As far back as I can remember, being conscientious about the possibility of the end has always been through an association to music and/or films. Likewise with memories of childhood and teenage years, both intimate and formative. Those feelings feel reflected in this selection of universal masterpieces: the last piece Mozart penned (Requiem in D minor); the funeral march of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7; the cold air of Purcell (Molière’s death scene in the biopic by Mnouchkine); the haze of Brahm’s A German Requiem; the adagietto of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 (heard in the film Death in Venice); Zarathustra or the “eternal return”, philosophical and metaphysical triplet Nietzsche-Strauss-Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey); the damnation of Don Giovanni under the specter of his own father as commander; the supposed ending of Pamina in The Magic Flute, my first opera live at the age of five; the lachrymal larghetto of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2, brought from Japan by my father; the Goldberg Variations by Gould; Barber's strings associated with the 9/11 disaster, while I was “falling asleep”; the third of Strauss' Four Last Songs, a sublime cycle, a peaceful crepuscule I’ve listened to on loop, particularly when I was sick... It evolved into a true transcendental experience. My first great love, Bob Smith's doppelgänger: “Just Like Heaven”, memories of singing it together, and parting together.
I defend and believe that film music is not a subgenre: the death of Jedi master Qui-Gon in Star Wars; West Side Story’s ending; the sinking of the Titanic; or, another boat symbolic of the exodus of Jews to the lands of Palestine, Exodus, images by Preminger and lyrical-Hollywood music by Ernest Gold. The supernatural voice of Julee Cruise marked my adolescence through Lynch's “dark” TV series Twin Peaks. Likewise with Charlie Parker thanks to Clint Eastwood's Bird. Ultimately, the loss of a child is the most cruel and unbearable ending. Haendel's saraband illustrates this tragedy in Barry Lyndon. The beginning of the end.
"And if the music should also fail?" Aldous Huxley wonders, "well, there was always silence to fall back on. For always, always and everywhere, the rest is silence."
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