Listen to The Adagio for Strings when your pain is locked down so deep you’re numb and empty. This will open it up and let the sadness flow away from your heart.
Or listen to it when you’re happy and melancholy is something to enjoy because you can’t imagine feeling it.
Either way, this beautiful piece of music never fails to touch my heart, whether in joy or in sorrow.
This is how Leonard Bernstein must have looked while conducting this music. His face expresses what I feel when I listen to it.
This is one of my favorite pieces of music.
I’ll never forget the first time I heard this piece. A friend recommended it, said I had to listen to it. So, I grabbed the novel I was assigned to read for Lit class, and headed to the library. As I sat there listening with headphones, reading the wrenching opening of The Grapes of Wrath, it was as if the piece were being played on the very strings of my heart, which reverberated with chords of grief and sorrow. Tears streamed down my face, unchecked. Every sorrow I had ever known, or would know, or even imagined knowing, was contained in that music. It was a long time before I could leave. And when I did, I was changed.
Thank you. E. Mae, for your beautiful description of the power of this music.
Loved it Georgia. On my desktop so I can listen when the heart needs it.