Elegiac Music

 

    Virgil, 70 BC

 

It's interesting how music is used after major horrific events. I recall after 9/11 there was music that was appropriate or inappropriate (Clear Channel's "Hit List").

Certain classical pieces seem to be more elegiac. Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings is often used, apparently considered the saddest music ever written. And yet the irony is that music of any kind is anathema to fundamentalism. We like to think music has healing power but that might be our cultural arrogance.

Music with words (or anything that has text, like a film) becomes more salient after memory encoding. Words can be meaningless until things happen in one's life that you relate to.

In the days and weeks after the attacks, I'd be listening to the radio and there would be interesting serendipity: You'd be listening to a report about Islamic holy wars, change the dial to rock station and hear Lennon's Instant Karma followed by Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down. You can't remove meaning from random events as they occur. They are distinctly personal experiences that sometimes seem to be made just for you.