/**/
12/04/2011

Music Moves Me ... to something strange.


One of my favorite pieces of music is Beethoven's 7th, 2nd Movement, Allegretto, in A Major. In fact, if I may be even more precise, the first 3 minutes, 20 seconds of said movement.

I seem to enjoy music which might be classified as "Melancholia".

Beethoven's 7th gives me the strangest vision in my head and I don't know why. I see, in my mind, the bodies of soldiers - specifically, Napoleon's army with which he invaded Russia - the greatest disaster ever visited on the French before World War I. I see them in piles along a road. Frozen. Laying all in disarray. I think these bodies are men who died on the way to Vilnius, in Lithuania - the fighting over, the army defeated, the victims of a terrible European winter. Not men who died in battle, but those who died trying to get home.

I have seen this same vision all my life. I can remember the first time I heard the piece. I remember the first time I saw them. I don't see their faces. I see their bodies - as if through a frosted window - and I see dead horses and useless carts and the equipment of War strewn about.

All my life.

I told you it was strange.

I would really like to know why this vision visits me every time I hear this piece.

Ndinombethe.

4 comments:

Big Mark 243 said...

I will have to find a link or a video to this piece to give it a listen... it is a little late and I can't recall a piece of music that brings this kind of vision to me...

There once was a 'melancholia' station on AOL Radio... I wonder if there still is...

Grandmother Mary said...

Okay, this will be equally strange in response. The first thing that came to my mind was that they are communicating with you somehow, all those soldiers, to find a way home. When people die quickly, their soul can get trapped here in this world and sensitive souls can be vehicles for them to finish their journey to the beyond.

Tara R. said...

Like Mark I need to find this composition so I can listen to this movement. There are songs that have an emotional impact on me too.

PattiKen said...

There are bits of music that bring clear visions to my mind as well. Ravel's Bolero always brings a gaucho riding the pampas. As with everything, I'm an agnostic. But perhaps you are having a former life memory?