The Saddest Music

I was talking to my friend Chris Hill tonight about Rattle’s performance of Mahler 9. (It had been recommended by my friend Tobias Hünermann.) I bought it—months ago—but still haven’t listened to it. The reason? I feel as if I need to have a certain store of emotional strength to listen to it. Otherwise I become inconsolably depressed. I think the last time I listened to it was, oh, 1992—that's how deeply it affects me. Right now, I’m absolutely sure I don’t have the fortitude I need. For instance, lots of great animals in my life have died: the first was Lori’s cat Julio; then Kari’s cat Joon followed a few months later; then my own wonderful Chococat over the Christmas break. And just today Laurel’s dog Magy died. Animals are like children to me. So I’m certainly not ready for Mahler 9 anytime soon.

I’ve been wondering why it seems to me that all the saddest music I know comes from when I was younger. The second movement of Tippett’s Double Concerto; Barber, Knoxville: Summer of 1915; Albinoni Adagio; second movement of Tippett’s first piano sonata (why Tippett?); Duran Duran, Ordinary World. I think I was 33 when I heard the Duran Duran and that’s the last sad song I remember hearing as sad. Have I become immune to sad music now that I’m older? Do I feel less deeply? Or have I simply become less self-indulgent?

Strangest of all are the pieces that sometimes seem sad to me and sometimes don’t: Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians is one, but so are “Mache dich” from the St. Matthew Passion and Howard Shore’s closing credits music for The Two Towers. What accounts for the difference? It can’t be a question of quality alone. Does it come, perhaps, from the power of the memory with which the sad music is associated? And if that's true, might I someday have a wonderful memory associated with Mahler 9 that will make it possible for me to hear it as often as I’d like?