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Read on to discover why facing our own mortality reveals music\u2019s most profound secrets…<\/strong><\/p> Some decades ago, the Southbank Centre<\/a><\/strong> in London ran a concert series called Last Works, which did exactly what it said on the tin. It programmed music written by composers just before they died. As I recall, it wasn\u2019t a crowd-puller. People don\u2019t mind being reminded occasionally of their mortality. But several months of staring into the abyss of oblivion did\u00a0seem a little morbid. \u00a0<\/p> Yet much classical music is about confronting death \u2013 and it\u2019s not all written by composers facing imminent extinction. For every Mozart<\/a><\/strong> Requiem<\/a><\/strong> or Mahler<\/a><\/strong> Nine there\u2019s a Dream of Gerontius<\/a><\/strong><\/em> or St Matthew Passion<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. These masterpieces portray the psychology surrounding death with acute empathy, yet written by composers in their prime.<\/p> And whether such pieces are written early or late in composers\u2019 lives, their interpreters will be performers of all ages. Years ago, I watched the National Youth Orchestra<\/a><\/strong> rehearsing Britten<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s War Requiem<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. The young players were concentrating so intently on the work\u2019s formidable technical challenges that they seemed disengaged emotionally. <\/p> Suddenly Philip Langridge<\/a><\/strong>, the great tenor soloist, stopped singing and turned round to face them. \u2018You do realise what this music is about, don\u2019t you?\u2019 he said. \u2018It\u2019s about the slaughter of millions of boys \u2013 teenagers, just like you.\u2019 When the music restarted, it was transformed. The intensity level rose about 300 per cent.<\/p> That set me thinking. As we get older do we respond differently to that vast canon of music dealing with mortality? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Winterreise<\/a><\/strong><\/em>? Or do human beings possess such a flexible sense of empathy that we can relate to virtually any state of mind if it is evoked convincingly enough by a composer?<\/p> It\u2019s a complex question. Because baked into some music dealing with death is a kind of theatricality that makes it easier for audiences to relate to it. That\u2019s obviously the case with opera. You don\u2019t need to be a jilted Japanese teenager to be profoundly moved by Cio-Cio-San\u2019s suicide in Madam Butterfly<\/a><\/strong>,<\/em> nor a Nordic hero to feel shivers down the spine during Siegfried\u2019s Funeral March.<\/p> But it\u2019s also true of certain concert works. When Verdi<\/a><\/strong> evokes the Day of Judgement with those echoing offstage trumpets in his Requiem<\/a><\/strong>, or when Mahler conjures up the chilling summons of the Grim Reaper with those hammer blows in his Sixth Symphony, those are also theatrical gestures \u2013 more like brilliant sonic effects than profound insights into our mortality. People of any\u00a0age can understand that.<\/p> On the other hand, I believe that it\u2019s only when you pass into old age, or perhaps through some life-threatening illness, that certain pieces disclose their full depth. For example, two works by Schubert have always been on my \u2018desert island\u2019 list: the Quintet in C and the \u2018Unfinished\u2019 Symphony<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>Much of the classical canon is about accepting our own mortality<\/h2>
Can we empathise with music about death at any age?<\/h2>
It’s only as we get older that music about mortality reveals its full depths<\/h2>