MUSIC of the land
Like a cinema projectionist, the best music has the power to flick the switch that transports us to a different time or place. It also has the ability to either amplify our feelings or help us escape them. Songs are where we go to lose ourselves or to find something that is otherwise lacking. As is the natural world. Many of us are currently yearning for the great outdoors, that pastoral idyll of colourful people, wildlife and settings. Thankfully, sounds can take us there.
Just as the countryside inspired some of our finest composers to create their masterpieces, those same works can carry the listener from their armchair, high over the hills and across the oceans. The relationship between the landscape and music is a symbiotic one.
Admittedly, listening to Holst’s probably won’t lift you up and drop you down upon his interpretation of Thomas Hardy’s fictionalised Salisbury Plain, just as hearing the short flurry of activity coursing through Elgar’s may not bring to mind the unfortunate bulldog who fell into the River Wye. Instead, these pieces trigger our own memories; perhaps a heathland where you saw your first adder or an adventure had with your
