on my list.

In the really good old days, the March from the Love for Three Oranges Suite was used for a radio show called The FBI in Peace and War.   

See:  http://www.otr.net/?p=fbpw

[DavidRoss]

Dave, what a beautifully phrased and evocative post!

Cato, one of my strongest musical associations is for the March from the Love for Three Oranges Suite, as it was used for an egg commercial that appeared on television when I was a girl.   I cannot help but think of marching eggs when I hear the music! I don't mind this, actually, as I thought the commercial fun and liked the music. When I heard the music, I didn't know what it was, but it stuck in my head for years; I heard it again on the car radio when in my late teens/early twenties -- somewhere in there -- and almost ran off the road, I was so excited to finally know what the music was!

When in my 30s I finally got a stereo and finally finally had some money to spend on CDs (I won $500 in a contest and spent it all on CDs), that Prokofiev work was one of the must-haves on my list.

Thanks, Owlice, very kind of you to say so.  And now I know I must listen to the Three Oranges march soon, for I can't summon it to memory, and I cannot recall the marching eggs, either.  

P.S.  Just youtubed it.  But of course.  

http://www.youtube.com/v/Tn_95hdy6Nw&feature=related

Whoops!  Musta got the wrong hat march!  How's this:

http://www.youtube.com/v/KzC_RJrPV40&feature=related

[Guido]

The feeling of nostalgia is one of my absolute favourite phenomen, and I think it's the emotion I most crave in music - Charles Ives, Samuel Barber and Gerald Finzi being my three favourite composers - the entire oeuvre of each composer drips with it. Wistful, yearning, sehnsucht.

Unfortunately it rarely happens to me in real life - that feeling of really being truly transported back to a time and place in terms of how it felt, rather than just remembering it as an image, or a fact - Something I really treasure when it does happen though. Reminds me of Proust - "Every paradise is a paradise lost."

[Cato]

The feeling of nostalgia is one of my absolute favourite phenomen, and I think it's the emotion I most crave in music - Charles Ives, Samuel Barber and Gerald Finzi being my three favourite composers - the entire oeuvre of each composer drips with it. Wistful, yearning, sehnsucht.

Unfortunately it rarely happens to me in real life - that feeling of really being truly transported back to a time and place in terms of how it felt, rather than just remembering it as an image, or a fact - Something I really treasure when it does happen though. Reminds me of Proust - "Every paradise is a paradise lost."

I am not acquainted with Finzi unfortunately, but the Ives works of nostalgia which come to my mind are the Third Symphony and the Holidays Symphony.  Of course, in a certain sense Ives deals quite a bit with evoking small-town life in the late 1800's.

Samuel Barber: Knoxville, Summer of 1915.

[Guido]

I agree with the pieces you have mentioned here - but really I think that everything that Ives and Barber did is infused with memory and nostalgia - maybe just what I hear, but I think it was of prime concern to both of them. Finzi has always to me seemed to be the most poetic and sensitive of the composers of the English musical renaissance - his music has a particular resonance with me despite (or I suspect partially because of) its obvious technical limitations.

[owlice]

I cannot recall the marching eggs, either.

Maybe you're too young to have seen that commercial!

Nice hats videos; thanks!

In the really good old days, the March from the Love for Three Oranges Suite was used for a radio show called The FBI in Peace and War.  

See:  http://www.otr.net/?p=fbpw

I missed that completely, but then, I'm a child of the television age. (I used to think the best job on earth must be selecting the music for cartoons; I'm still pretty envious of those who got to work on the Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd/etc. cartoons which introduced so many to so much classical music.)

There are pop tunes that definitely transport me back in time: with one song, I'm 16 and at the pool with my best friend; with another, I'm 11 or 12 and lying in bed at night listening to the blues seep through the ceiling from my older brother's room.

Carnival of the Animals doesn't transport me to my own childhood, but to my now-tall child's, as I listened to it many a time when he was settling into sleep in his loft bed and I was sitting on the air sofa under the loft, not because he needed my presence, but because I wanted to share that music with him. I don't think I'll ever again hear Aquarium without feeling as though I'm sitting in the dark surrounded by furniture from Ikea.

[ChamberNut]

Oh. We're talking classical. Well then, where it all began...

Same here Dave! 

[Dr. Dread]

Same here Dave! 

Yep. You are my brother from another mother. 

[ChamberNut]

Yep. You are my brother from another mother. 

Beethoven's 9th Scherzo still evokes images of dancing Jesuses statue, vampire, the bride at the scaffold and Alex's room. 

[Dr. Dread]

Beethoven's 9th Scherzo still evokes images of dancing Jesuses statue, vampire, the bride at the scaffold and Alex's room. 

[toledobass]

For me, one of the great things about being a musician is how the pieces I perform end up relating to various parts of my life.  When repertoire rolls back around, one of the first things that happens, almost automatically like some sort of reflex, is I go back through my catalog of performances to remember the various times I've played it.  That always triggers memories surrounding those performances.  While maybe not exactly nostalgia,  certain pieces will remind me of what was happening in my life and the people I was surrounded with the various times I've performed it.  It's always smile inducing. 

A big one for me is Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto.  It was the first piece I ever played with an orchestra and for that it will always sort of stand as a baseline (har har) of how I've developed over the years.  It will always remind me of how far I've come.

Allan