I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Hindemith's "Mathis der Maler"....

A few days ago, Terry Teachout ruminated a bit on the idea of "living in a piece of music", inspired to do so by this post by Heather at In the Wings. Setting aside the question that immediately arises -- "How the heck do you live in a piece of music?" -- I've been thinking a bit about it.

I find that it's a blend of two factors, really: visual and emotive. It's partly about what I "see" when I listen to a given bit of music, and partly about what a given bit of music makes me feel. Now, over the years, I've come to almost consciously avoid approaching music from a visual standpoint. Since my first real exposure to extended orchestral music came via filmscores, I tended to indulge the visual aspect, to the point of using things like the Star Wars soundtrack LPs as a means of re-experiencing the film. But then, I had a teacher who rather dramatically illustrated to me that music need not cue any one visual at all, and I was off to the races. Now, I buy filmscores only if I like the music, and I now refuse to limit myself to buying scores to films I've seen.

What does this have to do with "living in music"? Well, it's a matter of approach, really. My own journeys through any musical landscape (or soundscape, I suppose) are based on feeling and emotion than on any sense of visual stimulation; likewise, I tend to prize emotion and feel over form. But anyway, staying with what I take to be the sense of the question, here are a few pieces of music that maybe I wouldn't specifically want to inhabit, but maybe visit once in a while:

Bach, Mass in B-minor. The part of me that automatically looks up upon entering any house of worship would be at home here, I think.

Mozart, Symphony No. 40 in G-minor. I know what I just said about form, but Mozart's just so good at form -- and if form is done supremely well, as it always is with Wolfgang A., the appreciation of form can itself be an emotion, in the sense of that cosmic sense of wonder I get when standing in a field at night looking up at the stars.

Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique. Here's good emotion winning out over bad form -- the first movement in particular is pretty disjointed, as Berlioz's grasp of sonata allegro form isn't terribly good. He's constantly stopping and starting rather than making convincing transitions, and at one point he goes up and down the chromatic scale before reaching one of his dead-stops. But the raw feeling of this thing -- yeah, I want to live in this piece for a while. It's a work of intense emotion, dominated by Berlioz's fiery love (or, more accurately, obsessive infatuation) with an actress he saw on stage, and at one point driven by the fantasies of an opiate madman. Who wouldn't want to go into that piece for a while?

Rachmaninov, Symphony No. 2 in E-minor. Longtime readers will know that I'm often mentioning this piece. It's the most perfect expression of Romantic melancholy that I know.

Pink Floyd, The Wall. I'd probably open a vein if I actually lived inside this album. But maybe not.