The Writing Life: Five Pieces From My Playlist

“This is my music, this is myself.” Emerson

I don’t mind the blank looks I get when I talk about my writing playlist. Different from most I’ve heard about, it’s one of the joys in my writing life. I have put together a list that doesn’t change, reaching back in time, with over five hours of orchestral music. Here’s a sample of the music that has been my companion on more writing projects than I can count. Its inspiration never wears off and it will be with me as far as I can imagine into the future.

“The Lark Ascending” by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) sits at the top. I begin almost every writing session by listening to this pastoral piece for solo violin and orchestra. From the opening woodwind chords that allude to flight, this piece from 1914 gives me passage out of the workaday world. The violin solo, the lark taking flight, invites me to come along to a higher and more peaceful place. And in sixteen minutes, I’m transported.

I walk deeper into my work with Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). The four movements of “Le Tombeau de Couperin” take me on a contemplative walk into his resonant memories of friends who died in World War 1. I’m an essay writer so I’m comfortable wandering with Ravel into these portraits, each with a gentle energy that becomes a metronome to keep me on pace.

Not that I want to encourage any conundrum to stymie me on the page, but I turn to Sir Edward Elgar’s (1857-1934) “Enigma Variations” for a shot of energy midway through a writing session. Billed as a set of variations on a theme, the trick has been to find the theme. Musicians and scholars have argued over it since 1899 with no agreement. I can’t find it but the orchestrations, the sheer sound, rather than the structure hold the variations together for me.

When I need to let go and write freely, it’s the impressionistic “Nocturnes” by Claude Debussy (1862-1918) that buoy me. Three movements that paint pictures of clouds, celebrate festivals, and bring the singing of sirens from afar inspire me to explore possibilities without a thought toward censoring myself. Twenty minutes of having the emotional space to write with abandon is a gift.

Samuel Barber (1910-1981) helps me turn back toward the world when I finish a writing session. “Adagio for Strings” is built around a simple, meditative motif that builds harmonic tension in waves that come to intermediate resolutions before reaching a climax. As if releasing pressure, the piece winds down to the original motif and ends on little more than a breath.

 Should you take a listen, let me know what you think of this part of my playlist.